I think people do have regret, more often then not, would be my guess. When you get into an affair, no matter how ‘soul mate’, or, ‘meant to be together’ you feel it is, you’re not giving either partner the best of who you are. If you have to be clandestine, then you can’t be open, you’re not being honest with yourself, often not living up to your own ethical beliefs. Hence regret.
Whether or not you end up regretting loosing your ex, in the bargain, you would surely regret disrupting your family, traumatizing your kids, ruining your reputation amongst family/friends/neighbours.
When you’re cheating, you’re settling for the crumbs of a relationship, mostly. Something meaningful happens you can’t just pick up the phone and connect to your ‘soul mate’. Holidays apart, you cannot send a gift, should the other be ill you cannot be there to care for them. It’s not a real relationship in so many ways.
The appeal of the forbidden heightens sensation for the time together, but once that is gone, often so is some of the thrill. Great sex is awesome, but the bills have to be paid too, lifestyles often take a big hit through divorce and separation. The heady times of cheating can blind people to the uglier realities sometimes.
In my experience, that’s certainly been the case. There was that bad case of poor judgment in college (with cheating being a symptom of the problem; at that point, now-hubby and I were on our third year of a long-distance relationship).
There was much remorse and regret afterward.
Yes. But because not all relationships end in a betrayal. Some people divorce amicably due to the recognition of incompatibility. Some end when a member of the relationship dies. Some even end in anger. In all of those cases, the emotions you described would be accurate. But a betrayal of commitment in the relationship creates a significant imbalance that wouldn’t apply in the other cases.
Having been in relationships that ended mutually or through circumstances outside of the control of either party, and having been in a 10-year marriage that ended with an affair, I’m going to say that yes, there’s a huge difference.
I had a shortish relationship with the sweetest, cutest, most sensitive guy I’d ever met. He was so wonderful. He was a gentleman, he was intelligent, he was thoughtful, and I fell head over heels. We went out for a couple of months until he dropped the bombshell that he was married but ‘separated’, so I was the unwitting other woman in his affair. Shortly after this, he decided to get back with his wife. (there were no kids). I asked why, why, oh, whyyyyy? What about US? And he hemmed and hawed and finally said, thoughtfully, looking off into the distance,“I can’t stop thinking about her, Sali…she has some problems, but she’s just so…beautiful.” Having plunged a sword into my heart, he described her devastating beauty. So he went back to his beautiful bride, established a successful business, and is still married to her decades later. Remorse and regret? Yeah, for both of us, I guess.
I think it’s a platitude that’s only sometimes actually true, that’s not told because of its truth but to make the victim feel better.
See also:
Bullies will get bored with you if you ignore them.
All girls go through an awkward phase, you’ll be gorgeous when you’re older.
Einstein didn’t talk until he was four, and look how he turned out!
Honestly, those pants don’t make you look fat, honey!
Size doesn’t matter, really it doesn’t.
Well, which question are you asking? Do you want to know if affairs in end regret and remorse, or do you want to know if most cheaters ultimately want to go back to the person they were cheating on? They’re two totally different questions with totally different answers; as you’ve seen with your friends, you can feel like shit for hurting someone and wish you hadn’t done that without having the slightest tinge of interest in being back in a relationship with that person.
I think the first form of regret is nearly universal among people who aren’t utter assholes. The former sort I would think is pretty rare.
That reminds me of parents telling their kids that bullies just have low self esteem and they only pick on you to make themselves feel better blah blah blah…Might be true sometimes, but I think very often bullies are just jackasses and the pick on the weak kids (me) that’ll just sit there and take it.
I was recently telling my parents about a bully in high school, both my parents looked at each other and told me that they went to school with his dad…who was also an asshole.
I meant a LOVE relationship. (who cares about NON-love relationships??)
All love relationships end in tears and hurt. Losing “love” is what hurts, whether it takes 1 night, or 20 years to lose it, and it doesnt matter how you lose it… but you WILL!!! lose it.
IF you didnt feel anything about it ending, then it never was love, you never had it, and you never lost love.
Sometimes you get to be the first to die. In fact, I sure hope that I have some love relationships–romantic or otherwise–going on whenever I do die. I’d hate to think my last years would be spent as the sole survivor of all my earthly entanglements.
Well, if I die first, I don’t have to have any tears.
No, but it can put it off a hell of a lot longer. I’d rather live a life where I loved one person for 60 years and then mourned their passing than to love ten people just as deeply in sequence, only to have each betray me in turn.
Damn, you’re right. I hate it, but you’re right…