Never Forgive Infidelity, Cheating!
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2023-09-08

Yesterday, I published this on my Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/narcissismwithvaknin):

"If having an affair has revitalized your marriage – then your union has always been sick and dysfunctional, based on deception, mistrust, and abject dependency. A mentally healthy marriage never survives an affair."

It provoked a bit of a storm. So, here is what I meant to say:

I refer to cheating: an affair involving deception. Not to an open marriage or open relationship or polyamory or the lifestyle (swinging) or cuckoldry which do not involve deceptive practices. 

Any arrangement between consenting adults which involves no coercion of any kind and no harm whatsoever to others is perfectly legitimate as a way to pursue happiness and wellbeing.

Some affairs are consensual (for example in polyamory). 

When the affair involves concealment and lying, to forgive this magnitude of deception and rejection, you need to be mentally impaired somehow.

If the marriage is of two psychologically impaired people, no number of affairs can fix it. This is rank nonsense. Serious mental illness is for life and incurable (though manageable). Ignore the self-interested nonsense online about “healing”. It is a scam.

Mentally healthy people break up after a deceptive affair. If they do not - then they are mentally impaired in some manner. No two ways about it. 

Their boundaries are porous or nonexistent. They are dependent (codependent). They regulate externally. They are trauma bonded. They are too anxious to face life and reality (constriction). They cannot perceive their partner as real. They are dissociative. 
 
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