What Would You Do If Your OH Cheated? **Proceed With Caution...**

I honestly don't think I know what I'd do until I was there. As Footlong said, a drunken snog in a club is very different to forging an emotional relationship with someone, even where there had been no sexual contact.

Not that I'd be happy with a drunken snog mind you, but I think it might be easier to forgive than actually falling in love with someone else.

Really? That is not fine at all in my book. Loyalty, trust and respect should be a given!

I think Annie is being misunderstood. She is not condoning cheating, merely pointing out that someone cheats due to issues they have within the relationship. For example, lack of intimacy may spur someone to seek it elsewhere (not that anyone is saying this is the right thing to do, mind).

I agree with Anniepie that it's difficult to know what you'd do until confronted with that situation. I can only speculate.

I think affairs are obviously a symptom of an unhappy relationship however i could never continue a relationship with someone who thought so little of me to push me to the back of his mind and carry on regardless.I would have much more respect if they said they were unhappy and wanted to change things or split up before anything else went on. I don't really buy the men and women are different thing,my husband and i are on the same sheet,drunk or not. I don't think he would forgive me if i kissed anyone else either.

If i am honest the people that i have known who are with people who cheat do go on to do it again,it might be years later but quite often they do it .i have an acquaintance who's fiance has cheated on her numerous times,she found out once ,forgave him,found him out again ,they split up,fast forward six months and they are back together and now getting married. How she can trust him is beyond me.

I took Anniepie to mean that sometimes there can be nothing 'wrong' with the relationship and someone will cheat anyway purely because they can. Sometimes cheating can be part of a bigger problem though, and it's not always straightforward to see which is the case.

My ex cheated on me just because he could. The girl in question was a friend of his and he loved the ego boost from having her chase him and me in pieces over losing him. He was cold, callous and calculating about it. That's unforgivable. Conversely, my mum cheated on her ex. He was controlling and violent, and her cheating extended to receiving and responding to letters from a male friend of hers which gradually got more romantic in nature until they'd crossed a line. Two very different scenarios, both involving infidelity but the nature of it is completely different. I wouldn't say that what my mum did was as bad as my ex.

It would definitely be a really hard situation to be in. If you have kids it would be tougher because you have to think about them as well as yourslef. Still trust is so important in a realationship, I think after someone has cheated it would take alot of work to repair the relationship.

If I am being completely honest, I really dont know what I would do it all depends on the cause of the cheating, the affair itself was it a one night thing was it a full blown affair. I know that I would be truly devastated though - god the thought makes me feel very uncomfortable.

On this point, i got so upset at that scene in Enders the other night when it showed Kat pulling her dress down outside the R&R with that bloke. I am an emotional div!

**Debate-inducing questions**

What is the basis of the unspoken promise to each other that you'll have no physical contact with anyone else? Is it rooted in history where people were generally less promiscuous and therefore the act of sex was more "sacred", to be saved only for the one you dedicate your life to? Is this not outdated in today's sexually permissive society? Are we fooling ourselves to think that we might be the only person our partner should ever find attractive? Are we so generally insecure that we couldn't bear the thought of comparison with other girls (or indeed, boys). There's a thought - would it be different if your partner cheated with the same sex (or the opposite sex, if you're in a gay relationship)? Do we set up the "no sex with others" rule as some kind of test, where the act of doing it isn't the problem, it's the broken promise that you wouldn't do it? Why, if someone does physically cheat (we'll assume no emotional ties), does that break your trust in that person, when you've likely never laid a specific rule about it in the first place?

Just pondering. Why is fidelity so universally important?

I've never understood that one. Ages ago I was friends with a couple, and the bloke would actively encourage his OH to kiss other girls on a night out. I couldn't understand why this wasn't cheating. Surely kissing anyone other than your OH is wrong, whether they're a male or female?

Does it not go back to the original contract of marriage (rather than partnerships for the sake of love) in which infidelity would be a dissolving factor? ("The union of one man and one woman...forsaking all others"?)

Well, the basic answer is that boys get off on girl-on-girl action and thus, the "cheating" part is secondary to immediate sexual gratification. Is it different if the third party is active in the procedure? I suspect some (myself included) would categorise the cliched "homosexual" experience as "exploration" or "curiosity". I *think* (maybe naively, who could know?) that I'd be more "relaxed" if boy went with another man than with another girl.

I asked Mr S what he would do if I kissed another girl. After giving it some thought (perhaps too much) he concluded that he wouldn't be happy with this & it would be the same as cheating with a dude.

My SIL caught her ex-husband in bed with another man. Would you be more upset if they cheated on you with a member of the same sex or the opposite sex? Or is cheating, cheating no matter who with?

So you make a promise, one that yourselves and society recognise as binding. When was the traditional marriage contract drawn up? I'm guessing several hundered years ago. Anyway, does that answer the question: WHY is infidelity a dissolving factor in a marriage?

I don't think it is an unspoken promise. If you are married, you make a vow to the other person that you will be faithful to him/her for the rest of your lives.

I suspect the psychological issues are entirely different between the two alternatives. One, cheating with a girl, opens yourself up to every single insecurity you've ever had. The second, cheating with a man, is a qualitatively different thing. There would presumably be no comparison to be had, the question of "Has he got perkier boobs than me?" being slightly ridiculous. Obviously, you'd have to get past the "Is he actually gay? thing, which is a far more fundamental problem not presenting itself in the first example.

Surely not just if you are married? It's a universal and implicit part of most relationships? Why?

If i was socially conditioned to think that it was normal to have several partners then i assume i would think this was the way to live and accept it. Our culture of exclusive relationships i think goes pretty much to be a rule unless it is spoken about otherwise.

I think each relationship though can have it's own rules that can work well. Mine is a very very exclusive relationship but the last partner that my OH had they had a few threesomes. When i asked him about it he said it was a thing he wanted to experience but also that the relationship was broken anyway so it did not really matter.

Completely agree, Footlong. Also, cheating with anyone has health implications as well as emotional.

I have read countless reports of people not disclosing herpes/ HIV to new partners. Cheating could potentially cause all sorts of issues. You just don't know what's festering under some people's undercrackers.

Does everyone feel absolutely horrible to think of their H b0nking someone else? If this is a natural feeling then I suspect that's why infidelity is still an important part of any relationship. You can't force emotions can you? Or can you be conditioned by society to feel certain emotions?

Duplicate

I wouldn't care if my hubby cheated on me with a male or female - he would still have shoved his member in someone else's hole.

I know that in our relationship and then marriage, we class having sex with someone else as cheating - it's an intimate act that we should only do with each other.

Because in the days before reliable contraception (when these "rules" were drawn up) it ensured that a man knew children born to his wife were biologically his.

I am not naive enough to think that my partner doesn't find other women attractive and neither is he about me. We both agree that if either of us were to betray the trust we have with one another that the other party would be most likely devastated. I wouldn't want to inflict those feelings on him and vice versa. Once one of you becomes indifferent to the other ones feelings, then you have the potential for that person to deviate.

No not just in a marriage, I was just using it as an example of a spoken agreement.

By the nature of entering into a relationship you are agreeing that that person has your love, trust and commitment over other people, unless it is stated that it is an open relationship of course.

In answer to your question, the entering of a relationship suggests exclusivity whether it be of a corporate nature or a couple. Othewise there is no point having a 'defined' relationship, you are just sleeping with a multiple partners but you have more of an emotional tie with one of them.

I agree that the thought makes me feel like puking. However, the particular thing that makes me feel like puking isn't him putting his willy into someone else, it's him looking deeply into someone's eyes while doing it. Whether I think this is an innate respose or a condtioned response, I don't know. Monogamy isn't a biological trait (for every monogamous, cute pair of swans, there are a million species that display completely indiscriminate sexual behaviour). So if it's not "nature", then it must be "nuture", a product of a higher intellect or a deeply-ingrained societal pressure.

Would that not serve as a defining feature of a relationship?

My OH always says this to me, but I don't take it as a green light to cheat on him.