Welcome to the human race.
It isn’t an issue of whether he’d still love you. It’s more a matter of he’s got the vision running through his head of you having sex with another man, and that vision is causing him great pain because he loves you.
You can be honest with him, but if he loves you, the cost will be a great deal of pain for him whether he stays or goes.
If he doesn’t give a good goddamn about you, he’ll just dump you or cheat on you in return or whatever, and it won’t hurt him in the least.
I view cheating as a line-crossing event. Some people will cross that line, some people won’t. If someone crosses it once, it reveals very much about the personality of that person. I feel they are very likely to cheat again. I feel they have the mindset that it’s okay for them to cheat when they feel like cheating.
To cross it, they likely had to take several inappropriate steps up to the line. Even if it was a ONS, it didn’t just spontaneously happen that they fell into bed. Likely there was a period of time where they were flirting, touching, talking where each step got them closer. Some people will take that path, some people won’t.
If my SO cheated on me and I found out about it, it would be over. End of story. Cheating is a deal breaker.
Your feelings are interesting, but is there any data backing those feelings up?
Is there any data on how
P(you’ll cheat multiple times|you’ve cheated once)
stacks up against
P(you’ll cheat|you got married)
?
Sure. But everyone who ever loved anyone loves a fiction, in one way or another.
My wife thinks I’m handsome. I’m absolutely certain she is misled.
I think my wife is faithful. I may be misled - I don’t think I am, but one never knows. But I am happy now, and would be profoundly unhappy if I found out she was unfaithful.
Who wins, if she tells me? What benefit to either of us? Nah. If you’re confident that I will never find out in any other way… let it be. I’m OK with a little fiction in my life.
Of the heart and mind, or just the body?
Human beings and human relationships are not so simple.
Just speaking from a clinical perspective, infidelity is genetically ingrained into our species. We are built in with an urge to seek sexual novelty. It has helped our species survive and succeed and cheating is responsible for the existence of every single individual human being alive today. Without it, we who are here now would simply not exist.
So there is that fundamental urge. There is also a parallel urge to couple. That has also evolved with the human species in the same way that infidelity has. We are genetically paradoxical. We are driven to couple and to cheat.
And this paradox is the basis of the most pervasive drama of human existence. From the beginning of storytelling, every story about people is a story about couples and cheating. Just as it is death that creates life, it is infidelity that creates fidelity. One does not exist without the other. It is part of the drama of living as a human being.
How these factors play out in any individual or in any specific relationship are complicated. No, it’s not as simple as “anyone who has cheated once will cheat again” and it’s not as simple as “if my spouse doesn’t know every last fact about me then he or she doesn’t actually love me.” Life is not so simple, love is not so simple, people are not so simple.
That’s at least part of the reason behind why I might choose to remain ignorant of fleeting, isolated infidelity, provided that there are no other long-term consequences. To survive with some peace of mind, there are something things that are not worth knowing.
Come on… now who’s being naive?
Quoted for truth.
Even if it were ten years ago?
And even if in that time you’ve built a beautiful life together? With children who adore you both?
And even if you had never known your SO to be anything but loving and respecful to you for that intervening ten years?
Hey, your choice, but I don’t think it makes sense if you think about it.
Yeah, they really are.
Bolding mine.
You don’t show respect for my by lying to me. And it’s funny that you put “known” in there when the whole point is what the spouse knows and doesn’t know.
Look, it sounds like there are plenty of people who would rather not know and there are plenty who would rather not tell. As long as people establish up front what they want and what they’ll do, I don’t care. As I said upthread, I wouldn’t likely have a relationship with someone who wouldn’t want to know, and I wouldn’t under any circumstances have a relationship with someone who thinks it’s in my best interest to lie to me. But that’s me and my that’s my life.
I am absolutely not trying to be provocative when I ask this, but: how can you know this? At most, you can say that you wouldn’t under any circumstances have a relatioship with someone who says they think it’s in your best interest to lie to you. But someone who thinks it would be in your best interest to lie probably wouldn’t tell you that they did, would they?
I would have thought it obvious I am talking about what I would choose to do. Other people are saying they are okay with being lied to. I am saying that I am not.
Lying by omission for ten years is the opposite of respectful.
Let me put it this way: If my partner cheats, and they admit it to me of their own volition, free and clear, my first instinct would be to explore the (admittedly small) chance that we could work things out.
If I find out about it on my own, then my first instinct is to immediately launch the ejection seat. If they don’t respect me enough to tell me the truth about one of the foundations of our intimacy, why should I trust the impression that they’ve been otherwise loving and faithful for the remainder of our relationship.
It’s not like the letter writer in the column cited any motives that were particularly unique - she felt lonely because her otherwise completely devoted husband was working two jobs to support their new family. On the scale of factors that can strain a relationship, that barely even rates. If they don’t end up facing down something even more wrenching in the future ,they’re probably the luckiest couple in the world. Doesn’t the husband have the right to know how badly his wife behaves when faced with a relatively minor breach in the relationship?
I haven’t thought about it. I’m just talking about sex. Can you give me some parameters concerning cheating of the heart and mind? Or a definition?
I agree.
I think if you did the do, your responsibility is to be honest with yourself: Are you going to do it again? If yes, then confess and see if your SO can live with that. If no, atone and move on.
I think people who believe a single, never-to-be-repeated event should be admitted are underestimating how devastating infidelity can be. I’d be curious to know how many in the “Yes” camp have actually received the news–not that they’ve married a serial cheater, but that their spouse made a bad call one time and isn’t going to do it again.
Yes.
I wouldn’t be able to trust her. And, at least for me, children are not an option. If they were, I might think differently. But even then, it would be over once they left the home.
It ain’t what I know, it’s what I don’t know. Relationships are founded on trust. I am very clear from the jump what my view on fidelity is.
Why does it make sense to stay with someone who has betrayed your trust and lied about it for ten years?
The results of this poll aren’t at all surprising. How many people have cheated on a spouse? More than half, surely. Those people are likely to be in the “Don’t tell the spouse, it will only hurt him/her” camp. People who have never cheated but can imagine doing so are likely to vote that way, too. That leaves a minority of people who will vote the other way.