Don’t Cheat—Just Don’t Do It
Posted by Kristi
An article from Psychology Today was brought to my attention a couple weeks ago. Ever since the Tiger Woods debacle, there has been an influx of articles about fidelity and its flip side. This one in particular is simply titled “Fidelity.” One paragraph asserts that there is a good chance that infidelity has a negative effect on the cheater. If they have a conscience. I’m sure it would be stressful trying to keep all of these balls in the air (especially as many as Tiger supposedly had) and, in the case of marriages with or without children, keeping their family together. It does much to dispel the notion that all cheaters are people who simply wish to have their cake and eat it, too.
While that’s all well and good, I can’t help but not care about any negative effects cheating has on the cheater. And why the hell should anyone? They’re cheating on their significant others, for crying out loud. No matter what the reason, they’re wrong for doing it. Flat out wrong. Even though I’m anti-marriage, I’ve always thought that if you “took the plunge” then divorce should be a last resort for soured relationships. The only time divorce shouldn’t be a last resort is in the marriages where one spouse contemplates cheating on the other. You should get a divorce before you make that devastating choice. I know, I know, it’s not that simple. Marriages are more complicated than that. But you know what? It’s all just an excuse for the cheater to justify their actions.
“My wife/husband has a low libido while mine is high!”
“We’re no longer in love!”
“My wife/husband refuses to have sex!”
“My wife/husband is not open to sharing!”
“We can’t divorce, we have kids!”
“I really do love my wife/husband, but I have needs!”
When I hear that last one it provokes a visceral reaction in me. I used to read one married person’s account of their extramarital trysts on the blog, but I had to quit after they professed to love their partner so much. Yeah, they love them so much that they’re willing to make a fool of them every day and worse yet, share it with the world. I just can’t stomach it when someone proclaims they love their partner while they go around cheating on them. I think it’s pretty fucking low. But I also can’t stomach the cheaters in unloving marriages without the balls to get divorced. I don’t care how awful your relationship is or what you have to lose, divorce or—in the instance of a non-married committed relationship— leave your partner. Quit making excuses and do it. Or quit cheating. It really is that simple. Everything else is just an excuse.
I understand that things can unexpectedly take a change for the worse in relationships. I understand that the couples can be sexually mismatched. I can also understand that polyamory and open relationships are off-limits for a lot of couples. Again, that’s when I say you should divorce. Worried about losing your kids? Well, you’ve got a better chance of keeping them or at least acquiring visiting rights if you divorce instead of cheating and getting found out (and you eventually will). The courts don’t look too kindly upon infidelity during divorce cases and custody battles. Cheaters should think about that before they cheat. I don’t think it’s particularly fair when it comes to custody of the kids since a person’s infidelities usually have nothing to do with their parenting abilities. But, hey, I didn’t make the rules and couples are usually aware of them when they marry. As for your kids, they’ll survive and get over the divorce. But they might not get over finding out (and they will) that their mother or father cheated on their other parent. Think about it.
So, yeah, I have little to no sympathy for cheaters. I have been the other woman. Granted it was just online, but that matters to some people. I’m not proud of it. Now, I do my best to make sure all of my playmates are either not in a relationship/married or they’re in an open one. I had to end one budding playmate situation when it became clear to me that the female in the relationship wasn’t as open as the male had led me to believe. I can’t willingly put myself between a couple. I don’t care how bad their relationship supposedly is. Besides, how do I know they’re telling the truth? I can’t. It’s bad enough the partner is made a fool by their lover that I don’t feel like adding to that.
People accidentally fall in love, right? Yeah, well, you can put it off until you’re divorced. You don’t have to pursue a relationship with someone else. There is always a choice; you just have to make the right one. I freely admit that my tone is judgmental, but I won’t apologize for it. I don’t go around personally condemning cheaters but if you’re a friend of mine and you tell me you’re cheating on your SO, I’ll have no respect for you in that situation and I’ll probably distance myself from you.
One married friend told me he had found a girlfriend and all I could say was, “Well, that’s fucked up.” We haven’t spoken since, but then we didn’t speak much to begin with. He always joked, and I think sometimes seriously, about hooking up with me and I repeatedly turned him down. He would tell me how his marriage was convenient but loveless, and each time I reminded him that I had no way of knowing for certain. I’d joke back that his wife had to personally tell me it was all right with her before we hooked up. This may be one of the reasons why we don’t talk much anymore. I don’t really know. But I’m not torn up over it.
The moral of the story is—don’t cheat on your partner. But if you do, don’t expect me to have any sympathy for you over any psychological effects you might suffer from. Oh, another moral is—don’t try hooking up with me if you’re not in an open relationship. Don’t give me a sob story. Save that for someone gullible who would actually give a crap about your marital woes. Just remember, there’s always a choice. Do yourself and your partner (and kids?) a favor and make the right one.
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The fact that you can just brush off the fact that a kid would get over the divorce is.. disgusting to me. My parents divorced each other. My father cheated. Can you guess which one affected me more? THE DIVORCE. I don’t give a damn about my parents’ sex lives and neither do most people- do YOU care about what your parents do in bed?
The divorce was messy. My mom accused my dad of molesting me to get full custody. She couldnt prove it, but just due to the accusation she won out and all he got was visitation.
People cheat for many reasons, sometimes they aren’t reasons at all and sometimes it’s accidental. But sex does not equal love. Sex. Does not. Equal. Love. Cheating is sex. Love is love. The two are completely separate.
I disagree entirely with this article, and honestly, I’m offended by it. My dad cheated and I would and will gladly defend his right to do that because my mother was and is a sow of the most bull-headed proportions. He did not want to initiate the divorce because of me. So my mother brainwashed me into lying to my father then surprised him with the divorce. For a whole year. A whole. fucking. year. I did not speak to my father because she had convinced me that he was pure evil.
A short time later he moved to England. I regret every day what that bitch of a mother did to me and that I missed out on a whole year I could have spoken to my dad. He cheated, he cheated and I hope he enjoyed it because that bitch deserved every second of it.
I’m sure you’re a great person with good intentions. But, Blind criticism without thinking about all the possible situations and reasons is never the road to take. Even if you hate my father because he did that, even if you hate me because I cheated (out of marriage, for what its worth), you dont know either of us. It makes exactly as much sense as hating someone because they like a certain color. Hating someone solely because they made a choice you disagreed with. Hating someone because they’re a different religion or political stance.
It makes exactly as much sense, and just because its wrong to you doesn’t mean it wasn’t right to someone else.
.-= Darling Dove´s last blog ..Pleasurists #68 =-.
I don’t see where she talked about hate. She just talked about not having sympathy for someone for something they chose to do, knowing full well it could have unpleasant consequences. It’s like not feeling sympathy for someone who chooses to bash their head into a wall. Hello? It’s going to hurt.
.-= Adriana´s last blog ..Bad Thoughts =-.
Agreeing with Adriana here. She didn’t say she hated people who cheated, just that she lost respect for them for making that choice.
I disagree with a lot of what you said. Being a parent myself, there are decisions parents have to make for the best interests of the children. Sometimes that decision is divorce because it’s better to model a healthy relationship for the kids than to go on living a lie. There’s a massive difference between caring about your parents sex life and caring about your parents betraying each other, ignoring their vows and breaking promises to each other.
And I completely, 100% disagree with your statement that cheating is ever ‘an accident’. That’s absolutely ridiculous. You don’t accidentally have sex with people that are not your partner. No one trips and falls into another person’s vagina(or asshole, or mouth, or wherever you put your genitals). You don’t accidentally drive to a hotel and take your clothes off. You make the conscious decision to continue what you are doing every step of the way.
I’m not sure why having sex is the only thing being considered as cheating here (and I think DD was only talking about sex, too, which also confused me). My partner could do plenty of things that weren’t sex and it’d still be cheating. Every relationship is different, and what constitutes cheating for one might be having sex with someone else (only) but for another, emotional cheating might “count.” Emotional cheating isn’t as obvious as a naked person on top of you, and I can easily see how someone could cheat that way and have it not be this black-and-white issue that’s in plain sight.
.-= Rockin’ with a Cock in´s last blog ..Part 2 – A Bullet on the Body =-.
I don’t think anyone said that sex was the only form of cheating. I specifically called cheating a betrayal and a breaking of promises. I just didn’t feel the need to list 100 things that constituted the decisions a person would make to cheat and how they weren’t ever accidents.
I concede that you can’t accidentally cheat, because if you know something you’re doing is cheating, and you consciously do it, then you can’t claim it’s an accident.
I didn’t say that anyone said that sex was the only form of cheating.
.-= Rockin’ with a Cock in´s last blog ..Part 2 – A Bullet on the Body =-.
I don’t see sex being referred to as the only thing that’s considered cheating, but I actually think that most of the time, emotional affairs can be way more damaging that purely physical infidelity.
Okay, so.. a couple of thoughts. As in my reply to DD, I see why you wouldn’t have sympathy and I can dig that. It’s hard to feel sympathetic for a situation a person puts their self in.
But this is a black and white view and we live in a colourful world. I used to think cheating was a deal breaker and then I learned, for me, it’s not (at least it wasn’t). It isn’t a pleasant thing, it is something we should all try to avoid but if you end your relationship before cheating, you may be missing out on something amazing. Sometimes, unfortunately, cheating is the “big thing” that finally sets the lets-work-this-out gears in motion. Not always, of course which is why I firmly believe people need to be recognizing and making an effort to work through issues to before cheating or other negative outcomes become reality.
This isn’t to say that I condone cheating. I do not. Like you, I would not participate in it willingly. However, while it “should not” happen, it does and I think that’s just how it will always be, no matter what you or I say. So, I would rather deal with the reality that it does happen and help folks people prevent or get over it.
.-= Adriana´s last blog ..Bad Thoughts =-.
I agree with most of what you’ve written. Cheating is wrong 100% of the time. While I can agree with Adriana about how cheating affects some relationships (like my marriage, both my husband and I cheated on each other), it shouldn’t take such a devastating act of betrayal to make us realize that we love our partners. We need to stop taking things for granted and learn to communicate with each other before it gets to the point of cheating. People need to go to their partners before they decide to cheat and say ‘I’m not getting this from our relationship. What can we do to fix it? Where can we compromise?’
Great post.
I definitely think we all should do everything to prevent cheating from happen buuuuuut, sometimes it does and sometimes you just have to look at it on a case by case basis.
.-= Adriana´s last blog ..Bad Thoughts =-.
Exactly. Just because cheating is wrong doesn’t mean it’s a mistake a couple can’t come back from.
You know I wish more women felt like you do…I am IN an open marriage and the women my husband finds attractive/interesting are told this at the very start of any even friendship. My husband is as open as a book about our situation and STILL the women refuse to talk to me or even ascertain whether he is telling the truth! They are fine to be friends with him, even close friends. There are some that even consent to sleep with him in our bed when I am out of town…but actually say hi to us on the street…or God forbid be polite to me on the phone?? NO WAY!
*sigh* It really makes me mad to see other women treat him like he’s doing something calculated to hurt me without even asking me if it WOULD hurt me…or better yet tell him no! It would solve so many problems if they would do either, and they might have a really great time.
I disagree that you should leave your relationship if you feel the need to cheat…if my husband had I’d have missed out on my children and my current life. I would be lost and, knowing me, locked into an untenable situation. Our situation was odd but his cheating, while total hell, did show us the error of our ways, so to speak.
Also my husband would call you all sorts of fool to believe that kids just “get over” a divorce but not parental infidelity. He was torn apart physically and emotionally by his parents during their divorce and afterward. Their infidelity didn’t affect him at all, he didn’t delve into their sex lives and they divorced for other reasons…it’s only recently that he found out they HAD been untrue to each other.
On the other hand my life would have been so much better if my parents had divorced, if only because I would have been able to get away from my Dad’s alcoholism and my Mom’s mental instability (custody arrangements had been drawn up when I was around 9 so I knew where I would have gone) the thing is my parents were NEVER unfaithful to each other.
Seeing in black and white is a luxury you have when you are young and inexperienced. Still I don’t have any patience or sympathy for cheaters and even though my eyes have lost the ablity to see black and white easily, it is still pretty cut and dry for me. Don’t cheat…it never helps.
I understand why you would feel the way you do. And I respect that. However, I’m going to have to agree with Sarah and Adriana here. Now, like them, I’m not condoning cheating. I’ve been cheated on, as well as been the other woman. Neither situation is one that I’d recommend someone get into. However, shit happens, life happens, and life isn’t always black and white. And until you’ve been in a relationship, you really can’t judge how others handle theirs. I’ve cheated. I’ve been cheated on. I’ve been cheated with. And all of those things sucked, but they happened because of the relationships we were in at the time. I know I’m not articulating my point well AT ALL here, but what I’m trying to say is that yes, we should try not to cheat. It would be ideal if no one ever cheated. But we really can’t judge someone until we’re in their shoes, and we all make mistakes.
Firstly, people that know my thoughts on the subject well – Sarahbear, Britni, more – know that I’m not an evil person void of emotion. I understand that people get hurt by cheating and that makes me feel for them. However, the majority of this article I have an issue with.
“People accidentally fall in love, right? Yeah, well, you can put it off until you’re divorced.”
It doesn’t always work that way. The world isn’t black and white. There are always exceptions and situations that don’t fit in the package that people want them to fit into.
“One married friend told me he had found a girlfriend and all I could say was, ‘Well, that’s fucked up.’”
I understand how you could have that reaction, but it might have been a better move to instead ask him why he had a girlfriend, if he planned to leave his current partner and how he was feeling about the whole situation. It doesn’t make someone a monster just because they cheat. It only makes them human – not all people can’t act 100% as society wants them to (and with the feelings of everyone in mind) at all times. Maybe he told you because he needed to talk about it.
That’s really all I’ll say on the subject. If you want to know more, you can look at my post on here called “Not a Monster.”
.-= Saraid´s last blog ..Review: Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to Advanced Fellatio =-.
I enjoyed reading this, to be fully honest with you. I have nothing more to say on the subject than that, other than this:
It does not make a person “human” by cheating. Trust me on that. It is not in human nature to cheat, so it does not make a person “human.”
It’s also not necessarily in human nature to be monogamous, but people sure as hell try. They also fail sometimes. So, if it’s not in human nature to be monogamous, then maybe it *is* in human nature to stray, or to cheat, if a naturally non-monogamous person is forced, or tries to force themselves, into a monogamous relationship model because they think it’s the only way to have one.