When I was first engaged to my wife, I asked her grandfather, who by then was 90 years old and hard of hearing, "What is your secret to staying married for more than 70 years?" He told me simply, "Honesty. Don't hide things from each other." Now, long years after he is gone, his advice still rings true for me and my relationship with his granddaughter.

There is sometimes the temptation to hide things from our spouse. This is especially true of infidelity and cheating on your spouse. The "seven year itch" has felled better men than I. Thankfully, I have not succumbed to being unfaithful to my wife. Yet it's not as if our marriage has not been without its struggles and challenges. We have survived, in part, because we understand some things about ourselves and, as a result, have made some specific promises.

First, we understand that attactions to other people will come. Whether it's me as the husband feeling an attraction to a co-worker, or my wife feeling an attraction to someone from church, the feelings of attraction will come, because at our core, we are human and succeptible to temptation. We naturally seek to meet our own needs. The question confronting us when we feel the pressure of infidelity is "What need am I feeling that is pushing me to look outside my relationship with my spouse?" Sometimes these needs are natural, God-given ones that should be met in the context of a marriage but for some reason are not. Others are unnatural behaviors learned in the context of previous relationships.

Let me go into some detail on this. I believe that the more one dates around before marriage, the more likely it is that the person will pick up behaviors and relationship patterns that are mostly unhealthy. At best, dating is a pattern of attempting to lure someone to commit to you while you consider, like a consumer, what this person can give you. It's never an objective evaluation, either. The patterns formed in dating are especially harmful to a future marriage relationship. In marriage, the goal is to serve your spouse and meet their needs, no matter the return on your investment. Dating, by its nature, requires a much more self-centered approach. Additionally, rationalizations and compromises are almost guaranteed. "If I give this, then maybe he/she will give me this and this in return." The Christian concept of freedom through serving each other is lost to the worldly concept of bartering and trading. Some Christians never break that habit, and so, as a couple progresses, memories surface of the old relationships where partners Z, Y, and T met this need, which may or may not have been God-given.

What happens from there is usually what determines whether infidelity will happen. Either the person suffering the need will work with it in an honest way or they will suppress the need. The former has a chance of preventing infidelity, the latter has none. Suppression will cause the need to either surface in an affair or sublimate (change without intention) to something more dangerous.

My wife and I have promised each other that if we have a need that is serious enough to provoke an attraction, we will tell the other before anything comes of it. We've also promised that if the other comes to us with such an issue, that we will listen and not allow anger or jealousy to take over. We have further promised that if the other's need is found in God's design for our lives, we will work to meet that need. If it's not, we can work with each other to find a solution to resolve the need before it becomes a disruption in our relationship.

Finally, we make a conscious effort to avoid situations where we spend time with a person of the opposite sex. It reduces not only the chance of infidelity, but also the chance for those needs to surface and tempt us. We are to be wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves. To assume we're okay with these encounters, especially making a habit of them, is to invite disaster.

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