No worries. It went over my head, or something.
If something you did means that the person you are having sex with may no longer want to have sex with you, then, yes, you have an obligation to tell them, so they can make an informed decision.
I also think not wanting your partner to tell you is selfish. Yeah, you don’t want to know, but the person who did it has to feel the pain and shame for the rest of their life, and make absolutely sure no one else tells you, because, the second they do, your crime is both cheating and lying. Surely dealing with that early on would be better than hurting someone you love, even if it is their own fault.
And, if you are the forgiving type, then knowing about it is better, because then you have something to forgive, and the other person can actually reap the rewards of that forgiveness by no longer being punished for the rest of their life because of one mistake.
Finally, I agree that it is rare that someone can cheat exactly once, especially when they lie in order to keep themselves from receiving the proper consequences for their action. People are inherently selfish, and people are horribly bad at self punishment. Having cheated once will make it much harder not to cheat again.
The relationship is probably in trouble anyways.
In general, I vote for manning/womaning up. (1) The partner who is acting in good faith based on the vows deserves that consideration, in my opinion. (2) Also, secrets put a distance between you. Whether both know or not, it’s still there. (3) And, it happened for a reason. That reason needs to be brought out into the open and worked on. (4) Finally, the truth has a way of coming out sooner or later somehow, anyway. If my partner had a one night stand, it would be rough. If they had a one night stand and lied about it for years, I would likely never trust them again, knowing what capacity for deceit they had. (5) Sneaky people suck.
See, I’m the opposite. If I found out about a “consequenceless” infidelity that had happened years ago - and we’ve been happy in the years since - I’m not sure I’d work myself into a lather. I’m sure I’d be hurt and disappointed.
And, if he confessed immediately, I would also be hurt by the confession - that my spouse didn’t protect me from his own indiscretion. That he made the decision for me that I should know. The he spoiled my blissful ignorance. To me, that, and not the ‘cover up’ would be the betrayal.
I feel this way, too. Word perfect.
That is an interesting perception. Maybe the right thing then would be for the one who cheated to take into consideration how the other would prefer to be treated with it, rather than how the cheater himself/herself would prefer to handle it.
Bingo. Often, confessing is the most selfish thing that happens.
Ideally, you don’t have the indiscretion to start with. Once it happens, is your spouse the sort of person who needs to have the option to punish you, leave you, make informed choices? Or are you both better off if you suck it up, admit to yourself it was a mistake, and hope it stays buried? Serial infidelity - that’s a different matter entirely. Your spouse has a right to know that you cannot maintain monogamy.
There’s always the option of putting the news in one’s will. “To my spouse: I leave you the knowledge that I cheated once / several times / constantly during our marriage.”
:mad:
;)
Not confessing is the exact same selfish behavior that you displayed when cheating. It is no longer up to you whether the relationship should continue or not, keeping it to yourself is just lying to your partner about who you really are every day you spend together. Confessing has nothing to do with making yourself or your partner feel better, it is about giving them the choice to continue the relationship or not.
So? ‘I ran over a squirrel today’ and ‘I ran over a person’ is just a matter of degree. Most people have no problem seeing that the degree of difference in an action can make all the difference in the world. And anyway, nobody is saying that 100% honesty, 100% of the time, is the way to go. Just that you should be honest about the things that you know are important to your partner.
You care about somebody but you cheat on them. You’ve already betrayed their trust, at this point you owe them something. If they wouldn’t want you to tell them, shut your mouth and live with your guilt. If they would, fess up and face the consequences. If you don’t know what they would want, your relationship might more problems than just infidelity.
Of course. But I generally don’t give two shits what most people do, or how trustworthy they are, or how honest they are most of the time. I am not going to make myself vulnerable to disappointment until I know them pretty well. The closer they are to me, the more I care, and if we have promised to share a life together my expectations are very high, especially about something that we both agreed was central to the relationship. Anyone who would break such a promise once cannot be trusted.
Not fucking around is really easy to do.
For you. For me, its selfish to confess. Why put the burden on deciding to stay or not on me? If you aren’t happy, put on your big boy pants and leave. If you are happy and made a horrible mistake, protect me from it. Don’t turn me into the bad guy because it becomes my responsibility to save the marriage or not. If I leave, I’m not forgiving - not really committed to the marriage. If I stay, I’m a doormat waiting to be cheated on again. If you cheat again, I was stupid to stay. I don’t need this to be my problem. YOU choose. If this is the end of the marriage, end it. If it isn’t, don’t make it my problem.
Which is why its best not to get yourself into the problem of “should I confess or not” to start with. But once it happens, its best to do a careful evaluation of both yourself and your motives, your spouse, and the overall state of your marriage.
The evolution and history of the human race proves you wrong. Fucking around is a basic aspect of our nature and an important tool for survival of the species.
So what? Assuming your assertion that there is some kind of evolutionarily necessary biological imperative to be unfaithful, it still doesn’t follow that resisting it is hard to do. At least for someone who has developed a bit of self control. There are manuals for that, if you are interested.
It’s not a matter of whether I as an individual am interested. It’s that infidelity is simply a matter of probability. It is going to happen to a certain number of people, like it or not. So it’s irrational to base your decisions based on an expectation that it never happen.
Actually, evolutionary psychology is a mostly unscientific discipline that doesn’t manage to “prove” much at all.
As noted above, I don’t give two shits about what most people do.
What, in your understanding, *can *never happen, save those things that never happen by definition?
It is not irrational to expect people to keep their promises. I submit that you do it yourself dozens of times a day, either explicitly or implicitly.
At any rate, it is clear that I would never enter into such an understanding with someone like you, should I get to know you well enough to consider it. Some folks think highly enough of their word to actually make an effort to keep it, and not hide behind some bullshit excuse. This is not intended as a judgment; it’s simply that as with folks who smell really bad, or chew with their mouths open, or beat their children or their animals, or lie, cheat and steal, I prefer to avoid their company.
Actually, the only thing that’s clear is that basing any such conclusion on a message board discussion like this would be a serious error in judgment.
By the way, it’s a fallacy to attribute arguments in a discussion to the personal character of the individuals making them. This is a discussion board, and I discuss. I don’t affirm that every last thing I say here is relevant or applicable to my life. That some people habitually take the opportunity to make conversations into personal attacks is unfortunate.
Talking about infidelity does not constitute a threat of infidelity to you, personally.
My mistake. I assumed that you, as a rational person, are unfaithful, since the expectation of fidelity, according to you, is irrational.
As to personal attacks, not a bit of it was personal, as I took pains to point out. Unless you believe that my saying that preferring not to associate with someone is a personal attack. I assure you it is not. Again, nothing personal. Cheat away all you want.
Another logical fallacy. Stating that it is irrational to expect fidelity means that as a rational person I should not expect fidelity from others. It has nothing to do with decisions about my own actions.
Appending “nothing personal” to a personal statement (“You are so disagreeable that I wouldn’t associate with you”) doesn’t make it non-personal.
Again, a personal attack.