If you've followed U.S. politics at all over the last five years, the name of South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, a Republican, has come across your computer more than once.
At first, it was because Sanford's experience as a member of Congress and as governor of South Carolina led him to be a potential favorite for the 2012 presidential nomination. Then it was because of his 2009 affair with a woman from another country and his subsequent divorce from his wife Jenny. After he won an unlikely victory to once again represent in Congress, he seemed like the comeback king — at least, until a few days ago, when he broke off his engagement to the woman with whom he cheated.
While Sanford is an easy target for Democrats who want to criticize unfaithful social conservatives as hypocrites, and for politicos in general to get click-throughs to their websites, his experience also provides a lesson for a culture too often stuck on self-centeredness when it comes to relationships.
For practicing Christians, marriage is a lifelong commitment that entails self-sacrifice for the good of the other person in the relationship, as well as any children the relationship may bear. By its very nature, cheating is a selfish activity that entails lying, often ends in divorce, and maximizes the always-dangerous “grass is greener” mentality. And despite the excitement an affair may bring at first, the damage is both deep and wide.
In a 2013 book, relationship expert Jean Duncombe noted that interviews with people who cheat, as well as marriage counselors and psychologists, showed that the damage to children is devastating. She told the Daily Mail:
‘I’m puritanical when someone tells me they’re having an affair — because of the work we’ve done on the impact of divorce on the children.
‘If people say to me that the children don’t know, I say: “Are you sure?” or “Think about what you’re doing to the children” — and I never would have said that 20 years ago.’
That damage is often not seen for years, sometimes decades. And it can crush the next generation's physical health, mental health, and relationship health.
But surely the affair is necessary for the happiness of the person cheating, right? One therapist and published relationship author, Esther Perel, says that the answer is no — that, in fact, many people who cheat are, essentially, mistaking a lack of Disney Princess-like excitement for an unhappy marriage.
And the affairs don't last. According to MarriageAdvocates.com, half of affairs last from one month to one year, and according to Oregon “individual and couples therapist” Alec Wilson, affairs last only three to seven percent of the time.
Additionally, Americans who remarry after divorcing have much shorter marriages than their first one. A 2012 study showed that over half of couples who have a cheating spouse get divorced, though Wilson says that the divorce rate is as low as 30 percent.
What this means is that rather than being greener, the grass is devastatingly less green than where most married couples are currently standing.