Cheating is a red line for me. That happens, the marriage is over. The paperwork, money, who gets the kids will get worked out, but the marriage ended.
If my husband still wanted to be married, I’d work it out. It would be so unlike him that there would have to be STUFF going on–terrible depression, or true identity crisis, or something. He’d be hurting, and we are a team.
If I found out he’d been cheating all along, and that it wasn’t actually unlike him–well, I’d be totally, utterly flabbergasted and I’d probably want out of the marriage. Not just because of the infidelity, though, but because he would literally turn out not to be who I now know him to be.
A one-night hookup? I’d forgive. It would hurt, but I would forgive.
A lengthy relationship, behind my back? That would be difficult, but I’d sure as hell try.
Me and my love are coming up on 20 years together. I’d forgive a lot of mistakes. I’d almost prefer the one night stand to something worse, like drugs or gambling away all of our savings, for example.
I would caution that there is probably a difference between what people think they would do as a hypothetical vs. when it really happens.
My first wife cheated on me for several months. When she finally told me about it, we talked (after the initial emotional upheaval) and she said she wanted us to stay together. We got counseling and I was willing to forgive.
However, two months later I was still seeing his phone number show up on our long-distance phone bill (1983 when you had to pay for LD calls). That’s when we separated.
Every case is different and I may not feel the same way if it were to happen in a different relationship.
My wife of today has always made it clear that cheating would be the end of the relationship. (She wasn’t threatening or warning me, it just came up in discussion a couple times as an abstract topic.)
The loss of trust is crushing to a relationship. What happens afterwards depends on how willing both parties are to work hard to reestablish that trust, and whether they can do so.
If it was an indecent proposal type of arrangement then I would expect a cut of the money and a free pass of my own.
But seriously, I think a discussion before it happens laying out the why would be the only way I could be open minded and possibly be accepting. The lying and deceit are the relationship breakers, not the act itself.
I don’t think I could forgive infidelity under any circumstances.
I also would not forgive my husband if he ever did this (not that he would) and I’d kick him to the curb without a moment’s hesitation. I can understand a man wanting a DNA test if he has good reason to believe he is not the child’s father. But a DNA test as “par for the course”? No way, Jose. If there is no trust in a marriage, why bother staying married?
But a known-beforehand, discussed beforehand, indecent proposal would not be an infidelity.
Also, past a certain point, a DNA test is unfair to the child.
I am absolutely certain of my wife’s fidelity, but suppose I weren’t. We have three kids–three year old daughter, two-year-old twin boys–whom we are raising together. Those are my babies. No one is allowed to hurt them needlessly, including most especially me. Moreover, regardless of genetic relationship, I neither need nor desire any excuse to stop being their daddy. I think I’d rather die.
There are no such circumstances. In my view, the infidelity is less about the physical acts and much more about the betrayal of trust. For him to engage in sex acts with another woman means, by definition, he has deliberately broken a promise he specifically made to me.* Not only has he deliberately broken a promise he specifically made to me, there are several preliminary steps he had to go through in order to get to the sex acts with another woman stage wherein he has also broken several specific promises he made to me. Cheating on your spouse is never an accident, regardless of what some folks will try to convince you.
He is aware of all this - we’ve discussed it several times, both before and after our marriage (memorably, in the context of his stepfather cheating on his mother and her taking him back). If he ever finds that his desire to have sex with someone else has reached a point where he’s contemplating it regardless of the violence it will do to our marriage, then he is well aware of the fact that he needs to open his yap and use his words before he crosses a line he can’t uncross. It is possible - if unlikely - that I might be willing to grant a pass. If I have consented to his behavior, then it is, by definition, not cheating. If he goes forth before using his words, there is no chance our marriage survives. This is most definitely one of the situations where it is NOT easier to seek forgiveness than get permission.
There exist circumstances under which I would - probably very reluctantly and with a few conditions - give my husband permission to perform sex acts with another woman, but all such circumstances include a lengthy and honest discussion with me about it in advance of any hanky or panky taking place. For him to act in the absence of my explicit consent would mark the end of our marriage the moment I discovered it. And discover it I certainly would.
It’s like this: either I can trust him or I cannot. Either his word to me is good or it is not. If it is not good, then there’s the door, Skippy. This is, for the record, a reciprocal agreement. I hold myself to precisely this same standard of behavior. If I were inclined to polyamory (which I am not - I am constitutionally unsuited for it), then I would still hold myself to this standard of behavior - if you give your word to someone, then you must keep it if you possibly can. With a lot of promises we give people, keeping our word can be out of our own personal control. With infidelity, keeping your word is always within your own personal control. Always.
It’s just not excusable behavior. If you’re not happy in your marriage, then use your words and talk about it with your spouse. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be married at all, in which case, get a divorce. If you fall in love with someone else, which sucks but it happens, the appropriate response is again to use your words, have the shitty conversation and then get a divorce (or, I suppose, obtain consent from your spouse to also be involved with the other person, in which case the behavior is no longer cheating). If someone is just not capable of monogamy for some reason, whatever that reason is, then the thing to do is not get involved in monogamous relationships, whereupon the question of “infidelity” does not arise.
- Note: I do not believe he would ever do this.
I don’t really see any way we would stay together.
“Can we go to my parents this weekend”.
“No”.
“Why not?”
“Because I hated going to your parents before I found out their daughter was a whore.”
“I’m going out with my friends tonight.”
“What time are you coming home?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you go put some guy’s dick in your mouth if you get bored waiting for me?”
“We got invited to Marie’s wedding. Can we go?”
“I’ve already been to two of her weddings. Why don’t you bring that dickhead you fucked? He should have to share in the crappy stuff too.”
“Can you pick up Junior after school?”
“Can you prove he’s mine?”
Yeah. And it will get worse after you find out she cheated on you.
Married 25 years. I think I could get past a safe, discreet one-off thing after some serious talk about why it happened. Assuming it was not an extremely fraught time, for instance while I was in the hospital or out of town at a family funeral I could get past it, as long as any underlying issues that my have contributed were resolved. At this point in our lives we have a secure relationship, a deep friendship, and a mutual reliance on each other’s judgement, and I don’t see either of us being bored/lonely/irrationally hormonal enough to risk what we have for a fling. We have (as far as I can tell) an excellent and satisfying sex life and we just generally like hanging out together more than with anyone else separately. He works every other week out of town, so he certainly has plenty of opportunity if he wants.
Aangelica, your post is beautifully expressed, all of it, but especially this part. It resonates. Marriage comes down to trust and holding to our vows. At the same time, that’s what makes it possibly so brittle a bond, easily broken, and yet also so very strong.
See, to me it’s more like this:
It would take more than his genitals or even his heart being in the wrong place for me to stop loving him.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t forgive my husband if he required a paternity test on all our children. Really, a paternity test as par for the course? Why would he have reason to believe I’d been sleeping around?
Legally speaking, in most jurisdictions they are your legal children regardless of paternity if you do not dispute it after a certain age (which varies).
Are these Jerry Springer branded? Why am I not surprised that Walmart carries them?
As several people have stated or implied, the relationship is already in trouble if that lack of trust is there preemptively. Everybody says that my daughter really looks like me, so I’ll assume she’s mine. I don’t see the resemblance personally; for one she is adorable so I don’t know where that came from!
Married five and a half years (to the day!) Don’t think I could forgive. My wife and I have absolutely perfect trust. I spend a substantial amount of time having drinks with pretty girls when she’s not around (and she knows about and is okay with that), so our relationship probably wouldn’t work otherwise.
If the trust was gone, the relationship might as well be too. We’d be starting over either way.
I would still love him just as much, actually. I just wouldn’t remain married to him. Those are separate considerations for me. It is possible to love someone whose behavior you can’t allow in your life - ask any parent who’s had to cut off a drug-addicted child who refused all help. The question “Do I love him?” is a distinct question from “Can I permit myself to be treated in this fashion?” or “Can I allow this [insert destructive behavior here] in my life?”
I would also contend that his willingness to deliberately break a promise he’s made to me - and one about which he knows I have strong feelings, at that - in the name of getting a little nooky would indicate strongly that he does not love me. Or respect me at all, either. All he would have to do in order to prevent the behavior from actually being infidelity is to open his mouth before he did it and have a discussion with me about it. This is not a super high bar to pass, really. I might still inform him that if he’s going to go ahead, then our marriage is over, but it won’t be because of infidelity.
How little must a person who cheats think of their spouse that they can’t even manage to open their mouth and fill their spouse in that they intend to stray?
This is the one thing in my mind that separates infidelity from any of the other often so much more terrible slings and arrows of unkind fortune that can hit anyone at any time - it is a betrayal that is purely within the control of the person doing the betraying. It is, unlike so many other terrible things, entirely the fault of the person committing the infidelity.* Even in the rare cases where infidelity is objectively pathological, a person so afflicted carries with them the responsibility to be forthright and upfront about their pathology with their spouse - precisely the same as if they were a recovering addict, or knew they were infertile, or had a major health issue or anything else with a big influence on their life. In that situation, the couple can set boundaries and work around - or the spouse can elect to leave (or, more likely, not become a spouse at all). But full disclosure is absolutely required.
*Cue someone protesting “But… but… it wasn’t my fault because reasons”. I have a news flash. It most certainly was your fault. “But I was drunk!” “But I got caught up in the moment!” “But I wasn’t satisfied with my sex life!” Tough shit - still your fault, Skippy. You had an iron-clad responsibility to use your words before you used your genitals. After promising fidelity, you must keep that promise. The only circumstance under which I can see relaxing this standard is if it is not possible to discuss the matter with your spouse. And by “not possible” I mean your spouse is in a coma for an indefinite period of time or the equivalent.
I’m not going to quote the entire post, but I agree essentially with everything Aangelica just posted. Cheating is a betrayal of trust, and without trust there is no marriage. I would still love my cheating spouse, but he would no longer be my spouse. I would wish him well, but that well would no longer include me. No one forces anyone to cheat. It is a conscious choice and it has deep ramifications for everyone around the couple, as well. Cheating was an issue in my family, and various people coped with it in various ways, but it upset and fractured families either sooner or later, the tension in the marriage (when they stayed married) affected the children, and in my case, it left a very sour taste in my mouth regarding this type of dishonesty.
I told my husband before we were married that if he were going to cheat on me, just tell me in advance and I would leave right then and there. There would be no tearful pleas for forgiveness, no second chances, nothing. I wasn’t going to have that kind of marriage, like my grandmother, my cousins, etc. had done. If he no longer wanted to be with me, he no longer did, and there would be no point in dragging it out.
I have no idea what I would do. Foir the record, I have never cheated and I’m as close as possible to 100% sure that my partner hasn’t either.
I agree that trust is an issue in a marriage, and must be recognised as such. However, any marriage or relationship has moments where trust is broken eg: staying out too late with the boys. Now these are minor and understandable and usually forgiven (after appropriate penance).
I just think that sometimes people view sexual fidelity as THE most important trust issue in a marriage. Maybe it is - but there are many others (mostly fairly trivial as above, but still important). But we assign a symbolic value to sexual fidelity, whereby most automatically assume it would be the end of the relationship. It’s as if sex is the most important part of a marriage (and, of course, symbolically it is - hence brides in white). But many couples do have fidelity issues and recover. It’s just sex, after all.
For me, things such as a partner being physically abusive to me or my children would be far more of a relationship-breaker.
But I just won’t know until I face it.