Julia Hartley Moore - Infidelity: Exploding the Myths

Thanks to Gareth St John Thomas and Ian Watt at Exisle Publishing for believing in this book. A big thank-you to barrister Ross Knight for being there for me professionally for all these years and for being my friend. You give the best advice, Rosco; your contribution to this book and my others has been invaluable. I look forward to working with you for many years to come. Thanks to Brent and also Gillian you know who you are and you know how valuable your contributions have been! A special thank-you must go to my thousands of clients over the years; its been a privilege working for you, and without your stories this book could never have been written.

I especially want to thank my family and friends for putting up with me while I was working on this book, but you should be used to it by now you are all saints! And lastly, a very special thank-you to my husband Steve, for being a wonderful sounding board and source of support and for bringing true happiness to my life.

Please note that the language in this book is often gender-specific to men, but applies to all, regardless of gender, race and sexual orientation. Men are highlighted as a gender not because all men betray or all betrayers are men; its because they tend to be caught more than women do and most of my clients are women. It should also be noted that I have not used actual names or exact circumstances in the stories featured in this book, in order to protect the privacy of individuals involved.

How can the person you trust the most in the world betray you? How can the one you love above all others break your heart? How can someone you care about more than anything not care about you?

These are questions that millions of people around the world have had to ask themselves. Even people as famous as Sandra Bullock, Elin Nordegren and Hillary Clinton.

The sad reality is that with every relationship and every marriage comes the possibility of infidelity. It doesnt matter how rich, beautiful, powerful, successful or intelligent you are infidelity doesnt care. Infidelity doesnt discriminate; infidelity couldnt care less where you live, what you drive, what career path youve chosen, what religion you practise, what your ethnic background is. No matter what gender you are, whether you are straight, gay or bi, or what political affiliations you have, infidelity can find you.

Im not a psychologist, Im not a professor; I dont deal in theories. Im a private investigator, and I deal in cold hard facts what I know about infidelity Ive learned at the coal face of betrayal; I see the shattered lives, the broken families, the grief that infidelity leaves in its wake.

Infidelity can strike at any time with a force so powerful that it leaves you incapable of functioning. It contaminates your waking thoughts and makes sleep impossible. In fact, experts tell us that to live with such stress levels for a prolonged period can reduce our life expectancy by 10 to 14 years. As far as Im concerned, that on its own is reason enough to write this book.

So what is infidelity? Well, most of us think of it as someone having a physical relationship with a person other than their partner, but its actually a lot more complicated than that. There are two kinds of infidelity physical and emotional but what they have in common is that infidelity by its nature always involves deception. And thats why infidelity really, really hurts.

Physical infidelity usually means having covert sexual relations with somebody who is not your partner. But to some people it isnt as straightforward as that as former US president Bill Clinton famously tried to argue when he told the world, I did not have sexual relations with that woman! Monica Lewinsky may have performed oral sex on Bill, but in his book a blowjob is not sex, so he wasnt cheating on his wife Hillary at all. How would that sit with you?

Emotional infidelity can cause just as much hurt, pain and suffering as physical infidelity, if not more. Emotional infidelity is usually thought of as getting too emotionally close to someone who isnt your partner. It could be an extended flirtation with someone you dont want your partner to know about, which might involve long lunches, constant text messaging or intimate exchanges via the internet. It could even be a secret addiction to pornography. Anything that secretly removes your emotional time and attention from your relationship with your partner is emotional infidelity.

When we talk about deception and betrayal it goes without saying we have to talk about pain, and the element that causes the most pain is lying. When someone you love deceives you by lying, the one thing you cant lose sight of is that they have made a conscious choice to deceive you, therefore they have made a conscious choice to hurt you. What makes lying so disturbing is that no matter how hard you may try to rationalise your partners behaviour (and believe me, we are all guilty of that, its the most natural thing in the world to do) it just doesnt make sense. Why would the one person you love, who tells you he loves you, deliberately set out to deceive you? Lying takes away your ability to know what is real any more you may find it hard not only to believe what he says but also to believe in yourself.

There are different types of lie lies that involve what is said, and those that involve what isnt said. What is said are blatant denials of what is happening. They often go something like this: Theres no way Im having an affair; I would never do anything to hurt you; Id leave before I did anything like that. Lying by omission is where the lies are harder to define because they are unspoken. They always involve neglecting to tell you important information that would affect how you dealt with a particular situation. Its a bit like assuming that what you dont know wont hurt you. For example, your partner may neglect to tell you they have an anger problem, or a drug, drink or serious financial problem. Being aware of any of these problems would allow you to choose whether you want a relationship with this person. Lying by omission doesnt allow you that choice.

Im sure Elin Nordegren never wanted to be the wife of a serial cheater, but thats what she ended up as. Tiger Woods didnt have one affair, he had dozens; in fact he had so many he checked himself into an expensive clinic as a sex addict. You see, in the 21st century serial cheaters no longer have to be seen as dishonest or deceitful theyre apparently suffering from an illness beyond their control: sex addiction.

But at what point does a man go from being a cheater to a sex addict? How many women does he have to sleep with? Surely Warren Beatty, Hugh Hefner or Mick Jagger would be mortified to think they have been suffering from an illness they havent known about for most of their adult lives. But Hugh Hefner has recently stated he thinks sex addiction is just a cop-out excuse for adultery, adding, most people who cheat do it because they think they can get away with it.