Why is it not illegal to cheat on someone

Just musing here, but if cheating were to be made illegal, how would you define cheating? Would it have to be PIV? Or would oral sex count, or touching of breasts for example? Would kissing count? How would you differentiate between a full on snog and a peck on the cheek or a hug upon greeting a colleague for example?

Would your doctor nurse be afraid to do a smear test because she could be touching you illegally?

BTW, I don't think it should be made illegal.

Why not... Both? 😈

Because it's not a crime.

I feel for you, currently going through similar, mine would never cheat, but appears to be lining someone up ready, under my nose, and she is flirting in front of me, quite blatantly.

Odd woman, who really should be ashamed of herself, I am for her, and for my situation, with a deluded creep to deal with.

Not sure if he is just flattered, seriously considering, already secretly chatting to her, or just stupid.

Its a slippery slope. There are a range of behaviours that could fall under the definition of 'cheating'. Make it illegal for men to cheat on women and I guarantee its women who will pay the price when they are criminalised for any behaviour their partners consider inappropriate. Do you want to live in a country where a jealous husband not wanting you to have a drink with a male colleague could use the law to control you?

I'm in my late 60s now. Like a lot of people, I have been (back in my early 20s) in a relationship in which I was cheated on. It hurt, I learned lessons, I moved on.

Would I have gained anything from him being taken to court? Not in the least. Might it have stopped him cheating? I seriously doubt it, though if he were concerned, he'd just have dumped me. as it was, I dumped HIM, which was very satisfying indeed. I commend this course of action.

Divorce has massive financial consequences, it’s not like people get to just walk away from a marriage.

I’m in Scotland which I think has more sensible divorce law but there are still huge financial consequences to a divorce.

Coppers won’t come out if your house has been burgled or a 70k car is stolen off your drive. Can you imagine ringing 999 and saying ‘Gary has been cheating on Karen with that Vicky from the Garden Centre!’

’STAY THERE, WE’RE ON OUR WAY!! NEEE NAW NEE NAW NEE NAW

A friend of mine's grandparents owned a hotel.

When a couple booked in and were followed upstairs by a photographer, then left after about an hour, they knew what it was all about.

As long as they paid the bill they weren't too bothered.

Humans lie and betray each other daily in different ways and on so many levels. How could you ever police this? We lie to our children and tell them Santa exists and a tooth fairy and all kinds of (according to adults) white lies. To a child who hasn’t been on the earth very long these lies we tell them are the equivalent of an affair, they shake the very belief systems they’ve held all their lives and show them that the people they trust the most can lie to them repeatedly for years.
So do we lock up every parent who has ever told their child that Santa is real? Or that all their teeth will fall out if they don’t brush their teeth? Of course not.
When it comes to cheating the most we can ever do is have enough respect for ourselves not to tolerate betrayal when we discover it, and to focus on our own emotional resilience to overcome betrayal if it does happen to us. Would you want to be with someone who is only loyal to you because it would be against the law to cheat, or someone who is with you and faithful to you out of their own free will? I don’t think I’d ever trust a partner who was only with me out of fear… that’s no way for anyone to live.

Added to which you would have to support everything else that goes against the rules of marriage or a monogamous union being a crime also.

So if one person becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol

If one person puts the couple into debt

If one person is an arsehole

If one person stops loving the other. Isn't that in the vows? To love and cherish till blah blah blah...

Women do it too, you know?

There are some individuals I know who I honestly couldn’t blame for having an affair.

You don’t mention being married OP, so this person hasn’t committed adultery, let alone done anything illegal.

Can you imagine a bunch of 18 year olds heading off to freshers week at uni and cheating on their boyfriends and girlfriends back home and getting charged for cheating? That’s life! It happens. Most people are hurt at some point. Most people have been second choice at some point. Yeah it’s shit and really hurts, but not illegal.

Great plan OP if you want to criminalise half the population.

And add it to your online dating profile as a warning 😁

I assume all the people supporting this idea are happy to pay the extraordinary amounts of tax that works be needed to fund this?

I’m really sorry.

it’s just that life is hard and you can’t legislate the hard stuff away.

Firstly infidelity can be men and women. And secondly there a a million reasons why people commit adultery and some of those reasons have huge mitigating circumstances. So of course it shouldn't be illegal. Unless you subscribe to the sorts of cultures that stone women to death for it

Right enough, I've never heard about any raging swingers in Iran.

This
Can't be sure isn't this the behaviour of a love bombing Narcissist?
When dating (and also in life ) believe nothing you hear and only half the things you hear.
If someone sat there on the first date telling me how 'wonderful' they are - I'd be thinking:
I'll be the judge of that ( and what a plonker)
Trust has to be earnt and can take many months and sometimes years.
Doesn't mean you are policing them, but you have to pay attention to what they say and do.

It can't be made illegal, but I totally understand what you mean OP, that people's lives and mental health can be left in tatters and the person (people) who caused that just walk away and leave your life like a pile of rubble. I have experienced it, I know others who have been on the receiving end, and it always results in HUGE amounts of trauma, sometimes PTSD, and takes years to recover from. Even then it changes you and you are never quite the same again.

The way I look at it now is that it just makes me more determined than ever to be a good person, a decent human being, and never ever be responsible for doing that to another person - to break the cycle. There are plenty of us out there who would never cheat or try steal somebody else's partner - I would never do that to another woman. The people that do cheat and show no remorse are truly not worth your time and don't deserve a place in your heart. Some people cheat and are genuinely remorseful and full of regret, I guess that is more of a grey area. The best thing you can do is be proud that you are a good person and make the world a nicer place by continuing to be so. You are far above them, too good for them, they are just too stupid to realise it.

We already have laws against this, just sign a contract with witnesses and then sue for breach of contract

In some backward countries, women are still being stoned to death for adultery..
Can you find a case where a man has been stoned to death for cheating on his wife?

And how would this proof be obtained? Who is going to pay for all this surveillance, litigation and the additional burden on the judicial system?

I do think it makes a bit of a mockery of marriage as a legal contract if there is no potential 'breach of contract' or 'fraud' consequence in the case of adultery.

The traditional set-up in which a lot of weight is put on vows (which have no legal status) as being 'the wedding' rather than the signing of the register (which creates the inheritance, next of kin etc rights but doesn't comment on how many partners you can have other than that you can only have one current marriage at a time) muddies the waters of common perception in this regard, I think.