Relationships can’t have been solid if his head was turned

@Holidayhell22 The ones I know who have put their foot down and told their dh to do more, well they tend to be the ones who cheat or get cheated on as their ‘relationship’ becomes unhappy.

I would totally agree with this.

When my exH was working long hours I did everything - even though I worked F/T and was the main breadwinner.
I encouraged him to get a promotion with shorter hours and more money so we could spend more time together.
He got the promotion and as he had more free time I asked him to do more about the house. He turned into a "gunner" = "I'm gunner do it tomorrow."
He also took up a hobby that was all consuming and sometimes kept him out of the house 5 nights a week.

I tried everything, I tried to reason with him, nagged him, shouted at him, finally I was at my wits end and stopped cooking, cleaning and doing laundry.
At the same time I secretly consulted a solicitor about a divorce.

His response was to spin a sob story about his 'unreasonable wife' to his employees at work and managed to suck in a younger women who felt sorry for him. They had an affair and I divorced him.

Years later they married so obviously she doesn't mind being a skivvy 🙄

@HRTQueen I agree. On some level they feel they 'deserve' their extra curricular sex life and are arrogant enough to think they don't get caught. And they are capable of separating out their actions from the potential consequences and harm caused. Some people are just very very entitled.
And (huge generalisation and I know there are exceptions) I think it's mostly men because women tend to think about consequences more, especially for their children.

a person makes a choice to cheat and its for a number of reasons and very often it has nothing to do with their relationship

I think the vast majority of men will cheat if they have the opportunity to without being caught, not a popular opinion on MN but that's from not just my life experience but many people I know/have known

I think what @HoppingPavlova says is broadly technically logically correct, but it's really not anywhere near simple.

It's 1000 tiny things that add up to something that should never happen; I found myself quite scared when I realised that work felt more like home then home did.

And it's not like I planned it. And it's not like I wanted it. It was a slow slow slow drip effect that eventually took over everything.

One week before, if you'd told me I should leave my marriage for someone else, I'd have died laughing. There was nothing wrong, but my close friendship evolved over time under severe severe anxiety and stress.

I voted YANBU as the cheating partner is ALWAYS to blame. There may be valid issues in the relationship, and the answer to that is, if unhappy then LEAVE and then be free to peruse other opportunities. Staying, while unhappy, and then using that unhappiness as an excuse is a weird childish cop out.

"This is impossible to sustain in a long term relationship though. There will always be times when someone is ill, or stressed or tired! And if it's the only way to prevent my dh from cheating, then frankly an OW would be welcome up him! I want a man who can remain loyal even when life isn't 100% perfect. Because it's impossible for life to always be without problems or boredom.
If someone can only be faithful when they are getting sex every day, then it's a shit relationship."

This is the issue. People value sex differently. People have different sex drives. If these are incompatible in a relationship there will be problems.

lol the number of relationships where there is consistent daily sex must be vanishingly small

This is impossible to sustain in a long term relationship though. There will always be times when someone is ill, or stressed or tired! And if it's the only way to prevent my dh from cheating, then frankly an OW would be welcome up him! I want a man who can remain loyal even when life isn't 100% perfect. Because it's impossible for life to always be without problems or boredom.
If someone can only be faithful when they are getting sex every day, then it's a shit relationship.

I know a woman who regularly cheats on her long term partner. Her only excuse is that she doesn't think monogamy is for her but she 'loves' her partner and wants them to be together. Not sure how she'd feel if he was the one cheating.

I'm surprised that so few women seem to understand there are a lot of men who treat sex as entertainment, stress relief, even a hobby. Its only relevance to the home relationship is that they know they are cheating, but probably feel that as an unreasonable condition they try to uphold for the wife's sake. If they fail a few times and she doesn't find out, no harm done (in their eyes).

Imagine you drive the ideal car for your lifestyle. It's comfortable, works well, looks good; you love it and are proud of it. Somebody offers to lend you a top-end performance car for the day! Naturally you bunk off work, climb into your Bugatti and spend the next several hours having the time of your life with this sleek engine of unprecedented power.

This is not a metaphor, because people don't swear fidelity to BMW or Volvo, but it's got some legs: Most drivers recognise the Bugatti would be a shit choice as a regular car and hand it back with a big smile on their face. Some, though, find this experience so much more rewarding that they abandon their Range Rover and all the needs (children, shopping) it satisfies. They keep renting performance cars until, one day, they buy one and depart forever, leaving the family car and family behind.

It's not the family car's fault. It's just that he couldn't have a BMW and a performance sports car, so he did the next best thing.

Plenty of women like "driving Bugattis" too, but the potential risks and consequences are greater for us so we tend to weigh things up more carefully.

I do know 2 other couples who have been together ages and none of them have cheated. Both men did cheat on their previous wives though. Both had children and left when the children were still relatively young. The new wives don’t have children and I think this helps sway the balance in their favour.

I agree with a lot of other posters.
The stresses of life affect people.
Sometimes, yes the relationship is just not right. Other times it’s not getting a break from the monotony of family life.
Of the couples I know who have been together a long time ( and without either of them cheating as far as I know,) in the vast majority of cases the woman always does the majority of the grunt work. The women: pack the children’s suitcases for holidays, check when they need new clothes, do the laundry, do the cooking and cleaning, take time off work for the children etc etc.
The men do a bit, but in general the women fuss around them and stop them becoming bored.
They also have help. Maybe cleaners, laundry service, babysitters, parents who help out a lot, child care for date nights etc etc.
The ones I know who have put their foot down and told their dh to do more, well they tend to be the ones who cheat or get cheated on as their ‘relationship’ becomes unhappy. They are more susceptible to cheat I think.
I’m always amazed at the number of women at work who the ones taking time off for childcare. Mention their dh and they all say the same: Oh dh can’t possibly take time off from his very important job, even the female managers say this when they earn more than their oh!
Anyway, it is complicated, humans are attracted by new and shiny, it’s weather you resist it.

I've never heard of a relationship where they have daily sex end up with either party cheating.

I have had periods of unhappiness in my marriage but never felt the need to cheat. If I had got to that point I would have ended the marriage first. Sorry meant to say I agree with this poster mostly.

I think it can be both, in a way.

The cheating spouse is always to blame.

AND

The relationship can’t have been solid

BUT

The other person in the relationship believed it to be solid because the cheating partner was a lying bastard who was very good at lying - possibly to themselves as well. The cheating partner is essentially incapable of a solid relationship, but manages to hide this.

While a cheating person may be genuinely unhappy/feel unfulfilled in their relationship, it doesn't mean there's something "wrong" with that relationship or that their partner is lacking in some way.

Some people just have overblown senses of entitlement so no relationship will ever be enough. The situation upthread where someone was secretly using sex workers throughout their relationship seems like a good illustration. Yes, that person may have felt a deep "need" to have so much sex that they chose to use sex workers at the same time as sleeping with his wife, but it doesn't mean his wife was in any way at fault or letting the relationship down.

This applies to emotional/attentional needs as much as physical needs - for some people, no amount of love/care/understanding/attention will ever fill the hole of need inside them.

And while there may be some relationships where cheating takes place that are genuinely flawed, the flaws don't excuse the cheating. Cheating is always a path chosen by people who are unwilling to address the reality of one relationship before embarking on their next.

I don't think you can ever say it is the other person's "fault", but sometimes people cheat because their relationship isn't meeting their needs, yes. But that can be for loads of reasons - it doesn't mean the other person is "wrong" - maybe they just aren't compatible, or have grown apart....

My friend always says her endless cheating is her husband's "fault" because he makes no effort (doesn't arrange holidays, doesn't do much housework etc). But I always say to her I think that's bollocks (I say it more politely) - that these may be reasons she is unhappy, but they don't make her cheat - she could always leave him if she wanted to.

Lots of people cheat and are still very in love with their partner. My daughter's dad was still in love with me when he cheated, and begged me not to leave him, (but I did and he is now with the OW he cheated with.)

Absolutely not! No relationship is perfect. It’s something you work on together. My stb ex husband slept with a prostitute. This isn’t acceptable behaviour. If you’re that upset about the state of your relationship that you think you might cheat you should leave not cheat. It’s horrible. It’s made me question myself so much. I’ve actually tolerated a huge amount of terrible behaviour from this man in the name of love. He put me through hell. Some people are going to cheat because they want to. For various reasons. Many people in perfectly happy relationships cheat because of themselves. Because they need something else that being in a monogamous relationship doesn’t give them. That’s through no fault of the partner in most instances. For example some people just get bored of the same person, or they have a crisis over getting old and need to feel youthful again. No one is responsible for being unfaithful but the one cheating

I had a (female) friend many years ago who was hooked on the adrenaline of new relationships and cheating. She got pregnant very young, married the father. He was a good husband and father but she couldn’t help herself. He was “boring”. Eventually that marriage broke down.

she married again a few years later but continued in her quest for excitement and that marriage has broken down.

None of it was the fault of the husbands. It was all on her.

Only the cheater decides to cheat instead if work on their marriage or do the decent thing and leave first.

I don’t think it’s right or fair to assume that affairs happens because of a ‘bad’ marriage, personally.

Attention from someone else can be intoxicating and can slowly tempt a person in an otherwise okay marriage away. The marriage starts to pale in comparison to the new, exciting prospect. They have to justify their behaviour by finding fault in the marriage. It’s a scale that slowly tips.

To assume ‘well, the marriage must have had problems’ is too simplistic and also feels very victim-blamey but people don't want yo think that it could happen to them.

I've been very unhappy in previous relationships that ultimately ended, but still didn't consider cheating, as I'm not an arsehole with no morals.

i don’t think there is any excuse at all for cheating, if you are not willing to try to save the marriage/relationship and feel the need to cheat you should just leave.

Even if a relationship is bad, that's no excuse for cheating. Fix it or leave

My cheater ex fell apart when I kicked him out. Oh he was sorry, he loved me, he wanted to be with me. The nearest I got to an explanation was 'excitement', so yes, it was the whole shiny new thing reason on the whole, rather than any disatisfaction. And the fact that she would presumably shag him when he was absolutely pissed, which I wouldn't.

The sort of man who leaves his marriage for another woman is a fucking loser, though.

Type of berk who probably has little experience with women and has his head turned cause another's touched his pee pee.
Indecisive wankers. Imagine being such a loser as a man that you'll go through with a wedding just for the sake of it and not mean a damned word you say to look after your wife.

But if a man is sure of himself, deeply cares for his wife and children, a good provider etc then yeah perhaps a little infidelity is tolerable provided of course if what goes on on tour stays on tour.

It's the stupidity that gets me.