Ever know of someone who told their SO they cheated but didn’t? I’ve heard of people lying in the other direction, but I’m wondering if people have anecdotes about someone who didn’t do the dirty but said they did, and why.
I ask because a friend of mine recently exited a LTR with the mother of his child. She told him she cheated with someone they both knew. Things weren’t going well for a long time anyway, so he finally decided to move out. But when he talked to friends of the guy she says she screwed, they said he was out of town, he couldn’t have done it. Now my friend thinks his ex really didn’t cheat, that she just said she did to test his commitment/fuck with his head. If she was taking that stupid gamble, she lost, because her claim of infidelity was enough to get him to leave (which he wanted to do but wouldn’t until that confession because of the kid).
My reaction was :dubious: … his friends were covering for him so you wouldn’t kick his ass, buddy. I know it hurts, but don’t lie to yourself like that. I understand not wanting to think your SO cheated and being in denial about it, but really, who has ever heard of someone saying they cheated when they didn’t? But hey, maybe one of you has heard just such a story. Regale me with your tales.
I broke up with a girlfriend because I felt an emotional intimacy and love for another person that I knew I didn’t, or couldn’t, feel for her. The circumstances and the way that I broke up with her was ambiguous and I believe it left her believing that I had sexual relations or other physical intimacy with this person that I love, which was not at all the case. I know it was a betrayal either way.
No, never. And if I did, I’d quickly file them under “crazy person you’re best off rid of, anyway.” The friend in the OP was *either *a cheat or a liar and manipulator, none of which I’ll tolerate in my partners.
devilsknew’s situation is a little different, IMHO. He (she?) was probably “cheating” under the emotional tag, no matter where the genitals touched or didn’t. I actually respect him for not sniveling and defensively whining, “but I never touched her, honest!” Such details are not useful or relevant. If this relationship is over because of your feelings for another person, that’s it, end of story. Doesn’t matter what you’ve touched or not touched - as he says, it was a betrayal either way.
Granted, in my situation, it was more a case of me finally just responding to yet another in a hugely long string of totally baseless accusations of infidelity with a sarcastic and fully insincere “Oh ya, I totally fucked him. Twice. Right there on the countertop.” accompanied by one of these :rolleyes: so severe I almost injured my own eyeballs.
My SO at that time was constantly absolutely certain I was cheating on him. This was a product of an earlier relationship he had in which is then-girl was cheating on him constantly. I was patient about it for a while, but it got old amazingly quickly. Repeated conversations about the whole thing failed to improve the situation. Every time I was out of his sight (and my whereabouts unknown - i.e., not at work or school), he was certain I was banging every guy I knew. He wasn’t violent or controlling - just suspicious. He couched all this in tragic “how could you hurt me like this” tones. (What can I say? We were like 20.)
After six weeks or so of that nonsense, when it became clear that he wasn’t even making an effort to let it go, I just agreed with him the next time he started up. And then elaborated in such a fashion as to alert any even marginally rational person that I was full of shit.
That was the end of the relationship - although when he discovered (via tracking down the guy he’d accused me of infidelity with) that my partner in crime (so to speak) was actually not only out of town, but out of the country at the time of our “infidelity” he tried to get back together with me. I, however, wasn’t biting. Not all of my male friends were at all likely to be conveniently on deployment when he thought they were bumping uglies with me.
I went though something similar to what devilsknew said, when my long-term girlfriend moved 1,200 miles away with no promise she’d ever return. We tried to do the long distance thing, but eventually I found myself very fond of a new girl, and the feelings were mutual.
We were affectionate friends, but never kissed or slept together or anything. We flirted and went on “dates”, and were kind of cuddly sometimes. I was stretching the bounds, but in my mind I never cheated.
When the 1st girlfriend surprisingly decided to come back, she found some old emails to my buddies where I was wondering whether or not to carry on this long distance thing when I had a great girl here rarin’ to go. She saw it as an act of betrayal and insisted I confess that I cheated on her. I never even kissed the girl, but eventually it sank in that she saw the emotional thing as bad or worse than actual cheating. Lesson learned.
I was labeled a cheater for the rest of our relationship (4 of the longest months of my entire life), and I learned my lesson.
My next relationship I was cheated on, physically and emotionally.
I still don’t think I cheated in the first case, but it was pretty obvious pretty quick that my personal definition didn’t matter… it was HER definition that mattered. I still feel bad about that one.
Maybe she wasn’t so much testing him more trying to get rid of him? I certainly have a male friend who had outlived his usefulness once he’d done the initial fathering bit (IANAMysogynist, don’t suggest this is commonplace, and this girl may have wanted rid for any number of reasons, if at all.).
That could very well be true. However, she did freak out when he moved out, put all his stuff on the lawn, cried, yelled, etc. Their custody is not working out too well because she is being very spiteful (of course, I’ve only heard his side of things). I’m not sure where she’d get off being angry at him for leaving her-- if you tell someone you cheated on them, what else do you expect?
Overall, I think my friend would agree with WhyNot that his ex is a nutcase. I just can’t fathom why someone would lie about cheating. There are so many ways to get rid of someone that don’t make you look like a total dirtbag, if you want to get them to leave you.
My husband’s ex claimed to have cheated with another woman but later said she just said that to push him away a little and have some space. :rolleyes:
My SIL was more or less caught cheating - her best friend was caught in a situation where she had to tell my BIL - and admitted to it, in great detail from what I hear. Now she says she didn’t cheat and has some pretty slick stories to cover everything up, but I think that just came about when she saw my BIL was about to dump her and the subsequent decline in her lifestyle. (Double :rolleyes:)
I’m thirding **WhyNot’s ** opinon. They both are absolutely, certifiably nuts.
While I agree that emotional cheating is indeed possible, I don’t think feelings alone constitute betrayal. If you wake up one morning and realize you’ve fallen in love with a someone, you haven’t betrayed anyone. It’s out of your control. What is betrayal is then moving on to fostering that new relationship on any level while concealing the emotional extent of it from your partner.
In this case, devilsknew may or may not have been cheating–simply realizing that he had emotions for this other person doesn’t make him a cheater, nor, in my mind, is he a cheater if it took him a while to realize how he felt/what was going on. People fall out of love sometimes. It causes a lot of pain. It doesn’t make anyone a bad person.
I was under the impression that **devilsknew **was leaving his girlfriend because he had feelings for this other woman and intended to pursue her immediately. While I agree that breaking up before physical contact is the honorable thing to do in such a relationship, I don’t see what harm is caused by not being specific. Anything you say in that sort of situation is just going to harm the girlfriend and going to make you a weasel. Play it out a few ways:
“So you’re leaving me 'cause you’re fucking Jane?”
“No - I haven’t touched her!”
“Yeah, right! Liar!”
“So you’re leaving me 'cause you’re fucking Jane?”
“No, we haven’t slept together, but I think I might be in love with her.”
“So while you’ve been fucking me, you’ve been wishing it was her?”
“So you’re leaving me 'cause you’re fucking Jane?”
“No! No, I’m leaving you 'cause I *want *to fuck Jane.” slap!
This is one time where, as wasson did, I could see simply giving in and accepting that you’ve “cheated” according to your partner’s definition, and that groinal activity wasn’t the differential in the diagnosis. Quibbling over the definition of “cheat” just isn’t going to make anything better. As **wasson **so wisely said, it doesn’t matter what you think is “cheating”, only what your partner thinks is cheating.
So, unlike the OP’s example, I would *not *think **devilsknew **or **wasson **was crazy for allowing their partner to think they cheated or essentially “saying” they cheated when they didn’t. I certainly don’t think either of them is a bad person, and never said anything like it.