EIGHT

Creating a Commitment Plan

When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.

—Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

As you have probably figured out by now, there is not much you can (or should) do to calm your mate down. You cheated and betrayed her trust, and now she is hurt, confused, and angry. And she’s going to stay that way for a while, reacting in unpredictable fits and starts. She is on her own particular roller-coaster journey, and you need to let her travel that path. In the interim, you can work on yourself and how you conduct yourself in your relationship (and elsewhere). This means setting limits on your sexual behavior and finding ways to stick to those limits.

Creating a Personal Fidelity Plan

It is time for you to create a personal fidelity plan that outlines which of your past sexual and romantic activities are no longer allowed, which are slippery, and some healthy things you can do when tempted to cheat again. After you’ve created this detailed plan, discussed it with others, and even shown it to your significant other, you’re going to sign it, contractually obligating yourself to abide by it. Think of this as taking a vow of monogamy a second time, only this time you actually intend to keep it.

Creating your personal fidelity plan starts with a statement or list of the primary reasons you want to be faithful. Here are a few commonly stated goals:

• “I want to save my relationship.”
• “I don’t want to lie to my spouse anymore.”
• “I want to uphold my marriage vows.”
• “I don’t want to hurt my partner or my kids anymore.”
• “I want to live my life with integrity instead of feeling like a sneak.”

Once your goals are clearly stated, you can take the next step in the creation of your personalized fidelity plan.

Note: Every person and every relationship is unique. As such, each plan for fidelity is also unique. This means that your plan, based on your individualized goals and circumstances, will not look like anyone else’s. Nevertheless, I do tend to see common elements in almost all approaches, and the generalized material that follows is based on the patterns I’ve observed over the years.

The personal fidelity plans that I recommend are three-tiered, consisting of a bottom line, warning signs, and good stuff. Each of these tiers is described below.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is your baseline definition of infidelity. Here you list the specific behaviors (not thoughts or fantasies) that qualify as infidelity in your relationship. This list will include all the ways in which you’ve cheated plus a general statement about infidelity that encompasses other methods of cheating. If you engage in any of these activities, you’ve cheated. A typical cheater’s bottom line might include the following:

• I will not engage in sexual activity with any person other than my spouse. Things like oral sex, hand-jobs, and making out qualify as sexual activity.
• I will not be sexual online with anyone other than my spouse. This includes webcam sex, virtual reality sex games, sexting, and even flirting on dating or hookup websites and apps.
• I will not have any dating or hookup apps on my phone or tablet (or any other digital device), nor will I have memberships on any traditional dating or hookup websites.
• I will not buy, look at, or masturbate to pornography.
• I will not flirt with other women. “Harmless flirting,” with no intent to pursue a sexual encounter, still counts as flirting.
• I will not make or maintain contact (in person or digitally) with former lovers, girlfriends, dates, or hookups.

Warning Signs

Warning signs include the people, places, thoughts, fantasies, events, and experiences that might trigger your desire to pursue sex or romance outside your primary relationship. In addition to obvious potential triggers, such as logging on to the Internet when alone, joining work buddies at a wild bar, or downloading a hookup app, this list should include things that might indirectly trigger your desires, such as working long hours with too little sleep, arguing with your spouse or your boss, keeping secrets (about anything), or worrying about finances. Here are a few items typically listed as warning signs:

• Lying and/or keeping secrets, especially from my spouse
• Skipping therapy or support group meetings
• Lack of self-care (not eating well, not exercising, not getting enough sleep, not taking time out for fun)
• Attending parties and social gatherings, especially when my spouse is not in attendance
• Business travel where I can disappear for a while and no one will know
• Unstructured free time (especially alone)
• Unresolved anger, frustration, irritability, and strong resentments—especially toward my spouse
• Not taking time out to engage with my spouse on a one-to-one level
• Feeling slighted, ignored, or underappreciated

Good Stuff

The third tier of your plan lists healthy activities that will lead you toward fidelity and a better life. Essentially, these are things you can turn to when you feel tempted to cheat. These activities may be immediate and concrete, such as working out or painting the house, or long-term and less tangible, like getting a new job or taking classes. In all cases, your list should reflect a healthy combination of work, healing, and recreation. Certainly things like going to individual and couple’s counseling should be on the list. But you should also include fun things like spending time with friends, enjoying a hobby, and just plain relaxing. Here are a few items typically listed as good stuff:

• Spending quality time with my wife and kids
• Reconnecting with my male friends and working to strengthen those bonds
• Finding a new hobby, preferably something I can enjoy with my family
• Getting regular exercise to help with stress, mood, and body image
• Becoming more active in my church
• Working on my house and yard so I can feel proud of these things
• Going back to school to learn new skills
• Participating in the daily tasks of home, such as cooking, cleaning, childcare, and gardening
• Volunteering to coach my kids’ teams
• Getting a (male) workout buddy

Once again, and I can’t stress this strongly enough, every cheater and every relationship is different. Each person has a unique life history, moral code, and set of goals. Thus, no two fidelity plans are the same. This means that activities that are deeply troubling for one cheater may be perfectly okay for another. For instance, some women are fine with their mates masturbating to pornography once in a while, but other women find this deeply offensive and disturbing. For the first set of men, porn might be listed as a warning sign. For the second set, it would be listed as a bottom line issue.

This brings me to my next point: Don’t create your personal fidelity plan on your own. Your spouse should have input, and so should your individual therapist, your couple’s counselor, and anyone else who is playing an important role in the process of healing your relationship. And that is a good thing. The more thorough you are when creating your plan, the better.

Once your personal fidelity plan is finalized, you should sign it, indicating your willingness to abide by it. Your spouse can keep a copy, and you should, too. It is also wise to share your plan with a trusted friend, your therapist, or a clergyperson—someone you trust to call you out on your behavior when needed.

Fidelity Plans: Top Tips

When first constructed, personal fidelity plans typically look airtight. However, despite their seemingly hermetic appearance, they usually are not. Most cheaters who want to continue cheating can find (or build in) some wiggle room that lets them work around their boundaries. That is obviously not the way to rebuild trust and save your relationship. In recognition of this, I suggest that you keep the following tips in mind when you construct and implement your plan:

• Be honest. Creating an effective personal fidelity plan requires complete and brutal honesty on your part. Let’s be frank here: If you are looking for ways to continue cheating, you will find them. So it is important for you to remember that the purpose of creating a fidelity plan is not to justify and rationalize continued infidelity (or even watered-down versions thereof). Rather, the purpose is to end your cheating and the incomprehensible demoralization it brings.
• Be clear. If you lack clearly written boundaries, you will be vulnerable to deciding in the moment that certain activities are “okay for now” even if they’ve been wildly problematic in the past. Impulsive sexual decisions made without clear guidelines are what dragged you down in the first place, so it’s best to not leave any wiggle room.
• Be flexible. A personal fidelity plan is not set in stone. In fact, cheaters often spend a month or two (or even a year or two) with a particular set of boundaries and then realize that their plan requires adjustment. For instance, recent developments in digital technology (e.g., free porn sites, hookup apps, video chat services, and social media) have forced many former cheaters to revise their plans. However, changing your plan is not something you should do on your own. Making changes should always involve input from both your spouse and anyone else who is instrumental is your process of healing and rebuilding trust. Changes to a fidelity plan should never be made simply because a special situation presents itself and you decide, in the moment, to make a change. That is not changing your plan; it’s paving the road to continued infidelity.

More Boundaries to Consider

In addition to creating and following your personal fidelity plan, you and your spouse can agree on and implement any number of other boundaries. These might include the following:

• The twenty-four-hour disclosure rule. The simple, sad truth is that you will not embark on the process of healing and rebuilding trust perfectly. You just won’t. You will screw up at some point, and you will need to tell your spouse about it. Anticipating this, you can implement a boundary that requires you to tell her what happened, no matter what, within twenty-four hours. This boundary gives you an opportunity to be honest and to talk about what you did, what led to it, and the precautions you’ll need to take in the future. Understand that your spouse is allowed to be angry about what you did. You screwed up, and you’ll have to accept her reaction. But at least you’re being honest with her.
• Amending lies. If you’re like most men who cheat, telling lies has become a habit. If this is the case with you, perhaps you and your partner can agree that when you tell a lie, you have twenty-four hours to come clean without her getting angry about it. She can be mad about what you did, of course, but not about the fact that you initially lied to her about it—provided you fess up within twenty-four hours. After that, your fib is absolutely in play, and she has every right to scream and yell about it.
• Addressing problematic drinking or drug use. This is a big one for a lot of relationships. If you’re a serious drinker or drug user, your significant other may want that to cease along with your cheating. Frankly, it’s not a bad idea. After all, alcohol and drugs inhibit your ability to make intelligent, rational, well-reasoned decisions (like the decision to not cheat even though the opportunity has arisen). If you are addicted to alcohol or drugs, you will find this boundary difficult, and you will probably need outside assistance via inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, and/or a twelve-step recovery program.
• Installing “parental control” software. There are numerous products, most notably Net Nanny, designed to protect kids from inappropriate sexual content and contact in the digital universe. These products are equally useful for cheaters. They typically offer filtering and blocking (of problematic websites, apps, and contacts) as well as monitoring and reporting to a third party. Generally, this third party is your therapist or an accountability partner, rather than your spouse. If, however, your spouse wants to monitor your digital wanderings, so be it. In fact, your willingness to provide this level of access will go a long way toward rebuilding relationship trust.
• The ten-minute rule. This one is pretty simple. You agree that if your wife phones you or texts you and you cannot answer immediately, you will respond within ten minutes no matter what, even if you’re in the middle of an important business meeting. (If you actually are in a business meeting, you can say, “Excuse me, this looks like a family emergency.” Even the stodgiest people will allow you to quickly step out of the room to handle the “emergency” without judging you for it.) This rule also applies to your mate. During the few minutes it takes you to respond, she agrees that she will not assume anything and will not get mad that you didn’t answer right away. After ten minutes, however, all bets are off. (If you’re going to be on an airplane or driving through an area without cellular service, you’ll have to let her know about this in advance.)
• Full financial accountability. If your spouse is interested in tracking how and where you spend money, as many betrayed women are, let her see your finances, both small and large. If you spent money on your cheating—and, let’s face it, you almost certainly did—then becoming accountable for every penny you spend from here on out will help your significant other believe that even though you betrayed her in the past, you aren’t doing so anymore. In addition, your willingness to be an open book financially will help her understand that you’re also being an open book with the rest of your life. (Remember, most women see the world holistically, so for them, honesty here signals honesty elsewhere.)

Fidelity Tools That Are Just for You

You’ll be glad to know that not everything you do requires a conversation with your spouse. In fact, there are numerous personal tools you can utilize when you feel triggered toward cheating, and your mate will not need or even want to know that you’ve used one. She wants to know about any actions that might hurt her, but not about every little thought that you didn’t act on. And believe me, you will at least occasionally be triggered toward a return to infidelity. How could you not be, when our consumer culture is so thoroughly drenched in sex? The good news is that when you drive past a billboard advertising a nearby strip club, see a lingerie commercial or a sexually explicit movie, or run into a woman who reminds you of a woman you cheated with, there are plenty of highly useful tools at your disposal, including the following:

• Your personal fidelity plan. I generally recommend that reformed cheaters carry a printed or digitized version of their personal fidelity plan at all times. Not only does your plan provide clarity about which of your actions are and are not acceptable in the moment, it also lists healthy alternatives you can turn to when tempted toward relapse.
• Your accountability partner. An accountability partner is a person with whom you can share your inappropriate thoughts and temptations, and with whom you can vent about the fact that your wife is not patting you on the back every time you do the right thing and don’t cheat on her even though you could easily do so without her finding out. Ideally, your accountability partner will be a male friend who has overcome infidelity in his own relationship, but your therapist or minister will do in a pinch. The most important responsibility of an accountability partner is to talk you off the ledge when you’re angry or feeling tempted to cheat.
• The three-second rule. No matter how much willpower you have, you are not in control of the thoughts that pop into your head. What you can control is what you do with those thoughts once you become aware of them. Therefore, after recognizing that you are thinking about sexual activity with another woman, give yourself three seconds to turn away from that thought and focus on something else. Most men simply turn their thoughts to that woman being a real human being (and not just a hot body), often by thinking of her as someone’s mother, sister, wife, or daughter. You can also focus on who pitched game four of last year’s World Series, what color you should paint the house, or the fact that your dog won’t stop crapping in your neighbor’s yard. All you really need to do is think about something that doesn’t involve cheating. You should be aware that unwanted sexual thoughts might pop into your head ad nauseam. You’ll get rid of one, and another will arrive almost immediately. In such cases the three-second rule can be used repeatedly. It does not lose power. In fact, the more you use it, the better it works.
• Bookending. Most sexual triggers crop up unexpectedly. However, some can be seen well in advance. For instance, the office Christmas party is coming up, and the woman from accounting with whom you had an affair will be there. There’s also an open bar, so everybody will be drinking and getting a bit loose. Instead of just going to the party and taking your chances, you can bookend the event. Before the event, you call your therapist or your accountability partner and commit to fidelity, perhaps discussing plans to avoid any sort of cheating. After the event, you call the same person to discuss what happened, the feelings that came up, and what you might need to do differently next time.
• Self-checks. This is a way to gauge your mood and susceptibility to infidelity. The easiest way to go about this is to HALT, with HALT being an acronym for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. (Some people use anxious rather than angry.) When you HALT, you ask yourself, “When is the last time I ate? Did I get enough sleep last night? Is there some conflict in my life that I need to resolve? Would a few minutes spent talking with someone who understands me help me feel better?” More often than not, a catnap, a candy bar, or a five-minute phone conversation will greatly diminish your in-the-moment desire to cheat.
• Gratitude. Reformed cheaters sometimes find that they are most tempted toward infidelity when they are feeling negative emotions (like anxiety, fear, shame, depression, or resentment). A great way to combat this is to write a ten-item gratitude list. A side benefit of this exercise is that it promotes happiness. In fact, as my amazing colleague Brené Brown (2012) notes, gratitude and happiness are inextricably linked. According to her research, grateful people tend to focus more on their strengths than their weaknesses, which makes them more hopeful, less stressed, and more likely to overcome major problems (such as infidelity in a relationship).

The tools listed above hardly represent the full kit. Keeping a journal, exercising, calling your therapist and/or your accountability partner, checking in with your family, developing healthy hobbies, praying, meditating, and just plain thinking it through are a few of the hundreds of other tools that you can use to combat triggers toward infidelity.

QUESTIONS FOR

Reflection

• What are your goals for your primary relationship, both short-term and long-term?

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• Are you willing to place limitations on your behavior as a way to heal and improve your relationship? If so, what are they?

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• Do you feel grateful for your primary relationship and the woman with whom you share your life? If so, list ten reasons for this. Then list ten more.

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• Do you feel resentful for having to change your life to make your spouse happy? If so, write out what you resent and why.

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