Would you stay in a marriage if your spouse Cheated?

[Tiger]

Why are most of you assuming that the cheater is the man? Of the people I am acquainted with in 3 marriages the wife is the cheater in all cases. With women no longer being stuck in the house they have just as much opportunity to cheat as men do.

I don't think you can say today what you would do tomorrow, every case is different.

 

[tmm99]

Tough crowd. Having someone cheat on you is challenging, but harms you less than having her spend too much money, drink too much, get really fat, use cocaine, have lousy inlaws, get you involved in disputes, etc. Things change if she is unavailable or unloving to you.

Ha

WOW. Really?? To me, discovering that my husband had cheated and has a child (a teenager really) would have a far greater impact on me than any of the things you listed. This finding may harm me less financially (unless he has been giving them a lot of money - recently $600K for the woman's house), but emotionally, the degree of devastation, to me, is much much greater. Whenever what you have been perceiving as life, trust, etc gets changed when you are not ready, it is a life changing experience.

 

[youbet]

An interesting side note is that a lot of male cheaters will not tolerate the same in their wives [-](Arnold?) [/-] (Bill?). I guess being a dick head is a generic feature.

There's another example for ya!

 

[Texas Proud]

If my wife cheated I would probably get a divorce...

If my wife cheated and it resulted in a baby, I would definately get a divorce...


I think that the problem with Arnie is that there were a LOT of women who came forward and said he did this or did that and Maria defended him, making it look like they were liars.... this goes to her credibility... Now you kind of have to believe that they were correct and she was wrong...

 

[haha]

Arnold is a product of Venice Beach and the 60s muscle culture, then Hollywood, then bigtime politics

Maria Shriver is a Kennedy for heaven's sake. She comes from a famous family of blue ribbon cheaters. Heck, in at least one case, they not only cheated but the sex partner wound up drowned.

Like Peter Lorre says in Casablanca, "I'm shocked".

Ha

 

[FIREd]

Before getting married, I told my wife-to-be that any cheating would result in a divorce. Period.

Well, after 10 years of marriage, I am less sanguine about the whole thing. I think it would have to depend on the circumstances. If the cheating was just a moment of lust, I would be more inclined to forgive than if it was a long-term affair.

 

[KingB]

In answer to the title of the thread:
Will your life be better if you get a divorce? Sometimes divorce is not the solution and it sometimes makes the life more miserable.

 

[Texas Proud]

Arnold is a product of Venice Beach and the 60s muscle culture, then Hollywood, then bigtime politics

Maria Shriver is a Kennedy for heaven's sake. She comes from a famous family of blue ribbon cheaters. Heck, in at least one case, they not only cheated but the sex partner wound up drowned.

Like Peter Lorre says in Casablanca, "I'm shocked".

Ha

Yea, this was one of my thoughts also.... coming from a family of cheaters she should not be 'shocked' that a rich and powerful man cheats...

 

[antmary]

To answer the question - "Would you stay in a marriage if your spouse cheated?"

No - because marriage, for me, denotes "sacred trust," and once that is gone, it is gone.

 

[calmloki]

Why are most of you assuming that the cheater is the man? Of the people I am acquainted with in 3 marriages the wife is the cheater in all cases. With women no longer being stuck in the house they have just as much opportunity to cheat as men do.

I don't think you can say today what you would do tomorrow, every case is different.

To quote rumour posted by Meadbh on another thread: "Fertility specialists commonly run across this issue. Rumour has it in the medical community that the percentage of children whose fathers are not their biological fathers is approximately 10%".

Now that's sex with issue. What do you guess that means for infidelity type sex percentage as far as sex both with and without issue?

 

[DangerMouse]

Truthfully I don't think until you are in such a situation do you truly know how you would act. I don't think that life is so cut and dried.

Would you throw out 25 years of a good and happy marriage for one mistake? I'm not talking about the Arnie situation, I have chosen not to read about it, because truthfully it is none of my business. This is between him and his wife.

I would like to think that I would at least hear him out before I stormed out the door and called the divorce lawyers.

 

[Zoocat]

Exactly. But as for Arnie, I think he was a serial womanizer, this just happened to be the only, er, issue from his infidelity.

I don't care how old we are, I'm not staying with a cheater just so I'm not alone. No children, small or otherwise.

Exactly. And I've never understood the fear of "growing old alone." The worse thing I can imagine is spending my elderly years with an old husband who doesn't appreciate me and expects me to "be there" to take care of him in his old age.
Maybe it's because I spent 9 years as a single parent and had some pretty steep challenges early in life. I am pretty self sufficient emotionally, and I feel that I can handle the aging process. I'm not afraid of death, like many people, having confronted a life endangering condition at age 31. I made my peace with mortality then.

 

[chemist]

Ann Landers

Years ago Ann Landers wrote an advice column. Women would write in and say their husband did this, did that, didn't do this, etc, should I leave him?

Ann's advice: "Are you better off with him or without him?".

Still pretty good advice if you ask me. And we can't get inside Maria's head to know the answer. A very personal judgment call.

 

[Meadbh]

Tough crowd. Having someone cheat on you is challenging, but harms you less than having her spend too much money, drink too much, get really fat, use cocaine, have lousy inlaws, get you involved in disputes, etc. Things change if she is unavailable or unloving to you.

Cheating is the only thing on that list that married couples take a vow not to do.

 

[Badger]

My first wife of 10 years cheated and as soon as I found out it didn't take me 5 seconds to come to the realization that by her actions she had already ended the marriage. Up to that moment I was all for doing what ever it would take to make the marriage a good one.

Now I'm on my last chance at a marriage. It's will be 24 years tomorrow. We both feel that cheating is about as bad as it could get. It encompasses lieing, breaking a vow, creating life long suspicion, mental anguish, and destroying trust. I don't have any respect for someone that would be that hurtful to their spouse.

I would find it hard to live with myself if I ever caused that much pain to someone I professed to love.

Cheers!

 

[sheehs1]

This is a tough topic. There are more ways than "cheating on your spouse" to break trust in a marriage. And there are more ways to cheat than having sex with another.

My first husband did things like...wanting to take my paid for car that I owned once we were married and trade it in on a new car. It wasn't until we separated that I discovered he never put my name on the title. (but he told me it was).
Boy did I learn many lessons from that marriage.

 

[sheehs1]

Oh...I failed to mention he had an affair with his secretary who came to my home while I was at work. She became pregnant by him. All...very messy. Thank goodness it was over 20 years ago.
Point being...if it's in their character..it will show in the little things. Then they become BIg things (husband or wife).

 

[haha]

Cheating is the only thing on that list that married couples take a vow not to do.

Well, I don't think that infidelity is a good thing. But as someone wrote above, when families have to be DNA typed for medical reasons they discover that 10% of the offsring do not belong to the guy who thought he was the father. That's matings that have produced babies, one might imagine that there are more that did not result in a pregnancy. Pretty common for something that people want to be so inflexible about. And clearly this involves female infidelity, so all the powerful man blaming rhetoric does not apply

My bet is that there is more than one person, maybe some right here on the board, who are absolutely sure that they would divorce their spouse tomorrow if he/she had cheated, and that person's spouse has in fact been with another.

One comment on the vow thing. People also stand up there and promise to obey. What woman here would even make a show of obeying her husband? It is laughable. An American man is lucky if his dog wil obey him.

How about the death do us part business? Looks like these vows are mostly pretty words, like most vows.

Ha

 

[W2R]

One comment on the vow thing. People also stand up there and promise to obey. What women here even make a show of obeying their husbands? It is laughable.

When I married my ex back in 1975, my mother wanted us to be married in the Presbyterian Church. When we talked to the minister he asked what vows we wanted. I said, "Oh, the standard wedding service, I suppose, I guess is it 'love, honor, and obey'", and he looked totally shocked. He said, "We don't use "obey" any more." He wouldn't use that word.

He changed it to "love, honor, and cherish". I got a lot of mileage out of that over the years.

 

[Alan]

If the cheating was just a moment of lust, I would be more inclined to forgive than if it was a long-term affair.

+1

 

[omni550]

If the cheating was just a moment of lust, I would be more inclined to forgive than if it was a long-term affair.

Out of curiosity, for those who agree with this option, is your spouse allowed more than one 'lustful' moment (and I suppose it would be with a different person each time)?

If so, how many over what period of time?

omni

 

[Badger]

"We don't use "obey" any more." He wouldn't use that word.

He changed it to "love, honor, and cherish". I got a lot of mileage out of that over the years.

+1

Cheers!

 

[rescueme]

"We don't use "obey" any more." He wouldn't use that word.

He changed it to "love, honor, and cherish". I got a lot of mileage out of that over the years.

Same here (married in a Roman Catholic service, back in '69). Yes, we're still married and I would attribute that to the vows/promise that we made to each other, in public (before family and friends) many years ago.

While others make a "joke" of marriage, I personally do not. If you can't commit for the long term and really mean it, than just live together, and live your individual lives.

Heck, I've had more up's/downs than you can imagine over the last 40+ years (including caring for a challenged child). Without the commitment to each other, I believe we could have not done as well in life as we have.

Just my $.02 on the subject being discussed.

 

[Alan]

Out of curiosity, for those who agree with this option, is your spouse allowed more than one 'lustful' moment (and I suppose it would be with a different person each time)?

If so, how many over what period of time?

omni

Not too bothered as long as it is, a) not a long term affair, and b) not the whole cricket team.

If she can remember all the details then the re-telling of the one-off's will help spice up our later years.

PS
now been living together 37 years, married for 35 of them and the sentiment is still the same. A long term deceiptful affair would hurt, one or two lustful flings would not.

 

[Webzter]

He changed it to "love, honor, and cherish". I got a lot of mileage out of that over the years.

Same wording as at our civil ceremony 10 years ago.