Is it possible to cheat on someone you love ? Have you ?

[ownbrand]

Im a regular but have nc and im asking for obvious reasons . I was cheated on and cannot find peace with it despite it being nearly two years ago . I often wish i had simply ended things back then . Have you ever cheated on someone you love ? If you were the injured party have you managed to come to terms with it ?

I do not beleive that my partner has been completeley honest with me about what happened and its likeley this is why i cannot put it behind me .

What do you think he could be hiding? That there was more than one?

No , it was very obvious at the time so clearly not an experienced cheat . I think i have not got all the details , i think he minimized the extent of it which i understand is common . I have read that unless someone comes completeley clean they are not truly sorry and that bothers me . Theres no use asking him again as i think he is now caught in the lie trap .

Ive also read that cheating is caused by underlying resentment or a desire to punish your partner . Either way its a conscious choice and i dont beleive in accidants or mistakes .

I think people can disengage and fall into someone else if they're the type of person who needs validation/attention/selfish (which we all can be) and mistake love for lust. I also think they can realise what they're doing isn't right and wish they could erase what they have done and feel guilty for the rest of their lives and realise they do love their spouse.

I don't think lust and butterflies has anything to do with love and family but people get confused, relationships are really hard work.

Hmmm I think it depends of the type of cheating.

Could you have a long term affair if you love someone? I don't think so because of the amount of deceit and planning involved. I don't see how you could do that to someone you say you love. A drunked, one-night stand, a one-off, I think is different.

I don't think that cheating is caused by underlying resentment or a desire to punish your partner. There are many reasons why people have affairs.

Not sure this is what you want to hear but trying to answer your question. No never cheated on a partner and I could never forgive or forget if my DF cheated on me. He knows and I know we wouldn't be together if he did, married or not married.. I dumped my first proper boyfriend because I found out he had snogged snog, shag, BJ or whatever makes no difference to me a girl on a night out. His excuse was he was drunk and didnt realise what he was doing.. i was heart broken but his excuse didnt shake my resolve and i ended our two year relationship immediately. I was 18 years old 37 now. I cant / couldnt live with that kind of dishonest behaviour.

I understand everyone is different though and some people can move passed an affair. I am not one of those people though...

I have cheated by having a O.N.S. I was in a sexless relationship for 2 months and he showed no interest in my sexually. So yeah I went out and slept with someone else and it was the best sex I have ever had. Do I feel guilty? No. Why should I if he'd have satisfied my needs I wouldn't have gone looking elsewhere.
I finished him the next day just said the relationship isn't going anywhere. xx

Thanks for commenting on my thread. So sorry you've been through this too, and its still troubling you 2 years later.

Where I'm at now i want to believe dragonsarereal answer but I don't know if I'm deluding myself and making myself feel better.

Currently struggling through a sexless relationship. Has been a few months. I think I could understand the desire to cheat in that situation.... for me it's the need to feel wanted and desired, and how unhappy the situation is making me.

I've not cheated, but I'm finding that I am more sympathetic to how it can happen at the moment than I've ever been.

What makes you think you don't know the full story?

Did you both have time apart to absorb what happened? Have you rebuilt slowly?

I think one of the most difficult things is that cheating produces its own circular conundrum. Normally affairs happen for one of two reasons; someone is by nature quite selfish and entitled and tends towards taking and deceit, or else they really are struggling to be happy in their primary relationship and are looking for a foolish way of ending it or getting something they lack elsewhere in life. in either circumstance it's very difficult to trust that person again or forgive or practically solve the cause. The first is personality and someone needs to be prepared to see it and do a lot of work on themselves, and the second is the dynamic of the relationship and the cheater clearly has trouble bringing it up and addressing it and has just made it a whole lot harder.

I have cheated and been cheated on and I can honestly say that of course you can betray somebody you love. Love is not the hard bit. We don't spend every moment of every day in a state of constant, intense empathy with the person we're with, even when things are going well. Cheating takes this lack of empathy to another level but it's not about lack of love. But something somewhere is a bit rotten and wrong. And if it's not dealt with honestly and openly at the time it will fester for years, as it seems to have done here.

I'm so sorry for your pain.

I had a EA while married. I guess I didn't see it as 'proper' cheating as it never got physical. For me it was an exit affair.

I had been unhappy in my marriage for a long time (my H was unhappy too but buried his head in the sand). The EA gave me the strength to end my marriage. I regret hurting my H (he found out) but I felt totally unloved, unappreciated and invisible. I was married to an emotionally detached man who wouldn't talk to me or show me any interest in me and it was soul destroying. It was totally 100% my choice to get involved with the OM, I had my head turned, but once I ended my marriage I realised OM wasn't the answer and that ended too.

BTW I had never cheated on anyone before and was with my H for 22 years and never thought I was capable of it, but it happens.

Thank you to all of you for replying .

Sex in our relationship was not an issue . It was a Ons thing with someone he had known for a relativeley short period of time . I belive he became quite attatched to her although he denys this . Either way it affected how he felt about me .leaving him unsure if he wanted to continue our relationship for a short time .

Worse he knew i was uncomfortable about this developing freindship but disregarded my feelings about it .

This cheating occured very soon after he was diagnosed with a very serious health condition , he obviously turned away from me to her . I think i have got the gentle version of what actually happened between the two of them , but not the full truth .

Tessa , i am still unsure of which one of those things applys to my partner.

I understand, own. He will be unable to tell you as everyone rationalises to some extent and almost all cheaters would rather view themselves as the one trapped in a relationship where their needs were not being met. So make sure you don't trust his account.

The best guide is to look for other examples throughout your relationship before this where your partner behaved selfishly, entitledly, narcissistically, secretively and with disregard for the truth. If you speak to someone a bit more objective, a friend or family member about them and describe these events or behaviors, would they be judgmental? Rather than rough and tumble of normal relationships? If so, they may be the sort of personality prone to affairs.

However, if you can't think of examples like this very easily, and the justification and explanations as to why he was unfaithful ring true to you (even if they are unpleasant) and you recognise the issues in your dynamic as having been created mutually and maybe familiar to you throughout your life, then it might be worth looking at the relationship a bit as well. Of course there is no excuse for infidelity, either way.

Doesn't sound like he's been helping you much through this anyway. Which is sad.

ownbrand it's not surprising that you feel the way you do if you don't believe what your H has told you about his affair. I think you need to kow the whole truth if there is any hope of your relationship working. Did he confess to you or did you find out? Have you had any counselling?

It sounds like he did have a emotional attachment to her, I've been there and it is incredibly hard to disengage, you are caught up in something that isn't real, that nobody else knows about and it is addictive. Is she competely off the scene now?

Men can and often do. I know plenty who love their wives and are still with them but have cheated, usually when away with the lads. Obviously their partners don't know!

Ownbrand You are in such an emotionally difficult place and I am really sorry you are going through this.

I think two of the questions you need to ask yourself are simply Can you live the rest of your life in this turmoil? and Will/Could you ever believe anything he says to you regarding his affair/ONS? If the answer is no then you really need to consider whether this relationship is right for you because do you really want to stay with someone you don't trust for the rest of your life? Do you really want to live with those doubts? There are no excuses for cheating and only the cheater will try to rationalise their behaviour. Unfortunately in some cases the innocent and hurt partner also tries to rationalise the cheaters behaviour to try and save the relationship. But the truth is people cheat because they choose to cheat (regardless of underlying cause) and they know what they are doing is wrong when the start doing it but they are more concerned with their own gratification than the damage their actions cause. Regardless of their reasoning, they are fully aware of what they are doing when they do it. Ownbrand whether you stay with him or leave you need to do what is right for you and only you in the long term.

You mentioned he got attached to OW and was unsure if he wanted to be with you. Why did he stay in the relationship? Was this because the OW ended the affair/wouldn't continue with an affair post the ONS or commit to a long term relationship with him? Or was he the one that ended the affair? How did you find out about the affair? Did he confess?

I have examined his charecter with a fine tooth comb . There really has only been the usual ups and downs but i now realise that we / i , had some poor boundrys and that we did not communicate well .

It was obvious that something had happened because he returned home early from a work conferance where ow was . I asked him and he told me . He claimed he had regretted it and didnt want anything further to happen with her . I will never know but i wonder if in fact she had told him that nothing further was going to happen .

Was the ONS a work college? Was there a friendship building up between the tow of them for some time?

Forgot to say that Ow was working with his company for only a short time . I get the impression they clicked straight away and then they started confiding / supporting about this health issue . I do not know why he wanted the support and understanding of someone he bareley knew .

I also do not beleive that this cocasion was the only time anything had happened . Does it really go from freinds to more in such a big leap

Are they still in touch at all? How long was she working there for?

Is your main worry that it would have continued on if she hadn't stopped it?