A question I am sometimes asked is, “As an adult child of an alcoholic, why am I attracted to cheating on my spouse?” My experience working with ACoA, as well as those adults from dysfunctional homes, has led me to identify unique possibilities that can address the heart of this daunting issue.

When you are raised in a home fueled by ‘non-assertive’ communication, you are taught to deny yourself. They don’t teach you to ask for what you need, or what you want. Instead, you are taught to ignore your emotions, your inner needs, and minimize your desires. Because your self-love models have not reflected to you the importance of honoring yourself, your programming is dysfunctional. As an adult, you don’t gravitate towards healthy relationships that honor you.

Most ACoAs marry their emotional and dysfunctional equal. Their peers are beings who match the emotional set points of their childhood caregivers. Although their spouses may outwardly appear to be the exact opposite of their parents, very often the partners are emotional equivalents to the types of energetic beings ACoA lived with as a child.

To further complicate matters, many ACoAs develop anxiety disorders because they have been conditioned to deny themselves. This denial of the Self creates energy blockages within the body. This blocked energy manifests in the physical body in many ways, including headaches, dizziness, tremors, insomnia, upset stomach, rashes, asthma, brain fog, forgetfulness, as well as addictions to distractions.

In my experience, ACoAs sometimes cheat as a means to escape the head chatter and pervasive angst they feel within their being. Quite often, when an ACoA discovers that he has married a partner who resembles one of her parents, the shock is so overwhelming that they seek an external romantic relationship, much like a Xanex. The extramarital affair acts as a distraction, and while it works as a way to temporarily hide from anxiety, the long-term consequences are far more devastating than ACoA acknowledges at this time.

In a perfect world, all beings would marry healthy partners and, of course, would be healthy, self-actualized individuals before they married. But in the world we live in, where most beings today are asleep, living their lives on autopilot, who are ludicrously unaware that they’re living their lives from dysfunctional belief systems they’ve learned. in their childhood homes, all too often, the first round of marriage for ACoAs is not the healthiest.

ACoAs, like many adults from dysfunctional homes, cheat for many reasons, but in my opinion, they do so primarily because of their inability to honor themselves, be honest, and accept the consequences of choosing to be honest, and thus honor others. oneself.

It is not easy to confront one’s own unhappiness within a marriage and verbalize that knowledge. It is heroic, instead of manipulating another being in our experience to help us escape our personal problems, to confront our dead marriage head-on. Honoring oneself is a noble endeavor indeed, especially when the superficial, material world we live in is full of beings who would rather avoid and deny, then confront and heal, and thus honor oneself.