To not care about cheating?

[MarzipanGenius]

Just that, really. I love DH very much, we’re not polyamorous and I have no interest in an open relationship. However, I read posts on here about cheating and the results at heartbreak and - while I have every sympathy for the posters, I don’t ‘get’ it on any real level. The idea of DH stepping out with someone else doesn’t really bother me at all.

I’ve always felt like this. In every relationship I’ve ever been in. I don’t say it out loud in real life, as I don’t think people would react well.

Anyone else feel like this? Am I alone?

Your first para is basically what I was thinking. People being different appears to make some commenters really angry, as well!

I think you are reading the superior tone into it. I don't feel any superior tone at all.
I think that's more reflective of how you feel than what the OP is communicating. Your use of the word 'fucking' ti further demonise it is telling.

I appreciate that I can’t know how I’d feel
until I’m in that position. However (I said this above, so forgive the copy/paste), it’s theoretical for everyone until they have to contend with it. A lot of people seem to have a visceral reaction to the very idea. I don’t have that.

Says more about you than the OP

This is interesting. I didn’t feel the upsurge of bone crushing love until my son was five or six months old. I loved him, but it didn’t hit me until
then. I don’t remember feeling anything at all when he was born. I could see from DH’s face that he was going through something transformative, but I didn’t have that experience.

It’s genuinely really nice to know that I’m not alone!

That's why he had been calling me an ugly bitch and criticising me for still breathing for the last year, until I was a nervous wreck.

I’d have considerably more of a problem with this than I would him having sex with someone else.

I’m so sorry all this happened to you. I hope you’re alright, now.

I care and I don't. I just don't really care a lot about stuff like that (if they did it or I did it).

I have been cheated on and I think I do feel a bit like you about it OP. I found out very much after the fact, after our relationship ended and he moved out. I also found out from other people, never him (it is true, I have proof).

I wasn't bothered about our marriage ending (it wasn't great TBH). I wasn't bothered about him shagging someone else. What hurt was being lied to for years. That kind of behaviour messes with your head and makes you lose all confidence in your own judgement. The way that a cheating partner behaves can also mess with your head. Some (not all, but mine definitely did) will be hostile towards their original partner as a way of managing the cognitive dissonance over having an affair. I was treated like shit when exh started cheating because it helped ease his conscious.

If he had been honest about looking for sex and attention elsewhere and had been a bit nicer to me whilst doing it, I probably wouldn't have cared. But he was a lying arsehole about the whole thing. And still denies it to this day even though I have seen CCTV of them shagging (he doesn't know this though!).

I know three people like this, who are of the’as long as he maintains his responsibilities, is discreet and is affectionate towards me’, I’m not bothered.

One woman is enjoying her life seemingly unbothered.

One divorced her husband after many years of infidelity, but only because her teenage daughter caught him and his OW in the outhouse he built for extended family visiting. He was getting increasingly sloppy, so this was kind of inevitable.

Third lady also carrying on, seemingly unbothered, except she doesn’t know his very long term affair has produced a child that he’s actively engaged with.

It's okay to feel how you do, as long as you are prepared for any fallout that may / not occur. There’s no guarantee once sex becomes frequent, that feelings won’t develop.

I would find those things very hurtful.

I think that for some (not all, by any means) people, it is the physical act of cheating that horrifies them, though. Based on things people have said.

I agree, OP. It wouldn’t be any kind of deal-breaker for me, or at least I feel it’s unlikely to be. Much of the behaviour that’s regarded as normal on the Relationships board — men who don’t pull their weight in childcare, domestic gruntwork, general life planning, managing a work-life balance, men who are usually elsewhere, men who don’t communicate, men whose emotions are reserved for Spurs matches etc — would rank far, far above infidelity as things I’d end my marriage for.

Thanks for the kind words. Almost all betrayed wives will tell you the same, it isn't "just" about him getting between the sheets with someone else. That's the point I'm making. When a man gets emotionally or sexually involved with someone else it does have an effect on your relationship and the way he views you. He will replace you in his emotions.

At best he will become distant and not want to talk/do anything with you. At worst, he will see you as a lesser being, someone to actually despise, someone who doesn't meet his expectations. Trust me, it's a very rare situation where a bloke is getting sex, love or emotional support from someone else and it has absolutely zero negative effect on you as the wife. I hope you never have to find out.

I don't think it's something a person can really know how they'd feel about it until it happens in their relationship.

A bit like people that believe they would fight back if attacked. Those people sometimes find out they freeze instead. A completely different reaction to what they thought they would have.

In my younger days it would have been absolutely shattering, but as I've matured I've realised that men are opportunistic about sex and a one off drunken bonk would not end my marriage but an affair would.

I wouldn’t care either. I’d like to have an affair tbh but have no idea how to go about it.

I’d be absolutely heart broken if my DH cheated in any form. It would shatter my whole belief of what we have. I find it difficult to imagine how it couldn’t, but each to their own obviously.

Stop being a dick. The OP is not claiming “cool girl” plaudits or showing off in any way she is commenting on the fact that her reaction to something is unconventional.

I can sort of understand this: I wouldn’t be relaxed about sexual cheating but I would be far more upset about the dishonesty than the physical act.

I really dislike the way “cool” has become a catch all put down for small minded people who are made uncomfortable by any evidence that another person sees things a different way.

Your DH is much luckier than mine because if I ever found mine had slept with someone else (romantic emotions involved or not), I'd fuckning hit the roof and it would be the end of the marriage.

I expect him to be faithful to me as I am to him. To me, that's just the bare minimum of being in a relationship with someone you love.

Ain't got no time for cheater, cheater, pumpkin eaters.

Agree.
Pretty sure I could forgive but if he was to empty the bank account.....,,.that would be far worse.

Get help for your emotional detachment.

This is pretty much how I feel. All of those would be dealbreakers for me. Sex with someone else would not.

If my partner had sex with someone else, it's not the sex that would upset me. It's not like I'm the only person he's ever slept with. And I also understand sex for the sake of sex, it doesn't have to be emotional.

Where I would have a problem, is I didn't sign up to it. I signed up to monogamy.

I would be valid at the cheating, lies and disrespect rather than the sex itself.

If he cheats, he's gone. It's as simple as that. A ONS or an affair,I don't care and it wouldn't break my heart because I wouldn't want a man like that anyway.

Well it's not only about the sex bit only. It's everything that happens around it, the betrayal of trust you put in someone.

So, if your DH would tell you next friday that he's off to shag an old friend he bumped into who he's got no romantic feelings for, you would be Ok with that? Bacause there was no lying or gaslighting?

Op, your stance is neither here nor there unless it happens to you. I think women mostly get upset by the lying and the utterly ghastly way cheating men behave. Plus there is the fallout that tends to leave women in a worse financial position.