Cheating is cheating but is it all the same?

[CommeUneVacheEspagnole]

Conversation with DH. Would love to hear your opinions.

Is it the same having an interaction with a virtual cam girl or someone in real life.

So... I'm saying if you have a sexual interaction with a cam girl or someone you know, the result is the same. I'm leaving.

He is saying there are different levels.

Me: yes they hit different but all interactions are worthy of leaving.
DH: The emotional impact will hit much harder with physical cheating. He would forgive a cam boy/girl as it is just physical and can be fixed. Real life cheating is unforgivable as the intentions are emotional.

For me this reeks of male bullshit.

No, you don't. You don't even have to know their names. I had really great sex with a guy whose name I never heard properly (he did tell me.ltell me, but i have crap ears and I'd been swimming earlier.) I was single though.

I do think it depends on your own boundaries. My first serious boyfriend after uni went away on holiday and came back really apologetic, telling me he'd kissed another woman. And i found thst because he was open about it, i didn't mind, I was just curious about her and what happened. I knew i was meant to be upset and jealous, but i just wasn't. He and I are still good friends - we visited his Dad in hospital together last weekend, in full knowledge of his current partner.

3 decades on, i am much the same - I don't mind if a guy I'm seeing has sex with someone else, as long as I know about it, they use condoms, have regular STI checks and it doesn't take time away from me. If he does it instead of being with me, that would make me unhappy, but if he sees someone when I'm busy, that's fine as long as it's not a secret. He also has to allow me the same freedom. I might not do anything about it, but I should have the choice to.

What I won't tolerate is secrecy. Seeing someone else when I don't know about it is not on. I don't want secret affairs or to go behind people's backs and cause hurt.

This wouldn't suit many people, and that's fine. Some people do need an emotional connection. Some people get very jealous. I don't. Any relationship needs to be built round the way we are. It's just we're all different.

For me, watching cam girls seems much seedier than getting with a real person in the flesh.

Honestly, you should take a leaf out of Birgitte in Borgen and not answer hypothetical questions!

I don't know if I could forgive either but for different reasons.

Cheating with someone husband has a connection with would be heartbreaking. Humiliating as well as they may know you- and may be impossible to cut out of your life depending on who they are.

Using a cam girl is using a sex worker. I'd be disgusted husband would treat another person so badly - sex work is using another person as a sex toy basically, it demeans them. It doesn't treat them as a whole person. I suspect I would permanently get the ick if he ever used a sex worker.

I think your last paragraph is why people think it's ok. They talk about it like it's generic porn created for the masses but it's a one on one interaction where they do things specifically for you.

I 100% agree with @Shineabrightlight that sexual interaction outside of the relationship is cheating. My DH says the same but that one can be forgiven. I don't think either can be forgiven.

I don't even know how this conversation came up last night 😂

For me both would be dealbreakers. I can see the logic that emotional cheating is worse than physical. It makes sense.

It’s just that I couldn’t either respect or be attracted to a man who had either cheated or used webcams. I would never be able to take him seriously or have sex with him so what would be the point of maintaining the relationship? There’s no point staying with someone you don’t like, respect or fancy.

Webcams are grim too. So tacky and low rent.

This is all just semantics surely? whether you call it cheating or harmless looking at women its deeply disrespectful to your partner and if you would keep it secret then its clearly something you know they would find a betrayal and find hurtful.

That begs the question- why are you deliberately doing something that you know would hurt your partner? That alone, regardless of the actual label you give it, indicates a lack of empathy, care and love for the person you are with and that speaks volumes about how you feel about the person you supposedly "love".

They're your personal boundaries. So you're both right. What's important is that he respects you saying that you're not comfortable with him doing something he thinks is fine. And that you're being reasonable in what boundaries you have.

He would forgive a cam boy/girl as it is just physical and can be fixed.

What can be fixed? The cheater's entitled attitude and lack of respect for their partner? Both of which would be present in both scenarios. Bleurgh.

Arguably sex cams are worse than cheating with someone in flesh because they are a form of exploitation - paying someone for sexual services. You cannot buy consent, and you cannot be certain that the person is 100% willing. An affair is less likely to exploit the other person (although of course a lot of affairs do actually involve massive imbalances in terms of respective ages, seniority etc.). But I think sex cams are more similar to using sex workers.

So for a physical affair I'd leave, and for sex cams I'd get the massive ick, lose all respect for my former partner as a person and then leave.

My DH says the same but that one can be forgiven. I don't think either can be forgiven

He doesnt get to decide universally what is able to be "forgiven" though does he? The person who gets to decide that is the person who is hurt by it. He might find it forgivable but that doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with his stance. Forgiveness is subjective and everyone has to determine their own boundaries of what they deem is forgivable and that will be different for everyone.

I’d be hurt/heartbroken by an ‘affair’.

A one night stand/cam girl/escort would fill me with disgust and contempt.

I think.

I’d consider leaving for both.

I tried to forgive my ex for a one night stand he had whilst off his face on drugs and gaslit myself into thinking this wasn't as bad as an emotional connection or ongoing affair. The reality was he was juts incredibly selfish and didn't care about or respect me enough not to have random sex with a stranger unprotected then sleep with me without protection a few days later. Unsurprisingly he was selfish in most other areas too. At least an emotional connection would have had some sort of point or thought to wrecking my life like he did.

Interesting discussion. Honestly, I think what would be the dealbreaker for me would be lying and intent. A random drunken one night stand? Tbh, I actually just wouldn’t want to know. Cam girls I wouldn't like- but if everything else in the relationship was ok, and it wasn’t hidden, then it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker.

Covering up an affair, and lying to my face? Absolutely unforgivable. I was in a relationship with a man, who it turns out, had a fiancé. And the depths of the lying, deceit and planning that went into having two women on the go was just staggering. The lies he was telling me as the ‘other woman’, if you like, must have been the tip of the ice berg compared with the lies he was telling his poor fiancé. There’d be no going back from that I’m afraid.

Oh, no. As in he would forgive me if I did it.

You're right, the results are both the same you're leaving.

Hes right, the levels are different.

@CommeUneVacheEspagnole

Oh, no. As in he would forgive me if I did it.

Yeah but it’s easy to say that: how many women use webcams? He knows the odds of that are minimal.

Oh yeah I get that, but is he then implying if he did it, you should do the same?

I suspect if you were looking at web cams and paying men with huge dicks to wave them around online he might not be as understanding of it as he thinks he'd be. Its very easy in a hypothetical scenario to be all forgiving but when it impacts your own personal insecurities it's a different matter. eg imagine if you were looking at men of the complete opposite physical type to him

All very well saying he'd forgive you for using a 'cam boy' when women don't use them and he knows that they don't 😂 What about if you struck up some kind of relationship online and you did the stuff that cam girls do for another man? Would he be so forgiving then I wonder?

Also forgiveness is only one part of it.
Someone finding out their husband/partner uses camgirls often do forgive and they don't have much anger over it, it often hurts their self esteem massively though and gives them body image issues or makes their own body image issues worse....so forgiving and being able to forget are very different.

Also some women are disgusted by it. They might not be angry and they can forgive but they get the major ick for want of a better word. You can't forgive the ick away!

So using cam girls can cause permanent damage to the relationship and particularly the sexual side of the relationship regardless of forgiveness or not.