There’s a difference between empathizing and condoning. I feel for them. But I won’t say that they’re doing the *right *thing.
Goddammit, woman, quit making all that sense or this thread will die before people have a chance to start getting properly enraged at each other’s moral failings/moral rigidity.
I don’t think it’s as gray as you make it out to be. I think there’s “people who find the idea of systematically deceiving their spouse as viscerally dusgusting as they would stomping on a kitten for no good reason” and “people who could understand how it might seem like a good idea under the right circumstances.”
And I maintain that one person can have each of those reactions at different times in their life. Is that really difficult to understand?
Scumpup, fat chance of that!
I don’t agree with the premise at all. I cheated on my first wife (with good reason IMO) many times during our 20 years together, but it hasn’t ever crossed my mind with my present wife of 15 years.
Well…yeah.
I would say once a cheat, always a cheat is a much better indicator of how the cheated-upon spouse feels, rather than predict how the cheater will behave.
If I were the kind of person who believes that statement axiomatically, then it doesn’t matter whether my spouse ever would cheat again; I would always believe them capable of it. It could damage our relationship because I wouldn’t get over it.
Just hypothetically, mind.
Well, if they’ve already done it they are obviously capable of it so wheres the flaw in that thinking?
The flaw in that thinking is that it’s lazy and self-serving. “Capable of cheating” and “inveterate cheater” are not the same thing. But hey, don’t work yourself up with any sort or nuanced thought here, it’s so much easier to just write someone off.
The area around New Madrid, MO, is capable of having earthquakes. So is Los Angeles. It would be lazy to consider the earthquake danger in each area equal.
Now by the same token, some humans lie habitually; others lie rarely. Some cheat at every opportunity; some cheat casually; some cheat rarely; a rare few never do.
What I’m trying to say is when someone says “once a cheat, always a cheat” it may well be rephrased to “if ever you betray my trust, you will never get it back.” It is less a predictor of the cheater’s future behavior than it is an indicator of the cheatee’s attitude.
No. I cheated most of my prior relationships. I’ll die before I cheat on my wife.
Okay- you win! 
I think EVERYONE is capable of cheating. Some people have done it already, some people will never get around to it. Some people will do it more than once, some people only once, and some people only if the circumstances are “right” for it (maybe they are in a bad relationship, maybe they are drunk).
I think that there are some people ill suited for monogamy, and some people who get a thrill out of cheating - and when you have those sorts of people in monogamous relationships, you have a pretty high chance of cheating…but I think both those types are the exception to “people who cheat.”
I agree with that assessment. If someone I loves vows never, ever, EVER to lie to me, and then she lies, even if she genuinely, honestly feel horribly guilty and vows “Never, ever, EVER to do it again”… Well that was the same promise made before, and that promise was broken.
Even if the cheater never cheats again, it can be very hard for the cheatee to truly feel that couldn’t ever happen again.
I don’t think I agree with this.
I could lose everything I own and have nothing material left in this world, but my word of honor is one of the very few things that can never be taken for me. I do not break promises. If I vow to be monogamous, I will keep my word, even if I hate my SO and a better opportunity comes my way. It’s not an issue of “never getting around to it”. If I cheat and compromise my word of honor, I could not respect myself. Tempted? Possibly. Capable? Much less so.
As you can imagine, I don’t make promises lightly.
We don’t need know stinking cheetahs! (okay, back into my box).
Missed the edit window.
Oops. Actually, my dad taught us there are two things that could never be taken from us: our word of honor being one, and the other is knowledge.
This. And when things were bad between me and the first Mrs. Montoya I did have an opportunity that could have been a good long-term match. But two wrongs wouldn’t have made anything right.
Exactly. My ex was a nasty, nasty bitch, but I still passed on a great opportunity until we broke up. I would not let her nastiness make a lesser man of me, and that’s exactly what would have happened if I compromised my integrity and used “but she’s such a bitch and I deserve better” as an excuse to cheat. And if I had cheated, what kind of relationship would the illicit one have been, given that its foundation was built on lies and duplicity? Nuh-huh. Do not want.
Well, from my point of view, cheating holds the likelihood not just of emotional betrayal but physical harm as well.
Case in point: a long ago boyfriend of mine cheated on me. He slept with his best friend’s girlfriend and possibly his best friend. He did not use protection. He contracted trichomoniasis, a parasitic STD, and he gave it to me.
How did I learn this? One weekend, I started running a lowgrade fever and having abdominal pains. I went to the ER and was diagnosed by an asshole misogynistic doctor who treated me like a contemptible slut. The trichomoniasis infection had become Pelvic Inflammatory Disease.
Thanks to that infection, there’s a very good chance that my right fallopian tube is severely scared. This means, should I ever try to get pregnant, there is a significant chance of me having an ectopic pregnancy. Untreated ectopic pregnancies cause death.
And what if it hadn’t been a trich infection? What if it had been HIV? My health and my health insurance are chancy enough as it is. Having to cope with a retrovirus, even with the antivirals currently available, would be disastrous.
If a person is willing to cheat on their partner, then there’s a strong likelihood that they are also thoughtless and selfish enough to cheat, not use protection, and put their partner’s life in jeopardy.
That’s what I find unforgiveable.
To the people that have cheated in the past and say they’d never think of cheating on their current SO, did you know, in the other relationships, that you would end up cheating on that partner?