Perspectives on cheating/Recovery

[RiverRunning]

Hi. I'm not a cheat, never cheated, and have never been cheated on, so far as I know. But I notice there's a scathing attitude toward cheaters - seemingly regardless of scenario. So, I wanted to pose a question to the people here: at what point do you start feeling more lenient toward cheaters?

 

Would you, for example, be more lenient toward a cheater who just did it for the physical gratification? One looked to assuage feelings of loneliness, low self-esteem, depression? One who sincerely hoped to create a new, ongoing relationship?

 

We'll say, in a hypothetical scenario, that a person has a one-night stand. Immediately afterward, this person regrets it. He/she immediately returns home and gives full details of what happened to the cheated partner. He/she also immediately decides to cut off the OM/OW, and gives access to his/her phone, computer, etc. to the cheated partner while they rebuild trust. The cheated partner is also willing, and even takes the lead, on going to counseling. He/she is willing to discuss the feelings that motivated a one night stand.

 

Personally, I wouldn't label such a person 'awful.' Affairs, to me, generally seem to be the result of ongoing neglect. A partner feeling depressed, insecure, having low-self esteem, etc. - or feeling sexually neglected - eventually winds up going out and having those needs met elsewhere.

 

Sometimes, it's a communication dysfunction between both partners. One partner isn't willing to hear out problems, so the other stops discussing them and clandestinely goes about having their needs met. In other cases, the cheating partner is prompted to cheat because the other partner doesn't give any gravity to their complaints and the like about the marriage.

 

I just feel like heaping the blame solely on the cheating partner is too easy - and it doesn't really solve anything in the long run. It doesn't explore the motivations for her/his cheating. It doesn't explore if the cheated partner had a way of dealing with issues that provided the kindling for an affair's fire.

 

I can emphatize with a cheated partner's pain - and I can even understand the knee-jerk reaction to go have a revenge affair or to brand the cheating partner a terrible person. But is this really true?

 

I think there's a big difference between one transgression, deeply regretted and never repeated, and an ongoing affair, or someone who engages in serial affairs, yet always claims to be 'done' with the affair when it's found out (but of course, never is).

[evryrozhasitsthorn]

Cheaters who could compartmentalize their cheating this successfully would most likely eliminate the fallout by completely hiding their tracks and never disclosing it at all. As a matter of fact there's a lot of thought that most cheating is never discovered.

 

And if a cheater was thoughtful enough to immediately be willing to turn over a new leaf in the manner you suggest, doesn't it strike you as very likely that such a person would possess the character not to have cheated in the first place?

 

That's precisely the problem with your hypothetical. People who cheat tend to do so for selfish reasons and are not really thinking at all about their betrayed spouse. That being the case, why on earth do you think very many if any of them are either able or willing to immediately come clean and make amends as you suggest might be possible?

 

If a pig had wings, it could fly, right?

 

 

 

Even if true, which I'm not sure it really is, this misses the point. Instead of "....went out and had an affair," substitute: "....went out and had an acoholic bender" or "....went out and shot up some heroin." If there is a perceived unmet need for affection or communication from the cheater's spouse, that need is clearly not met by the cheater's having sex with someone other than one's spouse. How does cheating on one's spouse improve the level of affection or communication with one's spouse? It doesn't. What the affair does provide is an endorphin rush...just like alcohol to an alcoholic or drugs to a drug addict.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure how you think a betrayed spouse could ever meet a cheating spouse's "need" for sex outside of the marriage, no matter how much communication takes place, unless there is an agreement to an open marriage.

 

More to the point, what you are describing is known as "blame shifting." Cheaters always have an excuse for their cheating which revolves around placing some kind of blame on the betrayed spouse. However the problem is that the cheating never addresses whatever the claimed problem in the relationship is. How does cheating help you communicate with your spouse? It doesn't. If anything it makes the relationship far worse because now the cheater has a big secret to keep from the betrayed spouse. Do you really think cheating aids communication between the spouses?

 

 

 

 

 

How does having a legitimate concern about the marriage equate to having extramarital sex? Where is that logical jump coming from? "You aren't listening to me enough, therefore I am justified in having sex with someone else and not telling you about it." Unfortunately that type of warped thought process on the cheater's part is frequently the cause of the communication problems in the marriage, not the result of it. It's usually the cheater who is the bad communicator in the marriage.

 

 

 

 

 

Who else would you blame for the cheating? If you can't assign responsibility for an action to the person who actually did that action, then you won't solve anything in the short or the long run.

 

 

 

 

 

Assigning the moral responsibility for the cheating, to the cheater, doesn't in any way prevent exploration of the motivations for his/her cheating. Explore all you like.

 

 

 

 

 

So you're saying that a spouse can react to a problem in the marriage by cheating and lying to their betrayed spouse, and somehow the betrayed spouse is responsible for that? Possibly, but in a very limited number of cases. In most cases it's the cheater who is the more selfish, less communicative, spouse, and is often far less invested in the marriage in the first place. Are you also trying to imply that the cheater has no other way of addressing problems in the marriage other than having extramarital sex and lying about it? That seems rather far fetched, since the cheating and lying does nothing to actually remedy problems in the marriage, it just makes whatever problems are already there, even worse.

 

But then obviously you are someone who yourself has already cheated or is thinking about it, or else you wouldn't have even asked. Perhaps you are an other man or woman.

 

Duck, when I finally get private message ability on LS, you are first on my list! I love your perspective of reality

[GLDheart]

You ask if it is ok (or more the way you put it: less bad) to "cheat".

 

It doesn't matter wether it is to cheat at cards, cheat in business, or cheat on your spouse. Cheating means to use deceit to gain an unfair advantage over the one cheated.

 

If the relationship is bad you have a moral obligation to improve it, live with it, or leave it.

 

Cheating is the option for those that can justify morally bad decisions. Did the person commit Adolph Hitler level atrocities? No. Of course not. But it is still morally disgusting and by nature dirty foul play.

[RiverRunning]

I never said it was 'okay' to cheat, nor was I trying to say that "It's the cheated partner's responsibility that they were cheated on." I'll explain more about the latter later on.

 

I also never said that sleeping outside of the partnership improves the marriage - but that, if a cheater feels that isn't possible and they still want to keep their marriage, they may go out and have those feelings met somewhere else. It doesn't fully solve the problem, but it does provide an outlet for someone else to help with that in the meantime.

 

I am saying that if neglect or something else of the like ultimately led to an affair, it is the responsibility of BOTH parties in the marriage - if they wish to save their marriage - to address their behavior. The cheater needs to start looking into why they cheated. If they didn't go to their spouse to address the feelings beforehand - why was that? If the cheated partner rarely interacts with the cheating partner or something else - why was that?

 

It is not the fault the cheated partner gets cheated on. It is their fault, however, if they neglect their partners or otherwise do not fulfill their end of the marriage. I'm sorry if I didn't fully clarify that in the first post.

 

The blame game can go on forever, is what I mean, but eventually the motivations need to be explored. Sure, plenty of cheaters just cheat even in happy marriages just because they want the thrill. Others, and I don't suspect it's a small percentage of the population, do so in unhappy marriages.

 

I disagree that if someone immediately confesses to a one-night stand that they would have the moral character to "not do it in the first place." Before a one night stand or an affair - assuming this is a person's first time - they don't know what to expect in the aftermath. In the moment of temptation, they're probably just thinking about...the temptation. Immediately afterward, they may suddenly realize the impact of what they've done.

 

That impact may or may not inhibit them from ever having an affair again. But I do think it's important to distinguish between cheating partners who are found out and those who confess simply because they know that they made a wrong. It would be curious to hear from others, actually, who went through this. Did the means of discovery change how you felt about your partner's affair? Did it make it easier or more difficult to start moving on the road to recovery?

 

I'm just arguing against the point that cheaters are always horrible and disgusting people, and that they went tramping around in an otherwise happy marriage. I do feel for people who were cheated on.

 

But I also think that in the wake of the affair, trying to ignore anything you did that may have contributed to negative feelings in the cheating partner, is just setting the cheated partner up for failure again in the future, possibly with somebody else.

[Betrayed&Stayed]

It is not the fault the cheated partner gets cheated on. It is their fault, however, if they neglect their partners or otherwise do not fulfill their end of the marriage. I'm sorry if I didn't fully clarify that in the first post.

 

Is this the "if he was getting it at home, then he wouldn't be getting it from OW" rationale. How will the BS know if the spouse's (WS) needs are not fulfilled or not? It has also been my experience that these "unfulfilled needs" are only "discovered" AFTER the AP enters the picture. Or in the least, over emphasized. A common sign among BSs is that during the affair, they can't do anything right in the eyes of the WS.

 

 

The blame game can go on forever, is what I mean, but eventually the motivations need to be explored. Sure, plenty of cheaters just cheat even in happy marriages just because they want the thrill. Others, and I don't suspect it's a small percentage of the population, do so in unhappy marriages.

There are a lot of blame games that go on. Think about this: there are no perfect spouses; there are no perfect marriages. So in essence in every marriage there are shortfalls and dificiencies. Therefore every spouse can justify an affair because of X need was not met. "But eventually the motivations need to be explored" and the motivations are most likely to be self-serving motivations of the WS.

 

In summary, the "I was missing x in our marriage" defense is a cop-out. There are always some deficiencies in every marriage. Having a secretive affair is the worst way to improve the marriage.

[reboot]

I'm not a cheat, never cheated, and have never been cheated on

 

Therefore you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

Come back when you've been married 15 years, have 3 kids, and find out your spouse has been banging your neighbor for the last 2 years. Then you'll have some perspective we can discuss. We'll see how "ok" it feels to you then.

[goodthingscome]

Hi. I'm not a cheat, never cheated, and have never been cheated on, so far as I know. But I notice there's a scathing attitude toward cheaters - seemingly regardless of scenario. So, I wanted to pose a question to the people here: at what point do you start feeling more lenient toward cheaters?

 

Would you, for example, be more lenient toward a cheater who just did it for the physical gratification? One looked to assuage feelings of loneliness, low self-esteem, depression? One who sincerely hoped to create a new, ongoing relationship?

 

We'll say, in a hypothetical scenario, that a person has a one-night stand. Immediately afterward, this person regrets it. He/she immediately returns home and gives full details of what happened to the cheated partner. He/she also immediately decides to cut off the OM/OW, and gives access to his/her phone, computer, etc. to the cheated partner while they rebuild trust. The cheated partner is also willing, and even takes the lead, on going to counseling. He/she is willing to discuss the feelings that motivated a one night stand.

 

Personally, I wouldn't label such a person 'awful.' Affairs, to me, generally seem to be the result of ongoing neglect. A partner feeling depressed, insecure, having low-self esteem, etc. - or feeling sexually neglected - eventually winds up going out and having those needs met elsewhere.

 

Sometimes, it's a communication dysfunction between both partners. One partner isn't willing to hear out problems, so the other stops discussing them and clandestinely goes about having their needs met. In other cases, the cheating partner is prompted to cheat because the other partner doesn't give any gravity to their complaints and the like about the marriage.

 

I just feel like heaping the blame solely on the cheating partner is too easy - and it doesn't really solve anything in the long run. It doesn't explore the motivations for her/his cheating. It doesn't explore if the cheated partner had a way of dealing with issues that provided the kindling for an affair's fire.

 

I can emphatize with a cheated partner's pain - and I can even understand the knee-jerk reaction to go have a revenge affair or to brand the cheating partner a terrible person. But is this really true?

 

I think there's a big difference between one transgression, deeply regretted and never repeated, and an ongoing affair, or someone who engages in serial affairs, yet always claims to be 'done' with the affair when it's found out (but of course, never is).

 

Let me ask the OP this, say you were in line to be accepted into a prestigious university or, you were among the finalists to become a full partner in your firm and you lost out to someone else. Later you find out that the person who got the admittance or promotion cheated. How would you feel?

 

Cheating = deceit = betrayal = LYING, and is the lowest and most hurtful action one person can do to another. The fact that my husband had sex with someone else is actually less painful then the knowledge he had so little regard and respect for me and himself that he lied. We were both in the same marriage, yet I didn't cheat, in fact it never has crossed my mind. Even after I found out, I knew that wasn't the way to handle things. Cheating is the biggest F You! I know of.

 

All relationships are a give and take endeavor, but communication and honesty are the foundations. Without them you are building a straw house on quicksand.

[Spark1111]

Hi. I'm not a cheat, never cheated, and have never been cheated on, so far as I know. But I notice there's a scathing attitude toward cheaters - seemingly regardless of scenario. So, I wanted to pose a question to the people here: at what point do you start feeling more lenient toward cheaters?

 

Would you, for example, be more lenient toward a cheater who just did it for the physical gratification? One looked to assuage feelings of loneliness, low self-esteem, depression? One who sincerely hoped to create a new, ongoing relationship?

 

We'll say, in a hypothetical scenario, that a person has a one-night stand. Immediately afterward, this person regrets it. He/she immediately returns home and gives full details of what happened to the cheated partner. He/she also immediately decides to cut off the OM/OW, and gives access to his/her phone, computer, etc. to the cheated partner while they rebuild trust. The cheated partner is also willing, and even takes the lead, on going to counseling. He/she is willing to discuss the feelings that motivated a one night stand.

 

Personally, I wouldn't label such a person 'awful.' Affairs, to me, generally seem to be the result of ongoing neglect. A partner feeling depressed, insecure, having low-self esteem, etc. - or feeling sexually neglected - eventually winds up going out and having those needs met elsewhere.

 

Sometimes, it's a communication dysfunction between both partners. One partner isn't willing to hear out problems, so the other stops discussing them and clandestinely goes about having their needs met. In other cases, the cheating partner is prompted to cheat because the other partner doesn't give any gravity to their complaints and the like about the marriage.

 

I just feel like heaping the blame solely on the cheating partner is too easy - and it doesn't really solve anything in the long run. It doesn't explore the motivations for her/his cheating. It doesn't explore if the cheated partner had a way of dealing with issues that provided the kindling for an affair's fire.

 

I can emphatize with a cheated partner's pain - and I can even understand the knee-jerk reaction to go have a revenge affair or to brand the cheating partner a terrible person. But is this really true?

 

I think there's a big difference between one transgression, deeply regretted and never repeated, and an ongoing affair, or someone who engages in serial affairs, yet always claims to be 'done' with the affair when it's found out (but of course, never is).

 

I think you make many valid points, but I have a problem with your hypothetical scenario.

 

A cheater rarely to never confesses. They usually lack the courage to do so.

 

And it is that same lack of courage and conflict avoidance that self-sabotages their ability to truly communicate their unmet needs or issues.

 

Often times, even the cheater cannot identify what is wrong, and when they do, they rarely to never say "unless this need is met by you I intend to have filled elsewhere."

 

That would take courage.

 

In fact, even after the affair has started, they rarely to never say, "I have met someone else and wish to explore those feelings. Let's separate, go to counseling and see if we have a marriage worth saving. In the meantime, you too can date others to see if there is someone out there more suitable."

 

Almost never happens.

 

And I believe developing feelings for another, while painful, pales in comparison to the daily lying and betrayals to sustain the clandestine relationship with the paramour.

 

That kills all trust, self-esteem and one's world view of reality.

 

As for the one night stand, I do not think it makes a difference to a BS. The pain is the same. You cannot quantify betrayal as one event being less or more of a betrayal than another.

 

It all hurts.

[BetrayedH]

I never said it was 'okay' to cheat, nor was I trying to say that "It's the cheated partner's responsibility that they were cheated on." I'll explain more about the latter later on.

 

I also never said that sleeping outside of the partnership improves the marriage - but that, if a cheater feels that isn't possible and they still want to keep their marriage, they may go out and have those feelings met somewhere else. It doesn't fully solve the problem, but it does provide an outlet for someone else to help with that in the meantime.

 

I am saying that if neglect or something else of the like ultimately led to an affair, it is the responsibility of BOTH parties in the marriage - if they wish to save their marriage - to address their behavior. The cheater needs to start looking into why they cheated. If they didn't go to their spouse to address the feelings beforehand - why was that? If the cheated partner rarely interacts with the cheating partner or something else - why was that?

 

It is not the fault the cheated partner gets cheated on. It is their fault, however, if they neglect their partners or otherwise do not fulfill their end of the marriage. I'm sorry if I didn't fully clarify that in the first post.

 

The blame game can go on forever, is what I mean, but eventually the motivations need to be explored. Sure, plenty of cheaters just cheat even in happy marriages just because they want the thrill. Others, and I don't suspect it's a small percentage of the population, do so in unhappy marriages.

 

I disagree that if someone immediately confesses to a one-night stand that they would have the moral character to "not do it in the first place." Before a one night stand or an affair - assuming this is a person's first time - they don't know what to expect in the aftermath. In the moment of temptation, they're probably just thinking about...the temptation. Immediately afterward, they may suddenly realize the impact of what they've done.

 

That impact may or may not inhibit them from ever having an affair again. But I do think it's important to distinguish between cheating partners who are found out and those who confess simply because they know that they made a wrong. It would be curious to hear from others, actually, who went through this. Did the means of discovery change how you felt about your partner's affair? Did it make it easier or more difficult to start moving on the road to recovery?

 

I'm just arguing against the point that cheaters are always horrible and disgusting people, and that they went tramping around in an otherwise happy marriage. I do feel for people who were cheated on.

 

But I also think that in the wake of the affair, trying to ignore anything you did that may have contributed to negative feelings in the cheating partner, is just setting the cheated partner up for failure again in the future, possibly with somebody else.

 

Betrayed spouses would at least agree with some of your thought process about reconciling. In one statistic I read (looking at couples two years post-infidelity), where the affair had been disclosed by the wayward 70% of the couples were still together; in cases where it had been discovered only 35% were still married and about half of them reported being happy.

 

On your other question about a ONS (vs a long term affair), as for my personal experience I desperately wished my wife's affair had been a drunken ONS. It wasn't.

 

And while my marriage wasn't perfect, nothing (and I mean nothing) justified what she did. I wanted to make sure I was never part of the divorce crowd in my lifetime. I spent 5 years before asking for my wife's hand. We had about a year and a half engagement planning her perfect wedding. We spent 12 years married, had two great children, built our own 3/2 home, had two professional careers (grossed about $120k together in our 30's), two new cars, a couple nice vacations every year. I was by all accounts a good father and a pretty damn good husband. There was no verbal or physical abuse; we both liked to socially drink from time to time but there was no alcohol or substance abuse, and we rarely fought - maybe twice a year and we apologized by the next morning. And anyone I knew would tell you that I'm an easy person to talk to.

 

I realize my story is anecdotal but I hardly think my story is rare. More importantly, whatever complaints my wife had during the marriage, she had an obligation to either fix them or to let go of the marriage. She, like all of the other cheaters, chose not to do that but instead to go F someone else. As for responsibilities to fix a marriage, sure I have to look at my part of marital problems post-infidelity which is, by the way, the exact same responsibility I had pre-infidelity. But if a wayward wants the gift of reconciliation, they sure as hell better not start off addressing the betrayed's problems. That is, as Ducksoup said, plain ole blameshifting. We're addressing the colossal ****ing retarded decision to have an affair first. When a marriage is having problems, the last thing you do is drop a ****ing nuclear weapon on it.

 

Of course, I did address my side of the marital problems post-infidelity. In typical wayward fashion, my wife kept lying. Regardless of my best efforts over a 19 year period (not saying I was free of mistakes by any means - I was a broken individual after all of this), I get to be part of the whole divorce crowd. And then people say, well, at least you got two beautiful kids out of it. While that may be true, it wasn't our agreement that when our kids were 9 and 5 I would suddenly be a single Dad who gets to see them half the time. I'm sorry but no matter how you slice it, it's bull ****. This is not what we agreed to and THAT is the long and short of it.

[road]

No affair is worse then the one you are in.

 

 

 

A person says that their feet hurt and are cold because he has no socks, to say well at least you have shoes.

 

Then take it to the person that has no shoes and he is complaining as well so you point out the person that has no shoes.

 

Till you address the complaints of the shoe free person about his cold feet. You point out what about the person that is foot free. This is being logical. Facing proof that you have been cheated on has nothing to do with logic.

 

 

 

If you are a BS that wants to recover you look for an angle to base recovery on.

 

That God it was only a ONS.

 

But to the BS that had a WS that a PA for months says TG it was only months.

 

To TG it was only a year.

 

To TG it was only years, and there was no OC.

 

To TG only two OC.

 

No matter how far an affiar went it always could of been worse. There is no limit to how much damage a WS can do.

 

One reason most marriages don't end after an affair is that most WS's only wanted the extra excitement of affair sex. They had no intentions of dumping their BS.

 

The other reason most marriages don't end in divorce is that the BS was ok with the current status and does not want the marriage to end.

 

The marriages that do end in divorce from the WS point are the exit affairs. Where the WS wanted to have a OP ready to replace the BS.

 

Marriages that end from the BS point are the ones that it does not matter what, where, who, when, why, & how the WS did during the affair but just that those BS have a zero tollerance for being cheated on and they dump their WS.

[Betrayed&Stayed]

Also getting divorced is expensive, and setting up two households is expensive, and child support is expensive, and alimony is expensive.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that if divorce did not often turn out to be a financial (as well as emotional) catastrophe for all involved, you would actually see quite a few more betrayed spouses partaking of the divorce option than otherwise do.

 

All of this ^ plus the emotional impact on young children. IMO - a divorce does not eliminate all of the problems and pain, it just replaces them with new ones.

[Spark1111]

I never said it was 'okay' to cheat, nor was I trying to say that "It's the cheated partner's responsibility that they were cheated on." I'll explain more about the latter later on.

 

I also never said that sleeping outside of the partnership improves the marriage - but that, if a cheater feels that isn't possible and they still want to keep their marriage, they may go out and have those feelings met somewhere else. It doesn't fully solve the problem, but it does provide an outlet for someone else to help with that in the meantime.

 

I am saying that if neglect or something else of the like ultimately led to an affair, it is the responsibility of BOTH parties in the marriage - if they wish to save their marriage - to address their behavior. The cheater needs to start looking into why they cheated. If they didn't go to their spouse to address the feelings beforehand - why was that? If the cheated partner rarely interacts with the cheating partner or something else - why was that?

 

It is not the fault the cheated partner gets cheated on. It is their fault, however, if they neglect their partners or otherwise do not fulfill their end of the marriage. I'm sorry if I didn't fully clarify that in the first post.

 

The blame game can go on forever, is what I mean, but eventually the motivations need to be explored. Sure, plenty of cheaters just cheat even in happy marriages just because they want the thrill. Others, and I don't suspect it's a small percentage of the population, do so in unhappy marriages.

 

I disagree that if someone immediately confesses to a one-night stand that they would have the moral character to "not do it in the first place." Before a one night stand or an affair - assuming this is a person's first time - they don't know what to expect in the aftermath. In the moment of temptation, they're probably just thinking about...the temptation. Immediately afterward, they may suddenly realize the impact of what they've done.

 

That impact may or may not inhibit them from ever having an affair again. But I do think it's important to distinguish between cheating partners who are found out and those who confess simply because they know that they made a wrong. It would be curious to hear from others, actually, who went through this. Did the means of discovery change how you felt about your partner's affair? Did it make it easier or more difficult to start moving on the road to recovery?

 

I'm just arguing against the point that cheaters are always horrible and disgusting people, and that they went tramping around in an otherwise happy marriage. I do feel for people who were cheated on.

 

But I also think that in the wake of the affair, trying to ignore anything you did that may have contributed to negative feelings in the cheating partner, is just setting the cheated partner up for failure again in the future, possibly with somebody else.

 

Hmm...this is the populist theory, the one espoused in all media that asserts affairs are somewhat justified.

 

There is not a BS that I know of, who does not go through a thorough period of introspection wondering what the hell we may have done wrong to warrant such betrayal.

 

While he and I were each 50% responsible for the state of our marriage, his choice to be unfaithful is 100% his own.

 

There are no perfect marriages, yet 50% or more do not choose to cheat to have needs met outside of the relationship.

 

Riverrunning, why do you think that is?

 

Why, if two people are in the same unfulfilling relationship, only one of two find infidelity the way to solve their problems?

 

Because it truly solves nothing in the marriage.

 

Now you have to add the layer of lies and deception and the lack of character and selfishness that not only allows that behavior, but begins to justify it!

[wayward 99]

From a cheaters perspective, I don't think it is fair to say ALL cheaters do not communicate his/her needs first. In my case, I communicated unmet needs for 10 years before being unfaithful. I am not then justifying the cheating, and I like Kidds way of describing it as dropping a nuclear bomb on the sitch. It was a cowardly thing to just stay in the marriage but go elsewhere for needs. But in reading His Needs, Her Needs I can see that I was pretty vulnerable because several needs were ignored for a long time. It is more useful for me at least to examine why I made the choices I did rather than just flaggelate myself and call myself a narcissist.

 

Nothing my husband did or didn't do justified that kind of betrayal. For me though, because the marriage was so problematic it made reconciliation difficult. I could separate out being remorseful for cheating and stopping that, but having any desire to work on the M was another thing because I had list hope a long time ago. There was not much to go back to.

 

Just my experience. I know there are plenty of cheaters who think they have a happy M and want something extra on the side.

[drifter777]

RiverRunning: Since you point out that you are neither a BS or WS, I understand where you are coming from. Until you are the victim of a cheating spouse a person has all kinds of reasonable assumptions as to how they would react to it. For a BS like me, a ONS vs. a long-term affair vs. whatever other conditions you can imagine makes no difference at my gut level. Or heart level. All the things I thought I would do, all the ways I thought I would react faded to dust on d-day. Those BS's who's WS had a ONS probably wish it had been a long-term thing because they may think they could understand better and forgive easier. After all, if your wife has a ONS you are left with the disgusting thought of her slutting around like a common whore screwing some guy in the bathroom. If it's a long-term thing you get to picture her sneaking off to join her lover in a motel and spending a blissful night together. Pick your poison - they both destroy you.

[Furious]

I never said it was 'okay' to cheat, nor was I trying to say that "It's the cheated partner's responsibility that they were cheated on." I'll explain more about the latter later on.

 

I also never said that sleeping outside of the partnership improves the marriage - but that, if a cheater feels that isn't possible and they still want to keep their marriage, they may go out and have those feelings met somewhere else. It doesn't fully solve the problem, but it does provide an outlet for someone else to help with that in the meantime.

 

 

You are very naive to paint such a one dimensional argument on behalf of a cheater. Do you truly think that a cheater would be that honest with an affair partner. Do you seriously think that many OW/OM would accept to be lowered to being just an outlet to provide "help in the meantime" because WS has decided to cheat and "keep the marriage".

 

It's not as simple as you make it sound, if anything your reasoning only invites more people into a toxic situation. Rather than having the courage to divorce you lay out a very poor argument in support of cheating.

 

You've captured the essence of how glaringly selfish a WS can be and how

they can justify not only hurting their spouse but also how they feel entitled to string along an affair partner who they have no intention to ever commit to.

 

There are no reasons to cheat only excuses to cheat.

And no one as the right to take away someone else's right to chose their own realty.