How Micro-Cheating Can Lead To Major Marriage Problems

In this episode of Relationship Radio, we delve into the intricate and often overlooked concept of micro-cheating. Through a personal story of transparency in marriage, we highlight the importance of candid conversations as a cornerstone of trust between spouses. We unravel the layers of subtle behaviors that, while seemingly harmless, can plant seeds of doubt and lead to emotional infidelity. By dissecting the nuances of micro-cheating, from understanding underlying intentions to recognizing early signs, we demonstrate how addressing these issues directly can help realign a marriage that may have strayed off course.

As we navigate the challenging terrain of trust and temptation, our discussion shifts towards effective strategies for discussing sensitive topics within a marriage. These include handling flirtatious behavior and addressing the use of explicit online material. We guide you through the process of initiating open and empathetic dialogues with your spouse, emphasizing the importance of focusing on feelings over fault, and establishing boundaries to protect the sanctity of your marriage.

Remember, the journey through marriage isn't just about enduring difficulties; it's about actively constructing a robust, shared foundation. In this episode, we provide you with the tools and insights needed to fortify your relationship. Join us as we offer guidance and support in strengthening the bonds of your partnership.

Relationship Radio is hosted by CEO of Marriage Helper, Kimberly Beam Holmes, and founder of Marriage Helper, Dr. Joe Beam.

Regardless of your situation, what we teach will not only make your relationships better, but will also help you to become the best version of yourself along the way.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Micro cheating. This is definitely a hot topic right now and maybe, to some people, a bit controversial and, to be completely honest, as we were preparing for this podcast, I was sitting here making a lot of faces of interpretation of like this is a very slippery slope of a topic. So what is micro cheating? Basically, at its core this term micro cheating I'll read the definition that an article on Mashablecom gives. It says that micro cheating is the form of engaging in inappropriate behaviors or interactions that teeter around the edges of intimacy or attempts facilitating intimacy with other people. Or, as our producer for this episode said, would your spouse be okay if they saw you doing this? Really, at its core, micro cheating is less about the behaviors that someone might be doing and more about the intention that someone has behind them. If you've listened to any of the talks or YouTube videos or podcasts that I have done where I've talked about topics like this or similar to this, then you may know that my husband and I have a very, very open conversation policy in our marriage about things like this. So, with the question of, would you be okay if your spouse saw you doing this?

Speaker 1: 1:55

My husband knows that if I ever feel like I've been in a situation where someone was flirting with me or I may have inadvertently been flirting back to them or whatever. It is typically the first thing I do especially if I feel like I shouldn't tell my husband is I go and I tell my husband, because it's the things that grow and fester inside of the dark that you don't want growing and festering inside of the dark. So typically what I have always done not just typically what I have always done is gone and told my husband. This happened. Either someone did this to me or I said this to someone and I think they took it the wrong way and I just need you to know why do I do that? Number one it takes the power of the situation away If I feel like I'm trying to hide something from my spouse not just me, but people in general when we feel this good feeling of someone replying to us or texting us in a flirty way, or they said something nice at work and I'm just not going to tell my husband about this, because I like the way that this feels when we start to like the way that other people, especially at the opposite sex, make us feel to such an extent that we don't want our spouse to know, because if our spouse knew, then we may have to come face to face with stopping that behavior or stopping those interactions. That's when a major red flag goes up and yes, I say a major red flag there, even if you haven't touched each other or held hands or kissed or done anything else, even if none of those things have happened, if inside of you you begin to feel feelings towards that person that really are only reserved for your spouse, you need to stop it. If you begin to feel things and you think well, let me put it this way, if your spouse were to feel those feelings about another man or another woman in the way that you're feeling about this other person, you wouldn't want that to happen and wouldn't you want to know. That's why this is so important to nip in the bud before it gets full blown.

Speaker 1: 4:07

One of the things we talk about a lot at Marriage Helper is this term limerence, which is falling madly in love with another person. And limerence doesn't just happen overnight. It happens over time in situations just like the ones I've been outlining. If you've been liking a bunch of another person's photos on social media, you start direct messaging them, you start texting with someone from work, you start hanging out after hours and you don't really think anything of it because you're just friends and you would never do anything. That is the prime foundation for how people end up falling in love with someone they never meant to fall in love with. So it's best to identify those feelings that you might be having now, even though they feel good, even though it might be stroking your ego, you might be getting some pride from it. You might feel young and flirty because someone's paying attention to you. That is the red flag of you need to back off from that other person, end contact if at all possible and go back to an appropriate relationship and maybe even tell your spouse. Now I realize that my husband and I we have a very open dialogue about that and, from what I've heard from some other people, there are some husbands or some wives who, if their spouse came to them and said, hey, this happened, or I'm struggling with feelings of attraction towards this other person, that might not be something that your spouse could handle if that's not a conversation that you've had in the past in a way that you both can have grace towards each other and understand that this is part of the temptations that come to marriage, and so maybe that's not the way you handle it right now, but the bottom line of nothing else is you need to stop doing the behavior that's leading you to feel that way.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Another part of this to consider if you feel like your spouse is micro-cheating is to have a conversation with them about how you feel. And, again, these micro-cheating things it may not even be a person that you or your spouse has real access to like in real life. These could be just things that your spouse is doing, of the people they're watching on Instagram or YouTube and the kinds of comments that they leave or the messages that they're sending. That could make you feel uncomfortable. If you've seen them publicly Hopefully you haven't been breaking into their phone to look at this but if you've been seeing some of the things and you feel like your spouse is flirting or maybe you were at a party and you felt like your spouse got a little too flirtatious or was trying to show off a little bit too much with someone that they just met then it could be an opportunity to simply have a discussion and lead with curiosity.

Speaker 1: 6:52

So, instead of leading that discussion with, why were you flirting with that girl at the party? It may simply be. Hey, I noticed that you were having what seemed to be a pretty intimate conversation with that girl. Can you tell me more about what was going on? And just start being curious, like how did you feel when you were talking with her? And then, ultimately, the idea the goal is to get to where you can share with your husband or your wife it can happen either way and say you know, I feel like it was a little inappropriate. Maybe you were trying a bit too hard or you came across as a bit too flirty, and I just want us to be mindful of that.

Speaker 1: 7:34

Now, this is a difficult conversation. Very likely your spouse may get defensive when you say that to them, and the goal isn't to try and blame them. It's not to try and get them defensive, but to simply have this open conversation about not engaging in some of these behaviors or activities and really protecting the marriage, because that's the goal here. The goal is how can we do everything we can to build a moat of protection around our marriage? Because here's what I can tell you Every single thing in this world, every single force, every single fill in the blank with whatever you want to call it is going to try and rip apart your marriage. There's always going to be temptations of any kind for lying, for cheating, being attracted to someone else. I mean, there's always going to be the temptation, and it's not because you or your spouse is a bad person, it's because marriage is hard and there's a lot of people and a lot of forces in the world that don't want marriage to work. Marriage is the background and the backbone of a strong society, of a strong culture. A healthy nuclear family, according to all of the research, is fundamental to a healthy society and to healthy humans, and so there's a lot of things that are trying to attack that especially.

Speaker 1: 9:04

According to my belief system, your goal, and what I hope your goal is, is to do everything you can to fortify and protect the commitment that you've made and the marriage that you have, and that is going to involve having some hard conversations. It's also going to involve walking away from certain situations that make you feel a certain way that you shouldn't feel. People who may make you feel a certain way. The guy at work who always says the nice things to you and makes you feel good and starts flirting with you. It might be a hard, difficult conversation to cut that off, but is it going to protect your marriage? It's going to be hard to maybe curate the content that you see on social media so that you don't see things that are going to give you fantasies about what it would be like if you weren't with your spouse. But how much better is it going to be for you to not see those things, so that you can fully appreciate your spouse and everything they are and everything that they've devoted and given to you and to the marriage? That's the goal Protect the marriage. Cure the content outside of your life so you protect the marriage. Choose your friendships wisely outside of your marriage so that you protect the marriage, because your marriage is the most important earthly relationship that you can have and that you will have, and so it's absolutely worth it to do everything you can to make it as strong as it can be.

Speaker 1: 10:36

We actually had a listener submit a question about this. She says my husband and I have been married for 15 years and I recently found out that he's been texting women that he works with and even paying for their lunch if they go out to eat during their lunch break. Should I confront him on it. I don't necessarily think he's cheating, but it feels like a breach of trust and I don't know what to do about it. My encouragement to this listener would be to say well, the first question I have is how did you find out this information? Because if you found out this information by breaking into his phone, breaking into his email, going and snooping, then it's not that you shouldn't confront the issue, but it's going to be harder to confront the issue, because the first thing that's gonna come out of your spouse's mouth when you confront this is saying why were you spying on me or why were you snooping on me? And they're not really gonna hear the heart of what you're trying to say. But let's just say here that you found it by seeing the bank statement, or someone at his work told you that this was going on. Then I believe it's incredibly appropriate, again by leading with curiosity, to go to your husband and say, hey, I recently found out that this was happening. Let me tell you how I feel.

Speaker 1: 11:48

The goal of the conversation I want to have with you isn't to make you feel bad about what you've been doing, but I want to understand what we can do to make sure that our marriage is good, that our marriage is in a in a healthy spot, and also to make sure that I don't feel like there's been a breach of trust. So you're not necessarily at this point asking why did you do this, because that can feel very confrontational and can lead him to become defensive, but it's setting up the framework of the conversation to where you're saying here's how I feel about it and using I statements not you did this and you're such a jerk. How could you do it? But you know, I feel like maybe there's been a breach of trust. I'm concerned that maybe you aren't happy in the marriage. Let's talk about this and then also followed up with.

Speaker 1: 12:33

My goal for this conversation is as follows I don't know what your goal specifically is, but let's say your goal is I want to talk about what's going on in our marriage. If there's anything we need to talk about that I need to be aware of that. You're feeling unfulfilled, but then I also want to talk about how this really felt like a breach of trust to me and can we talk about, can we talk through that and then make a plan moving forward. Is that something that you can do with me right now and then approach the conversation from there. You're leading with curiosity, you're not being defensive, you're not blaming him, but you're trying to have an honest conversation about it, and it still goes back to exactly what we said before.

Speaker 1: 13:20

The goal here is to protect your marriage, and these things can become very slippery slopes. I mean, we didn't even cover the parts of this. We just assumed that these are people that you know. We didn't even cover the parts of this that have to do with pornography and explicit material online and other things that maybe some people would call micro cheating, but are definitely other types of breaches of trust, especially intimately in the intimacy area, which can be its whole other episode in and of itself.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Here's what I want you to know marriage is important and, no matter what's happening in your marriage right now, we believe that there is always hope and that nothing is unrecoverable.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Even if it feels like you are facing a mountain right now that you have no idea how to begin to climb, we can help you with that. Inside of our Save my Marriage membership, which you can get a special offer to join for your first month by going to marriagehelpercom, we specifically have content and resources and a support community to help you navigate situations just like this. Whether you are the one who's been struggling with micro cheating or you feel like your spouse has, this is a serious issue. I wouldn't say you need to freak out about it, but it's not something you need to just brush under the rug and explain away either. It's definitely something that needs to be dealt with so that you can rebuild trust in your marriage, so that you can rebuild intimacy and ultimately create your dream life together, which is a huge part of what we help you do here at Marriage Helper. You can go to marriagehelpercom to get that offer to join the membership and until the next episode, I want you to remember there is always hope.