Infidelity Makes Me ILL

No kidding!!!

I was thinking of doing a rant on Osso's thread (about group marriage therapy), this is better.

I've just reached the end of my tether. Grow UP, people! Argh.

Marriage is a contract, where each of the partners promise to behave in a certain way. Many of the same people who cheat on their spouses, would be horrified even to consider cheating their business partners. So what is it about marriage, that so many people believe that it is ok to cheat on the person who is supposedly closest to them?

It's a thousand times worse when there are kids involved. But even without them....doesn't the unsuspecting husband or wife deserve better. Can't imagine waking up every morning, sitting down to breakfast or dinner, or watching tv together, or discussing the inane little daily happenings with a partner who's breached the final trust. And YOU HAVE NO IDEA! You're just continuing on your merry way, day by day, thinking that your world is perfect or flawed - however it may be - but that it's real.

Jeez! Spare a thought, stop a moment. It's NOT just YOUR life!

yup.

And what disgusts me is that most of those who cheat would be furious if their spouse were to cheat on them. That's what I can't figure. Anyone who cheats with someone who is married would hit the roof if, were they to ever marry, their spouse would cheat on them.

As a young man, I cheated on my first wives, although they also cheated on me. I had all kinds of rationalizations for it, but in the end I realized it was just wrong and not worth the worry and heartache. Also, I don't think I was ever really in love until squinney.

I always made it a policy to turn away from a woman I knew or learned was married.

It's the very worst sort of betrayal and people who do it should be ashamed of themselves. I know I was and who needs that ****? Life sucks enough.

I don't know why, but it bothers me just as much when it is someone talking about an affair with someone they know to be married, even if they aren't married themselves. Whether the cheater or the cheaters assistant, doesn't matter to me.

I never even considered an affair. Certainly I've looked and admired, I am human, but it never ever crossed my mind to sleep with them. Surely my early early life experience would have indicated it to be acceptable but for some reason I didn't learn that.

Makes me wonder why some do get that message even after growing up in two parent homes.

Keep it in your pants.

Or

Keep it OUT of your pants.

Think back to when you decided to be with your spouse. Remember the people you both were back then.

You are now (considering) cheating on ^^^ this same person. DON'T they deserve better? Okay, so you feel differently - but for the sake of the people you were, for God's sake, at least be HONEST! It's good for EVERYone involved!


^^that's what I want to tell these people. It just makes me really sad. It really does.

This thread premise is, to me, a railing against the inevitable. Not that affairs are inevitable in every relationship, but that sex outside of marriage is one of the ways of the world, while well stifled in some places with death to the adulterer.

I think that in many cases there is a component of thrill that happens with situations that involve being secretive and involve inability to possess (and mature to a less excitement-driven long time love) that keeps people from just telling their spouses and dealing with the issues.

I think in some cases the affair-having spouse doesn't really want to rock the marriage. You could say 'have cake and eat it too", but people don't always readily think that perjoratively about themselves. Sure, sometimes they do.

While not all marriages are based on fidelity, and many cultures take some bends in fidelity as the way of things, my own take on all this agrees with the majority of posters here, that it is important to deal with the marriage head on before reaching outside the marriage... this is the adult, responsible, thing to do.

This is not easily done for many in the affair mode. While I think it should be done, I'm not without understanding of it not. (And, no, I was not unfaithful in my marriage.)

As to the posters coming on here and asking for ways to increase meeting time with the lover, etc., I take most of them as put-ons. The ones that aren't, well, discussion will ensue.

You're being just a little judgemental, doncha think?

Edited to note I wasn't referring to osso.

I suppose so.

I am sickened by this ...trend, it seems. And I'd like to talk, or at least vent about it. It seems a handful others feel the same way.

Ossobuco, I get what you're saying. I just wish it wasn't like this. I wish more people were adults though, than adulterers.

I think you are asking too much of humankind.

There's nothing new, or trend-like, about it.

Doesn't make it any 'better', but really, nothing new under the sun.

Swimpy, definitely being judgmental, which I generally try to avoid. I had independently reached the end of my tether due to a recent spate of especially immature slash self-delusional posts from people here recently, though. I'd try to compose a neutral, I-see-your-point, non-judgmental response and just couldn't do it.

The "oh and by the way we have kids" (as if it doesn't matter), "I've only seen her twice since she was my first love 20 years ago but I know she's my soul mate" stuff just gets me.... grring. Not to mention the stuff about "there has never been honesty in my marriage, I married my wife even though I was still in love with this other person..." Back before agreeing to marry someone you don't love is the time to take action, not 20 years and x number of young children down the line...

Yes, I know, Squinney. I'm just venting.

EhBeth, I rather meant 'spate' (which Sozobe talks about in her post) - not trend. It isn't new. Plus the Internet, because, I suppose, of the anonymity it affords, really brings them out though.

Sozobe, totally agree with everything you've said.

we get 'spates' of all kinds of interesting things - something to do with how search engines pick up topics here - sometimes it's "he's looking at porn", sometimes it's "dating married man" - sometimes it's something religious or political - the waves come and go

Makes sense.

I'm inclined to think that recreational adultery may be a logical part of a society that allows $50,000-plus weddings designed to feature the Bride and Groom as Celebrities for the Day.


Of course, adultery has always been with us. Once upon a time when Hollywood Celebrities fornicated the Studios dispatched PR staff to rinse and spin immoral behavior.

The Me Generation has been encouraged to be sensual without shame. "If you've got it--flaunt it. If you don't got it, you're nobody."
Self-indulgence has been encouraged and adultery is a form of self-indulgence.

Imagine a t-shirt announcing: "I'm a faithful hotty." Sounds a little puritanical, doesn't it?