I’ve heard that some people will cheat because it makes the sex hotter. They want to push the envelope of getting caught…ALMOST caught is best. Ideally hubby would be walking in the front door as lover was sneaking out the back.
I was at the opposite end…mortified that it would be revealed.
FWIW: it concerns me when people shut down their logic, conclude that all cheaters must be devil-spawn, etc., and stick their head in the sand. Cheating goes on more than we’d care to admit and it’s better to examine why it happens so we can address it (and take steps). JMO, YMMV.
My sister, who’s about as wise as they come, didn’t marry till she was 46. She and her then fiancé talked about expectations for the marriage and such, and one issue that came up was their respective pasts. Her view: the past is gone and we generally paid a price for mistakes we made. So it should be excluded as double-jeopardy. Besides, it’s the suffering that taught us a difficult lesson and made us better people, REALLY forced us to learn lessons, and so on.
If I found another woman who was really great for me, and if she would have me as a husband, she’d have a guy who has been pre-disastered on this issue. Been there, done that, not going there again.
I can’t speak for others, but whenever I tried to talk about our insatisfactory (for me, and apparently for both) sex life with My Ex Who Cheated, he was unable to converse about it. I’d be asking to occasionally change positions, he’d grab me and start taking my clothes off. I’d ask him not to bite my nipples (it hurts, ok?) and he’d laugh, say “you’ll get used to it” and bite some more. Like the joke says, when his blood is all downstairs his ears don’t work.
Frankly, I should have kicked his butt to the curb a lot sooner - I didn’t do it because smoke does get in your eyes, I spent months blaming my own sexual inexperience and inability to relate to his culture for all our communication problems. A relationship has to be both ways: I need to talk, my partner needs to listen; my partner needs to talk, I need to listen. And communication should include every aspect of the relationship - it’s not just “talking” but also touching, sex, or letting the other person set the temperature in the car.
The old saw that sex is a symptom of deeper issues rings very true to me. A related and undervalued or overlooked issue is that intimacy—touching, kissing, holding, all the warm fuzzies—bites the dust along with it. I probably like sex as much as the next guy, but IMO it’s really the termination of non-sexual intimacies that exact a far heavier price than a lack of coitus.
That sounds like what Alice posted, effectively “I’ve already been emotionally abandoned, so…” Paraphrasing Nava’s, when the other puts his/her needs first and foremost and ignores yours, it’s a different shade of the same color b/c the needs still won’t be fulfilled.
I propose that love and sex as needs are far more important than people acknowledge. Consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Love and acceptance are such basic psychological needs that they cannot be denied any more than you can deny the physiological needs of food and water. A lot of people get married precisely for that reason: to fulfill them.
If your spouse said, “I’m in charge of the food and you can’t have any,” what would you do? Ultimately, to survive, you’d steal food. Would that make you a criminal? Well, they ARE in charge of love and sex.
eleanor said:
I think I have more sympathy (not sure that’s the right word, how about less contempt?) for cheaters if I have some insight into their situation. But given today’s no fault divorce etc, I don’t see the need for affairs–get out and then get on with it. (that sounds glib and it’s not meant to, sorry).
I know what you mean but I’m concerned that if you don’t understand why I’m hungry, then I still don’t get the food. Back to what Nava said, the spouse is judge, jury, and executioner and if he didn’t “understand” why she didn’t like him biting her nipples, he felt justified in continuing. As stated earlier, my ex sidestepped the whole thing by “not remembering” and there are other ruses for justifying unacceptable behavior.
I suspect there are a lot of us who knew our spouses were doing some deep, grievous damage to us personally and consequently to the relationship and couldn’t get them to stop. In hindsight, yeah, we should have kicked their asses to the curb a lot sooner. We’re older/sadder/wiser now.
The problem is after a long time, particularly in a community property state, the term cheaper to keep her comes into play. This is even more so if one spouse didn’t work outside the home.
I think people can decide their own path. I’ve cheated on girlfriends in the past for various reasons (mostly because I could). At this point though, I’ve decided not to cheat on my current girlfriend because it’s not worth it to jeopardize the relationship. If I found someone who I really wanted to cheat on my girlfriend with (as opposed to say, some hot piece of ass in a bar providing a target of opportunity), then I would have to reevaluate my relationship.
And actually, I find not cheating to be the best of both worlds. I get to feed my delicate male ego by knowing I could have banged some other girl if I wanted to, but I don’t have to deal with the guilt of actually cheating.
If you find a way to justify yourself cheating once then i simply refuse to believe you wouldn’t do it just as easily another time. For all of those saying “ive cheated before but i would never cheat on my darling soandso”, what if the situation was the same as whatever lead you to cheat the first time? why would you react any differently?
The thing is, people can get used to almost anything, and I think sometimes don’t realize how crappy their lives have become until something shakes them up. Problematically, the “something” is often “someone”. Of the dozen or so people I’ve known well enough in my life to feel like I actually have some understanding of their marriage, three or four of them have had marriages I considered to be so unhealthy, so pain-filled, so intolerable that it left me literally breathless: people who found home to be a source of constant, painful tension and not for even a moment a refuge or a solace. And what shocked me in each of these cases is how resigned the people involved were: misery had consumed them so entirely that they had forgotten about happiness. For someone in that sort of situation, where they are used to feeling unloved, demeaned, put-upon and ill-used (and that is often mutual after a few years of a bad marriage, whoever or whatever started it), having someone come along that actually likes you, laughs at your jokes, is happy to see you–that’s a powerful drug, and you don’t have to be an evil person to have it cloud your judgement: hell, your judgement’s been destroyed by years of misery.
People in these circumstances are not at their best, and they often do foolish things. I don’t think it inevitably means they have permanent flaws.
Person 1, talking to a starving person: “Here, have some bread, some meat…”
Person 2 “No thanks, I really had my heart set on some cheese. I’ll wait.” (Dies)
Isn’t it an ancient (but often accurate) stereotype that the person with whom the cheater cheats is less physically attractive than the spouse?
Type 1 cheaters: In it for the game, screwing the hottest people they can find.
Type 2 cheaters: It’s about the need to be emotionally “fed.”
Sometimes I think marriages ought to come with one of those signs that some businesses have: “If we don’t take care of our customer, someone else will.”
The only thing I’d possibly change about your post is that I don’t think it’s always a choice. The people in the situations you describe probably don’t have that luxury and are reduced to doing what they have to do to survive emotionally.
We haven’t even thrown in the fact that some couples have children to consider, decide to try to hold it together for their sake.
I was only married for a very brief period of time, less than a year before we split. Before that, I believed that cheating was pretty much the worst thing you could do to your spouse and, considering myself an honest man with a very high standard of Integrity, I would never consider it.
However, by about the six month point in our marriage, intimacy had vanished. My wife went from “I will never turn you down” (like any other, a promise she broke as soon as it left her lips) to the endless list of excuses. She never initiated even non-sexual intimacy. While I never cheated on her, I certainly started to think about the possibility.
Now when I see a man cheating on a beautiful woman, I no longer instantly think “what a scumbag”. I start to think that maybe it’s her.
I used to shit my pants too. As I matured, I grew out of it.
A lot of it also has to do with the nature of the relationship. When I was in high school, I had an opportunity to cheat on my girlfriend but didn’t. In retrospect, I wish I did. I mean why the hell not? We broke up a month later anyway and it wasn’t like I was going to marry her. But premeditated cheating in a serious, adult relationship? That’s just a dick move.
To the extent that much that all humans do falls into category 2, of course they are.
My ex was an habitual cheater. He was also a gaping black hole of need. These two characteristics are certainly not unrelated.
But there *is * a difference between doing the wrong thing in order to meet a healthy, legitimate, fundamental need (say… stealing bread because you’re starving), and treating the entire world as a means to satisfy your distinctly *unhealthy * sense of nothing-is-ever-enough entitlement (say… being Al Capone).
I disagree. Type 1 is doing it for a cheap thrill. Type 2 is doing it to survive. Type 1 likes it and does it whenever they can. Type 2 struggles with guilt and fear.
I say two types, but that’s b/c it seemed like the two we were discussing. There may be 5 for all I know. I look forward to your counterarguments, though.
I wonder what people think about how cheating starts, exactly. I mean, was the man or woman just sitting around one Saturday and decided it was time to cheat, so they formulated a plan and carried it out?
Sure, there are those who see a person in a bar and go for it, and I think they’re type 1. But what about type 2? While it doesn’t excuse cheating, it’s important to note that sometimes others are baiting the married person.
From my own experience, I’ve noticed there’s a dangerous pastime that people engage in. I’ll call it, “You’re married and—therefore—‘safe.’” Some people will interact with marrieds as if that wedding ring is the Hoover Dam, holding the married person in check from acting. Sometimes it’s presented as light-hearted, flirtatious behavior; other times it’s more seriously presented, e.g. “I wish more men were like you” or “Why can’t my husband/boyfriend be like that?”
Of course it’s a double-bind. If I didn’t react—honoring my marriage—I couldn’t have this person, who seemed to get who I am and appreciate me etc. when I get none of that at home. So I might say, “Oh, not really,” which prompted them to tell me, even MORE sincerely. Nice. If I had reacted—dishonoring my marriage—I would have contradicted her theory of what a great guy I am. When I was struggling with a bad marriage, this was like a special form of torture.
BTW I’ve recently encountered the corollary of “Safe.” I’ll call it, “Why Hasn’t Somebody Scooped You Up?” This is when a married (thus, allegedly safe) person tells a single person like me how wonderful he is, how they have to set me up with someone etc. This “set up” doesn’t usually materialize; it’s really an excuse to keep the interaction going.
Before Dopers jump me, let me state that I think a couple of criteria need to be fulfilled before behavior falls under these can be ‘diagnosed’ as such.
They interactions are ongoing. That is, sure, some will pay you a compliment and then move on. No big agenda. But when the other person makes it a daily discussion, it is far less innocent, especially if they’re seeking you out.
They escalate/go deeper. What starts as “You sure are a nice guy,” in a week, snowballs. I choose that term because they start elaborating with things you’ve mentioned or things they’ve observed or heard from others about you.
Not strictly necessary but a definite red flag: complaints about their dating situation or marriage.
What adults ought to realize, IMHO, is that these are dangerous games. You don’t know what others are dealing with and the game can go too far.
And there is the rub. People who are cheated on (including myself) want to believe that their cheating partner is the jerk, that cheaters always cheat, and its not them.
But sometimes it is them - or rather the combination of them and the cheater. Some people cheat on one person - or six people - and then find the right person for them and never want to risk that relationship by cheating. And its usually not just simply the right person, its the right person at the right time.
Not sure if you can do A or B on that - it’s usually a little of both. Last weekend, I visited some friends and ran into a girl I had dated for almost three months. During the course of our conversation, she admitted that she regretted when she abruptly dropped me and started dating someone else (roughly two years ago).
Let me tell 'ya - if I didn’t have a girlfriend right now, I would have taken her right then and there, on the table we were talking at. And my reasons probably would’ve been about half and half of the two “types”.
I guess, to me, detecting the game is easy as a spouse.
If you’d be embarrassed or want to hide your behavior from your spouse, there’s a good chance what you’re doing is not good for the marriage. Cheating is more than sticking your dick where it’s not supposed to go (or the obvious converse).
Cheating, to me, is about giving to somebody else what is due to your spouse.
@Engineer: maybe type 1 and type 2 represent the extremes of a continuum.
@Belrix: I’ve always been pretty kinda naive about such things. My default assumptions were/are things like, “Nobody’s interested in me” and “Oh, she says that but if we were both single, she’d run in the other direction.” I assume people have honorable intentions, a situation starts innocuously and builds. By the time I notice it on my radar, well…
I used to think adultery was primarily something businessmen engaged in when they were out of town. They could pick up a strange woman in a bar, do the deed, and return home like nothing happened.
Reflecting on it now that I’m older, I doubt that’s the most common scenario. Women IME aren’t usually THAT loose, unless they’re Rolex bandits or have another agenda. Some men are Don Juans and may take it where they can find it, willing to take high risks.
But my bet would be that more often, the two people have known each other for some time. A moment of cinema that leaped off the screen and grabbed me:
*Hannibal Lecter: [Buffalo Bill] covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.
Clarice Starling: No. We just…
Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don’t your eyes seek out the things you want?*
Right. :smack: A lot of people—probably a majority—cheat without ever leaving town. Potential partners are everywhere. And if someone is looking for “emotional feeding,” a strange woman in a bar isn’t going to provide that.
But if, say, the two are working together or otherwise see each other regularly, there’s an opportunity to build some trust, exchange signals of willingness, and so on. The emotional betrayal precedes the physical and leads to it, as in the games I described.