Cheating in relationships

[Nanondorf]

Let us begin by accepting the fact that people are full of shit. When the restriction of a relationship is exclusivity, someone is bound to be tempted by the promise of "forbidden fruit" so to speak. Personally, I would not restrict my partner from seeing other people, since they're unlikely to observe that restriction in the long run anyway.
I understand that the main issue in this thread is the breach of trust, but we are talking about other people, so
it is to be expected.

Even so, I am of the opinion that cheating in mutually exclusive relationships means the relationship has run its course, since the social contract holding it together has been breached. Replying to the main question of the thread:

- There is no need to stay in a relationship under such circumstances.

- Suspending reasonable thinking for the sake of said relationship is stupid, as it only serves to further torment the one being cheated on.

-An act of revenge such as posting details on the internet, including names, is nothing more than a act of vengeance that will end up being detrimental for all parties involved. Not only is disclosure of information on the internet a damn dangerous thing (as our favorite scandal has demonstrated), but it's also damn petty. One would do better to just part ways and keep his pride intact.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

You guys are missing one big part of this, at least in the context of Zoe Quinn's behavior raising the topic. She didn't just cheat on him. Lying is a fundamental part of, and necessary condition for, cheating on a partner or significant other, so there's little point in discussing lies.

Key here is the fact she emotionally abused him and kept him in a cycle of abuse for months to facilitate cheating on him. Abuse and infidelity do correlate -- strongly -- and one is often used to facilitate the other (cheating as a form of abuse, and abusing to facilitate cheating).

 

[Norithics]

My S.O. and I can't be cheated on. We're both 'open' toward other people, though those people tend to have to be really good friends of ours. It feels natural to us, because just like no one person can emotionally sustain another by themselves, the same goes for sexual aspects for a lot of people.

But it is worth noting that when this arrangement came about, it was a totally honest one. To be real, it isn't about the sex: It's about the lying.

 

[littlewisp]

Huh. I guess, an alternative perspective. Something I've done. Something that's been done to me.

Eight years. Not a lot, when you look at the course of a lifetime, but still a good chunk of time.

I have a very high libido. Awhile back, so did my boyfriend. Everything was great. . .until he stopped wanting anything. I thought, I should be patient. I was accepting. I told him you know, stereotypes aside, it's okay for a guy to not want sex all the time. He started going downhill, emotionally. I listened to him, I tried to help, I tried to get him to talk to friends -- anything. The mere mention of counseling sent him into a breakdown; he couldn't accept the idea of needing counseling, even when he admitted that he felt something was wrong with him.

When I told him that sex is part of how I showed my love for him, he said he didn't want the relationship to just be about sex. He all but told me that me wanting sex was selfish.

So I tried to cut back on it. I tried to hold myself down. I would hide my needs from him, take care of it privately, try not to touch him when we laid in bed; I used to be proactive. I used to try to start stuff. The look in his eyes . . . I stopped. I stopped mentioning it, I started to pretend that I didn't want it from him, that everything was okay. Every time I tried to talk about it, he looked like I was killing him. So I stopped.

I told myself I was being selfish to want more. He's a good guy. But when your partner loses that look when he looks at you, when he has no response to you when you buy sexy anything, when his compliments sound platonic and slightly bored. . .when you lie next to him naked and nothing is there -- it hurts. Slowly but surely, it worms its way into you and you start feeling like you're nothing. Because then you start wondering -- what is romance? What makes this any different from a platonic friendship where you're sharing financial responsibilities? It got to the point where I started asking friends (the kind who are honest, and blunt) if I was desirable. If it was me. If there was something wrong with me. And even when they told me no it's not you and yes you're desirable, deep down I couldn't believe it, because the person who I wanted that from was showing just the opposite.

And it wasn't just that. He's depressed. He doesn't want counseling. He tells me he would be nothing without me. I feel suffocated. I can't share my problems -- he can't take them. And I have always tried to be good with communicating, with talking things through. When your partner can't handle that and won't get counseling. . .when he says that he wouldn't make it without you, that you're the only thing keeping him going, when you're afraid to share your stress with him because you question whether or not he'll be able to handle it --

I didn't physically cheat, no. I emotionally cheated. I opened myself up to another man. For the first time in those eight years, I cried about that relationship with someone else. I let him tell me things that, to me, would constitute cheating. I told him things that, were the shoe on the other foot, I would consider cheating.

Is it okay? No, of course not.

Did it show me that unless something drastic changes, this relationship is unhealthy for me? Yes. I feel smothered, suffocated, unable to move forward. He tells me I'm the only one in the world who keeps him going. I am working full time and schooling full time. I have my own stresses that put me on the edge, and when I am out of my mind, he jokingly complains to others about how awful I'm being, in front of me. Rather than tell me how he feels when it's just us, he airs it in public, when we're in front of other people. It just. . .it hurts.

It isn't always so simple a thing as not being able to keep it in your pants. It is still awful, I am not denying that, but sometimes it's a little more complicated.

And yes, I am working up the courage to tell him. I am afraid he will hurt himself. I love him, but I just can't do this any more.

So yeah, to me, any sort of cheating signifies an end. Even for me, being the bad person. I can't trust him any more. I can't talk to him. I can't touch him. I can't get help for him.

Just a little something from the other side.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

...snipity...

my questions to you all,
Why stay in a relationship when you know someone is cheating?
Why do you have to suspend all reason in order to stay in the relationship?

Love makes us blind to the flaws of the ones that are the object of our affections. We kid ourselves, it was an accident, they wont do it again, it's my fault for not giving him/her enough attention. The mental gymnastics we do to justify it are staggering. It boils down to trust really, we share every part of us with the ones we love, we trust them with our secrets and let our guard down. It's just too painful to admit that you have made a mistake in trusting another so completely, so we don't we close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears and pretend that it's not really happening, it never did, and everything is just fine...really.

If you break up because your significant other cheated on you is it ok to post every detail on the internet for all to see, including names?

No it's not ok, what happened between you is yours and your's alone, tell friends or family sure but to post it on the net is just seeking vengeance. I can see why people do it though (I've come really close to doing something similar my self in the past but on Facebook and not the whole internet), what's the phrase? Hell hath no fury like a lover spurned? Really it's shocking how close love and hate are to each other biochemically. It's not an excuses per say but logic and reason just take a back seat when the rage descends, you are in pain, this shit really hurts deep in your sole...somehow you have to make it stop, but you can't so what can you do? Make that bastard burn and feel your pain that's what.

These are tough questions and even I don't think I have my own answers, but it would be interesting to see if there are common patterns. Feel free to share your own completely ridiculous lies that you believed from a cheater.

The trick is time, no it doesn't heal all wounds but distance from the event does allow you to gain a measure of objectivity. Once when meany moons ago when I was with my first girlfriend she, you know what? I really don't want to pot this in public, if your curious then PM me and I'll tell you about it.

 

[Aramis Night]

Cheaters are on the same level as violent rapists and serial murderers as far as I'm concerned. They are the very definition of Evil. If you are incapable of honoring your own vows, what good are you? Why should anyone respect anything you ever have to say? You would have demonstrated your own untrustworthiness. If you are capable of betraying those whom you claim to love, Then I shudder to think how you would treat anyone you didn't love since obviously other people clearly mean so little to you in the best of circumstances. If you cannot master your own selfish urges or simply refuse to simply because they are "natural" or some similar excuse then you deserve to have your personhood renounced. The one thing that separates humans from animals is our ability to overcome our nature's. If you cannot or will not even for someone you claim to love than you are less than an animal and much less deserving of compassion since your clearly bankrupt in that department while an animal is still very much capable of compassion.

As for people that are involved with cheaters and know that they are sleeping with someone else's significant other... You are a vulture. You are nothing more than a parasite. Irrelevant of whatever you are being told about the significant other from the person your having sex with. You know damn well that nothing they tell you is likely the truth. All you are doing is helping spreading misery to others just so you can get off.

As to this notion that we shouldn't call out people who engage in this behavior I call BS. The point of calling people out for this or "slut shaming" if you prefer is not just for the sake of revenge on the part of the aggrieved party(which there is no good argument to deny them anyway). It is also done for the sake of getting the word out about bad actors so that others have the choice of making an informed decision about the trustworthiness of their associations. The only thing remaining silent on these matters accomplishes is helping the bad actors get away with lining up their next victim/s. Funny how whenever people engage in other bad behaviors there is this expectation that we should call them out on it(racism/sexism/etc) but suddenly when it comes to this, its considered bad form to call it out regardless of the personal harm done to innocents. Such hypocritical nonsense.

 

[Terminal Blue]

No that is wrong. To put it how wikipedia puts it, "Betrayal is the breaking or violation of a presumptive contract, trust, or confidence that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship amongst individuals, between organizations or between individuals and organizations."

Okay.. I think I see the problem here.

I kind of fundamentally reject the notion that relationships are contractual. I'm kind of aware in saying that that it puts me at odds with most of the poly community so don't take me as a spokesperson in this regard, but to me, this is what I am non-monogamous to escape, because the notion of preconditioned contractual obligations doesn't fit in with my conception of trust at all. I don't get the concept of marriage, for example, because I don't understand why you would ever tell someone you always wanted to be with them. That's not something you can ever really know the answer to, so why would you say it?

I take your point in a broader sense, though. I'm sure many people do see betrayal in those terms.

to put to it simply, when one says "betrayal" there is an implicit "of trust/commitment/contract" on the end.

For example, if a friend trusts me to look after their cat and I feed it paracetamol and kill it, they might not give a shit. They might be a callous bastard who says "fuck that cat, it was just a cat." But that doesn't mean I didn't betray their trust, it doesn't mean I didn't fail in the commitment I made to them.

I don't think you can generalize, even about a situation so extreme. For example, if you have severe mental health problems that's going to fundamentally change how I percieve your actions. It doesn't change the fact that you've killed my cat, but it does change whether or not I can contextualize it as betrayal in ways which can't be reduced to the killing of the cat as a breach of contract.

But this is getting very semantic.

Polyamorous is a pretty general term, there are a million different relationship models that fall under that banner. Bearing that in mind I don't know if we're talking about the same thing. I'm talking about committed relationships, both polyamorous and monogamous.
Because without commitment there cannot be infidelity.

I'm also talking about committed relationships. However, I don't think that's true. You can have a one night stand with someone and then feel betrayed by them, commitment or no. More importantly, however, I don't buy that this is a linear correlation, I don't buy that more commitment has to come with more fidelity and I don't buy that infidelity signals a lack of commitment. In fact, wouldn't genuine commitment be completely unconditional, entirely independent of what anyone involved actually does? I don't think that would be particularly healthy, but at the same time what good is trust if you can't trust someone to know when it's okay to break the rules?

What if a friend cost you a job opportunity you trusted them with, out of sheer absent mindedness? Would the trust you placed in them not be breached? Would you not be less likely to trust them with such things in the future?

Sure, I would be less likely to trust them, but why would I contextualize that as betrayal? It sounds like a pretty honest mistake. I don't see why an apology wouldn't cut it. Sure, it's a huge failure on their part and I'd be upset, but if I was committed to that friendship why would I not give them the benefit of the doubt, and if they kept making these kinds of mistakes.. well.. it kind of becomes my fault for putting this stuff in their hands.

Why is malice the key here? Malice isn't thought to be a common factor in infidelity.

Well.. this is kind of my point. Why would you ever feel betrayed by something which isn't actually meant to hurt you, which as far as I can see isn't actually about you at all? I mean.. I guess if it's some kind of weird revenge sex that would count, but if you genuinely trusted someone why would anything less even register?

I had another question I was going to ask. What if you had a child with someone, they were taking legal and financial responsibility for it along with yourself. And they left, never to see the child or support it financially again, in favor of another relationship?

I'd feel exactly the same as I would if they left to take part in a lifetime mission to Mars. Meaning, I'd feel extremely hurt, but I don't really see why their relationship would come into that.

I don't really have the expectation that anyone else is going to prioritize my happiness over their own. That's my job, as far as I see it. Obviously, in that situation I would want said person to stay and help me raise the kid, but I don't really see why I have the right to demand it or why the failure to do it would constitute a breach of contract, because I don't see where that contract was ever made. Of course, there are things I could demand in law in that situation which would actually be contractual obligations, but those aren't really for my benefit but more for the benefit of the child.

The issue here, again, is that I wouldn't have a child with someone if I thought they were going to bail so if they did bail that to me would violate my sense of who I thought they were, so I guess it would be a betrayal in that sense. But I don't really see why the act itself constitutes betrayal.

Jealousy happens because people realise that they can never know their partner like they know themselves. It happens because people realise that ultimately they can't control their partner's actions. It is those two facts that make people fear they will lose their relationship and thus, jealousy.

But if you know that's a possibility, why is it any different from any other bad thing that happens in your life?

Trust is a reliance. If you are not relying on your partner to do (or not to do) something then there can't really be any trust.

Why would you ever rely on anyone for anything you aren't prepared for them to fail at it?

That's a pretty cynical view of reality, I'm sure, but it's the only one I feel I can afford.

 

[Johnny Impact]

-Why stay in a relationship when you know someone is cheating?
Because some of us enjoy pain and abuse. Even feeling like you've been stabbed in the heart can seem better than feeling nothing at all. Others have somehow convinced themselves they deserve it. Abuse victims say things like, "He wouldn't hit me if I did better." Fucking WRONG. It's not about you failing to please him, because the thing that pleases him is finding an excuse to hit you again. Cheating victims tell themselves they're too fat, too uninteresting, too whatever to keep their partner from being disloyal, never understanding it's not about them at all.

I'm not one of them, mind you, I think those people are fools. I don't claim to be the perfect guy, nor do I demand everything on a silver platter, but I deserve better than to be cheated on, and I'm drop-kicking the duplicitous tramp into the next county the minute I find out about it.

-Why do you have to suspend all reason in order to stay in the relationship?
That's the wrong question. Relationships aren't about reason. They are about the exact opposite of reason. Your partner will make you crazy. The trick is finding someone who makes you the good kind of crazy.

-If you break up because your significant other cheated on you is it ok to post every detail on the internet including names?
Hmm. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't keep it a secret, and I would definitely make any snide remark I felt like making, but disclosing the full details of infidelity to everyone you know (which in the age of social media also means everyone she knows, everyone those people know...) seems like a petty stab at vengeance, as likely to backfire on you as it would be to cause her harm. If you want vengeance, I say go Old Testament.

-Feel free to share your own completely ridiculous lies that you believed from a cheater.
Can't say I've ever been cheated on. However, I do have a story.

In my entire life, there have been exactly three occasions where women have approached me. All three times turned out to be practical jokes someone was playing at my expense. I'm not talking about the kind of practical joke your friends play on you, where it's truly meant in the spirit of fun, and you're laughing with them by the end. I mean public humiliation.

To give you one example, a girl in my high school once grabbed me and towed me out to the yard on some pretext of implied kissy-kissy. I don't remember what she said. I was confused about receiving attention from a girl, especially one whose name I barely knew. Despite traumatic flashbacks to the previous time a girl had spoken to me (another prank), I allowed myself to hope and went with her. When we got outside, I discovered we were not alone. There were over fifty students gathered. I knew that something was about to go horribly wrong, and I was right. She had written a three-page poem involving me masturbating in public, which she proceeded to read aloud. It was terrible, borderline illiterate, but that didn't matter. Everyone had a huge laugh at me. "Johnny + public masturbation" became a series of running jokes that lasted all the way through graduation. If any of those people knew where I was today, almost twenty years after high school, I have no doubt I'd still be hearing the fucking things. A day or two later, the girl cornered me again. She said one of her friends had dared her to do it, in a so-we're-cool-now-right kind of way, as if a flimsy excuse would fix everything. I wanted to do something to her, something worthy of a horror movie. Slice up her face so she would be ugly for the rest of her life, something like that.

That's what happens when women speak to me.

I'm sure you've heard the expression, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Well, I got fooled three times. I've had ample time to dwell on it and I still don't know exactly how much shame three times is. Shame squared, maybe? Regardless, I am down to my last molecule of dignity and I will not see it strapped to the altar of false hope and eviscerated for some shitbag's sadistic amusement. Ladies, I leave you alone, you leave me alone. That's the deal.

I suppose I did learn valuable lessons about the nonexistence of justice and the utter futility of hope.

 

[the December King]

A day or two later, the girl cornered me again. She said one of her friends had dared her to do it, in a so-we're-cool-now-right kind of way, as if a flimsy excuse would fix everything. I wanted to do something to her, something worthy of a horror movie. Slice up her face so she would be ugly for the rest of her life, something like that.

That's what happens when women speak to me.

I am so sorry that this happened to you, it sounds horrible! I WOULD have decked her in the stomach, were I you, the second time she cornered you- or at least walked away, as quickly as I could- her bullshit stories be damned.

I hope you have some more positive experiences with women though. They really aren't all that bad, I swear.

As for cheating, I despise it and so does my lady. We both agreed on that early on in the relationship, and we both agreed that it would end ours, if it ever became a thing. I guess that's that communication thing again, cropping up.

But as to airing it out on social media afterwards, I really don't see what the problem is, if you do decide to post about it. The cheated upon party has lost a sense of trust, a supposed partner, and a good deal of dignity and pride. This was avoidable, and perpetuated to hurt them, plain and simple. Why not make sure that the other parties get the same? It also lets people know what was done to you, and who did it- you know, for those people you know, to avoid being cheated on/ avoid scumbags in the future. The cheaters usually really regret nothing, except perhaps airing it earlier- clearly the cheating partner wasn't happy with the relationship as it was, at best was too weak to call it off before cheating, and well, the other party was a slut (man or woman). They get to walk away with no repercussions. The cheated upon is left emotionally fractured, perhaps ruined.

You know, this happens all the time, but the coverage isn't usually this 'high profile', unless it's actually tabloid movie star-type stuff. Books get written, specials get made, gosh, media loves this stuff. Though I don't think that kind of gossip and scandal has alot of effect over hiring-and-firing in general (I have NO data to back that up, that's all opinion, and I'd gladly reevaluate upon request/rebuttal).

EDIT: I should preface this by saying that, although I haven't been cheated on, I was in some really messed-up relationships, and had a chance upon reflection to decide where I stood on the subject.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Okay, how many people actually fucking read thezoepost?

If you read the thing, you realize pretty quickly that it's not about a jilted ex airing dirty laundry. It's about a pathologically manipulative woman wreaking fucking havoc on the lives of those around her while boasting an uncanny ability to dodge all responsibility for her horrendous behavior. I honestly don't believe Eron wanted to go public just for the sake of going public. He talks very openly about wrestling with the decision to post it online and his primary reason for doing so: to prevent her from inflicting further harm in the only conceivable manner that works, which is warning the public and backing up your contentions with loads of hard evidence. The alternative is to let her go on ruining marriages, gaslighting her romantic partners, etc. So Eron took the hit he knew he was going to take, but I'm still disappointed at how many have fallen in line with the overriding narrative that typically surrounds any revelations from an ex-boyfriend. Imagine if he'd been the one pulling all that shit and she was calling him out in public... how many people would be saying "don't air your dirty laundry" then?

Anyways, I've been in a relationship with a BPD girl (who was remarkably similar to Zoe), and it was honestly hell. I put up with it for far too long because I had seen glimpses of someone I truly cared about, but those glimpses were by far the exceptions. I'd say, for the most part, intensely attractive people can get away with murder when it comes to manipulating and deceiving plainer or less "important" partners - and sometimes they take full advantage of the fact. When that behavior becomes serialized, well, it rarely stops. And for me, the failure was trust. Not specific trust in her, mind you, but rather trust in the belief that there exists a base line of morality for all human beings operating in a given set of circumstances. When you rudely awaken to the harsh reality that some people are, in fact, selfish (borderline-sociopathic) users? Hopefully that's the end of your days getting shit on by the world.

 

[Trunkage]

Huh. I guess, an alternative perspective. Something I've done. Something that's been done to me.

Eight years. Not a lot, when you look at the course of a lifetime, but still a good chunk of time.

I have a very high libido. Awhile back, so did my boyfriend. Everything was great. . .until he stopped wanting anything. I thought, I should be patient. I was accepting. I told him you know, stereotypes aside, it's okay for a guy to not want sex all the time. He started going downhill, emotionally. I listened to him, I tried to help, I tried to get him to talk to friends -- anything. The mere mention of counseling sent him into a breakdown; he couldn't accept the idea of needing counseling, even when he admitted that he felt something was wrong with him.

When I told him that sex is part of how I showed my love for him, he said he didn't want the relationship to just be about sex. He all but told me that me wanting sex was selfish.

So I tried to cut back on it. I tried to hold myself down. I would hide my needs from him, take care of it privately, try not to touch him when we laid in bed; I used to be proactive. I used to try to start stuff. The look in his eyes . . . I stopped. I stopped mentioning it, I started to pretend that I didn't want it from him, that everything was okay. Every time I tried to talk about it, he looked like I was killing him. So I stopped.

I told myself I was being selfish to want more. He's a good guy. But when your partner loses that look when he looks at you, when he has no response to you when you buy sexy anything, when his compliments sound platonic and slightly bored. . .when you lie next to him naked and nothing is there -- it hurts. Slowly but surely, it worms its way into you and you start feeling like you're nothing. Because then you start wondering -- what is romance? What makes this any different from a platonic friendship where you're sharing financial responsibilities? It got to the point where I started asking friends (the kind who are honest, and blunt) if I was desirable. If it was me. If there was something wrong with me. And even when they told me no it's not you and yes you're desirable, deep down I couldn't believe it, because the person who I wanted that from was showing just the opposite.

And it wasn't just that. He's depressed. He doesn't want counseling. He tells me he would be nothing without me. I feel suffocated. I can't share my problems -- he can't take them. And I have always tried to be good with communicating, with talking things through. When your partner can't handle that and won't get counseling. . .when he says that he wouldn't make it without you, that you're the only thing keeping him going, when you're afraid to share your stress with him because you question whether or not he'll be able to handle it --

I didn't physically cheat, no. I emotionally cheated. I opened myself up to another man. For the first time in those eight years, I cried about that relationship with someone else. I let him tell me things that, to me, would constitute cheating. I told him things that, were the shoe on the other foot, I would consider cheating.

Is it okay? No, of course not.

Did it show me that unless something drastic changes, this relationship is unhealthy for me? Yes. I feel smothered, suffocated, unable to move forward. He tells me I'm the only one in the world who keeps him going. I am working full time and schooling full time. I have my own stresses that put me on the edge, and when I am out of my mind, he jokingly complains to others about how awful I'm being, in front of me. Rather than tell me how he feels when it's just us, he airs it in public, when we're in front of other people. It just. . .it hurts.

It isn't always so simple a thing as not being able to keep it in your pants. It is still awful, I am not denying that, but sometimes it's a little more complicated.

And yes, I am working up the courage to tell him. I am afraid he will hurt himself. I love him, but I just can't do this any more.

So yeah, to me, any sort of cheating signifies an end. Even for me, being the bad person. I can't trust him any more. I can't talk to him. I can't touch him. I can't get help for him.

Just a little something from the other side.

I see this happen so often its ridiculous. One person tries to dictate the others sexuality though forced abstinence. Then the other person wonders why the affected person has cheated. The relationship actually end long before the cheating happened. The other person disengaged emotionally and sexually.

This is coming from a person who has been cheated on four times by four different women and never cheated. If you get cheated on, its so easy playing the victim and not taking responsibility for your own actions.

The first girl who did this I feeling like I wasn't being really 'forceful' with having sex. We'd been going out for months and no action. I didn't want to be that 'forceful' or 'pressuring' guy. I didn't work out because she wanted a bit of that to help the sex side of things start.

Which leads directly to my second mistake. Trying to be more 'forceful' trying to get sex. She found it a too high of a pressure situation. She still wanted sex but I had freaked her out about it. Funnily enough, that's the one where we tried to make it work. We tried sex and it was terrible. I think there was too much history before that.

The third one just stopped contacting me, and I found out almost a week later that she cheated on me. Everyone ostracised her, even her friends. I never found out what happened.

The last I could tell something was wrong for a couple of weeks. We agreed to talk about it. She told me that she had cheated, but why she was feeling weird was that she felt like she was more interested in women. She only cheated on me the day before. We had agreed to be monogamous previously and she didn't know how to discuss these feeling with me.

I do understand this last one, as all this happen by the time I was 20, and I met the person I was to marry that year. I didn't have much experience with having sex with men. It was very traumatising when a couple of years into the relationship that I had to discuss with her that she couldn't fulfil all my sexual needs as she wasn't a man. I've never been so scared of a conversation in my whole life.

With my marriage, we talked about how if we are interested in sex with any other person, the partner needs to be told first. Nothing come up in 11 years, so it seems to be working.

As to delusion for keeping the relationship going, My first point about how the relationship has ended well before any cheating goes on leads me to asked the cheaters (who actually still loved the original partner), why didn't you break up if you knew the relationship wasn't working.

 

[Trunkage]

Snip

You are pretty emotionally weak if you are trying to make excuses for your actions. You should take responsibility for them.

 

[Trunkage]

Double Post

 

[Halla Burrica]

I am not experienced when it comes to romantic relationships, but just from my perspective, in most situations I doubt I would be able to forgive them and want to move on, though there are always those morally grey areas in our terribly complex world that would require more thought and there wouldn't be a simple answer to.

 

[Velventian]

I take it with cheating you mean your partner having a relationship with someone else and hiding that from you.
Everyone makes mistakes, so yeah it can happen that 2 people get together as friends maybe drink a little bit too much and then do something they shouldn`t because one or both have relationships. Never happened to me before but i would be lying to say i would be strong enough not to, everyone makes mistakes.

That only counts once, its a one time "Not get your ass kicked to the kerb" card. Even then the trust will be severely broken, maybe beyond repair but from where i stand there`s at least hope left.

But having an affair, a romantic relationship with someone else then your partner. Personally i see no excuse for that, because its not accident, its something that need premeditation, planing, hiding the evidence, its not only breaking the persons trust its actively abusing said trust to cover the affair.
And that's a game over.
Because that just breaks something inside of you. There are stories out there of couples getting back together after one partner cheated but i never saw it happen.
Quite a number of people i know have cheated or have been cheated on, a lot of them tried working it out, getting back together. But i never saw it actually work out.
Sure some try it for a couple of weeks but the broken trust is like glass shards in a wound, you try to ignore them but they keep grinding away inside of you.

Fuck up one time and maybe it can be fixed, but if you have to sleep with someone so badly at least have the guts to end the relationship.

A child tries to steal cookies from a char and hopes it can get away with it.
An adult should close one door before he/she opens another.

 

[littlewisp]

As to delusion for keeping the relationship going, My first point about how the relationship has ended well before any cheating goes on leads me to asked the cheaters (who actually still loved the original partner), why didn't you break up if you knew the relationship wasn't working.

For me, I was in denial. It wasn't until that happened that I realized that I was lying to myself. It was stupid of me. It was me letting my half of the relationship down. It was telling myself that I could handle everything by myself, and not talking about it with anyone, pretending everything was fine and I was happy. But I wasn't.

I did wind up telling him. Hardest conversation of my life.

I guess if anyone reads this, don't let what happened to me happen to you. Even if you're trying to be selfless and sacrifice yourself for the relationship by telling yourself that you can handle it, don't. If the other person can't handle life or you and isn't willing to go to counseling or even talk to a friend about it, it's time to have a serious talk. Don't pretend it's okay like I did.

 

[JarinArenos]

Cheating is one negative data-point on a chart indicating the health of a relationship. If you have someone regularly lying, using obvious manipulative tactics, or... other issues. Honestly, my experience with toxic relationships is limited, so I don't know most of what can go wrong.

Saying "people make mistakes" is a two-edged sword. Don't get me wrong, forgiveness is absolutely critical to a healthy relationship; nobody is perfect. However, it's easy to get blinded by your own attachment and just keep excusing more and more bad behavior. The key is honesty. Both to your partner, and - more importantly - to yourself. Convincing yourself that a relationship is fine when there's obvious problems is possibly the quickest way to torpedo that relationship.

Breaking up sucks. Letting it linger until it implodes is far worse. Either make an actual effort (BOTH of you) to fix the issues, or rip that band-aid off, deal with the pain, and move on.

 

[Trunkage]

As to delusion for keeping the relationship going, My first point about how the relationship has ended well before any cheating goes on leads me to asked the cheaters (who actually still loved the original partner), why didn't you break up if you knew the relationship wasn't working.

For me, I was in denial. It wasn't until that happened that I realized that I was lying to myself. It was stupid of me. It was me letting my half of the relationship down. It was telling myself that I could handle everything by myself, and not talking about it with anyone, pretending everything was fine and I was happy. But I wasn't.

I did wind up telling him. Hardest conversation of my life.

I guess if anyone reads this, don't let what happened to me happen to you. Even if you're trying to be selfless and sacrifice yourself for the relationship by telling yourself that you can handle it, don't. If the other person can't handle life or you and isn't willing to go to counseling or even talk to a friend about it, it's time to have a serious talk. Don't pretend it's okay like I did.

The bigger problem is that everyone perception is not based in reality. Its like everyone has this augmented reality plug into the sense we have to warp how we think about the world. The cheater who though it was best to try and make the broken relationship work until breaking point, the investment bankers who could gauge risk, the politician who thinks that what they say hasn't been recorded and used to discredit them down the track, the worker (or boss) you thinks the boss is useless. There might be some truth to what you see, but what you experience (through seeing) and what your eyes view is warped by your experience up to that point.

You can see this with some people who seem to chose the exact same negative relationship. That's the only relationship they know and understand. Why would they choose different?