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.

This ! No excuses. If you are that unhappy then LEAVE.

The number of people who say they cheated as they were so unhappy and how the ex was so awful.....yet they stayed. Funny how they say all that when they get caught.

How many people cheating do you actually know? I don't think I know that many and it's not something that really comes in the conversation😂

Cheating is wrong and it makes you a bad person.
Of course it doesn't. It's never black and white, and both partners in the relationship that' broken are at fault. It doesn't mean they are a bad person.

Some women marry men they never really loved in the first place.

Because sometimes there are kids whose family you don't want to divide up?

Because sometimes the parter stops having sex woth you?

As I said, my mum cheated. She says herself that my dad did absolutely nothing wrong. She just didn’t love him any more. So he was at fault for him just being him? The same person she married?

Those kids are still there when those parents have an affair though, and risk dividing up the family in a far more acrimonious way. My mum said she stayed ‘for the children’. Well we were really happy when my dad caught her with another bloke, I can tell you 😏.

I know of someone trapped in an abusive relationship who did it purely to be able to get a divorce. She didn't want to but she knew the ex would never ever agree based on his on abusive relationship so basically forced it by "having an affair". She's regretted it ever since but in that circumstance she took a drastic step in the hope it would get her away from him. And knowing the person she was involved with I understand completely why she felt it was her only option.

Not a good enough excuse. You're still putting your family unit in jeopardy by cheating.

Nope. If you're not happy, leave first.

People’s lives are messy and complicated and people make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect.

I don’t think cheating is ever the ‘right’ thing to do but there are certainly situations in which I can understand see how/why it’s happened, and I don’t necessarily think it makes someone a terrible person. It can make someone a good person who did something wrong, for a reason I can understand.

Whether I would judge someone for it really depends on the manner and motivation of it. I’ve known people who have cheated in ways that has made me despise them for it. I’ve also known people who have cheated in ways that have made me think ‘What a difficult situation for everyone involved and I hope it eventually works out for the best.’

And do you feel the same if it's the man cheating? I've cheated and been cheated on. It involves lies, gaslighting and often using "family" money to fund the affair. Nothing about any of those things makes it possible to say cheating is not wrong. Whether or not that makes the person a bad person is a more difficult question. Very few people are all good or all bad, but that doesn't soften the wrongness of the act of cheating.

No I don’t. Men are inherently selfish. If they cheat, it’s because they want to. When women do, it’s because they have to. Exceptions exist of course, but that’s generally the rule in my experience.

There is rarely, if not never, anything wrong with how you feel. However, the right thing to do would be to end one relationship before starting another. It's the only decent thing to do. That's how I see it.

Cheating but staying for the kids is stupid.

A friendly divorce vs a betrayed divorce lead to very different outcomes.

Add An abusive ex who can then poison the children with well mummy/daddy cheated and play the poor poor me card isn’t something you should give to an abuser.

Well we could live together but mummy:daddy was too busy sleeping with someone else because we were not enough for them. Look they have left us. They don’t want and love us. That type of bs an abusive ex will use.

Sorry but I disagree.

I do agree life isn’t black and white. However, if you’re lonely, neglected, etc., end the relationship.

OP, I absolutely get where you're coming from. I'm in the same situation; I'm in a relationship where the other half makes no effort and i really need an out.

On the other hand, I really need to step up and just say "look, this isn't working for me" instead of being a people pleaser and keeping it going, but, I really think people should be honest with each other and end the relationship first, nomatter how difficult it is.

I do understand that it's not always that easy.

I don't think theres any such thing as a "rule" in human behaviour.

We all have personal agency, we can all get ourselves out of a situation that makes us unhappy if we choose to.

Cheating is abusive, it removes the right to informed sexual consent and personal agency. It involves gaslighting, manipulation, minimising, dehumanising of the betrayed party and lying. It puts the betrayed party at risk of STIs and mental health issues.

It passes pain on.

It’s black and white as far as I’m concerned.

I agree, OP. People who say that you should leave the relationship first aren’t considering the way that some women are trapped and controlled.

All these posters who talk of ‘trapped women’, would you feel the same if the person the trapped woman was self soothing with was YOUR husband? Really would you?

This is actually a pretty common dynamic. Trapped woman becoming close to a married man who doesn’t feel as needed at home because his wife is capably raising the kids, dealing with the home, working at the same time etc etc. these men become KISAs - Knights in shining armour to these unhappy women.

Affair gets found out, and the person who is then left traumatised, anxious, with ptsd symptoms is the wife in the background. Damage to the family and to the children involved.

Affairs pass pain on, they ALWAYS pass pain on. There are ways of doing things in a healthy way.

Trapped and controlled to the extent that they can’t leave, but are able to find the time and freedom to conduct an affair?

To be able to have an affair, you have to repeatedly deceive and lie to your partner. You are also giving them the delusion that they are in a monogamous relationship - gaslighting. If you are having sex with them, you are denying them informed consent, because they do not know you are putting them at risk of STDs.

We are the sum of our actions. That means you cannot do these things and be a good person. It's like the idiot celebrities who get caught out in wrong-doing and say 'this isn't who I am'. Yes, it's exactly who you are.

I say this as someone who had an affair, and saw what it did to my then-partner. It showed me what kind of person I had become. I did not want to be that person, so I vowed never to cheat again - and I never have.

If I were a different type of person, I could have made excuses for myself, and they would have appeared to be true - to me, to others, and probably even to him, because no relationship is perfect, and we should have broken up sooner. But luckily, even when I was a selfish arsehole, I was self-aware enough to know that, and empathic enough to genuinely regret what I had done to him (I wasn't caught, I confessed). Luckily for me, because if I had chosen the other option, I'd have become a different person to the one I am today. A worse person, who would have cheated again, because I would have been a person who believed that cheating could be justified.

Cheating is on the cheater - it isn't 50/50 at all. That's just the lie of the reconciliation industry, since 'this relationship is not salvageable because you are tied to an accomplished liar' doesn't bring in anywhere near so much money.

There is always another way. And however difficult, I'd venture it's less difficult all round than having an affair. I've never seen honesty result in a worse outcome than deception in the long term.

I think where people are being abused it can be the way out they need. So I agree OP, it’s never black and white.

And you’d be ok if the abused woman was using your husband as her way out? Or the husband of someone you loved dearly, families you loved dearly, affected. Would that be ok? Would you be happy to take one for the woman’s team? Seriously, I can’t get my head around this!

@Kidsgotothatschool calm down. I can see this is a sensitive issue for you. When someone is being abused no, I don’t think cheating is bad. I would rather an abused woman finds a path out.