I think the decision to tell or not depends entirely on the relationship and the people in it. In my mind, if a one-off, one-nighter is a deal breaker, then maybe the relationship is not as resilient as it could be. Much worse, and much more challenging events are likely to occur during the course of a marriage. In my opinion, just because your hormones momentarily got the better of you is no indication of how much you love your spouse, or how committed you are to the marriage. The fact that you feel bad about it is; and, I would assume, prevents you from ever doing it again.
Exactly. It doesn’t take two people to identify a mistake. Granted, we are talking about a pretty huge mistake.
If no diseases are brought home, and the straying spouse can buck up and try to make things better in the marriage, I think that’s better than possibly opening up a hole in the marital fabric that might not ever be mended.
I don’t see the difference between someone who cheats once and doesn’t tell and someone who is constantly cheating and doesn’t tell.
I’m inclined to believe that anyone who cheats and says that they’re not telling their spouse because they want to spare their feelings is full of shit. They’re not telling because they’re afraid of the consequences of their betrayal that they have so far eluded. If someone’s cheating on me I want to know about it so I can end the relationship. Fuck the fiction.
I agree with this. Ann Landers (or maybe Dear Abbey) used to say this. She’d advise to tell a counsellor, a minister, a trusted friend (you know) and would say exactly that - the cheater was eager to share the guilt, but what was done was done, and the guilt was the cheater’s to bear.
I wouldn’t tell, and I wouldn’t want to be told. (I would be shocked to shit to either have a one-night stand, or hear that my husband had a one-night stand. It wouldn’t end the marriage, on my part. (We’ve gone through life like a well matched team of horses, and we are in sight of the barn at the end of the road, folks. Throw it all away at this stage of the game? Uh, uh.) Him, I don’t know. Men are funny. I’ve heard that to them, “it was just one time, honey, it didn’t mean a thing!” But if the wife steps out, OMG the world has come to an end.
I’m saying that none of us can tell the future. Our promise to “not cheat” is truly a promise to “do our best not to cheat.” Even on your wedding day, or the day after you had a one night stand and say “God, how could I have been that STUPID.”
In the second case, I think its time to evaluate the marriage. If its a fundamentally good marriage where a stupid mistake was made, why would you hurt your spouse? So you can both have the drama of a stupid error in judgement?
It would be nice if we were rational people. If we were rational people, you could go to your spouse and say “Honey, I did something REALLY stupid, and I love you, but I think you should know and I hope you forgive me.” And a spouse that loves you back would forgive you and you’ve move on - with things being the same. But we aren’t rational people. In most cases, the innocent spouse feels guilt (was I not sexy enough? did I gain weight?). The guilty spouse feels guilt. Erosion of trust happens. If the marriage is fundamentally sound, 'fessing up does more harm than good - because we are human. And can take a fundamentally sound marriage and make it unsound. That really seems like a big sacrifice for two people to make over something as stupid as a drunken fling that didn’t have any consequences.
On the other hand, if there’s any chance of STDs or a man being mistaken about the paternity of his wife’s child, that’s among those long-term consequences that demands that the facts be cleared up before things move along.
If your wife asked you whether her bum looks big in these jeans, and it does, would you tell her yes? Nobody is 100% honest to their spouse, or ANYBODY, so you can’t possibly have a problem with dishonesty. Now we’re just arguing over degree.
I think you should tell if you want the marriage to end. If you want it to continue, you should not tell and you should never do it again. If you are equally tempted to do it again after one foible, then you should just end the marriage.
I think there are moments of questioning in any long term relationship, and chances are good that the one night stand happened during one of those times.
I also think we all deserve a bit of emotional privacy during those times of questioning whether or not we want the relationship to continue. I definitely don’t want my partner to be honest about every -dear lord I can’t take this woman’s nagging for another second- moment. If my partner is thinking of leaving the relationship I really don’t want to be in on the whole process. Either decide to stay or let me know you’re leaving.
In the case of a one night stand I can see two outcomes. First that there is regret and a renewed commitment to the relationship, which would be squashed with the confession so I’d rather not know about it. Second that the one night stand confirms that leaving is the right choice, in which case I do not need to know that the decision was tested with a fling.
This generalization is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve never cheated and would never cheat. But I voted not to tell. Confessing to a one-time indiscretion will do more damage to the people involved than keeping it a secret. But once it jumps to a 2-time indiscretion, it’s time to speak up.
I’ve only been in exclusively monogamous relationships and I don’t mind it, but I do not believe monogamy is natural. Nor is it the most desired state for every person in a monogamous relationship. I believe some people push very strongly for monogamy (even when they don’t believe they can be monogamous) because they have either been indoctrinated by religion that marriage is sacred and the ultimate goal, or because they felt obligated to enter into marriage by their monogamy-seeking (or pregnant, or both) partner. Or because they’re going to be seeking public office and single people don’t get as many votes as married ones (snerk–but seriously, truth).
People who are compelled to insist upon monogamy for non-religious reasons may actually prefer it, or they may have convinced themselves they prefer it because they would be jealous of feeling compared to others in the context of a non-monogamous relationship.
FTR, I don’t insist on monogamy, although it is what I am habituated to. I would be okay with doing polygamy or an open relationship, with the understanding that honesty and openness are even more super-duper important than in a monogamous relationship, since trust barriers are naturally pushed harder and time commitments increase when multiple people are involved.
The difference is what the cheater is or is not doing to repair the marriage. If he or she cheated once, but now is genuinely recommitting to his or her spouse and fixing the problems that exist, that’s one thing. If he or she is going out and cheating again, that’s another.
I worded that poorly. I can see the difference between the cheaters themselves: One only made the mistake once and the other is continuing to do it. Where I don’t see the difference is in both of those people continuing to lie to their SOs. If I’m regularly cheating on my SO, apparently the right thing to do is to not tell her, because I’d be hurting her unnecessarily.
If I believed that it was a one-time thing and that she was remorseful then I would accept that she kept quiet to spare my feeling and would even appreciate it.
I have to admit that if I found out via a friend rather than a confession then I would be less likely to believe that it was a one-time thing.
I’d be pissed because I didn’t know about it until now and I’d want to know all the seedy, sordid details. Positions, frequency, location, (was it in an hourly motel? hot.) was there more than one guy involved, etc. Then I would ravage her with hate-sex and then we’d go to dinner.
Or change the terms of the relationship. If both you and your spouse are open to the idea of an open relationship, group marriage, or other variation on a theme. It isn’t LIKELY your SO is going to accept that offer, but if the relationship isn’t “over” yet for you and you’d like to continue it, but change the terms, the offer can be made.