This should my last effort on the Infidelity theme. Yesterday brought yet another article on the subject of marital infidelity to my home page, just as I was putting some finishing touches on the prior Journal entry.
Infidelity in marriages and relationships has become more common than not. What may one learn from an infidelity experience which is redeeming?
This offering is from the magazine, Women’s Day, a magazine which I imagine to be written along traditional lines of today’s women styling home makers.
There is some hope for those who have to contend with marital infidelity, according to this article.
Here it is: What You Don’t Know About Infidelity
“Cheating isn’t necessarily the kiss of death for a marriage. An affair can actually bring a couple closer together. Experts debunk this & 11 other myths about lapses in loyalty.”
I thought that the points made in this article are well expressed.
Crestone and Beyond
Semper Fidelis is the family motto of my family’s Fuller clan. This Latin term means “Always Faithful.”
I believe this kind of faithful fidelity has to do with the culturing of perseverance, resiliency, determination, willpower, devotion, loyalty, honor, prudence, order, and other such life engendering personality traits.
My mother’s mother’s father (a maternal great grandfather) was in the Army of Northern Virginia during the years 1861 to 1865. He was an infantryman, and was in many major and minor skirmishes, including the sufferings and horror of the 9 month siege and trench warfare at the battle of Petersburg, Virginia, in 1864-65. The climactic denouement of this misery was depicted in the opening scenes of the movie “Cold Mountain.”
Great grandfather John Boswell Fuller served in an Alabama regiment with his brother Dan. They made it all the way through the hostilities right up and into Appomattox, where General Lee surrendered to end the misery of this devastating war.
More Americans died in the Civil War than in all of the wars that America has ever been involved with!
War is futile. Someday, humanity will be faithful to that concept. One can only hope. We will become at one in fidelity to peace in this world and a cessation of the current destructive usurpation of her resources.
And so, the fidelity theme is broad. It is far more of a concept than just this socially pervasive notion of relationship sexual infidelity.
What are you faithful to?
What do you value in the story of your life and offering?
John and Dan Fuller walked all the way home from Virginia to Montgomery, Alabama. The usual means of transportation had been destroyed by the Union army. There was no railway, and there were no horses, donkeys, or mules to ride on.
I can imagine that food was scarce on this long walk home, but the Fuller brothers were used to enduring through privations. It was an act of perseverance and faith, and it was a good thing that they had one another. Providence carried them along. Such stresses build character and the so-called types of intangible qualities which escort one through a long and fruitful life.
John Fuller came home, built a home, raised 15 children with his wife, and became a respected Judge in Montgomery County. I lived in the home he built for the first 7 years of my life. On the 50th Anniversary of the siege and battle of Petersburg he returned to the site of the struggle and reunited with fellow countrymen from both sides who fought there.
At the Petersburg battle field site he wrote a tearful letter to one of his son’s named Paul. Paul was my great uncle and godfather. I have the letter. It is a letter about the strife of days gone by, the adventures of survival in the siege and the fight, the resolution of hostilities, and the reunion of disparate parties.
If we are on a path of transformation and growth, we should become more internally informed about our process, more nuanced and clear about our demons. We should become more comfortable with the sabotage patterns of our demons, such that we can reconcile our peace with them.
Robert Bly once said words to the effect that we never get rid of our demons; we just educate them. That may be the case for those who can only go that far on their path of growth.
Others go further; they learn to release and let go of their demons. Their demons just become a past part of their story..the one they have forgiven and let go of…the story which they have learned to honor….the story which no longer is able to inform them about who they are becoming
Our demons no longer are able to fool us about what is going on. Think about how to get to that point in your growth.
I often wonder what John and Dan talked about as they walked from Virginia to Alabama. I think about how many stars they saw at night. They were hardly 20-22 years old. I imagine they spoke of the ruin and hardship in their country and their homeland, their hopes for home, and perhaps their dreams of their future lives. I imagine they talked about having a home, a wife, and a family.
Articles such as what appeared in Women’s Day were about a century of years away…so were all of our prickly social addictions and collective self image needs. See some insight on this concept in the next Crestone and Beyond Journal entry.
Forgiveness is the only way that we heal.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond.
Wishing you the Best that Life and Love have to Offer…..