Is this an acceptable reason for cheating?

[Ilovefruitpastilles]

I know there’s no acceptable reason for cheating really but sometimes can circumstances make someone vulnerable when in different circumstances they wouldn’t have dreamt of doing it?

My DH has cheated and it seems to have been down to a few things but he says the main reason was sexual rejection. Our sex life has got progressively worse over the past year and it had got to the point where I never wanted it and certainly never initiated anything. We were going through a very difficult period in our marriage and our relationship had deteriorated so much that I didn’t feel loving towards him at all and if he initiated it and we did sleep together it was pretty obvious that it was just a chore to me and I wasn’t really enjoying it.

He said enduring this for a year (and we did have differences before this as his sex drive is higher) had made him feel really depressed and he thought I didn’t fancy him or love him and was rejecting him. It made him feel absolutely terrible about himself so that when he then met someone who paid him a lot of attention (plus other stressful things in his life were going on to do with family) he started a friendship which then led to an affair.

I believed prior to this that if someone cheated you should leave as the trust that your relationship was built on was gone but now I’m in this situation I don’t know what to do.

There are several threads on here about relationships with no sex and everyone says how awful it makes them feel about themselves and how rejected and unfanciable they feel, and I believe he did feel that way. Obviously we both should have talked to each other about the way we were feeling as I felt that he wasn’t treating me well at the time which is why I was finding it difficult to be loving towards him, but we didn’t talk and now we are in this situation.

We’ve talked a lot now and do still love each other and want the marriage to work but I’m finding it difficult to get over the betrayal even though I sort of understand what led him down that path.

Sorry for the essay but it would be good to hear what others think.

I wouldn’t expect him to do 50% of the chores as he has a very full on, senior job and I work part time. The DC are reception/ nursery so I do get some time to myself but spend it doing chores. I am thinking I should use one of those mornings to do a hobby/ class and then whatever housework doesn’t get done we’ll have to share in the evening!

I definitely expect him to be fairer at the weekend though.

And yes to making me feel more special!

I think society should just accept that there is nothing wrong with wanting multiple sex partners. It's in our nature and those who push monogamy, which is totally unatural and unrealistic should get their heads checked.

When your wife says she's not looking at a better looking man, she's lying. Female sexuality is feared by many men. It's totally unfair.

If people want multiple partners that’s fine, but he shouldn’t have got married and committed himself to one person if that’s what he wanted!

Most men want sex but they want a domestic to keep house and tbey want free childcare.
They like the fun bits of parenting, don't we all. but they'd much rather someone else do the drop offs and pick ups, get up in the night with a dick child, care for an ill child, take dcs to parties, hobbies, sort out presents, diaries, parents evenings, do the laundry, iron the clothes, sort out uniforms, sort through wardrobes and toys etc etc.
If they have a job which takes them away from all this then that is good and dandy.
Most men would prefer this, it gives the men an excuse not to be the domestic.
They can then enjoy being fawned over by a junior female at work and wallow in all the attention.
They can also say I can't do x and y because I have a job.

If course some men are different and it's those men who usually still have great sex and great relationships.
It's not a coincidence.
If both partners worked 50/50 and split everything then I think they are much happier on the sex front.
Of course there are exceptions to this but it's about how you are made to feel for both men and women.

I know there's no excuse but I certainly get how your husband must feel.
My DH pushes me away if I even make a suggestion of having sex, he's always tired despite it being me who is always up with the kids, having a full time job and doing most of the housework, cooking and shopping. I'm not complaining about that, but recently I have been having very erotic dreams about my ex boyfriend from 10 years ago and I'm considering getting in touch with him. I love my DH and my children and I don't want to be a cheat but sometimes I need more that to just feel like a mother and a maid.

Listen to what he says, if he still loved you and doesn't want to be with this other woman, talk it through. It's up to you if you forgive him, but if it's something you can work through....you should x

Op as you can see on this thread, the mentality of cheaters is actually really straightforward. They feel entitled to sex and if they don't get enough at home they feel justified getting it somewhere else.

Note that some of the people sympathizing with your Dh aren't taking much responsibility. They're not wondering why their sex life is suffering or why their spouse is no longer feeling loving towards them.

They're not saying they're having counselling or are considering separating. They're not proposing an open relationship. And more importantly they are not telling their spouse that the situation is getting so bad they are considering getting their needs met elsewhere.

This is what you're up against.

He still betrayed you. Not acceptable. Not honourable. Not considering you as a wife or best friend d.

Considering and honouring you would have been talking to you about how he felt about the lack of sex waaaaay long before having an affair.

Considering sex seems to be sooo important to these men, you have to wonder why they are not talking about their declining sex life with their spouses. Because I'd want to know what was going on.

Yet we've heard several times from men on this thread that there wives stopped having sex with them and they've apparently no idea why. Of course they know, their wives will have told them exactly why.

Belinda I do agree there are men out there who use work as an excuse to get out of doing their fair share. I have several friends who no longer work but are at home taking care of babies and toddlers and they are expected to do all the cooking and housework too as the man works. Because being at home with tiny children is such a walk in the park! That sort of attitude does make me angry. In my case he does do some housework / cleaning but due to his hobbies it hasn’t been balanced enough at weekends.

Terf it’s depressing isn’t it. I don’t think he once told me how depressing and awful he found it or tried to understand what was going on with me. I have to hold my hands up and admit I didn’t communicate how I was feeling either but then I didn’t try to ‘solve’ the issues by having an affair. And I did make some attempts to talk. I wish he’d told me he was tempted to have an affair due to the way he was feeling and it could’ve been a wake-up call for us both. The temptation of sex with this OW was obviously too much to resist though :(

Op there is nothing to say that this affair wouldn't have happened five years ago if he had met her back then. You would probably have been in a good place back then, yet he would still have tried to justify it. Affairs are often opportunistic. They are not a symptom of a bad marriage, they are a symptom of a flawed personality. It's obvious when you consider the fact that these cheaters who whinge about their bad marriages And lack of sex are so desperate to stay in them.

I am worried you are taking responsibility for his affair and the bad patch. Your bad patch (caused by him) did not cause him to cheat. His own personality caused that. I think your bad patch is irrelevant really.

And What about the Ow? What was their relationship like? Did he pretend to care about her? Or has he acknowledged that he simply used her for sex?

It seems like their relationship was quite casual. The messages I read were friendly banter, nothing about love or missing each other / wanting to see each other and nothing sexual. I suspect it was mostly about sex but he enjoyed her company too. He said they talked about interesting things rather than the kids and sorting out the broken tap, etc. The thing is, we had interesting conversations when we first met but if he married her, in 10 years’ time he’d be having mundane chats with her too. No doubt he found her a breath of fresh air compared to his moody, inattentive wife...

That must have been horrible to hear.

Is he able to see that he had a different relationship with her because HE was different? That you get out what you put in?

Yes it was. But I don’t think I’m a boring drudge - you’re bound to have very different conversations with someone brand new compared to your partner of 10 years and that’s normal.

I don’t think we’ve really discussed the you get out what you put in theory. I want to talk about it though as I want him to realise that it wasn’t a case of him not getting enough from our relationship but not giving enough that made it easier for him to cheat.

We’ve got family staying so it’s been hard for us to talk about stuff the last few days, which is really frustrating as there’s a lot I want to talk about!

When you do talk i don't think it would do him any harm to point out how you would respond to a man who is interesting and makes you feel like a woman instead of a nanny. It sounds like hes been the boring frumpy drudge, not you.

Do your family know?

Yes they do. I didn’t want him hiding from what he did, and when I found out told him if he didn’t ring his DM to tell her, I would. I told my immediate family too and our closest friends. I couldn’t face putting on an act and pretending everything was fine while he played the doting husband. Everyone was completely shocked.

People saying the husband just needs to be supportive and give up his needs but that's not very fair and I doubt those same people commenting that would sacrifice what they enjoy for their partner.

This goes both ways... the husband can sit in depression with no sex life BUT the wife can also please the husband and compromise.

Relationships are about compromise... you take something away from the relationship, then it's your responsibility as the wife to replace that otherwise you get in the issue that we're commenting about.

In my opinion, it's unethical but totally understandable and forgivable that the husband cheated in this instance. Sometimes in life and especially love, you've gotta do things you don't want to do for the benefit of the other. That means if you take away one's sex life... then it's up to you to bring up the topic with him and discuss it, not on a forum. If not, then it is up to you to discuss a compromise in the relationship. How you feel if the husband just withdrew moral or emotional support like you've withdrawn from the sex life with no compromise or little communication?

We're only seeing one side of the story here... to be fair, it would be great to hear the husband's side of the story.

Granted, yes you are only hearing one side of the story but the overwhelming response has been that it’s wrong to cheat no matter if you are going through a difficult time or not and if he was that unhappy he should have told me rather than started another relationship.

If you RTFT you would see we did have a conversation about it, initiated by me, and I DID make an effort after that to initiate sex but he didn’t stick to his part of the deal and continued to chase the OW. It was AFTER that conversation that he first slept with her (literally about 3 weeks later).

We are communicating much better now, it’s just a shame it has taken something like this for that to come about. We both should have been much more open and honest with each other and that is something we’re both trying to work on.

We have agreed compromises with his hobbies; I wouldn’t expect him to give them up altogether as that would be unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable to expect him to behave like a father and husband at the weekend rather than a single for man though.

How you feel if the husband just withdrew moral or emotional support like you've withdrawn from the sex life with no compromise or little communication?

That's exactly what happened Freindly, did you bother to read the thtead?

Op i hope some of the posts on here have made you realize just how much cheating is sanctioned and excused. And that along with your husband, many people believe that despite being miserable you should be sexually available to your husband because men are entitled to sex no matter what.

This bias for men works very well for men like your husband. Note the sympathy for him.

After all that's happened would you actually want to have sex with him again though? If you didn't want to before very much then surely this is going to put you off even more. He may feel guilty and grateful for your forgiveness for a while but then when again he starts feeling like he doesn't get as much sex as he wants he'll not be happy and then what happens...

OP, please don't take anything the last person has posted.

It's complete and utter bullshit.