“Once a cheater, always a cheater”
No, I don’t think so. What’s more true, is the cheater accusing the not-cheater of cheating [ a sort of psychological projection].
Hurt feelings and miscommunications in a relationship are one thing. Making them worse by making the conscious choice to let another guy put his dick in me while I’m still in the relationship is another thing entirely. There’s absolutely no excuse for making a bad situation worse.
Because you’re trying to maintain two incompatible lifestyles at once. And also because of what wring says - in my brother’s case, he cared deeply about his wife and his child, and he also cared about the woman he was involved with. He didn’t think about that when the affair started. He found himself in a situation where he knew he could not continue with both his family and the other woman in his life, yet he cared deeply about each.
I’ve heard other people in the same situation describe as being like a child asked to decide which parent he liked the best, and the one he didn’t choose would be taken from his life forever.
Obviously, not all affairs are like this. There are situations where one or both the cheaters don’t get emotionally involved, and the hurt (to them, at least, probably not to the betrayed spouse) is not very bad. But when there is love or caring between the affair partners, and love between the married partners, it’s a very difficult situation indeed. The people I’ve talked to who find themselves in this situation pretty much say they’d never, ever do it again - the personal pain and suffering as well as watching their loved ones suffer is more than enough punishment.
Athena hit it right on the head. The mental and physical energy it takes to keep juggling all of this shit is just too much to bear (or at least it was for me). I’ve known men who happily lead two completely separate lives for years and years, but I just collapsed under the weight of it all. I’m a pretty strong, well-adjusted man, but there at the end I seriously considered just stepping out in front of a bus. I’d be gone, it would all be over, the pain of my death would pass in time but I’d still be remembered well by my wife.
It is a no-win situation for all involved and causes the most unspeakable pain and suffering. After you come to your senses and realize just what havoc you’re causing you hate yourself, the guilt is crushing, you feel small and cheap, and everything is just…bad. That’s the only way I can describe it. It is all just bad for everyone involved.
I shudder to recall it.
I’ve been cheated on at least once, a couple others I’m suspicious of. I just have to assume they had the courtesy to break up with me before sleeping with new toys, since I can’t and wouldn’t want to verify it.
As far as I’m concerned, if someone uses my toothbrush it isn’t my toothbrush anymore. Same with a girlfriend. She wants to sleep around, fine – there was something wrong between us and it’s better off over. I see mourning over such a loss like mourning over the loss of a tumor – was just going to cause more pain later.
I’ve only cheated once, and that was because the girl I was dating moved out of town, and I lost her phone number so couldn’t break up with her. Pity too… she was a really nice girl, and she didn’t move all that far away, I just didn’t have a car.
You made me cry.
I’m cryin’ now…and it has been quite a few months since I have cried…at least about Dewt’s affair.
I’m still crying.
we are 10 months past what a certain ‘marriage site’ calls ‘discovery’…basically when you find out or are told…for myself it was october.
so at this time last year he way in the throes of the mess…and our marriage sucked.
I’m crying now because for so long, I knew inside that it had to be because of me somehow…no matter what he said, or what I read…it had to be me…I wasn’t thin enough, not beautiful enough, the house was never clean, I was too tired for sex, I felt like I had to do everything, we would talk, but the changes never came, we never DID anything about anything…the list goes on…this is where your 'insert domestic problem here line just got me bawling…I had never felt so inadequate as a human being in my life as I did those first few months.
sick and pitiful, isn’t it?
that another human being, that the one you love and trust beyond measure, the person you share your life, a child and a future with, would inflict upon you the greatest pain to date in your life (other than the death of a child, if there is a greater pain than this to be found, please shoot me now) causes you to lose your faith in mankind in many ways…
you look at EVERYTHING differently…as if your whole existence and beliefs have been pulled out from under you.
but suddenly, it doesn’t matter anymore what I did or did not do right…yes, our marriage was not good, partly my fault…I have 50% responsibility for that, but he made the choice to be unfaithful.
I made the choice to start over.
I’m the cheatee to you, but I’m also telling you that our relationship IS better…not perfect, not always great, lots of stress, but the whole relationship is DIFFERENT…he will never do this to me again…our marriage will never get to the point it was at, we’re alot more considerate, well he tries…and that is the point…he tries.
It still hurts, but now I know it won’t kill me…it has shown me a strength within that I never knew I had. I am changed, as is Dewt…I’ll send him over here…his posts are blessedly shorter than mine.
there was no point to this other than to say thank you.
goddess, I ramble to much.
There was some talk here that some people feel giving blow jobs to other people isnt cheating.
What defines ‘cheating?’ It varies.
Two things right up front: I am what you would consider as the cheatee. Secondly, I’m Hamadryad’s husband.
I’ve read with interest all the different opinions in this thread. Some people consider cheating as the end of a marriage/relationship. Some people don’t. Some people have found it as a way to break through the wall of bullshit surrounding the problems their relationship is having. No, not the actual act of cheating, but the aftermath, when it gets out.
And it will get out. I don’t care how clever you think you are, or how far away from home you are when you cheat, or how blind you think your SO is; it will come out. Sooner or later. (Can you tell that I am of the firm belief that, if it happens, you should own up to the music and tell your SO about it?)
At the time that Hamadryad speaks of in her post, we were going through a very, very rocky period in our marriage. I won’t go into the gory details, but within a few short weeks she thought she had found out something very horrible about me, which totally changed the way she looked at me. Also, the person she ended up getting involved with was a self-centered bastard that kept telling her that “he was there for her in these troubling times,” and that “he would be there for her” when all the bastard wanted to do was get into her pants.
When I found out about it, I was incredibly hurt by it. I won’t lie to anyone about that. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue being married. I felt betrayed. But then, after a bit, I started to think what it would be like without her there, and also wondered if I cared so little for our relationshipp that I would just throw it all away.
Some people, they would have. And if that’s the way they feel about it, then more power to them. But when I married her, even though the phrase “for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse” weren’t in our vows, they sure as hell were in my heart, and I wasn’t about to just “toss it all away” without a good ol’ Southern-style fight.
We spent many, many nights sitting and talking about everything that was wrong with our marriage, not just what she had done. Granted, at first it was very, very painful. I had my eyes opened about a lot of things that I hadn’t realised, as did she. No matter what we did, though, we kept coming back to the bottom line. Did we want to continue as a couple, or did we want to go our seperate ways?
That was four years ago. I know that our marriage is stronger than ever, and I know that Hamadryad feels that way also (and not just from her posts here! <grin>). We thought we had something worth saving, were willing to do what we had to do to save it, so we did. Was it easy? Hell, no! Was it worth it? Hell, yes!
I’m not saying that this would work for everyone. In fact, I’m sure that it wouldn’t. But for us, it did. She’s my love, she’s the mother of my children, she’s my wife, and most importantly, she’s my friend. I wouldn’t trade what we have for anything.
What did I learn from that experience? Be honest. Anything else, you sell yourself and your SO short.
No, I don’t. I think that it depends on the individual and the circumstances and consequences surrounding his/her actions. Someone who just doesn’t give a shit and always gets away with it will probably not change. Some one who does give a shit and gets away with it might change. Some one who really does give a shit and can’t live with it and subsequently doesn’t get away with it and realizes just how much SO really means to them… well, maybe that’s them growing up.
I’m with Hama, in that I’ve seen how an affair can act as a catalyst for an epiphany within a marriage. I’d like to add that it can serve a similar purpose within an individual. I was devastated and sickened by my actions and the string of decisions that I made when I viewed them through the eyes of the woman I truly loved.
But is there such a thing as justifiable cheating?
No way. My answer would not always have been this, but having had the dubious benefit of much experience (from both sides)I’d have to lodge my vote in as a ‘most definately no’.
I can understand where CheifScott is coming from. It is unjustifiable. One could argue that cheating isn’t always done with malicious intent, but then neither is drunk driving and the intent is hardly the point, right? When you make vows and commitments, they are to be honored. Otherwise, there is little point in making them.
** If you’ve been cheated on in the past, is it harder to trust someone? **
For me, nope. I was well desensitized to jealousy during my mid teens by an older woman who cheated on me blatantly though denied it right to the end. It bothered me at first, but after I’d slept around a bit too, and we started… but that’s a long story, and hardly appropriate. Anyway the point is no, it’s not harder. I never even think about it. I’m not saying I’d want Dylan to cheat on me, most definitely not, but if she came home and confessed to having a short fling at some point in the past, I’d be ‘over it’ pretty quick. That of course is not the same as her coming home and telling me that she’s in love with another man. Shit, my world would come to an end if that happened. 
Anyway. I’d just like to add that although I’ve heard (and can tell) stories of how an affair can ultimately ‘save’ or ‘improve’ a marriage, I don’t buy it. Bottom line is; if your relationship falls to that level and you can solve the problems without the catalyst of an affair you’re in a much stronger position than with the scars of a betrayal.
I thoroughly and absolutely regret cheating on my wife. It was a very poor decision. If I could go back in time and change things, I would. Without a doubt.
And no. I would never do it again.
Okay, I followed your line of reasoning up to here. First off, I can’t see where an affair would save or impore a marriage. What I do see is where an affair could blow open a situation and force the parties involved to come to some sort of decision. A catalyst, if you will. Perhaps it would come to a head later, perhaps not. I personally don’t know of any marriage that has been through an affair that didn’t have repercussions of some sort.
Stronger position? In what sense? Whether a relationship remains together because one of the people had an affair and they resolved thier problems, or whether they did it without an affair, isn’t the relationship still together? Or are you talking about adding the emotional hurt of the affair on top of everything else?
I am the same way. Cheating has no purpose except to hurt the person you cheat on. There are better ways to break people’s trust.
Just to weigh in, cheating is the One Unforgivable Thing in my relationship. I could never trust that person again - ever. There are some things that cannot be “worked out”, IMO, and that is one of them. My SO would be on the street, and then in court if she ever did that.
I would be very mean and bitter. I guess that makes me a bad person, seeing as the general mood here is one of “cautious forgiveness” (my characterization anyways).
My only friend IRL was cheated on by their spouse a year ago - he stays only because he’s building enough evidence to win a custody battle over their son. He told me recently at lunch, “Una - I don’t just dislike her - I hate her.” That’s how I would feel.
I guess I really don’t understand the tendency towards forgiveness…how sad for me I guess.
I think any kind of sexual contact with another person would be cheating. I can’t imagine someone not being upset that their SO performed oral sex on someone else. But then again, some people would say that having sexual fantasies about another person is cheating. I guess everyone has a different definition of what cheating is.
oh really?
and I always said that if you were ever unfaithful, you would find your stuff outside, and you could go with it…of course, saying something and then finding yourself forced to act on it when the situation arises are two different things…
I find it hard to believe that you would ‘be over it’ pretty quick…
is this because you yourself have cheated now, or would this have been your stance regardless of your past betrayal?
psst…can you spare a sig?
I used to have pretty liberal atttitudes towards sex and fidelity. I used to feel that sex and love were two separate concepts, independent of one another. Remnants of this philosophy still remain insofar as if you were to confess to something like that, the impact on me would be far less severe that what you went through. I have been in an ‘open relationship’ before and had no problems with sharing my girlfriend physically with another man/men. ('course when she left me for said other man, I was pretty upset.)
Please note that I am in no way suggesting that we have an open relationship or that it would be in any way a feasable way of life for us.