And are you actually arrived, or are you speaking hypothetically?
What would make a difference?
The length of the marriage? Children? Whether you’re still having sex?
What if if it was a one time thing, or if it was with a mutual friend, or collegue?
Would it make a difference if you found out, or if he/she confessed?
I suspect I’m on the more forgiving side. If it was a one-time thing, with someone I didn’t know, and and there was confession and contrition, I think I could forgive.
Yes if something medically or emotionally hampered my sex drive. No if I was still interested and instigating. Marriage or living together is a Big Commitment and Promise, and should only be violated under extreme duress. Boredom or Opportunity doesn’t count.
I would say yes if the cheating partner willingly agreed to discuss what led up to it and the affair itself. And expressed true remorse. If they chose to try and brush it under the rug I would walk.
It’s hypothetical because I’m not even married, but I’m sure I wouldn’t divorce over it in certain circumstances. But it would bother me a lot even after we’d supposedly moved on from it. If it was a longterm thing or serial affairs, I think it would be divorce time.
It would also depend on how much I needed him though, financially, and to help with the kids, etc. I’m fine with being alone but it would be a cost-benefit thing. If the alternative was moving into a one-bedroom apartment with four kids or something, fuck that. But this is why I probably wouldn’t put myself in that position to begin with. I like having relationships sometimes but marriage or even living together would make me very nervous.
Nope. We have an agreement that getting involved in another romantic or sexual relationship requires discussion and agreement at the very least. Anything less is a complete betrayal of our promises to each other.
It’s a totally different question as to how that discussion would end up, though. That would depend upon the circumstances.
My ex left me. After a few weeks, I start putting the pieces together and realized she had been cheating on me for at least 4 months. At first I told myself I would take her back, no questions, just come home. Then I told myself that if she wanted to come back, we have a lot to talk about, but I think we could make it work. Then I told myself I don’t think I want to be with someone that would rather cheat on me then deal with whatever the problem was.
But as I came out of the fog of a divorce and got back into a better headspace I can tell you that if she came up to me today (and we’re still very civil with each other, we have a kid, we see each other at least once a week) and told me that she wanted to come back to me I’d say no. I simply am not interested in getting back together with someone that cheated on me. In fact, that did such a number on me that I’m not sure I could ever date someone that had ever cheated on an SO (high school/college non-serious stuff not counted, I’m talking about serious, living with each other, basically married type SO’s).
My wife asked me this question about 30 years ago.
My answer was as follows:
If I’m having a lusty and frequent sex life with my wife, who one time gets a little tipsy and ravages the pool boy, I’m gonna laugh it off. If either (a) I’m getting short-changed at home, or (b) it happens more than once, we’ll be settling it with lawyers.
Are you saying that if you lost interest in your SO it’s okay if they cheat on you? It seems like a better way to handle that would be to discuss it and decide that until the issue is resolved that you can have an open (semi-open anyways) relationship. I mean, what if your SO says “well, we only had sex twice last week so I slept with Pat the other 5 nights, you always said I could do that if your sex drive dropped off” Communication is key.
Funny thing about that. Towards the end of my marriage my (now ex) wife wasn’t ‘interested’ in me and basically told me to do that. I’d be going out with some friends and she say ‘oh, do you think she’ll have sex with you’. She blamed her lack of sex drive on her anti-depressants or her birth control. I figured out later her lack of sex drive wasn’t due to her meds it was due to her sleeping with someone else and her trying to get me to sleep without someone else was probably her way of a)making her feel better about it b)her way of getting out of the marriage by then deciding she just couldn’t deal me having slept around PLUS she’d get to tell people I cheated on her or c)she actually felt bad for me and was just trying to get me laid.
I honestly think it was a little of each, but no good would have come from it.
No. No reconciliation. Divorce might be delayed if there was some emotional issue with the children where I thought it would harm them excessively. But once the kids were in a stable emotional place, divorce proceedings would begin.
Depends on the situation. If it was like brad Pitt or something, sure I’d let that one slide, but i get to do Sharon stone if the opportunity ever arises. And the dude better be rich too, no wife of mine is going to bang some homeless dude or a former child star. Bare minimum would be the bassist from a boy band with at least one platinum record. Also, she has to say sex with me was better.
Now that i think about it, if she banged the delivery guy, i would actually feel sorry for her. Aim for at least like a stockbroker or someone who owns a fairly large company, or at least someone who has a higher social status than me, and im already in the top 10% of males already by educational attainment.
I have. It was devastating. And it occurred after we’d had children. He was a good dad and they loved him.
He initiated the discussion when the weight of his guilt was more than he could carry any longer.
There were conditions. He met them all. There were changes I needed to make as well.
It took a long time to rebuild trust but this June we’ll have been married for forty-seven years. It was the right choice for me to make.
Given a different man and different circumstances I couldn’t say how I’d answer the question. It’s just that I would want a chance at forgiveness if I had done something that made him hurt enough to divorce me so it only seemed right to give him the same.
Some hypothetical husband? Hell no. My actual husband? Of course. He’s not just some guy . . .he’s my family. I’d forgive him the way I’d forgive my mom or my sister if they did something terrible to me, and the standards to break it off with him are about the same as the standards to break it off with my sister–i.e, hypothetically possible, but pretty damn extreme.
If he were at a point where he was cheating on me, he’d be pretty miserable/confused/wrecked. I would be to, of course. But I don’t know how I would get through that without him: having a person to work with when you need to figure a way out of miserable/confused/wrecked is what a marriage is. Unless he wanted to leave–which is a really different thing–we’d work it out together.
On the other hand, if I found out about some on-going 10 year affair or something, well, then, that’d be different. Because he wouldn’t be the person I think he is, it would turn out he was just some guy all along.
Absolutely not. I’m coming up on 24 years of marriage, which means I’ve been married to the same woman for almost half my life. After all we’ve been through together, if she cheated on me it would be more of a betrayal than I could stand.
As a woman, one explanation I’ve heard more than once for a woman not leaving when she found out her husband was unfaithful is that there was no way she could divorce her husband for doing something she had done herself.