INFIDELITY DOESN'T JUST HAPPEN

K. from Kentucky is very distressed that he's cheated on his wife with a woman he says he cares for, but not as much as he loves his wife. He's going to confess this to his wife (he doesn't know how or when), but fears this will break them up.

Probably.

Since they don't live together and have had serious trouble in the past, this may end the relationship...and maybe it should.

Sex doesn't just happen. You can't blame it on proximity(we sleeping in the same apartment) or on the wicked wiles of the seductive other person. At some point, you pulled down your pants. You made a decision to be unfaithful. Your committed relationship may have had a ton of problems. You may not have felt loved and cherished. Your mate may have cheated on you first.

You might have been drunk.

All this matters, but the consequences are the same. If you've been unfaithful in a relationship, there's no reason to think you won't do so again or that you've just made a mistake like writing a phone number down incorrectly or giving the cashier a bill of the wrong denomination. Sex is a complicated set of behaviors. You had lots of time to think--even if you weren't thinking clearly.

Cheating involves very powerful emotions and far-from-simple situations. Don't think I don't get that. Even very intelligent and gifted people get themselves into compromising situations and are caught with their shorts down (i.e. Tiger Woods).

When trying to muddle this through, you need to ask yourself--What the heck was going on with me? This is a big question and it includes the state of your committed relationship, as well as, the personal challenges of the cheater. Relationships have an emotional flow, not unlike plumbing. You need to keep things open and, when they get clogged, it can get messy. Bad communication in a relationship leads to blockages. In this case, it's only natural that your interest seeps away and heads in other directions. That doesn't mean it's okay or healthy to cheat.

The cheater also may have issues that lead to the cheating--like using sexual activities to deal with emotions (either to block them or bolster them). For some people, sexual addictions replace healthy emotional connections, either because they've found emotional connections themselves to be too painful or because they don't know how to establish these. Others use sexuality to feel valuable when they don't otherwise believe this about themselves.

You also need to ask yourself What is going on with the committed relationship? Every relationship involves conflict and, if you don't know how to resolve these, you'll drift. No one cheats when they're in a fulfilling, connected relationship.

It may be that personal issues have kept one of you from being able to really invest or you might have struggled to feel close when there was massive unresolved issues hanging between the two of you. It may have felt like you fell out of love with your committed spouse and into love with the new person in your life.

Love doesn't work like that. You only fall out of it when there has been trouble in it.

Infidelity is a choice. You don't catch it from friends like the flu, you make a choice. Try to learn what the situation says about you...what you can learn from it.

Remember: Even really good people sometimes make unhappy choices.