Relationships can’t have been solid if his head was turned

[Hummingbirdie]

Saw another poster write this on a thread and it made me think, do people think if someone has an affair that the state of the marriage must have been to blame? How much is the cheating partners fault or is it a shared responsibility that it happened?

YABU it’s shared responsibility
YANBU a cheating spouse is to blame

I've never heard of a relationship where they have daily sex end up with either party cheating.

I agree with a lot of other posters.
The stresses of life affect people.
Sometimes, yes the relationship is just not right. Other times it’s not getting a break from the monotony of family life.
Of the couples I know who have been together a long time ( and without either of them cheating as far as I know,) in the vast majority of cases the woman always does the majority of the grunt work. The women: pack the children’s suitcases for holidays, check when they need new clothes, do the laundry, do the cooking and cleaning, take time off work for the children etc etc.
The men do a bit, but in general the women fuss around them and stop them becoming bored.
They also have help. Maybe cleaners, laundry service, babysitters, parents who help out a lot, child care for date nights etc etc.
The ones I know who have put their foot down and told their dh to do more, well they tend to be the ones who cheat or get cheated on as their ‘relationship’ becomes unhappy. They are more susceptible to cheat I think.
I’m always amazed at the number of women at work who the ones taking time off for childcare. Mention their dh and they all say the same: Oh dh can’t possibly take time off from his very important job, even the female managers say this when they earn more than their oh!
Anyway, it is complicated, humans are attracted by new and shiny, it’s weather you resist it.

I do know 2 other couples who have been together ages and none of them have cheated. Both men did cheat on their previous wives though. Both had children and left when the children were still relatively young. The new wives don’t have children and I think this helps sway the balance in their favour.

I'm surprised that so few women seem to understand there are a lot of men who treat sex as entertainment, stress relief, even a hobby. Its only relevance to the home relationship is that they know they are cheating, but probably feel that as an unreasonable condition they try to uphold for the wife's sake. If they fail a few times and she doesn't find out, no harm done (in their eyes).

Imagine you drive the ideal car for your lifestyle. It's comfortable, works well, looks good; you love it and are proud of it. Somebody offers to lend you a top-end performance car for the day! Naturally you bunk off work, climb into your Bugatti and spend the next several hours having the time of your life with this sleek engine of unprecedented power.

This is not a metaphor, because people don't swear fidelity to BMW or Volvo, but it's got some legs: Most drivers recognise the Bugatti would be a shit choice as a regular car and hand it back with a big smile on their face. Some, though, find this experience so much more rewarding that they abandon their Range Rover and all the needs (children, shopping) it satisfies. They keep renting performance cars until, one day, they buy one and depart forever, leaving the family car and family behind.

It's not the family car's fault. It's just that he couldn't have a BMW and a performance sports car, so he did the next best thing.

Plenty of women like "driving Bugattis" too, but the potential risks and consequences are greater for us so we tend to weigh things up more carefully.

I know a woman who regularly cheats on her long term partner. Her only excuse is that she doesn't think monogamy is for her but she 'loves' her partner and wants them to be together. Not sure how she'd feel if he was the one cheating.

This is impossible to sustain in a long term relationship though. There will always be times when someone is ill, or stressed or tired! And if it's the only way to prevent my dh from cheating, then frankly an OW would be welcome up him! I want a man who can remain loyal even when life isn't 100% perfect. Because it's impossible for life to always be without problems or boredom.
If someone can only be faithful when they are getting sex every day, then it's a shit relationship.

lol the number of relationships where there is consistent daily sex must be vanishingly small

"This is impossible to sustain in a long term relationship though. There will always be times when someone is ill, or stressed or tired! And if it's the only way to prevent my dh from cheating, then frankly an OW would be welcome up him! I want a man who can remain loyal even when life isn't 100% perfect. Because it's impossible for life to always be without problems or boredom.
If someone can only be faithful when they are getting sex every day, then it's a shit relationship."

This is the issue. People value sex differently. People have different sex drives. If these are incompatible in a relationship there will be problems.

I voted YANBU as the cheating partner is ALWAYS to blame. There may be valid issues in the relationship, and the answer to that is, if unhappy then LEAVE and then be free to peruse other opportunities. Staying, while unhappy, and then using that unhappiness as an excuse is a weird childish cop out.

I think what @HoppingPavlova says is broadly technically logically correct, but it's really not anywhere near simple.

It's 1000 tiny things that add up to something that should never happen; I found myself quite scared when I realised that work felt more like home then home did.

And it's not like I planned it. And it's not like I wanted it. It was a slow slow slow drip effect that eventually took over everything.

One week before, if you'd told me I should leave my marriage for someone else, I'd have died laughing. There was nothing wrong, but my close friendship evolved over time under severe severe anxiety and stress.

a person makes a choice to cheat and its for a number of reasons and very often it has nothing to do with their relationship

I think the vast majority of men will cheat if they have the opportunity to without being caught, not a popular opinion on MN but that's from not just my life experience but many people I know/have known

@HRTQueen I agree. On some level they feel they 'deserve' their extra curricular sex life and are arrogant enough to think they don't get caught. And they are capable of separating out their actions from the potential consequences and harm caused. Some people are just very very entitled.
And (huge generalisation and I know there are exceptions) I think it's mostly men because women tend to think about consequences more, especially for their children.

@Holidayhell22 The ones I know who have put their foot down and told their dh to do more, well they tend to be the ones who cheat or get cheated on as their ‘relationship’ becomes unhappy.

I would totally agree with this.

When my exH was working long hours I did everything - even though I worked F/T and was the main breadwinner.
I encouraged him to get a promotion with shorter hours and more money so we could spend more time together.
He got the promotion and as he had more free time I asked him to do more about the house. He turned into a "gunner" = "I'm gunner do it tomorrow."
He also took up a hobby that was all consuming and sometimes kept him out of the house 5 nights a week.

I tried everything, I tried to reason with him, nagged him, shouted at him, finally I was at my wits end and stopped cooking, cleaning and doing laundry.
At the same time I secretly consulted a solicitor about a divorce.

His response was to spin a sob story about his 'unreasonable wife' to his employees at work and managed to suck in a younger women who felt sorry for him. They had an affair and I divorced him.

Years later they married so obviously she doesn't mind being a skivvy 🙄