Divorce: What Happens When a Third Party is Involved

Some more notes from Eva-Maria Zurhorst's book, Love Yourself, And It Doesn't Matter Who You Marry. For the sake of easy ready, I will translate into the masculine gender, but the principles apply to both sexes. And yes, sometimes German sentences are really that long.

The Victim (the one cheated on) had already left the relationship
When one partner leaves, usually the remaining partner had already long left the relationship. That is something that we don't like to admit. We prefer to have clear statements of guilt: The one who leaves is evil, the victim is good. But...it is the victim who often betrays himself (or herself). The victim is often someone who denies any responsibility for himself and convictions. He is often someone who persists in maintaining his high, theoretical demands in the relationship. Someone who doesn't really get involved in a deep, connected manner with a real, non-perfect and sometime unreachable partner. The victim usually feels involuntarily dependent on his partner is some fashion, but doesn't dare anything to counter this dependence, become vulnerable, be open to the truth, and trust their own strength.

And the cheater? Often they describe their unfaithfulness and their married situation, "Finally I feel affirmed! Finally i could drop all my defenses and let down my guard. I don't have to live up to any expectations."

Usually we land in someone else's bed only when our feelings toward our marriage have been accumulating too long and needed expression.

In a three-way relationship we give expression to our inner fears of genuine closeness. The third party never simply comes into one's life by coincidence, but rather when our marriages have become stuck in hard silence or entangled in continual power struggles.

When a third-party appears, it is high time to make a decision - not for a person, but for the truth.

In Triangular Relationships - Three People Are Afraid of Intimacy
The dilemma of a triangle is in reality a cry for a courageous and genuine revlation and coming together.

The third party embodies everything that the victim does not. ... Therefore I encourage the victim to have an honest and open encounter/confrontation with the third person. The purpose here is to examine one's own development and discover "the missing thing(s), that the third-party embodies.

The cheater - the one in the middle - it would have been his task to be on the cutting edge, to dare something new in his marital relationship, to give new direction, to throw out old and destructive patterns of behavior, and to lovingly and patiently inspire his partner and family by bringing them to the next level.