Is this cheating, would you forgive this?

Im so sorry to find out your partner has been sexually harassing women in the workplace must be very painful.
It's not cheating(although i imagine he would have if he's been sexually harassing women at work) but that doesn't make it acceptable on any level.
His "banter" explanation is trying to minimise it and not to take responsibility for his actions.
He's repulsive and a danger to women and girls.
He also clearly has no idea how his repulsive behaviour may have affected his female work colleagues or the effect it would have on you.
How could any woman be attracted to a man who sexually harasses women?

Also, to add, there are definitely situations where I could see myself forgiving and staying with DH if he cheated.
I would not be able to get past this situation.

Not cheating, but indicative of misogyny and generally being a total dick. I’d dump him for that alone. [Shudders]. What a creep. How have you not picked up on his general vileness - it can hardly have been limited to the workplace, surely?

@Meg878o, ask to see the full set of paperwork for the investigation and the dismissal. He will have it.
The fact the he's still classing it as banter despite having lost his job over it is the most shocking thing to me. It suggests that he still thinks he's in the right and that he's not taking responsibility for his behaviour.

Insist on seeing that paperwork. If he says he's thrown it away, ask him to request a copy from his ex-employer. You need to see it. Then you can make a decision armed with facts.

Oh. Well you had everyone's opinions before,if you made your own mind up that it was acceptable, what is it you're expecting from this new post?

OP, when you are describing what he was sacked for, are you telling us what he has told you is the reason? Or have you heard from his employers their side of the story. Which I am sure will be far worse than any sanitised version you've had from him.

He isn't the person you think he is.
I suspect he's given you the 'vanilla' version of events.
I wouldn't say it's cheating as such. It's definitely not loyalty and respect, and it is more than grounds to end things.

It's bizarre that you ask about cheating, as if that's the only acceptable reason to leave a husband. Do you think if he hasn't cheated then he's not really all that bad? That being a misogynistic sleazy predator at work is totally fine? It isn't.

No it's not cheating so I clicked YABU

BUT it makes him sound like a horrible person

You need to stop asking Mumset (who keep telling you the same thing) and work out how you are going to make decisions. It's very shit and unfair, but you haven't done this. He has left you in this massive dilemma, and in all the pain. that is NOT RIGHT, but it is what it is. You need a very good counsellor that you can talk all this out with and give you the strength to make this decision. As someone who was lied, cheated on and gaslighted for 15 years, and left in the end, he will do it again. Him leaving was the best thing that every happened to me and me and DD are great now. He is cheating on the woman he left me for. Get some help to stop blaming yourself and get in a position to make decisions . My only regret is that i let him decide.

Hi Op,

Not read all the comments you have received but I’m going to break this down.

Firstly, you’re asking the wrong question in your opening: it’s not cheating in the explicit sense of one night stand/penetrative consensual sex, no. It’s actually worse.

This man has repeatedly conducted himself in a way that can be deemed as sexual harassment in a work environment.

Let that sink in.

He would not have been fired for minor issues. He has worked there a long time. And the employer would have to seriously have evidence to make their decision secure legally.

If your husband is refusing to take responsibility, ask him to see the documents provided that illustrate the evidence his work says they have. If he genuinely does not think he did anything wrong then he has a claim here for unfair dismissal doesn’t he?

I think you know the likelihood of that being the case is very small here.

So what you are left with is this: a man who has committed incredibly serious, potentially even criminal acts, and refuses to be accountable for his own actions.

He has utterly betrayed you and your children in several ways:

1. he has approached women in ways deemed by his employer as sexual harassment. So therefore that IS cheating. The only difference is they didn’t reciprocate! This makes him a predator, not just a cheater.

2. He risked the stability of your marriage for this behaviour. Think about that. He felt justified enough in carrying out that behaviour over and above the consideration he should have been giving to your marriage.

3. He has completely failed to provide financial stability for you and your children by choosing to behave this way. His being fired isn’t a random choice by his employer - it’s a direct consequence of sustained choices made by your husband. He has utterly failed you and his children.

4. This is where your feelings come in. Because he refuses to accept responsibility, because he is framing this as ‘male banter’ (and no it isn’t, otherwise it wouldn’t be an employment issue or gross misconduct), he is placing the blame and responsibility externally from himself and therefore conditioning YOU to doubt your responses and frame this as YOU breaking up the family much in the same way he’s framing it as his employer breaking his employment.

5. He is trying to gaslight you, minimise his responsibility, and refused to even learn from his mistakes. You removing yourself and the children from this situation is the natural logical consequence of HIS behaviour, not something you are actively independent choosing separate from his choices. Read that over.

6. Considering the entirety of the above, the only situation where you could possibly shoulder blame would be if you continued to allow your children to exist within this environment, with a father who not only refuses responsibility for his family but also refuses reality for himself.

Leaving him is the ONLY rational, responsible response to the situation he has created.

Your children deserve parents who model proper values such as personal responsibility, boundaries, respect for other people, respect for the law, and keeping promises (marriage vows, employment contract).

Please start trusting yourself and not this hideous man you are married to.

You are way better than he is currently allowing you to be.

Abuse of authority (if that’s what happened in this case) and sexual harassment is just as bad cheating (or even worse, tbh). It’s horrible!!

I thought I had read this before??

He openly and repeatedly sexually harassed women on the job. Making comments about women's breasts and bodies is not banter. He knows that, so he's a liar too. His behaviour was so egregiously bad he got fired for it. He's an asshole.

I'd be gone.

Didn't you make a thread before about this guy?

It‘s not cheating. But it is definitely not better than cheating.

telling female workmates that they're attractive and in good shape.

That sounds like sexual harassment and probably also abuse of authority (seeing as he was a team leader. Unless these work mates were his superiors or at least leaders of their own teams as well).

That‘s extremely nasty and I would hopefully consider it unforgivable!!

I said it before but he will only admit to the bare minimum, he is a sleaze. I wouldn’t forgive easily. If you spoke to a colleague they would probably say that they’ve wanted him gone for ages. Do you know any of his work colleagues?

If he's like this at work to the extent he's been sacked for it, and also doesn't think he's done anything wrong, then he will have done so much worse elsewhere. You are completely naive to think this is confined to his job, of all things. Who only knows what his chats down the pub, or in messages, with his mates are like.

Obviously you won't tell your kids that he's sexually harrassed a woman at work, but they will have been exposed to it in some way - at football practice "bantering" with the other dads, at the pool ogling women, at the shops creeping on women. And god forbid when you're daughter's older what he might say about her friends, or the comments he'll make to your son about women.

It’s not cheating but I couldn’t live with a dick like that

It’s giving bellend. Can see why people don’t want to work with that.

Oh please. I am far from Miss Perfect, and the only woman less drippy than me was Margaret Thatcher.

The last fucking thing I would do in this situation is waste my time trying to fix this useless article by scolding him and discussing his behaviour in counselling. If he can't get there on his own he won't be dragged there. It's not women's jobs to make men acceptable.

Its not out of character. He has been in trouble at work before and been threatened with the loss of his job on previous occasions for similar behaviour. OP has posted several threads about it.

Whilst I totally accept that an acquired brain injury can cause disinhibition in some individuals leading to inappropriate behaviour, given that sexual harassment, misogyny and disrespectful treatment of women by men is so widespread and entrenched it seems much more likely that this man is simply choosing to behave this way.

You will be ok.
The kids will be ok.

It will be hard but it will all be ok.

How anyone could sleep next to/be intimate/be affectionate with a man who has made other people feel uncomfortable like this is beyond me. Total ick. And I hate that term

I had this exact thought! Is it the same poster?

It’s not cheating, it’s far worse. It’s intimidating and predatory behaviour. I’ve been on the receiving end of workplace SH and it’s awful. It’s about power and he clearly has no respect for women.
It’s irrelevant really but he probably already has cheated or will do in the future.
How old are your DC?
So sorry OP, it must be absolutely awful for you to be in this position, but it’s his doing and his doing alone.

If it genuinely has come completely out of the blue and you say it is out of character for him, there is another possibility. There are medical conditions which cause personality changes, including disinhibition.

You say he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, its just lads’ banter etc. Ask him if he has been bantering that way before now. If he has, why has it only just been picked up? If he has not, why has he started now? Are there any other changes which you have noticed? Might be worth a discussion with the GP.