Okay, we are working here with the assumption that you are married (or seriously partnered), and monogamous.
Your spouse is going to have sex with someone else, repeatedly, without your knowlege or permission. You will find out about it after the fact. There will be no “surprise!” children nor diseases because of the affair. They still love you, and your sex life at home is still good. Assume that the time period that they are doing this is about the same for each one.
Which one of these would be best? Which would be worst? Why?
They pay for sex with prostitutes.
They have frequent one-night flings while away on business, with people they likely will never see again.
They have a “friend with benefits” - an ongoing sexual relationship with someone whose company they enjoy, but no emotional component.
They have an ongoing, emotional and sexual attachment to the other person. While they still love you, they also love the other person.
Other - ???
I’m curious about different people’s attitudes toward the different ways a person could cheat.
Personally - to me # 3 or # 4 would be best, followed by #2, and #1 would be worst. If my spouse is going to cheat on me, it had better be with someone that they care about, or at least like. To break the marriage bond for something that could be accomplished just as easily with a pay per view movie and a bottle of lotion is really just adding insult to injury.
I am told that this attitude is really rare, but to me it just seems logical.
I think I’d go 1, 2, 3, 4. If it’s just sex, I’d feel better about myself because at least they still care about me. I could tell myself they had some weird sex addiction, too, if it was just one.
1&2 because they show complete disrespect for the marriage by cheating without emotional involvement.** Oni no Maggie** I’m with you there.
3&4 are horrible because they have disrespected the marriage by allowing another relationship to develop and grow to the point where there is a physical element.
With 1&2 I would be disgusted with his lack of self-control and hurt that he could put so little value on the relationship that he would risk it for a zipless fuck.
With 3&4 I would be hurt that he had clearly crossed a line and made a choice to turn simple friendships into relationships that threaten the primacy of his marriage.
From my perspective, being married and having made a commitment to monogamy you simply do not put yourself in positions where 3&4 can occur.
Any “sparks” and you ensure you are never alone with that person. If you have to end friendships, you end them, if you have to turn down work projects to avoid late nights in the office alone with a co-worker, you do it. If you need chaperones, public places and a ban on alcohol to keep things merely friendly, then thats what you do.
Your marriage should be the priority, any interactions or relationships with others need to be based on that understanding. I don’t buy “it just happened” or “we fell in love”. Those are excuses for bad choices.
My choice to be with my husband means I have made a choice not to be with anyone else, and I have given my word. I do not intend to break it.
None of those are acceptable. It’s not the sex, it’s not the emotional attachment, it’s the lying that makes it “cheating”.
I might be okay with being in a committed-but-not-monogamous relationship, if I *know *that’s what I’m signing up for. But give me all the information I need to make that choice.
The emotional attachment is the big deal to me. I’m so used to being cheated on that I figure someone’s going to branch out for sex eventually; what I don’t know won’t hurt me as far as plain old ugly-bumping is concerned. Lying about it would be a much bigger deal than the sex–if my partner wanted to do any of these, except maybe 4, s/he could just bring it up with me and we could probably work something out to everyone’s satisfaction.
ETA: Some people have prostitution or stranger-fucking fantasies that could be fulfilled with some roleplaying and a little imagination, too.
Frankly, if he has to cheat, I’d rather it was with a safe, clean (and preferably legal) hooker. I would not want him to be with someone with whom he had an emotional attachment, because while I can get myself to understand him being sexually attracted to someone else, I can’t accept him forming an emotional bond like that with another woman. That, at least, should be sacred, even if sex is not.
A hooker, like the women in the brothel on the HBO show Cathouse, not some random crack whore off the street, is disease-free, will not fall in love with him, try to get pregnant, be jealous of me, talk about the affair openly, or involve herself in my life whatsoever. That, to me, is the safest, least offensive venue for marital infidelity. It’s separate and walled off from our marriage.
Of course, any infidelity, sexual or emotional, is grounds for the immediate dissolution of the marriage, so the question is moot for me anyway.
I’m with the OP. Visiting a prostitute is extremely distasteful and suggests an intolerable degree of calculation and advance planning,. Frequent one-night stands while away on business also suggests utter indifference to marital vows and deliberately seeking out a way to cheat.
Having a fuck-buddy is not nice, but at least it is likely that mutual respect is involved, and in all likelihood, the FB is someone who was vetted - “you understand it would be horrible if my wife found out, you’ll keep your mouth shut, right”? Option 4 is similar - I’d be upset that my spouse had such strong feelings for someone else, but I’d assume he didn’t wake up one day and say “I think I’ll go find someone else to fall in love with.”
I guess what it boils down to are that 1 and 2 suggest purposeful disrespect, whereas 3 and 4 suggest ordinary human weakness. I find the latter less insulting and easier to forgive.
Yes, I know that doesn’t entirely make sense - the FB does involve advance planning and purposeful disrespect. But I’m assuming the FB thing came from “thinking with the wrong head” and succumbing to temptation, rather than deciding to go out and search for someone. If my spouse placed ads looking for a FB, well, that would make it much worse.
Honestly I would much rather them leave me first before they have sex with someone else. I can see having an occasional threesome or something similar in a loving, caring, committed relationship, but if they feel the need for sex without my presence they need to end things before they go out and get laid elsewhere. None of the options listed are acceptable.
We both had a long history of anonymous promiscuity before our relationship. In fact, that’s how we met. That was almost 21 years ago, and it’s ancient history. It would break my heart to see him go back to that, and he’d lose my respect. But if he genuinely fell in love with another person, I could understand that, and I wouldn’t think less of him.
1 is best followed by 3 - the main reason is that it seems we can chalk the whole thing up to problems with our sex life. THAT I can live with. I would have preferred a conversation even if it was as blunt as, “Dude, you suck in bed”. The point is that we could work on it and if not at least it makes sense…people need sex.
4 - this would bother me more than the first two because because of the emotional attachment. You can’t really go back from something like this, the sex would be secondary.
2 - This would be the worst and I’m not sure it’ll make sense to anyone but me. This seems to me to be a lack of self control rather than a measured quest for sex. I’d prefer the measured quest for good sex because at least I can understand it. 2 seems to be the most deceitful.
2 and 4 would be something I could conceive of being alright. 2 I could see as being an issue with sexual addiction or something. 4, well, love’s a strange thing and unexpected.
1, totally unacceptable to me.
3, that’s just cheating. There’s no excuse.
The** only** situation acceptable to me would be #1: Sex with Prostitute.
One night stands with strangers are just too trashy to even consider.
Every other situation implies lack of commitment, and to me, marriage is commitment.
OTOH, if the spouse has some need I am just not meeting, and everything else is fine … well, hell, we have hired carpenters, accountants, cleaners, electricians, and plumbers, and I have dealt with that.
*Your spouse is going to have sex with someone else, repeatedly, without your knowlege or permission. You will find out about it after the fact. *
I would prefer my spouse to have sex with an old Western outlaw, whom I had already arrested for stealing my horse. That way they’d be hung so I wouldn’t have to go kill him after the fact for having sex with my teenage Native American bride who I forced into marriage.
She still loves me though, because I’d burn down her tribal village if she said otherwise.
1 and 2 would be more acceptable to me, and I could probably get over 3, but 4 is a definite NO in my mind. Sex is sex, and I could deal with that; friendship with sex might be tolerable. Emotional attachment and love for another? No way, for me.
