Would his honesty about cheating put you off a promising relationship?

[SmoothandFluffy]

I've recently met a guy online dating, and we really hit it off. First date was just drinks and a chat, and we got on really well. Loads in common, we both laughed loads. Second date we had a picnic at the beach and went swimming in the sea. Definite chemistry - I'm very attracted to him, and he seemed to like me too. Third date he cooked me a meal at his house. Things felt right and I kissed him. It was lovely.

We then spent ages talking about our lives, how we ended up single in our late 40s, and about what is important to us in a relationship. I told him that I'd had a bad experience of being cheated on, and that loyalty was important to me.

I'm not sure what came over me (I'm not usually like this!) but I really wanted to go further and started trying to undress myself and him. But he stopped me, and told me he had been unfaithful to his ex wife during their marriage, and that he couldn't go further without me knowing that, given how important I’d said loyalty was to me.

Obviously that killed the mood. I asked why he'd cheated and he said they'd had no sexual intimacy in years, and he eventually had a bit of a breakdown and slept with someone else. He stayed with her for another ten years after that until his kids had finished school.

I left his house then. And I'm really confused. He was genuinely lovely - funny, good looking, intelligent, kind. Not weird or pervy or anything like most of the guys I've met online. And he didn't have to tell me. But i don't know whether I should move on and wait for someone who has a better track record of being faithful.

OP, everyone is capable of cheating given the right conditions. If his marriage was sexless for years then imo that's extenuating circumstances surely?
Imagine your spouse refuses to have sex with you for years and then you meet someone and you're both really attracted to each other. I'd certainly find it very difficult to turn that down and so would many others.

If you like him, see him again and take it slowly.

Whoever you meet will have a past. Some will be worse than others. The question is whether they’ve learnt from it or not.

They all have a story.

My brother in-law always tells women about his past relationship. How volatile they were. How they escalated. How he's worked on himself and had therapy. Then he charms them, manipulates them and BAM they become his next victim. Ive warned them abd been ignored and my husband and I have rescued them.

Did he tell his wife?

I’m with @CalamityLane unfortunately.

The biggest indication of future behaviour is past behaviour.
when someone tells you who they are believe them.

Now, see, if you pursue a relationship with this man and he ends up cheating, he’s likely to see, “It’s not like I didn’t warn you. You knew what you were getting into.”

You’re a very wise old owl….this resonates perfectly with me x

Well quite. But it doesn't sound like OPs guy is a serial shagger.

I'd give him a chance OP. I have cheated in my much much younger days in my 20s; I woukd NEVER dream of doing so now.

The spin! The double-down! The DARVO! Alastair Campbell, is that you?! 😁

I had similar thoughts until it transpired that your scenario wasn't what happened; he actively went looking for a cheating partner on Ashley Madison.

Which means he reached a point in the marriage where he actively thought, "I'm not getting what I need and can't go on like this. But being married serves me better than not being married, and my wife would be unlikely to agree to open the marriage, so I can either (1) leave and have sex with other people but lose the benefits of being married; (2) stay with integrity, get the benefits of having a wife and family in tact and accept that sex is off the table for now; or (3) get all the benefits of both by lying to my wife and making sure she doesn't know that I have opened the marriage on my end.

And then sat down and deliberately and actively chose option 3.

They weren’t having enough sex so he cheated. Cheating is one of your ‘no’ tick boxes. I absolutely wouldn’t continue. A lot of people are assuming that all/ most men cheat, I think you’re buying into that if you think because he told you it means he’s honest.

That's fairly easily addressed by just talking about it though. You can remove all possibility of plausible deniability through an up front conversation.

I missed that detail.

I don't know much about Ashley madison but maybe he though no strings sex where both people were married but not planning to divorce was better than a typical affair? 🤷‍♀️

TBH it's difficult to say without knowing him/his ex wife etc and all the details.

I have never been cheated on, to my knowledge, so I might not be best placed to judge, but I would value his honesty. Plus I have some sympathy for anyone who feels emotionally and sexually sidelined in a relationship. It seems to me to it was an infidelity of a different nature from that of bloke who is serially unfaithful whilst still having sex with his partner who believes the relationship is happy. I get the feeling this man would commit if the lines of communication are kept strong and healthy - that seems to be what he wants from his behaviour so far. Hope I am not being naive but in your shoes I would go for it.

Yes, there were a lot of ACTIVE, deliberate decisions there. All fueled by rampant self-pity and entitlement that allowed him to tell himself he "deserved" to cheat.

And he STILL has that self-pity and entitlement.

He had options: counseling, talking to his wife, leaving. But no, the poor poor man, he HAD to cheat.

I’d be asking him what happened when he talked to his wife about their relationship, what he discovered about why she’d lost interest, what work he did to restore it, what they did together to improve things, what her priorities and preferences were - in her own words, not his assumptions.

Did she agree to the ‘stay together for the children’ plan, or would she rather have split earlier, giving them both a chance to find someone more suitable, or build a peacefully single life?

Did he truly see her as a person with her own needs, experiences, priorities, preferences? Or as a provider of services who had failed to deliver one of these to him, thus breaking their contract and giving him permission to fulfil that need elsewhere?

…While still drawing upon all her other domestic services and failing to tell her their contract had been nullified. Without his having to take any responsibility for uncomfortable communication or effort within a messy human relationship.

Person or service provider is the conversation I’d be pursuing. Transaction or exploration? Selfishness or sharing? Safe or unpredictable? What are relationships about, to him?

You’re late 40s you’ll be going through the menopause soon, if you haven’t already. Your sex drive will change, may disappear and you’ll experience other symptoms. Are you looking for a fun fling for as long as your libido lasts, or someone you might want to spend the rest of your life with?

Honestly, this whole thing has pinged my bullshit radar hard.

Him telling you about his cheating sounds like a ploy to get you keen and get past your boundary. It's called tactical vulnerability: by voluntarily bringing up his past cheating and saying it was a single mistake, he created the illusion that he is transparent, a moral strong man, and his morals are stronger than his desire fort sex. He's got you thinking, "If he's willing to admit something this bad, he must be honest and trustworthy now."

He certainly got many people on this forum believing that, which is understandable because most people are kind and honest and inclined to give others a chance.

Next he gives you a low-ball nudge with a message intended to trigger certain psychological reactions:

-"I will completely understand if you decide you’d rather move on" - this relieves pressure on the surface, which lowers your guard.

-"take a risk on me" - this intends to make you feel guilty for walking away because it'll make him "sad" (women are highly suggestible to this crap). You'll feel like you shouldn't walk away because then you're punishing him for being honest.

-"I'm glad I was honest with you regardless" - again, he suggests his honesty should be rewarded with another chance.

I think you're being played, OP. If your bullshit meter is pinging, as mine is, trust it.

This is a superb comment.
I would just add: be careful not to lead the witness to answers you would prefer.

If he were actually a reformed character, what would you expect to see in his message?

I wanted to come back to this because there's something really off about it.

Men who lie to get what they want are responsible for those lies. Not women.

Women are blamed for everything that men do or don't do. I suppose now it's also our fault that men lack the moral compass that stops them from lying.

did you message him back @SmoothandFluffy?

personally I would think that the time period since it happened (he stated for over a decade more and it's been how many years since?) and his honesty at a point when he gave up guaranteed sex would be points towards seeing him again.

I think the key difference at your age is he could just walk away if he was unhappy. I understand why many people, but especially men, don't feel that's doable with young kids at home.
should he have cheated? no. does that mean he must have continued to cheat for the next decade and be cheating on every woman since? also no.

i'd give the 4th date a go.

I would have left the ball in her court.

She told him she had a boundary. He told her he had crossed it "once". She left to go and think about it.

He should have waited for her to get back to him. That's respectful, also of her boundary. Instead, he piled on some guilt-inducing emotive crap.

This guy is pushy and likely a player.

Thanks everyone for your input on this - I can believe what a massive divide there is in people’s views!

It does seem that most (but not all) of the “don’t touch him with a barge pole” answers are using a lot of loaded language, are making a lot of big assumptions about him which don’t seem to be based on anything, and applying very black and white thinking. Some of the recent ones have even started suggesting his up front honesty and “niceness” is part of some kind of evil plan to manipulate me, which really stretches credulity.

In contrast the “take a chance but maybe be careful” responses seem much less loaded, and lack any extremist feminist undertones.

I had a phone call with him last night and gave him a grilling. Again, he could be lying, but he said that they had had lots of counselling and sex therapy with no result - and in the end she just said there would be no more sex/kissing or anything along those lines again. She’d begged him not to leave and said she couldn’t cope without him due to her mental health problems, and refused his request for an open marriage. He had a breakdown and chested, felt guilty and then threw himself into family life until his kids were starting to leave home and he started feeling lonely again. Then he left.

I’m actually not going to see him again, but not because of the cheating. I’m not going to see him again because I just don’t want to have to deal with someone that broken, which reading between the lines I think he probably is. I feel desperately sorry for him, and I think he would have been a lovely partner under different circumstances. Hopefully he will find the right partner, but unfortunately it won’t be me (there are reasons I’m not equipped to be the supportive partner at this stage in my life, but I don’t want to get into that).

@SmoothandFluffy A very sad outcome but if it's right for you, then it's the right outcome.