Although I think that's true for some people, I disagree that it's true for everyone who cheats. I cheated on my spouse. I didn't plan for it to happen, and I certainly wasn't proud of it, but it happened. At the time, I justified it because he cheated on me God knows how many times, he was emotionally and physically unavailable to me, he refused to do any work on the relationship when I tried for a loooooong time to make things better and he made me feel insignificant and unimportant. Take that jumble of emotional pain, throw in some alcohol, add another person going through the same kinds of things in their relationship..to a T...and it happens. I didn't feel guilty as far as his spouse was concerned because she wanted him to have someone on the side so she could run around on him...and did, A LOT. It was no secret, but in all honesty, that's really the only reason he did it. He really didn't want a relationship like that and they eventually divorced, but we were over long before that. I did feel guilty about my spouse because even if he was a jerk, I didn't enjoy hurting him. The long and short of it was that even though I understood why it happened, I did regret it, I made my amends for doing it, and I would NOT do that again. We're not together anymore, but we do remain amicable.
I think whether someone is a serial cheater has much to do with the reasons why the cheating happened. If it's that they just love the excitement of something forbidden or whatnot, it probably will happen again. But if it's a reaction to emotional pain, I think the chances are that they will not let themselves get to that place again if they learned anything. I have been with my spouse now for a long time, and our relationship is so much different than that one was. I would never, EVER want to hurt him like that, no matter what the circumstances. We respect each other and care about each other's happiness. That plus my ex was a major booze hound...this one is not....drinking isn't even part of our lives.
Anyway...just had to chime in.
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Ysis
8 years ago
Thank you, Wiggity for speaking your truth and sharing that. I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to do that. I'm also glad that you're in a healthy and happy relationship and that you and your ex have managed to salvage and maintain some civility between each other. Hating someone for their sickness or dependence is easy to do, but you chose differently. I admire you for that.
I, however, am not that admirable.
Speaking strictly for myself, I am a fight or flight kind of person. We either fight it out or I walk out. Truth be told, I'd walk out way before it ever got to the fighting portion of the evening. Dude could come home from work and everything I own would be gone and me with it. That would happen if he touched my albums or my Frosted Flakes, much less slept with someone else. I'm very in touch with myself, what I think and believe and quite realistic. I leave at the first sign of trouble. You might say, "Well, how can you build a decent relationship if you're always leaving?" Because I just plain old don't give a sh*t. There's so much else to care about in the world; so many more real and important things. Things more important than who I crawl into bed with every night or every other night, for that matter. To borrow a line from an old Meryl Streep movie, "It's not that you cheat, it's that you lie about it." Lying (cheating) takes away my choices and endangers my life. As I've said before, I can't control anyone or anything but myself and I choose to control my presence or absence in a relationship or rather, what may pass for one. Men (people) are going to do whatever they want to do. So will I.
Burn, Hollywood, Burn!- from the incomparable album Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy.
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