I knew a douchebag who cheated on his wife, but the problem with him was that he was a pusillanimous douchebag, not his sex life, which is none of my business nor something in which I am interested. What I mean is, the cheating + attempted cheating was consistent behaviour for him, but not the underlying reason he was uncool.
The diagnosis of PTSD from a purely clinical perspective requires perceived threat of death or threat of physical harm (including sexual assault.) Unfortunately, a lot of therapists are running with an ever-broadening conceptualization of PTSD so as to make the concept of trauma virtually meaningless. I truly think that the pop- culture embrace of little-understood therapeutic ideas is having an overall detrimental effect on society. Research indicates that the more central trauma is to one’s personal narrative, the poorer their outcomes. So now we have a bunch of self-reported trauma survivors, coping poorly. The more we water down the definition of trauma, the harder it will be to find effective treatments, because I guarantee you the solution to healing from your partner’s infidelity is not the same solution as someone who was kept in captivity for years and repeatedly beaten and raped by their abuser. It’s not necessary to minimize the impact of intimate partner violence in order to state your case. We need to end this constant victimization one-upmanship, because this, people claiming that infidelity is more traumatic than being repeatedly beaten, despite all evidence to the contrary, is the end result.
To answer the question, for me it’s an issue of accountability. If you commit to being faithful to someone, and you cheat on them, you have done something wrong that requires taking accountability and changing your behavior. I don’t generally believe people should be outcasts for doing socially unacceptable things, unless they have shown an unwillingness to address the wrong and change their behavior. But this is also impacted by how well I know the person and whether or not their marriage can reasonably be said to be any of my business. I can say I’ve distanced myself from people for less.
I need a cheater in my life- as an associate, as a friend, as a spouse- like I need a hole in my head.
In the context of intimate partner violence involving bruises and broken bones (not from, say, a soccer game) the victim will be traumatized, and pretty likely to have PTSD. Being beaten by your intimate partner is a betrayal that goes beyond cheating.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure an ex I was with for 9 years cheated on me, and although I was sad about the break-up, it was ultimately a good thing for both of us, and I have no lasting negative effects from the cheating
Emotional and psychological abuse can be at least as bad as physical abuse, but physical abuse usually has at least some of the other abuse, too.
Cheating is not inherently abusive. And I say that as someone who does, at least in some circumstances, lose respect for cheaters.
Abuse to me implies a power dynamic in which the victim is unable to leave, for whatever reason. If you were in a cheating relationship in which you were powerless to leave, either because of financial control, threats of violence, social isolation or severe emotional abuse that robbed you of self-efficacy, then you were a victim of domestic abuse on top of the cheating.
I want to note that trauma is really hard to extricate from circumstantial factors at the time of the event. Trauma is moderated by lack of social support and a host of other factors, and I would imagine infidelity would be one of them. So I would hesitate to say, “I experienced both X and Y and Y was worse” because the experience of Y was likely meditated by X. Y may well have been experienced as worse because X was also taking place.
I should clarify what I mean by that latter bit. The way people experience different events in their lives is influenced by a range of circumstantial factors that accompany the event. At the population level, we can somewhat predict how traumatic an event will be for someone based on other factors of their life. For example, soldiers with a history of child abuse are more likely to develop combat-related PTSD. If someone experiences infidelity as worse than their own domestic abuse situation, that’s valid, of course. But the contextual nature of such experiences makes it difficult to generalize across populations, especially when we have research indicating that, at the population level, this appears to be the exception rather than the rule. While I do think domestic violence is generally more psychologically destructive than infidelity, specifically because of the captivity and threat to bodily autonomy, I think what’s more important is that the nature of the wound is different. They are two different problems in need of two different interventions. It doesn’t make sense to me to treat a jilted spouse with exposure therapy, for instance. There probably wouldn’t be a lot of safety planning. I imagine it would be more about identifying complex and conflicting feelings about the cheater and working through some kind of grief. (I have no idea.)
EMDR maybe? But EMDR is weird and may or may not have practical applications outside of physical and sexual trauma. Personally it has helped me with emotionally complicated things that aren’t necessarily trauma. So I would recommend anyone give it a shot. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
Heck, yeah! Trust is pretty important in my friendships. Cheating is the very definition of breaking trust. Friends who cheat are immediately demoted to acquaintances.
I fully realize that one can conjure up scenarios where cheating is more or less “justified.” Not to me. I consider cheating to be far worse than fiddling with your taxes, stealing or embezzling from your employer, racism, or even assault.
Disclaimer: I have never cheated on a spouse or even an exclusive significant other. I am not aware that I have ever been cheated on by a spouse or significant other. The same applies to my current (third) wife. It’s just that I take this seriously.