Annotation 2: Adultery: a way to retrieve oneself in a struggle of emptiness caused by a miserable childhood

  As I mentioned before in annotation 1, the way parents use to deal with their children has a great influence on the future development. Here, the author points out that “Even the most generous and indulgent parents make mistakes which affect the children’s futures.” So, what is the problem? Our parents had many unmet needs in the childhood, which makes us share the same fate. “These unsatisfied demands are believed to bring feelings like frustration, harm, and emotional pain which compose emptiness.” The following is the example to show you that people turn to adultery to fill the emptiness deep in mind, which is induced by something wrong in the childhood.

Ian is the only but unexpected child in his family. He desires to be loved, cared, and depended on because he never really understands his father and even is not close to his mother. Though he got married, he never tells her about his desire deep in mind. Ian committed adultery finally, but he has learned to express his needs afterwards and she has learned to listen to. In this case, we see that getting little love makes Ian’s heart full of emptiness. When he feels it again, he is not a little boy anymore who can just endure loneliness, but a grow-up who can find consolation to relieve the intolerable pain. Should he be blamed for cheating on his wife? My answer is NO! Because normal ways like talking did not work in the relationship between him and his parents, he had to resort to an unconventional way like adultery. (Please see Annotation1)  And the result shows that adultery made this couple face their problems and successfully dealt with them.

So, should adultery be criticized? In view of the vows, the person who commits adultery should be blamed because he/she did break the promise. But look at the traits of emptiness. They are included “Everyone feels it”, “It comes from not keeping some relationships” and “It comes from not knowing self or losing self because of someone.” Like the case above, instead of eating much food, drinking a lot, taking medicine or overworking, people have to find consolation from another or new relationship because the one they engage in now is hard to keep. The main point is that emptiness comes from losing or not knowing self. But here, in Ian’s case, we see that through adultery, he finally knew what he wants and thus changed his marriage since then. It can clearly be seen that although adultery must be considered immoral or shameful, we cannot deny it is an useful measure to retrieve yourself even though in the first place you just wanted to fill the emptiness by it.

Reference:

Bonnie Eaker Weil & Ruth Winter. (June, 1994) Adultery:   The Forgivable Sin.