I think many people would feel the same way. And, on the other side, it might be easier to leave your partner by telling them you’ve cheated on them, knowing that will end it, rather than tell them the real reasons you want to leave them. I’ve seen relationships end this way.
It’s the coward’s way out in some ways, but most people aren’t heroes.
OTOH, if someone has had someone cheat on them then I fully support them getting ranty and despising all cheaters temporarily. Normal service will resume after the outage.
Which I haven’t done, and if you weren’t so het up about the subject you’d be able to see that. All I’ve done is present some reasons why a cheater isn’t automatically OMFGBBQ eeeeevil. If your personal experience is recent, I guess that’s why you can’t see what you are doing here. If it isn’t then you should get over it. Or something. Getting all worked up about something that doesn’t affect you*, and never will, cannot be good for you.
Sometimes something really is one person’s fault. It’s not always fifty-fifty.
As I figured would happen, a lot of “well, cheating is the cheatee’s fault too, they should have worked harder on the marriage” talk is cropping up. Sorry, but no. Maybe once in awhile. But if the marriage sucks you get a damn divorce. Cheating is usually the CHEATER’S fault. Some things really are one person’s fault.
Yes, sometimes it really is one person’s fault and yes an adult keeps their promises. But I am amazed at the number of people that just toss off “if the marriage sucks you get a damn divorce” as if it were so easy to do. And how almost always the cheatee is no way at fault, as if people go around having affairs and ruining their marriages for fun. I begin to think there are a bunch of idealists in the Pit… :dubious:
Well, being a big boy or a big girl isn’t always easy, now, is it?
It’s also hard to hold a job, raise your kids right, pay your mortgage, and in a thousand ways be a decent and productive member of society, but you don’t get a pass because it isn’t always easy.
If you aren’t willing to get a divorce or at least tell your partner what is going on then keep it in your pants.
The other person might be at fault for any number of things but the person who cheats is at fault for cheating. Period. It’s not like they are going to die if they don’t have sex, right?
OK, it’s obvious that those of you who are sensitive to cheating think that your opinion/feelings/morals/whatever are the One Right Way. You can’t even seem to believe that there is any other way, much less try to understand it. So, I leave you to your delusions - buh bye!
How strange that someone would think being honest and abiding by a promise is just a matter of personal opinion, like choosing a favourite TV show or deciding what movie to watch tonight.
If there is one universal trait ALL cheaters share in any realm of life, not just marital infidelity, it is that they are stone cold cowards who are absolutely incapable of taking responsibility for their shitbag behavior. It’s always finger pointing and “not me, I’m the poor victim, I was driven to this” tripe. It’s 100% bullshit without fail, every single time.
If you’re an adult, you own your actions and thats the bottom line for us grown-ups. You can blame whoever you want. But when you bitch out, take the low road and cheat, you just joined all your horrible oppressors as just another shitbag standing in line for fresh turds…then from there, sure, feel free to measure degrees amongst yourselves. But I don’t care how much you wail against it; that’s the line you chose to stand in.
Those people you know are so far in the minority, we might as well label them the anomaly. Cheating is a dishonorable act, committed by dishonorable people couching it in poor excuses instead of owning it. Just browse through this thread for proof of that. I’m not going to divert my opinion because 1 out of 100 cheaters actually do have a backbone. For every "I did it, I accept it, and I feel terrible about it ", there’s 99 “well I/he/she was driven into this” as if they’re just some sort of projectile missle…which obviously is a crock of bullshit. Unless you were held at gunpoint and forced to copulate with someone outside your marriage, of course. Then you get a pass for it, I suppose…but I’ve never heard of such a thing happening.
Now if more people DID actually own up to it, that takes cohones and actually shows a semblance of moral fiber. However, it is still a cowardly act. With marriage, you get exactly what you signed up for…and as an adult, you go into it with two eyes open. There’s a reason we have a divorce process: to get out of a shitty, broken marriage. Tough cookies if it’s a costly, hand wrenching process, maybe don’t traipse into something as serious as marriage if you’re not ready for all of it’s possibilities.
Even so, a lousy marriage in and of itself is still not decent grounds for cheating. In this day and age, people have so much trouble just doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. Everyone needs a pat on the back, a justification or a reward, and if they don’t get one, they’ll sure as hell make one up. Maybe I was just raised differently. Seems like fucking around on your spouse is fairly common these days, but it shouldn’t be. There are means of coping with a dud of a wife or husband, but once you make your genitalia available to someone outside the marriage, no matter what your awful spouse has put you through, you’ve just joined them in the ranks of dirtbag. You’ve played down to your competition. You don’t deserve a “bravo!”, you deserve a smack in the head.
Also, that’s merely addressing people who cheat because their spouse sucks. A sizeable percentage of people cheat because they damn well felt like it and their spouse had little to do with it. The blame is often an after the fact disclaimer after taking time to conjure up slights and injustices to make up for being too much of a pussy to own their action, a selfish, pathetic attempt to assuage ones guilt by outwardly projecting their shitty decisions onto the world around them. Makes you wonder just what, exactly, this type of person is teaching to their children, god forbid they have any and still commit this vile act. Probably something about how life is complicated.
That’s your opinion, Jan John, and I completely support everyone’s right to their own opinions, but since infidelity is so extremely common, you’re labelling an awful lot of people as worthless for doing something that so many people are doing. Which is not to make excuses for cheating, but if about half of the population is doing something, it might make more sense to deal with humans as they actually are, rather than how you’d like them to be.
I haven’t heard a lot of people say they were driven to cheat, but I have heard a lot of people IRL say that they ended up or wound up cheating. Perhaps I’m overanalyzing but it seems like you’re taking less responsibility if you say “I ended up having an affair” rather than “I had an affair”.
Just two examples of this (probably irrational) pet peeve I have from the Zebra Confession Thread:
You seem to have some vested interest in cheating being a symptom of the problem and not the problem itself. What you are saying here is that if one partner is cheating, the cheating is a symptom of a bad relationship, but not the cause. If you are in a seemingly happy relationship and all is well and then are devastated to learn that your partner is cheating on you then the problem IS the cheating. I suppose it logically follows that the relationship has a problem, but the problem actually can be one of the partners cheating. That doesn’t necessarily mean “not holding the same ideas about monogamy”, just one partner enjoys the excitement of doing something they know is wrong.
I think these two points account for a greater part of the cheating going on than people realize and are talked about with far less frequency. We spend so much time demonizing the cheater, or diagnosing the marriage as broken in some way, that we fail to recognize the very nature of our being. I’m not well versed in the scientific arena, but from what I’ve read, it’s becoming more and more clear that people are far more promiscuous than they care to admit.
However, that’s not how we view relationships for the most part. You’re supposed to find somebody and stay loyal to them for the rest of your life. That means being a good friend through thick and thin. However, it also means don’t have sex with anybody else but me.
Here’s the catch. People make those promises and they put their trust in one another. When that trust gets broken, people get very pissed off. Like another poster stated up-thread, it’s something of a mix of anger, deception, betrayal, jealousy, and a whole host of feelings that we would rather not have to deal with.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think relationships and marriages are a great thing. They are fundamental to our society as a whole and what most people would call home. Everybody deserves a home.
Another big point to mention here is that people change over time and that’s something you can’t really prepare for. But, once you’ve made that promise, there’s no going back. Quite simply, people don’t have much of a choice because marriage and fidelity is what we do. Like Chris Rock says, “Single and lonely or married and miserable.”
I don’t know what else to say. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding that goes on, but I think people should not be so quick to judge. Instead of pointing fingers or calling names, an individual should look to themselves first. Try to see where they may have not fulfilled another persons needs. Or, just try to understand the other person better and not take things so personally.
If you make a promise, you should keep it. But, you should know yourself well enough before you go around making promises. Try to understand that some people don’t understand themselves well enough because they are most likely having a difficult time getting by as it is.
I just found out that my soon to be ex has been having an affair with a drug addict who is currently residing in county jail for various crimes. She`s expecting to see him again in 2 days.
My first marriage I was married 20 years and cheated frequently and chronicaly. I never got caught and never fell for anyone else. I was in love with my wife and sex was great. I felt horrible guilt about cheating but couldn’t stop.
Looking back I figured it out. I felt like I was being used financialy and for security and I was right. We know when things are not right. I have not cheated on anyone since.