Kinda. I was open and honest about it with both of the girls involved. Made a point of it, really - romantic notions of honour and honesty and all that. One was fine with it in principle (in practice I believe emotions got in the way, even if she never said so directly), the other was mondo jealous and expecting me to end my prior relationship. Which I didn’t.
Eventually both relationships went pear-shaped in rapid succession. I still miss one of them.
As for why… “I was a stupid, self-involved, insensitive cunt” has a lot to do with it. But more fundamentally, curiosity : I’d only been with one girl, and when a second one proved herself interested I felt like I could do with greener pastures, broader horizons and so forth. And I felt that if everybody knew what was going on, things would be fine.
In retrospect I was a big fat idiot who should have learned to enjoy what I had, but there you go. I’m sure I’d do it again, though - I’m still a cunt, you see.
Never. Because once the trust is gone, the relationship is over, not to mention your reputation. And I think I would feel really cheap.
The one time I was interested in a woman while still in a relationship with someone else, I told the someone else first and she decided she didn’t want to hang around to see how it ended. Ended up better for both of us.
If I want a handjob from a sexy foreign hand, I’ll just go to an Asian massage parlor.
Unless you’re married to someone, why wouldn’t you cheat? Worse case scenario, a girl who you didn’t care enough about to be faithful in the first place breaks up with you.
Well, let’s put it this way. Back when I was single I wasn’t exactly hitting home runs with the ladies. And now that I’m married and have a pretty decent home life, I don’t find myself having to turn away many disappointed women on account of I’m married and everything.
So if I wanted to cheat on my wife I’d have to make an effort. I mean, if one of the super-hot young women at work decided that a middle aged middle income father of two was exactly what they needed right now, maybe I’d have trouble saying no. But that’s not going to happen. If I wanted to score one of those girls I’d have to put in a lot of effort, and the most likely result would be that I look like an idiot and get slammed into the ground rather than a quickie in the broom closet.
I have much more to lose than I could possibly gain by pursuing outside relationships. The cost is high and the benefits are elusive. And I’m not just talking about getting dumped by my wife, we’re clear that ending our marriage over adultery doesn’t make sense. I’d have to spend a lot of time and energy outside my household, and I’ve got a job, a mortgage, a long commute, two young children, a wife, and a house where shit breaks and needs fixed, and I don’t have hours on end to spend chasing women while my wife and kids sit home by themselves.
PLUS, I, you know, love my wife. And we have a good sexual relationship. And if it isn’t all my fantasies come true, no relationship could be. My wife is kind and generous and loving and most people in the world are crabby and needy and self-centered. If I had a sexless loveless marriage it might be different, but I don’t so it isn’t. If my marriage was horrible but I felt I couldn’t leave it might be different, but my marriage isn’t horrible and I don’t want to leave.
Why would I trade what I have for the unknown behind door number two? I know for some people the allure of door number two is extremely powerful, this is why the casinos in Las Vegas are so fancy. But psychologically I’m just not built that way, I’d much rather stick with what I have than spin the wheel.
As I said in an earlier post I had a 10 or 12 year span of cheating in a 20 year marriage. She never so much as suspected it. I have to look back and see what was wrong with myself durring this period. My father never cheated yet he was abused, downgraded and deprived of sex for many years with no break. I was on the defense, my wife was a lot like my mother in many ways and I was determined not to be like my dad. I was somewhat passive at home and cheating somehow made me feel like she wasn’t getting the best of me. Maybe a little more complicated than this but not much.
That’s a pretty good description of emotional adultery.
I don’t agree with this at all. Picture this scenario - a wife works with a guy that she adores (let’s call him Schmoe). She talks to him all the time, they talk and laugh and joke around and have long, heart-to-heart discussions, staying late after work, going for drinks, etc. They talk on the phone and text constantly when they’re not at work. She tells him everything; he tells her everything. They are the most important people in each other’s lives. Now, how much care and affection and attention is she going to have left over for her husband, when she’s giving all her attention to Schmoe from work? She and Schmoe have never really touched each other, but she’s completely head-over-heels for him, and hasn’t got any time at all for her husband. Her husband is a great guy who isn’t doing anything wrong - she just can’t be bothered with him, since she’s giving everything but her body to Schmoe.
Does that sound like adultery to you? There’s been no penis-in-vagina, but she’s giving everything to Schmoe and nothing to her husband. You can turn the genders around and have the exact same scenario play out - married man who gives his female friend all the love and care and attention he should be giving his wife. What part of this is a “bullshit term?” You think it doesn’t happen? You think there’s no cheating if there’s no penis-in-vagina?
Relationship threads at the Dope are a peculiar animal. Dopers are pretty smart, well-educated, competent people, but they have strange takes on relationships that should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
There were a few over in Zebra’s “secrets” thread who were willing to admit to cheating - a lot of cheating - under cloak of anonymity, so I suspect you’re right.
Plenty of men have GFs/spouses who have emotional affairs. It’s not fun. If you look on marriage advice and infidelity forums, it’s probably a majority men complaining about emotional infidelity. There’s more to a relationship than fucking.
Adultery is having sex with someone other than your spouse.
Call it something more accurate like “emotional neglect” or “emotional detachment” but to use the words adultery or affair is a joke.
If my wife claimed I was having an affair with another woman because I talked to her a lot and hung out with her a lot, she is obviously insecure and wants to guilt me into feeling like a cheater. However, that is not cheating. Cheating is sexual contact with someone other than your spouse. Same thing it has always meant. Diluting the meaning of spousal fidelity does more damage to marriage than finding new ways to create tension and strife.
I am now and have been faithful to my present wife over the past 20+ years of marriage. She satisfies me in every regard. My ex-wife was a different story: she was sexually cold, having almost no sex drive; she was raised as a strict Catholic who believed that sex was to have children; her idea of frequent sex was maybe once a month, lights off, missionary; and that was early on when we should have been boinking like bunnies; she treated me like a not-very-bright ten-year old. Given those factors, it was natural that I would respond to advances from other women, and I had a number of brief affairs during our 20 years together. They were purely sexual in nature and up until I met my present spouse, there was little emotional involvement. I honestly felt I had no choice but to seek sexual relief outside my marriage, and I was very careful about not sticking my dick in the crazy. Most all (and there weren’t that many) were just looking to have a good time and weren’t the type to come looking for me later. The only regret I have about any of it was that I didn’t walk away from the marriage early on when I realized we were sexually incompatible. As for the liaisons, they were fun, energetic and satisfying. The women were eager, willing and uninhibited; in other words, what a woman should be. As I said: no regrets.
OK. So, let’s say you or your spouse completely replaces the other with another or multiple others in every way possible, except there is no sex. What is that called? If you spend all your time with another, as a replacement for your spouse, it’s pretty extraordinary to claim that your spouse is “insecure” because she is opposed to you replacing her with another woman in every way except fucking.
Never cheated on my ex-wife, but then, we weren’t together all that long. In that brief time I became a lot more sympathetic and a whole lot less judgmental of people who cheated because their spouse was denying them sex and/or being emotionally unavailable or abusive about it.
When we were engaged, my ex-wife promised me (unsolicited) that she would never turn me down for sex. However, the moment we were married, that promise (like all the others) went straight out the window and she would most often resort to excuses, emotionally abusive excuses (“I’m angry about you for (something imaginary), so I can’t have sex with you and you’re being mean to me to even ask for it! HOW COULD YOU!”) and worse. Toward the end, I had to admit that I couldn’t go the rest of my life like that and I’d either end up cheating on her, or she’d have to get therapy and stop that shit (ha!) or we’d end up getting divorced (somewhere down the line).
Still not a huge amount of sympathy if you’re cheating for other reasons, but if it is to get the emotional and physical affection you can’t get in your relationship, and you cannot simply leave for whatever reason, then I at least start to understand it.
It’s hard enough to get one chick to dig me, let alone get another one and then keep them separate. I have homework to do, I ain’t got time for that crap.