Weddingbee Blog

As a newlywed, everyone asks you, “How does it feel? Do you feel different?” My response is usually, “Not much has changed.” Mr. G and I lived together before marriage. We pay bills in the same manner that we always have. We’re a unit. But when a friend told me a story the other day, my thought process made me realize that maybe I am different.

One of my friend’s coworkers, an ambitious, single woman, is having an affair with a boss at their company. They’d been flirting and carrying on for quite some time, and then a fellow coworker saw them out at a bar one night being more than friendly with one another. Now the whole office knows and talks about it at the watercooler. Oh, and did I forget to mention, the boss is married with small children?

I have never been accepting of the idea of cheating. But, in my younger years, I wasn’t super judgmental about it, either. When a girlfriend of mine was fooling around with a married man in college, I didn’t approve. But, on the other hand, I didn’t necessarily throw a fit and break off our friendship, either. I thought that I shouldn’t be judgmental of her and her relationship. People were often unhappy in their marriages. Maybe my friend and her married companion really were meant to be? It was a stretch, but, at the time, I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

However, now that I am married, I’m on the other side of that fence.

No longer could I be “the other woman”. I’d be “the wife”. And, in many ways, that changes the whole playing field for me. It reminds me of something my wise mom has told me time and again, “You won’t fully understand until you’ve lived it.”

I’m a wife now; not a girlfriend, not even a fiancé. I’m a wife. I don’t quite know or understand the scope of that word yet, as I’m new to this game. But I am already finding myself more serious, more judgmental, and very emotional about the subject of betrayal amongst married couples.

If you think about it, infidelity is all around us. It’s eyeing us on the cover of the latest gossip magazine at the supermarket. It’s lurking between the desks in our offices and schools. It’s talked about and even laughed about by acquaintances and coworkers. And, sadly, it creeps in and breaks the hearts of our dearest friends and family members.

It’s not that the over saturation of infidelity in today’s culture makes me distrust Mr. G. But, it has made me feel a kinship with the wives in these sad situations. I feel like I’ve joined a club of some sort, a sorority of married women, who can know and understand where I am coming from without me needing to say a word. Our hearts break silently for one another, because we can only imagine what that woman must be going through.

Maybe this makes me a throwback to a 1950s housewife. Or maybe it just makes me officially “married” in my mind and in my heart. I’m not sure.

How do you view infidelity in today’s culture? Have your thoughts on it changed since you’ve been engaged or married?