Can alcohol ever be an excuse for cheating?

[destroyedandanonymous]

My OH cheated on me and said she was so drunk she don’t know how or why it happened. Is this possible?

I think on the whole people say and do what they really want to say or do when they are drunk.

Going back to the OPs question, given that it was clarified that she was not so drunk that she was unconscious, then the excuse of being drunk is simply a cop-out to avoid talking about her cheating on you.

This may be for perfectly understandable reasons - she might be confused about how she feels about you. She may have feelings of guilt about cheating on you which are uncomfortable for her to accept. The two of you need to talk this through and find out what it was all about, but this requires that she is honest to herself first before she can be honest to you.

This can take time, but not too much time. Good luck.

OP - It depends on exactly HOW drunk she was.

If she was really drunk, but still able to move around freely, speak to others, etc, all in all, being DRUNK but not utterly HAMMERED, then no, I don't think that it is a reasonable excuse for cheating.

However, if she was so drunk that she was incapacitated (and I don't mean unconscious - the law sees these as two separate issues - you cannot give consent when UNCONSCIOUS and you also cannot give consent if you are too drunk. Two. Separate. Things.), then she was a victim of sexual assault.

But none of us can know which category your partner falls into.

There are some very worryingly 1950 esque views on consent on this thread, which make for very sad reading. Still very much in the vein of "it's up to women to police their behaviour otherwise what do they expect"? Having worked with victims of rape before, they often blame themselves, even when there is (quite obviously) absolutely no need for them to do so. How wonderful, therefore, that there apparently (still) exist people who are willing to attribute blame in the same way.

It's really quite pathetic really.

sykadelic, In UK law, a woman can commit a sexual assault but not a rape. Our legal definition of rape is 'penetration with a penis'.

Although just to muddy the water, I believe a woman can be charged with 'conspiracy to rape' if she is involved in aiding/encouraging a man to carry out a rape.

if you're referring to my views kaykaykay actually there's a lot more complex than 1950's.

If you willingly get blind drunk to the point where you don't know what you're doing then there are consequences. Those might be nothing or being locked out on a january and freezing to death (it happens) or it might be getting into bed with your newborn and overlaying them or unwanted sexual encounters that you'd never have sober which hurt other people or just a hangover. Or passing out in the middle of the road on a country lane where someone might come round the corner and run over you (that one still gives me the cold shivers, only just avoided them). You don't know what might happen when you drink to extreme excess. You do know that there's a higher chance of somethign horrible happening though.

Someone else's criminal acts (them doing things to you when you are incapacitated) are not ok, they are absolutely a criminal act and vile. Drinking too much and beign incapacitated doesn't make someone else's vileness ok.

But drinking to incapacity is your responsibility, though the actions of other people are not.

There's something frightening about the pretty big habit in a lot of the UK of going out deliberately to get bladdered to the point of incapacity and then to say 'oh well i was just drunk'. it's really weird and has, yes, consequences. Moderate drinking is fine. it's the extremes where it's a point of pride to get as pissed as you can that is weird.

Assuming that everyone who thinks that you have control over how much you drink unless you're an alcoholic is actually a 1950's rape-blamer is simplistic shallow thinking.

bottom line-she cheated and being drunk is no excuse