Once a cheater, always a cheater?

[Clothahump]

I don’t know if you can make it be an ironclad statement of “Once a cheater, always a cheater”, but the best indicator of future performance is past performance…

[Chessic_Sense]

@Alice The Goon

I A couple of years in, I began to try to tell my husband that there was something very wrong with our relationship, and asked him to go to counseling and try to fix it. He denied that there was anything wrong, wouldn’t work with me to salvage it, and ignored my emotional needs. I cheated on him during the last year of our sham, and while I did feel bad about it at the time, I didn’t really look at it as cheating, because I felt that he had abandoned me first. I understand now why I did it, and it most definitely is not because I’m “a cheater” or a bad person, it was because I wasn’t getting the love that I needed at the time, and I’ve forgiven myself. I would not cheat now in any relationship, because now I know how to go about getting my very human and normal needs met, and I’d never have to go to that extreme again. I was dealing with a bad situation in a bad way, for sure, but I was 22 years old and ignorant, and I don’t think I deserve a scarlet A on my forehead.

I quote your (almost) entire post because I think it applies exactly as written to my situation in the past month or so. I too felt abandoned and ended up seeking elsewhere. Perhaps that’s the true reason. I’d answer the OP with “If the cheater feels abandoned again, yes, they’ll cheat. If not, then they won’t.” Right now, my relationship is fixed, it’s been healthy and fun again, and I’ve turned away all my friends that I used to mess around with. Should the relationship go south again, I think I’ll just give up on it this time and not have to deal with the moral ambiguity.

[lobotomyboy63]

A factor that seems to keep popping up in this discussion: abandonment.

Here’s an article I googled across. Dr. Laura caused quite a flap.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23575221/

Said Dr. Laura:

“The cheating was his decision to repair what’s damaged and to feed himself where he’s starving,” Schlessinger replied. “But, yes, I hold women responsible for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.”

I’ll note that we could rephrase that to apply when women cheat. Men toss out perfectly good women as well.

A lot of the article mirrors what’s been said in here. I’ll pick up one thing that hasn’t.

Another relationship expert, psychologist Jeff Gardere, said that trying to decide who’s at fault is beside the point. “It’s not about the blame game,” he said. “It’s about looking at what’s going on in this marriage that may have been ripe for this to happen. But the person who cheats is doing it for a very selfish reason. It’s a very selfish act.”

I’ll agree with him that the blame game is bad. If human relationships were car accidents, we’d all be screaming at each other in the middle of the intersection while the victims bleed to death.

I’ll agree that technically, the act is selfish. Tell the starving man/woman, “You stole this loaf of bread just so you could eat. The merchant had to pay for that bread, you know! It’s all YOU YOU YOU, isn’t it?!” Nature/God/Og gave us a survival instinct. It requires us to be “selfish” so we won’t die. If you don’t secure what you need for yourself, who will? The world will run you over.

In a related vein, if you haven’t seen “30 Days” (Morgan Spurlock, of “Supersize Me” fame), you must. It’s supposed to be back with season 3 in June, woo hoo! I’ll have to start a thread for that show…it’s that good.

Amazon.com has it in their “unbox” dept, so you can download any episode for $2, if you like. He had an episode about illegal immigration that’s just the bomb.

Watch 30 Days Season 2 | Prime Video

A man who volunteers to patrol the border goes to live with a family of illegal immigrants for 30 days. You can imagine the arguments they exchange. But at one point he goes to Mexico to see where they lived before coming to the US and it’s a total pit.

The conclusion I think any reasonable person has to draw: if you lived in those conditions, you’d break any laws you had to break for the survival of your family. The law can say you’re a criminal, but it’s better to be a living “criminal” than a dead, law-abiding citizen. I can’t fault anybody for doing whatever they need to do to survive.

And in the case of cheating, it’s often about emotional survival when your partner has abdicated and you have to fend for yourself.

[Aangelica]

@Dangerosa

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.

Hold up here. Sometimes the cheater really is just a straight-up douchebag. Sometimes people cheat because they don’t give a damn about their partner and they feel like seeing if the grass really is greener. Sometimes it’s not about fulfilling needs they’re not having met in their relationship.

For example, I know (but never dated, for clarity’s sake) a guy who habitually cheated on every girl he ever dated. Repeatedly. Thoughtlessly. If she wasn’t with him at the bar, he’d go home with whoever else happened to be handy and persuadable. I knew him and (at least some of) his girlfriends well. I discussed it with him at length - and we were good enough friends I’m sure he was telling me the truth. His cheating had not a damn thing to do with a failure to have his needs met at home - he fully owned up to that. He just couldn’t stop checking to see if the grass was greener.

The one guy I dated who cheated on me flat-out admitted, in as many words no less that he was doing it on purpose to hurt me. Some people are just assholes, folks.

I don’t necessarily agree that once a cheater = always a cheater, but it is a thing to consider. Past behavior is the best predictor future behavior, like it or not. Some people grow out of cheating (or never have a cheating phase to grow out of), but some people don’t.