To think that cheating doesn’t always make you the bad guy?

[RegretfulJaneDoe]

Sometimes you’re trapped, lonely, emotionally neglected. People want clean villains and heroes but real life is messier than that.

Cheating is always wrong but that doesn't mean the other person in the relationship isn't also doing something wrong. It's also easy to say the cheater should leave but we all know it's not that simple (financial issues, DC involved etc).

I say that as someone who was cheated on for 2+ years. Tbh, it wasn't the cheating itself that left the most damage, it was the lies, gaslighting, emotional coldness and other behaviour during the affair (the script basically) that was the most damaging for me at a time when I was particularly vulnerable for other reasons.

Real life is messy, but no one is forced to lie and cheat. There are always choices involved. Even in the most difficult of relationships, someone about to cheat for the first time has the power to decide what happens next. They can choose to cheat, or walk away, or to end their relationship. The fact that life gets messy isn’t an excuse for making the most selfish and hurtful of choices.

If you’re cheating because the other person is bad, it just makes you both bad in different ways. Rather than putting your time and energy into cheating, you’d be better to invest it in leaving.

With cheating, you may not be a bad person, but you are doing something bad.

The reasons may somehow be justifiable (although I'm not sure they generally are), but that doesn't mean that what is happening isn't bad. Cheating on a partner involves lies, deception, breach of trust, breach of the agreement to be exclusive to each other and behaviours towards someone you are supposed to love that are not loving.

Clearly, all of those behaviours make the person cheating an "obvious villain" for want of a better term and it may well be that the person they are cheating on is a piece of work, but two wrongs will never a right make!!

Life is too nuanced to be that black and white

You can't judge another until you've walked in their shoes.

A person whose self esteem is so low due to years of abuse, and has their head turned by someone being kind to them is a very different cheat to someone who has multiple one night stands just because they can.

No, she could have left him and pursued another relationship when single. Why are the only options cheating or staying with him forever?

Bit biased, don’t you think?

YABU

I can agree that sometimes cheating happens on the background of a failing/unhappy relationship, rather than in a vacuum, BUT if you are unhappy for whatever reason and/or find someone else, then a decent person will end the relationship before cheating.

Cheating isn’t just the physical act, it’s the lying, the concealment and so on that goes with it. I’ve been cheated on. It hurt, it damages self-confidence and trust in yourself and your judgement, it damages your trust on other people. It is a horrible, shifty thing to do. There isn’t really a good justification, other possibly being in an abusive relationship (but then I still think you’d be better off ending it for that reason that cheating). All the “but we weren’t happy”/“I felt emotionally neglected” etc might be the reasons why you were tempted, but they are just excuses- if it’s bad enough to feel justified in cheating, it’s bad enough that you should end the relationship before you cause harm to someone you once cared enough about to have a relationship with.

it’s not about hero’s vs villains, and you are right life is not straightforward, but we can all choose how we behave and the actions we take. Cheating is a choice you make. There might be reasons as to why you are in the position where you want to, but you don’t have to do it, you make the choice to do so. And it is a shitty thing to do to someone, even if you no longer care for them as you once did or are angry with them, or hurt. It’s the difference between having integrity and lacking it.

I say again- if you are unhappy then address it and work on your relationship- or if your partner won’t agree to that/pays lip service to it, or you feel the problems are unsolvable, then you end the relationship.

It's one of these scenario where it's very easy to judge on the outside and be a keyboard warrior, but real life is never that simple.

You do have a lot of bitter ex-wives on MN, who already resent and hate the new partner of their ex, and can't get over the fact that he moved on and is happy. Even if they were already separated when they met. Don't expect a lot of understanding around cheaters.

The word "cheating" in the title of the thread will attract a lot of them.

Somewhat controversially, I think situations where one part of a couple treats the other as the housekeeper and nanny and doesn't lift a finger to maintain their shared home and thinks the other person should shut up and do it, and doesn't do any actual parenting of their children, is much worse behaviour than cheating. Its fucking disgraceful to just opt out of being a parent under the excuse of work or mental health or whatever bullshit people come out with, and I think its abhorrent for anyone to think their partner should be doing all the housework for them just because... woman? SAHM? Whatever bullshit. Women are not house elves. Men treat women like appliances and not whole people and its so normalised people dont see how fucked up it is.

My opinion is that cheating is always a bad choice to make.

I also completely understand some people will disagree because the other person in the relationship may be controlling, miserable, nasty. BUT 2 wrongs don’t make a right. If you are able to sleep around behind your partners back or have an emotional affair then you are still not making a good choice imo. I don’t think cheating is “OK” because your partner is bad.

I would never, ever judge someone for leaving their awful partner and then perusing someone they felt a possible connection with.

If you're able to conduct an affair then you're able to leave.

People will always find ways to excuse their bad behaviour though. But the question still stands - why didn't you leave first?

Too many people want to have their cake and eat it. It's much easier to stick with what you know while you test the water elsewhere.

Cheating is the emotionally stunted way of escape for some. It still doesn't make it right.

I think women in abusive relationships who cheat as a way of leaving a are more to be pitied than censured. The fact they have not been able to leave the relationship of their own accord and need to be rescued by another man is usually symptomatic of chronically low self-worth. I have no sympathy for abusive husabnds who get cheated on, after all they have already broken their vows by treating their wife so terribly, BUT, although some people have posted positive stories about these women finding a great guy, the reality is that most of they time they are walking out of the frying pan into the fire.

The other case where I would extend a lot of grace and understanding is where a partner has ended up the long-term carer for the other, particularly in cases where the cared-for partner has become in some way cognitively impaired. I know a couple where she had early onset dementia. She lived for the best part of a decade, at first with him and then in a home. Once she was in the home he struck up a relationship with a women in a similar position he met through a support group. He still dutifully visited her, cared for her and did all he could to make her comfortable but he also took a great deal of comfort and joy from his new relationship. What good would have been served by him telling his wife or even trying to initiate a divorce?

It’s always easy to trot out leave if you’re unhappy. Of course, that’s the right thing but in reality people don’t for many reasons,

financial
fear of losing children
fear of sharing children 50:50 or eow
giving up financial security, nice home for kids etc to a life much harder
impact to children on marriage breakdown and parents separating
and so on

not saying it’s ok in these situations but it makes it much harder than just leave

eg if you’re a man and sole earner to a sahm. You’re likely to lose your home, money, children.

if you’re a mum who has low income and your husband provides well but now you’ll have a to go back to work ft, or live on benefits etc

so no I don’t think it’s right, no I don’t think it’s black and white, yes cheaters can be good people , is the cheater always bad and non cheater always good ? No

on here though it’s always the mantra of leave first but real like is much more complex than that as are peoples relationships

In an ideal world, people would leave before anything like that happened. I guess what I was getting at is that life and emotions don’t always move neatly like logic does. Sometimes people stay because of fear, kids, finances or hope that things might change, even when they’re deeply unhappy. It’s not to excuse it, just to say the reasons are often more complex than they seem from the outside.

There's cheating when you need someone out of the blue, and you fall head over hill losing common sense. Thi gs might even ve fine with your partner.

Then there are the cheaters who just cheat because they don't really care how it impacts on others and they justify why their needs are more important.

Finally you get the cheaters who want out but to only give up what suits whilst keeping the rest. The women who look for someone else to replace the guy she got to dislike or hate but who still want the financial security. They cheat and only move on when they can shift the security onto someone else.

Men are more likely to fall into the second category, the women in the third.

Either way, it's a selfish act.

I am on the other side of that. I am also married but my husband is well aware so I am not 'cheating' as such. Our relationship doesn't work but we rub along as housemates and our financial situation is such that we can't afford to live apart for now. My boyfriend (which is what I call him) is a long term carer in similar terms to that which you set out. I know he agonised over it for many years before he met me, it's certainly not open or understood from the people on his side, more everyone turns a blind eye when he disappears off for whatever reason. I have absolutely no interest in forcing him to leave her formally. They've been married over forty years. Her life is limited and what will be will be. It is not what I would necessarily recommend or condone in others, but he is desperatly trying to have his own life, love, space away from the pressures of providing that support and I can't judge him for that.

Exactly this.

Life isn’t black and white but if you’re ‘trapped, lonely or emotionally neglected’ in your relationship, if you’re a moral person, you end the relationship, you don’t cheat.

not saying it’s ok in these situations but it makes it much harder than just leave
So it comes down to what tou value first, your self-interests or integrity.

Sadly, integrity has lost most of its meaning and value in the last few generations.

If only life was so simple.

Cheating always is a gendered issue, i've seen it happen to a couple of guys i know, where wife has cheated, and the general reaction was "he must have been doing something wrong for her to look elsewhere".

Whereas every guy who cheats is automatically a wanker who only thinks with his dick.

If you're feeling lonely and emotionally neglected you have two options to address this

1. Work together with your partner to improve the relationship
2. Leave

Having an affair is never the answer.

It's only as complicated as you make it 🤷‍♀️