Do you believe in cheating?

[thesummerqueen]

I don't get nearly enough sex to satisfy my needs in my marriage, but I would never go outside the marriage for sex. I couldn't live with the guilt for one, and I wouldn't want to hurt my wife for another. But when I'm feeling neglected I can talk to my wife in a mature matter and discuss the situation. Too bad so many people just can't seem to do that before deciding to take matters into their own hands and start stepping out.

What I got out of those situations was an understanding that people aren't raised with any idea of how to have a healthy relationship and most of us just muddle along and occasionally (usually by making mistakes) stumble over the best way to go about things.

Towards the end of my single days, I considered it good "asshole litmus". If someone wanted to cheat, and I asked why and it was clear they couldn't talk to their wife about things, I made myself scarce as a friend until they stopped calling. I said no in all situations, but at least I got to know who was chicken shit or not.

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Anyway, I'm not proud of what I did, but I did get something out of it that I wouldn't have gotten any other way, and I'd probably still be touting some self-righteous idea of why you shouldn't cheat since I wouldn't have any experience of it. The way I operate, when I'm with someone, it's because I'm full enough of that person that I don't want to be with anyone else. It's worked so far - none of my relationships ended because of someone else, but because the relationship failed. I don't commit to people I can't be 100% with. Which isn't knocking anyone who started a marriage and ended up cheating, or whatever. It's just how I operate.

So by being the 'other' person only, I got a close outsider's perspective on what it was like to be on both sides of that situation, and realized how stupid and shitty people are to each other out of pride or cowardice, or sheer dishonesty to oneself, and it's one of the motivators I had to be blunt and blatantly honest to everyone, and especially my partners. It was also where I learned how much people feel like they are investing in someone when they engage in a relationship.

The reason I think cheating is shitty, even if you never get caught, is because to my mind the outcome of getting caught isn't worth the pain of having a discussion that would prevent it, and the discussion has the potential to yield far better results than the cheating would. It's like getting mildly sick after a vaccine in order to prevent a horrible, possibly disfiguring disease. I know it's not as simple as that when you're in certain situations, but then, nothing in life ever really is simple, and facing a horrible aspect of yourself or your partner is one of the harder things to force yourself to do. But it is the best thing to do to be both selfishly gainful and unselfishly committed to your current partner. You may find out that the problems you're having have absolutely nothing to do with sex, and instead of having cheated and put a shitty bandaid on your issue, you actually heal it instead.