"All men cheat, you just never find out about it"

[Maryfast]

I'm part of a mixed friendship group who have been friends since school. We went on a night out Saturday night and my partner works away (we've been together 4 years and bought a house last year). He tends to work away for 3 weeks and then be home for 2 weeks.

Anyway, friends were asking how he was and conversation soon turned to how some would never do a relationship that entails being far apart from each other for certain amounts of time. Then conversation turned to trust and I was saying how I can never imagine he'd cheat on me and how lovely he is.

That"s when one my male friends made the comment on the thread title, followed by how all the males he know outside our friendship group have cheated but all the friends never say anything.

I don't believe this to be true at all and I've never imagined my partner cheating. Does anyone else believe in the view that "men have an innate ability to cheat?"

I think it's nonsense

Given the number of married men who have come on to me heavily or pursued me during the course of my life, most men would like to cheat if they are able to.

I think it depends on about ten different things, their emotional maturity, their impulse control, their wisdom, whether or not they think their partner would dump them if she found out! how good looking he is (ie does anybody else even want him?) whether doing the right thing holds any significance to him or not...
How many options he believes his partner has... more than him?

Lot of variables.

All of this maths chat only stands up if both affair partners are attached - yes this happens but a lot of people cheat with someone who is single and therefore wouldn’t be classed as a cheater. The single partner may not even know the other person is attached.

My god, no. None of my male friends in particular would cheat on their partners and I know for certain that if one of them did, they'd be ostracised by the other men in the group. As PP. said, birds of a feather flock together

It’s also possible that they cheat and don’t tell their friends because they know they would all disapprove.

I used to work in a male dominated area and most of the men had loose morals. Don't know if they were typical or not.

The Yougov survey covers who the affair partners are. Men are more likely to cheat with work colleagues and sex workers than women: women ore likely to cheat with friends than men.

As the survey finds that women and men cheat in more or less equal numbers whether a small number of women are cheating with a larger number of men is beside the point.

This has randomly tickled me

That’s nonsense.

Of course some men do cheat, but so do some women. But for most ordinary men, finding a woman who is willing to have sex with him isn’t as easy as going into a bar to pick someone up or swiping on a dating app. Unless he is very attractive or high status, that approach isn’t going to work for him.

The thing is none of us can know for sure. Trusting someone not to cheat is not the same as knowing they haven’t cheated - its possible only the cheater will know. Hence why So many people are shocked to find their OH cheated.

To echo a PP, I’m shocked at the number of people I’ve come across who do, both male and female. From the outside they seem to be in happy committed relationships. Often they’re the ones constantly posting on social media about family first! Maybe they are actually perfectly happy they just want to get away with having fun on the side. My personal experience I’ve come across lots of men who are married or in long term relationships, who will try it on if the opportunity arises, and I am still surprised by that

I'm a gay guy and therefore I'm innately promiscuous and certainly likely to cheat. Nah, I've been with my dp for 22 years, never cheated (unless you can call a quick five finger shuffle, thinking about some randomer I may or may not know, cheating), and as far as I'm aware, dp hasn't cheated either and has never given me a reason to believe otherwise. Your friend is talking shit by saying all men cheat. Some do, some don't. Some women do too, some don't.

No, it's bullshit.

For starters, it's not "all men". It's "some people". Women are just as capable.

Secondly, this man's friends do not represent everyone. It speaks quite poorly of him.

When I used to be a drug addict, everyone I knew took lots of drugs. I genuinely thought that was normal, and was often heard to utter "everyone takes drugs, these days". I'm sure there are plenty of people reading this right now who do not take drugs, and don't really know of anyone who does. I just thought this way because I surrounded myself with like minded people. This is what your "friend" has done, OP.

I've never cheated, and I know very few people who have. Funnily enough, when I hung around with drug addicts, I did know a lot of them cheated. I have much better friends these days. Cheating is rare in my social circle.

I'm no Sherlock Holmes but to hazard a guess, I'd imagine having the opportunity to cheat might be a factor.

I would tend to agree. I also think some men have a conveniently restricted definition of what constitutes cheating, so don't see themselves as cheaters. My DH cheated on me, in my opinion and in the opinion of my female friends, but he would say that he didn't really cheat because there were no emotions involved (random snogs, online stuff, using sex workers). I just think men can compartmentalise these things more easily and don't see the harm if they don't get caught.

I believe it's half and half. DH came back from a stag beyond disgusted with someone talking about being unfaithful but totally sure it would never get back to the wife by brocode

I agree. My best friend was being cheated on by her husband and left him which according to him was disgusting behaviour on her part as he definitely wasn’t cheating on her. He was talking sexually with, having phone sex with and sexting with other men, he used male prostitutes, had one night stands with men and had a male friend with benefits but he absolutely wasn’t gay so it wasn’t cheating. He was very upset my friend would consider it cheating because he had never even thought about cheating with a woman.

Rubbish. My husband worked away for many years. I would stake our children’s lives on his fidelity.

I think that your friend said this to you so as to bait you, upset you or make you doubt your relationship.

In fact I wouldn’t be convinced that he actually believes what he said.

I think he’s shit stirring and not a good friend.

The gossip always suggests that everyone is getting loads of action. Late night liaisons at the office. Swinging in the 'burbs.

The reality in survey after survey is that people, once they're settled down, prefer TV to the simple aggravation of being unfaithful.

Not so many people want to acknowledge that life is that banal.

I know precisely one man who I know has been unfaithful. He was a contractor working in a foreign country without his wife. I also have my suspicions about 1 woman. That's it. No one else.

I daresay if I worked in banking or in a strip club my experience would be different but like most people I don't.

Btw the survey I mentioned above was premised on particular acts (including snogging) as infidelity so it's not as if any of the respondents could say 'yeah, I had a sex worker over every Tuesday but It didn't regard it as cheating so it wasn't'.

None of the men in my family (bar my ex-husband) have cheated or would ever cheat. It's never even come up as an issue. It's just not something they would ever do. All very long marriages.

Fascinatingly defensive responses/denial on this thread. The old figures of men who cheated on spouses was 73%. How or why it's dropped to 40-50% is hard to understand, given how many more avenues are now open for people to find cheating partners, with apps designed for this particular purpose, etc etc.

I think both sexes can and will cheat. Doesn’t mean all will. Out of everyone I know on a personal level I would say around 90% have cheated at some point in their lives. Most of them have only revealed it because someone else has come clean. Some are one time things and some are serial cheats who have cheated in every relationship. Friends hide it because it’s none of their business.

People are less likely to be pressured into entering or staying in marriages they don't want now, which might be a factor. Women are more able to leave so if a man wants to stay married, he might be more inclined to walk the line.

It's also possible that a lot of people don't count online affairs.

Agree with a PP that a lot more men cheat than most people would realise. It is incredibly common. Fabswingers is full of them.

But no, not all men cheat at all.

There's two elements to this really: your friend's comment reveals more about him than it does about your partner. It shows he has low personal moral standards and what he says tells you very little about what your partner does.

But I have to say I think there's a fair bit of truth in what he says. I think an awful lot of men would cheat if they thought they could get away with it and a large amount engage in "soft" cheating (a one-off snog, flirty messages but stopping short of actually having sex and having an affair).

I don't believe humans are emotionally or physically designed to remain faithful to one another for more than a few years if there's no external factor keeping them together (usually children or a shared property).

It's only the fear of losing these that stops people cheating (or keeps the cheating under the radar), as opposed to a sense of the importance of the individual they are in a relationship with.