Trust is a delicate thing. Secrets and lies can jeopardize trust and permanently harm us and our relationships and dealing with a deceptive and dishonest relationship can be quite draining.
An intimate relationship should be the harbinger of mental, emotional, and sexual honesty. It means letting our partners know exactly who we are.
However, many couples do not keep the sanctity of their marriage alive but instead behave in an immoral manner that ruins their marriage.
Making ambiguous or imprecise statements, telling half-truths, trying to manipulate information through increasing focus, exaggeration, or mockery are all examples of how a person can be immoral in their marriage.
Being immoral in a marriage can prove detrimental and rob a couple of freedom of choice and the ability to stay in a loving relationship.
Table of Contents
Types of Immorality in a Marriage
1. Controlling Behavior
One kind of immorality in a marriage is controlling behavior.
Couples can easily play games and be indirect about their wants and requirements due to their defense mechanisms and a desire to protect themselves.
They may use manipulative tactics to achieve what they want, such as sobbing and crumbling in front of others or angrily exploding and scaring others.
They may take on duties in their relationship that hurt or constrain them.
Couples that struggle with controlling behavior frequently polarize themselves, with one partner being dominant and controlling while the other remains docile and subservient.
For example, one partner may be the “boss” of the finances, while the other may be in charge of their sexuality.
They may be drawn to certain roles out of familiarity or a need to feel safe, but this compromises their capacity to interact as two equals.
2. Defensiveness
Defense mechanisms are present in all of us, and they are vital for our existence.
However, in relationships, defensiveness stifles communication, buries goodwill, and transforms a simple human interaction into a potentially serious issue between individuals.
Defensiveness also takes a lot of energy to sustain. It’s supposed to make us feel less ashamed, yet it makes us feel worse.
Furthermore, if one spouse is constantly defensive, then the other spouse may eventually shut down.
While this may feel normal in the short term, these emotions will eventually surface, either as outbursts of wrath or passive retaliation, such as sharp-edged mocking, couched critiques, or the withdrawal of love, sex, and displays of gratitude.
3. Distrust
To distrust someone is to have doubts about their honesty or dependability and to be suspicious of them.
To grow, partners must feel safe in their relationship. Relationships often take a turn for the worst when there is no trust.
For instance, a partner’s refusal to share important information about their family history, job history, and their past relationships; their covert use of joint financing; withholding information about their friends or their whereabouts; and their increasing need to not talk about the intimate things in their life can all show their distrust in their spouse and the marriage.
Eventually, this can result in an actual breach of commitment with the onset of an illicit affair. With distrust seeping into a marriage, everything is scrutinized and misinterpreted.
Despite apologies and changes, distrust continues. It becomes impossible to maintain a viable connection.
4. Suspicion
Suspicion is a belief based on a lack of evidence.
This results in anxiety, dread, or discomfort, which might appear physically (nervousness, a rapid heartbeat, anger, a knotted stomach, or even disgust).
When you’re nervous, you get scared. Mistrust in your relationship at this moment prevents you from feeling vulnerable and exposed.
When you are suspicious of your partner and feel like you need to protect yourself, you withdraw, build walls around yourself, and prevent your spouse from approaching you.
Mutual trust is the glue that holds a relationship together. When this is shaken, the couple feels disconnected. You start to feel trapped in a marriage that isn’t happy.
5. Disrespect
Because disrespect can be as nuanced as it is toxic, capturing the nature and impact of disrespect in a relationship can be challenging.
A partner may be unaware of how hurtful their behavior or comments are to their partner and how destructive they are to their bond because they are well-hidden behind excuses.
Disrespect or contempt is demonstrated by someone who humiliates their partner; speaks over them, mocks, or disregards them; looks at their phone when their partner has shared something; shows disrespect in nonverbal cues such as rolling their eyes; rectifies or ignores their partner in public; and is unable to acknowledge, apologize for, or change their behavior.
6. Financial Arguments
Some occasional fights about money might not impact your marriage. However, discovering that your partner defrauds you financially could spell the end of your relationship.
In a dysfunctional marriage, financial infidelity may be the deciding factor in calling it quits.
Lying about money is one of the most prominent red flags in a marriage.
Even though one in three Americans admits to lying to their spouse about money, the topic is far too significant to ignore.
Small financial lies might escalate to significantly more destructive practices in your relationship.
In worst-case scenarios, financial infidelity can also take the form of revenge spending, in which one spouse overspends to demonstrate their independence or to punish the other for a flaw in the relationship.
This deliberately reckless action is done with the sole purpose of belittling their partner, which is a sign of immorality in a marriage.
7. Lack of Interest
A lack of interest in a relationship shown by a spouse is a deal-breaker for most. Most partners prefer someone furious with them over someone uninterested in them.
Disinterest is defined as a lack of interest in the other as a soul mate and the person who knows and loves you despite your differences.
No relationship stays in the honeymoon phase forever. The flame may start to dwindle, and one of you may lose interest in the relationship before you realize it.
With each coming day, your partner may begin to put less energy into the connection, leaving you with the impression that you are in a one-sided relationship.
The disinterested partner will stop listening, laughing, flirting, or touching the other with anticipation and interest.
It’s possible to have sex, but it’s more likely to be out of obligation, obedience, or routine.
8. Contempt
The most basic definition of contempt in a relationship is when you mockingly communicate with your significant other.
Contempt is difficult to detect and contest because of its subtle character. Simply defined, it is the polar opposite of respecting your partner.
Contemptuous conduct is when one partner uses cynicism and sarcasm to belittle and insult the other. The ridicule is done in a subtle, indirect, passive-aggressive manner.
Verbal and nonverbal communication combine to form contemptuous communication.
Indicators of contempt are derogatory humor, such as labeling someone ugly, a loser, or a fat whale, sneering, eye-rolling, and other exaggerated facial expressions.
9. Disdain
A person’s contempt towards their marriage displays itself through sarcasm, eye-rolling, frequent interruption, judgment, and impatience and thrives on irritation and conversational roadblocks.
10. Lying
From the little white lies to the terrible secrets, lies can destroy a marriage.
Sure, everyone has told a lie of some kind at some point in their lives, and most people are even guilty of lying to themselves.
The problem with little white lies is that they don’t always stay so little, and you need to frequently progress to bigger lies to cover up the lies you told in the past.
Trust is built on a foundation of open and honest communication, and every marriage needs it to survive.
A person’s partner deserves to know the truth about everything – from you eating the last cookie to the loss of a job.
If there is no transparency in a marriage, the other partner cannot help.
People in a bad marriage often lie about the bigger things in life, such as adultery which can be excruciatingly painful to the partner and shake a marriage to its core.
11. Infidelity
One of the worst things that may happen to your marriage is infidelity. It undermines the foundation of a marriage and can lead to serious damage to the partnership.
One of the main reasons why marriages suffer once a spouse is found to have been disloyal is that it breeds a catastrophic amount of distrust, and trust is something without which a marriage cannot function.
Infidelity is also the source of a great deal of pain for both the person who discovers their partner has been cheating as well as the guilty party.
Feelings of insignificance, worry, and melancholy, combined with frustration and fury, can lead to a relationship’s demise.
To come to terms with what has happened in their marriage, the victim of an affair may retreat from others around them.
While some marriages can withstand infidelity and time can aid in the process of healing, overcoming the sorrow and betrayal is difficult, and many couples fail to do so.
12. Deception (about affairs)
Infidelity’s most harmful component is deception.
The breach of trust caused by a partner’s clandestine involvement with another person results in the deceived party’s disturbing and agonizing realization that the person with whom they have been in love has a secret love affair.
This kind of immorality in a marriage can shatter a person’s self-esteem and perception of reality. It is immoral to cheat on your partner but even worse to go to great lengths to hide it from them.
13. Lack of Boundaries
At its most basic level, a lack of boundaries in marriage means no established norms or principles in the partnership.
One of the most severe repercussions of a marriage with no boundaries is that the couple may feel like they have fused into one giant blob and have no personalities of their own.
Many couples assume that all of their leisure time should be spent together, doing things that one partner may not enjoy.
And, while spending quality time together is essential, time apart allows us to keep our uniqueness in the relationship alive by enjoying time with friends and family and doing the things we enjoy individually.
14. Favoring Others Over Your Spouse
Many couples struggle with having a sense of trust in their significant other and not the world around them.
If a person’s spouse is not well-liked by the former’s family and friends, this can sow the seeds of doubt in their hearts.
If this person is not emotionally mature enough to handle these interpersonal conflicts, they may listen to gossip about their spouse and, as a result, may start treating them negatively.
In doing this, they may hurt their significant other and, in turn, weaken the bond of their marriage.
15. Mocking Your Spouse’s Past
We all have a past, and all of us have done things we are not proud of.
However, the important thing about making mistakes is to learn your lesson and become a better person as a result of it.
For many individuals, however, moving past their spouse’s past is difficult, and in moments of vulnerability, they may bring incidents up from their partner’s past to mock them.
These might include taunting them about their past addictions or poor decisions, which can hurt their spouse and make them less trusting of their partner.
Final Thoughts
Immorality can take many shapes and forms, but the core of the problem remains the same: it destroys a marriage from within and makes the couple feel hurt, deceived, and emotionally wrecked.
If you believe your marriage’s difficulties are insurmountable, it’s time to seek expert treatment.
Don’t wait until your marriage is irreparably damaged to get the most out of marriage counseling.
A marriage therapist can be a valuable ally in your relationship. Instead of taking sides, they will assist you and your spouse to gain perspective and develop the communication skills necessary to break the patterns that have kept you trapped.
You and your spouse can identify and modify unhealthy patterns with their support and recapture the love you previously shared.
