No, I haven’t cheated on my wife. I hope I never will. But I’ve cheated on other women before, so I have some salient experience. Anyway, my point is that this is an abstract discussion, not a petition for advice.
There? Everybody clear? Good. Now we can get to the question of the thread:
Should an unfaithful SO always or never confess his or her infidelity?
Assume, for the sake of argument, that the infidelity in question is not ongoing; that is, we’re talking about either one-time encounters or affairs that have been definitively broken off. Assume also that the cheater honestly regrets the infidelity and wants the relationship to continue, there are neither pregnancy or disease concerns, that there is little or no danger of the infidelilty being otherwise exposed, and the cheated-upon partner has not asked the question.
Does the cheater owe it to the other person to fess up? Or does the cheater owe it to the relationship to shut up and shoulder the burden? Does it matter what form the infidelity took-- e.g., genital, anal, and oral sex should always be confessed, kissing not necessarily, sexy dancing no?
My personal opinion is that I would not want to be told if:
It was a one-time encounter (as you say)
My partner felt guilty about it and wants to continue the relationship
It was not part of a larger pattern of infidelity
No pregnancies/diseases ensued
In that case, I consider my partner’s guilty feelings about the infidelity to be his punishment, and I don’t want to know about it. If, however, there was an ongoing affair, or my partner had engaged in multiple one-night stands, or didn’t feel guilty about it, I would want to know. A one-off one-night stand I can chalk up to a stupid mistake and sex drives run amok; I think anything else indicates a deeper emotional problem in the relationship, particularly since my boyfriend and I have a semi-open relationship.
No, you usually shouldn’t tell unless your SO is most likely to find out anyway. Confessing to such a thing is selfish. The main reason people confess is to relieve their own guilt and not worry about the SO finding out about it in the future. This is especially true of one night stands on business trips and related things but it also applies to different types of indiscretion. Times when you should tell are when you are sleeping with your SO’s best friend on a regular basis. Then, you just need to end the relationship with your SO.
I’m waiting for the flood of people to chime in with the usual “once a cheater, always a cheater” line. But that’s just not true. Many times people cheat because of circumstances which no longer exist, and are unlikely to ever exist again. If it’s truly a one-time thing, buried in the past, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Hmm…there’s a pun in there somewhere. Damned if I can find it.
If you find yourself in a position to have an affair, i.e. you care about your wife but the person in front of you wishes to care for you NOW. And you decide to - however briefly - indulge your loins…then something is wrong with your relationship with your spouse. And yes, she/he deserves to know. And should be told about your indiscretions.
No pitty for the consequences coming from such an admission, but that’s just me.
Can’t a person just take those circumstances to prompt themselves into working on their relationship with no reason stated? A confession is going to cause your SO permanent harm that can be avoided if you really are motivated enough to just fix the core issues. I don’t really buy the notion that cheating always means that something is wrong in the relationship with their SO. Lots of men cheat just because they like having sex with different people and it is that simple. Most of the ones I have known don’t categorize that in the same bucket as their primary relationship. Let’s say you get sent to war as countless men have done. Lot’s of them cheat but that doesn’t mean there is something wrong back at home.
Well, I don’t agree. If the spouse would care that you cheated, meaning she would be so pissed she may leave you, and you know this…and you still cheat and decide not to tell her. Yes that’s wrong in my book. Simply does not compute at all with me. I’m not judging anyone for cheating, we have friends who were together 12 years when he decided to have an affair. It tore her up, they had a 13 month old and it was nasty after she found out. To her it was the ultimate betrayal. However, I was friends with him and my wife was friends with her and we were friends with them as a couple. It was sticky to say the least, I told him he was a bone head and he said there had been problems for a long time…I still said, “well dude, you had to know she’d be pissed, I don’t know what else to say…” They are currently trying to work it out, although he does not live with them, and is “busy” every friday night with a different “friend”… He’s probably having a blast to be honest! But she’s hurt and he doesn’t appear to see it that way.
I believe it then becomes my decision on whether or not the relationship carries forward. Or at least it should become my decision. IF I feel the relationship is still worth salvaging/can be salvaged and that my SO is repentant and unlikely to do so again I will decide if the relationship gets another go. The cheater should have no say.
The question here is not whether the initial act of cheating is inappropriate or not. Obviously, it is not. The question is if the transgressing member of the relationship should tell the aggrieved or not. In certain circumstances I think you have to say or do something, but in others I think the position that it is better for the cheating person not to tell their partner is defensible. As you’ve amply demonstrated, simply hearing that your partner has cheated can be very traumatic and has the potential to increase the real harm of the situation.
You may want to know or insist upon it for your relationships, but it isn’t the best answer for everyone.
I believe that telling is most often done for selfish reasons. The cheater just feels too guilty to carry the burden alone, and he/she is worried about being found out, so they “clear the air” and confess all, thereby shifting the burden to their partner.
If you took an oath/vow, you agree explicitly that you will remain faithful (unless you already agreed to an open marriage). He/She has every expectation that you will hold true to those vows just as much as you would expect from her/him. Omission is also an issue not to be taken lightly as it also destroys intimacy in a relationship. Even if it was the once in a lifetime “one night stand”, it should be divulged to the spouse. It would be no less than selfishness to not give the offended spouse a choice on whether to keep his/her oath/vow with the offending spouse; and denying that right to continue the relationship can be even more destructive than the actual act of cheating.
I’ll never buy into the excuse that “it just happened” or “before I knew it we were having sex.” Sex might be easy for some people, but it is never so easy that it starts happening before you’re consciously aware of it. If sex were that easy I wouldn’t be a virgin.
Unless you’ve been drugged or raped, sex is a conscious decision. And if you made the conscious decision to cheat, your SO should have the conscious choice of whether or not to stay with you.
And for those to whom sex does happen that “simply,” perhaps you’d be better off seeking therapy before you subject some poor, unsuspecting victim to a relationship with you.
I would want to know if my husband had exposed himself, and therefore potentially me, to STDs, and I would also want to have full knowledge so I could make an informed decision as to whether or not I wish to continue in this marriage. The deception or lying would bother me more than the cheating, because if he’s keeping big, possibly life-threatening secrets from me, my marriage isn’t what I thought it was.
I would almost certainly forgive a one-time cheating incident, possibly not a full-blown ongoing extramarital affair. The former I could probably get over on my own in a short time, but the latter would require some serious marital counseling and much more time to forgive. Lying to me, I don’t know that I could ever forgive, no matter what.
If you’re having an affair because there’s something seriously wrong in your relationship, you owe it to your spouse to try to fix it, even if that requires confessing. Cheating is not a solution.
If you just had one night of fun, and your relationship is otherwise fine, I think it’s better to keep it under your hat for the sake of your partner.
A tough question, but as a couple of others have said, I don’t believe it’s the offender’s right to decide that the spouse or SO would ultimately be OK with it. I think the cheater should tell and then be prepared to deal with whatever the consequences are.
For those that say that confessing is just a way of shifting the burden to the innocent party, I respectfully disagree. I try to imagine myself in that situation. If my wife had a one-off and truly felt guilty and repentant about the situation, then I would certainly rather she told me about it. I think our relationship would be much better in the long run if we worked through it and eventually got to a point where she knew that she had fully regained my trust, rather than forever having to hold on to that guilt and being left to wonder what I would have done if I’d known. I would think that a truly guilty cheater who kept the incident secret would never be certain about the validity of the relationship thereafter.
I’m not a cheater so it doesn’t really apply to me. But I sure would want to know if someone cheated on me so I could make a full and informed decision about whether or not I wanted to continue in the marriage/relationship. I don’t really accept the “one night of fun” attitude when it comes to potentially give me herpes.
To me, there are a couple of things wrong with this sentiment. First, that one should be able to go out and have a “night of fun,” (fun which your partner cannot have if he keeps with the terms of your agreement) in violation of vows/promises, and then avoid consequences via a lie of omission. Totally selfish to keep it a secret.
Second, “for the sake of your partner”? How is this deception for anyone’s sake but the cheater’s? You deny your partner the option of making his/her own decision with a patronizing, “But it would hurt him!” Maybe you should have considered that before you did it. Once you’ve done it, if you conceal it, you perpetuate the harm by continuing the relationship under false pretenses. The terms of the original contract have been violated; the partner whose trust was betrayed should have the right to opt out.
I’m always kind of surprised to hear people say that cheating should be kept a secret because it would hurt the betrayed partner. To me that’s a self-serving rationalization of epic proportions.
