Catch me riding Dirty

An interesting topic was brought up in the WDT, cheating. If your spouse cheated on you how would you react? I heard two compelling thoughts, the first is that everyone is fallible and if it happens once it can be worked through and forgiven, the other was that it is unforgivable and that if someone cheats on you its time to move on.

Me, it depends. if it was a one time thing I'm inclined to try to reconcile, but if the cheating is an emotional and physical thing, I'd be inclined to try to be honest about the state of the relationship and move on.

Focus: Cheating, have you been cheated on?

Alt Focus: How would you react if someone cheated on you?

UnFocus: Would you cheat, have you ever cheated on someone else? If you haven't, can you think of a scenario where you might? If you have cheated on someone, what occurred to create the scenario where that happened?

 

I've been on both sides of the coin.

too much work, too much drama.

 

Focus/Alt-Focus: I've never had a monogamous relationship where I wasn't cheated on, and while there was always a fight about it, I moved on quickly and the relationship didn't end over that. It was always a one-time, random, drunken thing (there was one where he had a little bit of an emotional connection to the girl, but if I recall correctly they didn't even fully have sex and she lived elsewhere so I didn't feel particularly threatened) and, overall, didn't seem like that big of a deal. I have meaningless, emotionless one night stands or flings or fuckbuddies regularly, so I think when people say "it didn't mean anything" after being caught, that can be genuine. I have also been the person a guy has cheated on his girlfriend with many times, and once I've found out what's happened, seeing it from the other side of things, it's easy to believe it's just a simple fuckup. I do think that sometimes cheating can be, as they say, a sign that something's wrong with the relationship overall and there are larger issues that need to be addressed, but I also think that, sometimes, shit just happens and it shouldn't be a reason to torch a relationship to the ground. Having such an extreme reaction to being cheated on once, or even just the thought of being cheated on once, honestly seems a bit childish to me. If that's such a terrible thing to imagine or have happen to you, then I'm jealous you haven't experienced the full capacity people have to be terrible to one another. It's not pleasant, sure, but it certainly pales in comparison to plenty of other things I've experienced in relationships of all kinds.

All that being said, though, there are many situations where cheating is a deal-breaker and dick move of epic proportions. If it's a full-blown affair, or it's just constant and/or with tons of different women, say. Or even if it is just a one-time thing, if it was something that was done intentionally vindictively, or if the choice of person was particularly bad - like one of my best friends, or my sister or mom (if I had a sister or mom). A one-time thing with an ex, like in the situation that inspired this thread, is a grey-area for me, though, where there are far too many factors to be considered to know just how pissed I'd be any given time. I can come up with plenty of scenarios for cheating that have an additional emotional element to it that would definitely turn them into the tragic vicious absolutely heart-breaking event that cheating's generally viewed as, but for the run-of-the-mill encounter that we're usually talking about when it comes to talking about cheating, I just see it as a simple mistake. If everything else in the relationship is going at least relatively well, then fuck it.

Unfocus: I haven't cheated, and can't see myself cheating. It's not even thinking of myself as some upstanding moral being, just that I've never really felt compelled to. I'm not a person who leaps into a relationship. If we're monogamous or in some kind of official open relationship, it's because I really like being with you and having sex with you. I'm just not wired to constantly be seeking something new when I already have what I want, or juggling people. And as for those spur-of-the-moment fuckups, I just so rarely stumble across people that I'm interested in. If I'm dating or fucking around, it's because I'm putting in a decent amount of effort to try and find people, not because I just happen to casually be meeting all these amazing people I can't wait to have sex with all the time. If I'm drunk and horny and I do randomly meet someone I'm attracted to at a party or whatever, I am totally comfortable jumping into bed with them when I'm single, but I just can't see myself being compulsive enough to fuck them if I'm content in a relationship with someone I like. Even with something relatively spontaneous, I'm too much of a person that's constantly analyzing things and considering long-term, big-picture shit in the back of my head to be too reckless.

 

Focus: Ive never been cheated on officially. My ex gf in college once made out with, at the time, my best friend during a particular spat of ours. I remember not being being upset as much as confused and hurt. A few years ago, my ex and I went on a break of sorts, I thought we patched it up and got back together, but in her mind we were finished. She ended up banging and then dating the mid 30s dude from the dog park who "was just a friend". Throughout the 4-5 months we dated, he never cared to meet me, despite me asking her multiple times as I'd met his dog when she dog sat and such. Made sense that he was laying in wait. I took it as a bit of a betrayal cause, as I said, I wasn't aware we were finished and she had always claimed to never have such interest in the dude. But whatever. I suppose Ive been rather blessed in that regard.

Unfocus: Never cheated in the true "in a relationship, fucked someone else". My first "real" girlfriend after college was a bit of a rushed relationship. I'd be graduated for a bit over a year, thought I needed to be in a relationship to validate my adulthood or some shit, and started dating a girl 2 years older than me. She was very sweet, but we were not very compatible and she brought a lot of my poorer relationship qualities out. Instead of breaking it off, she just became distant over the period of 2-3 weeks. After a Friday in which she ignored my text and call to hang out, I went out on Saturday night and a girl in the group I was with took a liking to me. We all went back to our friend's apartment, we stayed over in an extra bedroom and she went down on me. I remember leaving the next morning feeling pretty terrible. By the next weekend, the gf and I were officially broken up, and I felt a bit more at ease, but still iffy. I imagine for most serial cheaters, it must get less and less profound with each successive transgression, or they are just morally bankrupt.

 

Another question for you guys:

Emotional Cheating: Is it a thing? Whats more important a loss of physical or emotional intimacy? If the emotional intimacy has died off and they have started talking to someone else, what does that mean about a relationship?

 

Emotional cheating would likely be a deal breaker. Physical cheating would likely not.

As I said in the WDT, for me, if my wife cheated, it would really depend on the specific circumstances how I handled it but in most cases I would not consider it to be the end of the world. If she got drunk and fucked another dude, hey we all make drunken mistakes, I've certainly made plenty. If she was really drunk and horny and I wasn't there and she found another dude attractive, I mean it's not ideal, but it's not like I'm gonna hold it over her head forever that she got her rocks off to someone else. Just use protection and don't call him again, ok? If she cheated as a symptom of a problem in our relationship like lack of communication or intimacy, then again, not the end of the world, so long as we both agreed to work through the problems and resolve it.... That being said, for her, my cheating on her IS a deal breaker, and I understand that different people view things differently, especially men and women in regard to sex. So I hold her to one standard (no emotional cheating, or specifically no hiding it) which I'll get to in a second, and she holds me to another. Fair? In most people's eyes, no. But it makes sense for us.

Ok, so the issues where I have a problem, is when the female, in this case my wife, lies about it and hides it from me. If you made a mistake, admit to it, own it, and work to fix it. The deception is worse than the crime. If she has a continuing relationship with another dude while continuing a relationship with me, under no circumstances would that be ok. Doesn't matter if it's repeat sex with the same guy, repeat dates with another dude not me, even romantically texting another dude (male friends, well duh, you know what I mean by romantic relationship so let's not nitpick semantics). I believe in divorce, even with children involved. If two people just grow apart, sometimes there is nothing you can do about it, and it's best for everyone involved to go their separate ways. What you should not do about it, though, is pretend like everything is ok while you cheat behind your partner's back. If you want to work through the problems, fantastic, talk about it, go to therapy, whatever you need. If it's not something you can work through, divorce, even if one partner doesn't think a divorce is necessary. At the end of the day, you're the only one looking out for you, and if you think you're doing your partner a favor by cheating behind their back, you aren't. Move on and let them move on.

 

The thing about emotional cheating is that it's so ambiguous. Can it even be defined in a way where it applies to everyone? Whenever I hear examples it just sounds like having a friend to me, usually one that you happened to make while in a relationship. Am I not allowed to have any kind of close connection with anyone else when I'm in a relationship? It sounds outrageously unhealthy to only depend on your one romantic partner for all of your emotional needs. Or it's things like watching porn, which I don't consider cheating whatsoever, or flirting with people but never following through with it which, I don't know, might be bad depending on the level it gets to but it's hard for me to call that cheating or something worth ending things over.

 

Yeah when people ask what they should do, or ask your opinion on it, or say something like "emotional cheating is worse," it's really hard for me to say anything other than "clarify what you mean by emotional cheating" and "depends on the circumstances."

I know I'm likely on the extreme, because I'm a dude who works in an environment comprised of 99% women. At some of our locations, with a staff of 50-80, I'm the only male there. And if you further narrow the category to straight males, I'm literally one of the only ones. It's the nature of the business. So it makes sense that the vast majority of my friends are female. The vast majority of the people I talk to are female. With my coworkers, I'm texting at least a dozen women a day. Some women would have a HUGE problem if their significant other was doing that. When I met my wife, she knew where I worked and what it was like and had to be ok with it. It was good because it built up a lot of trust at the beginning, and taught me how to be open and honest and not accusatory if she had any questions. But in reciprocating, I of course had to be cool with her guy friends (she was a waitress at the time, though she now works in the same company as me). It was just fair. I don't expect that many people have the same situation my wife and I do, and I'm sure that shaped my opinion on cheating, but I've always been curious if I'd have the same opinions if I worked in a different environment.

Alt Focus: Only had one serious girlfriend before my wife and she cheated on me rampantly. The things she did -- like standing me up for dinner on Valentines Day, made an excuse, later found out she ate with her side dude -- make me incredibly embarrassed at myself for not having the ability to see it for what it was, and not having the balls to stand up to her and cut it off while he was running me through the mud. The relationship lasted a little over four months if I remember correctly, and about a month after it ended I was in a hospital being read my last rites because of my brain tumor.... yeah, I wonder if that had any affect on my behavior during that relationship?

Funny part is, after the surgery, she kept drunk calling me at all hours -- but only when she was drunk -- and one night she called at like 4 am and woke me up. At the time, the post-surgery pain was so intense it was causing me to throw up and would make sleeping nearly impossible. So she woke me up, I immediately got hit by a rogue wave of pain, then I answered in a rage and apparently called her a "cunt whore." She said I was on speaker and apparently her friends didn't know she had been drunk calling a dude who was clinging to life after brain surgery. It was amazing to hear her get an ass reaming over the phone for that. I never heard from her again.

She is now married to the guy she cheated on me with, and I'm genuinely happy for her (though I knew that dude, he was a frathole, and I despise him and all of his kind). Learned a lot about myself from her, so can't really be mad at her. If lessons were easy to learn, everyone would be a hell of a lot smarter.

 

Focus: As far as I know I've never been cheated on. I suppose I might have been and they got away with it, but I doubt it. I didn't have a lot of long term relationships prior to my wife, before her the longest girlfriend was for 7 months.

Alt Focus: My wife and I have a series of rules about when we can and can't mess around with other people. To make that happen we are incredibly open and honest with each other. If she, despite all this, ever actually cheated on me, I would be absolutely crushed. It would really wreck me. But, the specifics would determine if it was a relationship ender or something to work through. If she had a bad moment we'd probably work through it. She's my soulmate and over the course of the next 5+ decades I assume there will be some bumps and bruises. If it was something more concrete though, I don't even know how to imagine that. It would be the end of me.

UnFocus: I have never cheated and couldn't imagine doing so. But then, I have really no reason to. Aside from an awesome and hot wife, I can just sleep with other women anyway so breaking the rules with my wife would be insane. Beyond that, she is the one true love of my life and I couldn't imagine hurting her like that.