Marriage success tips 7 strong reasons couples should choose monogamy over having affairs

Steven Lake of The Good Men Project explains the reasons why monogamy is way better than having an affair.

1. Keeps life simple:  If you want drama, have an affair. For the life of me, I don’t know why people don’t break up before the affair. Saves so much pain and sorrow. Yes, breaking up is hard to do, but when an affair happens, life can get seriously crazy. I have seen kids kidnapped, visitation rights ignored, cars destroyed, and people assaulted. Most of this could have been avoided if there had been no affair.
   
   
2. Safety: Yup, having sex with only your partner pretty much eliminates the possibility of getting a sexually transmitted disease (STD). You would be surprised how many people don’t practice safe sex.
   
   
3. Health: Stress is brutal on your physical and mental health. Keeping secrets is crazy-making for both you and your partner. The offending party takes a hit on their self-esteem and the offended often sense something is wrong, but is met with denials when they question their partner, which makes the offended party doubt reality (a.k.a.: crazy-making). When you have enough stress your body takes a hit. Not so much fun.
   
   
4. Staying monogamous is an incentive to keep your sexual life alive: It may not be a guarantee, as you could just let the sexual aspect of your relationship fade away, but if your libido is intact, there will be an urgency to find a solution. My partner and I have had to deal with huge stressors because of illness, finances, career change, moving, and personal change. These experiences affected our sexual relationship and we had to evolve to stay involved. The good news is that we are closer emotionally and sexually today than we have ever been. This is due in part because we have focused on our relationship without the distraction of an affair.
   
   
5. I don’t like hypocrisy: I don’t like sharing either, my wife that is. Call me old-fashioned but I just don’t like the idea of my wife making-out with another person. It only seems fair that if I want my wife to be faithful, I should do the same.
   
   
6. Keeping something sacred: In today’s world much of what we do is on public display. I am highly engaged with my clients, friends, and business associates. Social media is a medium that keeps me connected personally and promotes my businesses. My sexual relationship with my wife is something special that only we share. It is not just the act of sex. We have had relationships and sex with other people before we met. Yet, the people we are today, our shared history, and the unique combination of our personalities is unprecedented. Much like fingerprints, there is no other relationship like ours. Not now, not ever. Kinda cool when you think about it.
   
   
7. Respect: I respect myself enough to keep to my ideals and commitment. I respect her enough to value her commitment, her word, her dream, her vision and her faithfulness. I do myself and my partner a disservice when I break my oath. An oath I made to myself, her, and when married, to the community. Yes, we are human and make mistakes. Sometimes they are not mistakes but deliberate actions to get us out of situations that we believe we cannot leave without an incident, such as an affair. These things happen all the time. I see it in my practice every day and it grieves me to hear and see all the pain that happens when people don’t communicate how they are feeling about life, the relationship, and about themselves.