/ot/ - off-topic

This is a really interesting topic to me, as well. I'm also on mobile so going to do a brain dump that may or may not make sense.

Intellectually, I feel more or less the same way that you do. I don't think cheating is necessarily "worse" than any other number of mistakes one could make in a relationship but aren't generally considered grounds for breaking up.

Emotionally, I completely understand why it's such a grave transgression. If you're in a relationship where the assumption is monogamy, cheating really brings out the jealous demon. The person is yours - how dare they give themselves to someone else? It's as though the defining feature of the relationship is the monogamy, and if that's broken, then so is the relationship.

In many situations the issue isn't the cheating per se, but the lying and the deception. More people would be willing to forgive if the cheater came clean, but most of them keep doing it until they're caught and forced to apologize.

So many angles to approach this from. And of course in some cultures, Japanese for example, infidelity within marriages is condoned and even expected - the marriage model is fundamentally different.

>>83367

What made me post the thread is just an experience I had last night.

I watched a friend, a friend I know to be miserable inside of his relationship, deny another girl at a bar. Earlier in the day he had resolved to end things with his girlfriend, we did not expect to be going to a party that night or a bar, we were just talking. He was in a fairly typica situation I guess: his girlfriend was in love with him and he felt a little in over his head but was too afraid to break up with her for fear of how badly he might ruin her life.

Anyway maybe it was because of this resolution but to me it honestly seemed to come about naturally. We met a group of friends at the party and we went with them to the bar and he and this girl were getting along spectacularly but in the end he turned her down and in the cab home he told me "I vowed never to cheat, I will after I break up with X tomorrow."

I respect his decision but to me it makes no sense at all. For me the picture looks like this.

>he has sex with her in the night
>break up with his girlfriend the next day
>gf finds out and is devastated what a betrayal

Or

>he breaks up with gf
>has sex with girl the next night
>gf is devastated he broke up with her and fucked another girl the very next day what a betrayal

To me it looks exactly the same, some steps are just rearranged and all of a sudden one is acceptable and the other is not??

>>83367

Can absolutely understand the emotional aspect of course despite my rationale I feel strongly about my own girlfriend cheating but.. I don't know I think I'd feel just as sad about a break up. Cheating effectively means we're breaking up and what happens when someone has a break up? They inevitably move on and everyone says "oh well they'll be okay it just takes time." But with cheating there is this expectation that you are free to exact revenge or that you will be hurting for so long never to recover from this betrayal.

If you're going to cheat but first decide to break up with your partner. Isn't a spontaneous and out of the blue dumping just as much of a betrayal of that person's expectations of you and the two of you together?

>>83369
AYRT here.

Because the contract they entered into, though unspoken and perhaps vague, was monogamous.

If he slept with the other girl while still officially in a relationship, he is breaking the contract.

If he slept with the other girl after breaking up with his now ex-girlfriend, it will still suck for his ex-girlfriend, but since they're officially broken up, they are no longer under their monogamy contract and he is not violating any rule.

It's about honesty and honoring your societal contracts.

>but spontaneous encounters and especially encounters far removed from one's partner where the possibility of then finding out is 0, these don't make much sense to me

For people that have been together long-term it's not so simple as "what they don't know can't hurt them".
I've been with my partner since we were 15 and we're now 24 and 25 respectively. For me to go out and engage in sexual activity with another, it's not so much a case of me disrespecting my partner, it would fuck me up mentally knowing that, without his consent and only in the pursuit of carnal pleasures, I violated the pair-bond we initiated when we decided to pursue further a serious relationship.

I don't really believe so much in spiritual concepts such as soul mates or anything, but pair-bonding is an extremely powerful biological mechanism in mammals and birds.
Consider this, that the primary function within all lifeforms without exception is that of self-preservation, but a successful pair-bonding can create emotions so disruptive and chaotic to this organic law that we would happily sacrifice our self-preservation in order to further the life of your mate, i.e. acts such as pushing your partner away from oncoming traffic and dying yourself, swimming out to save your partner from drowning, and in the process drown yourself. In reproductive terms it makes zero sense, but that's what makes it so powerful and fascinating.

When you're that deep into a relationship and then you knowingly go out and violate the pact you created together you basically just piss all over it. It's not even a matter of the physical act, it's a matter of consent.
When two people are in love they go from functioning from two independent units to a single cohesive unit, so when you go out and cheat it's not just yourself you end up damaging emotionally/mentally, you damage your partner too, and do so without their consent.

That's just how I feel about it based on my own experiences with my long-term relationship. The idea of cheating on my partner though, it really does tear up something inside of me that feels neither chemical nor physical, but more intangible.

I've cheated before. I thought I loved someone, but it turned out to not be what I thought.

I regret it every single day of my life. I feel tarnished and ugly because of it. I can never absolve my sins. Cheating is wrong. And I believe that you are punished for it, just like you are punished for all your evil actions. I know I have certainly suffered for my wrongdoings. I know I will continue to suffer more and more until I repay my actions. And I also know it will never happen again. I am so sullied, so disgusting, and I have been shamed by so many people who were once friends and now disgregard me as the lowest of low. Please don't cheat. It will ruin your life. There are stains on our souls which can never be wiped clean again

Sorry for personal rant. Im a disgusting person and I'm sorry.

I cheated once, on a guy I was seeing at the time. I tend not to make strong emotional bonds with people unless I have reason to (and things were rocky with this guy to start with). But even then, for me emotion is still very cerebral. I understand why people are upset with cheating and everything, but I find I have an easy time moving past things that don't matter much to me–and a one time thing can fall into that kind of category.

In that moment, I was drinking with this guy I got along with and he started kissing me. At the time I was curious what kissing another person would be like, then I thought it would be bad to continue since I was effectively in a relationship. So I stopped.

I felt a little bad about that so I confessed to my bf, and at first he was pretty nonchalant ("well it was just kissing, if it was me I wouldn't have said anything"), then he revealed to me that a few weeks prior he had cam sex with some rando. Then he started getting more and more upset about it, saying I betrayed him and everything. Then the relationship was over. But time moves on.

I guess what I'm saying is that, for people like me, emotion doesn't happen until after the fact. I'm curious by nature, and that sometimes that extends to going along with the ride to see what happens. But since that happened, I know now that it can hurt people's feelings. I suspect that part of the reason that drove me to do this was my ex's personality. The guy I'm with now is a huge sweetheart, so I don't feel the need to "explore" possibilities with other people.

>>83390
This is where you went wrong. Kissing someone else is bad enough, but it wasn't sex or nothing of intercourse happened, but then you became even more selfish when you told your bf. What GOOD did that do? It made -you- feel better, but now he has to know this happened.

I guess it sucks your bf felt the need to cheat on you as well with some cam girl, but I guess cheaters do find each other.

>>83394

She might feel bad because of what she did, but you're labouring under the naive and frankly foolish notion that had she kept it inside of her that noone would have been hurt.
For however much she may have pained herself to admit it and forever much it continues to plague her to date, keeping this is a secret would have torn her up inside even further.

I've already told you, pair-bonding is an incredibly powerful biological mechanism that defies all that we understand about the self-presevatory function that exists at the core of all lifeforms. It doesn't have to make sense because it is, and it's because of such that religious and spiritual notions are born. What we can't explain we turn to the unknown for answers.

Have you ever actually been in a relationship? You sound like you don't understand love one bit. The OP image with the 4chan filename whispers to me that you're a gf'less /robot/.

I did it and admitted it to my partner and basically broke both of our hearts. I felt like the biggest piece of shit walking on the earth for a couple weeks, I tell ya.

but somehow…things have gone back to how they were. this relationship has always defied all odds, so I guess one more isn't shocking. I count my lucky fucking stars every day to have this person in my life and for their forgiveness.

that aside. I've come to realize this is an extremely complex issue that can never be reduced down to just "once a cheater, always a cheater" or similar idioms. so when I see those shit relationship memes on Facebook pertaining to loyalty, I fucking cringe because it's like, how are you going to pretend such a personal issue-which you can only guess the motivation for- can be as simple as "Cheating Gf Gets Karma!!!" clickbait?

I've cheated before, but I was under 20, immature and had relationships that never lasted longer than a year. I just chalk that up to being a dumb teen. I don't really count those as real relationships anyway.

Now that I'm late 20's and in a serious relationship, we've both expressed we want monogamy only so I'd be very upset if I got cheated on, but that's life. It might happen anyway. I just try and keep myself feeling and looking my best and have a fulfilling life outside my partner.

It's severe because entering into a relationship means you both agree to be faithful to one another. The thought of my partner with someone else makes me sick to my core, if I ever found out they cheated on me it would probably break me.
There is so much pain and so many issues you are inflicting on someone when you cheat. "Am I ugly?" "Was I not good enough?" "Did they ever even love me?" "Was I an idiot who was taken advantage of and lied to?" "How can I trust someone not to do this again?"
These issues cut deep and can go on a very long time, sometimes they might not even go away. People hate cheating because it's so selfish, you get to have your fun and will inflict all this pain on your partner and you know this but you don't care and do it anyway.
Of course it isn't always so black and white (abusive relationships, dead marriage, etc) but if you are cheating on your partner you don't even have the respect to break up with them so you won't hurt them. If you want to fool around with someone else then just break up with your partner, there isn't really a reason not to if that's what you ultimately want, or it's just selfish of you.

This story happened to me pretty recently actually and only just finished like 10 minutes ago and it started like a week ago.

I was drunk hanging out with this guy who I used to have a thing for but he cut off his hair and looks ugly now, but we were drunk and I ended up getting with him and I let him stay at mine. He had a girlfriend at that point, I'd met her before and she is absolutely lovely but he is the biggest cunt I have ever met. I think that's what made it easier to do things with him. He ended up breaking up with her in the morning and said he was going to do it anyway and I'd given him an excuse. He didn't tell her it had been me.

I spent the next night out with him and this other dude, I thought there was gunna be other people and there wasn't, waited around for more got too late to go home and had to stay at the other boys house with him too, the 3 of us. Spent the night being felt up wherever I tried to sleep, it was a bit much.

Went home feeling sick of boys, and the guy who'd cheated with me asked if he could stay, I thought he had no where to go so I just allowed. He made me pay a tenner for his fucking taxi (I'll never see that again I'm too broke for this shit) and kept asking me for sex when I told him before he came over that I was just going to sleep. He was trying to emotionally manipulate me into having sex with him the whole night I was having none of it and just rolled over like, bye.

Decided we were just friends in the morning. He still continues to message me, tells me that he's lost every single piece of love he ever had for me and I've lost my chance with him forever. I didn't give a shit lol.

Told my friends how much of a shit he is, everyone hates him and share their own shit experiences with him and other boys we know, become extremely powerful. He comes to the pub with us all, acts like a brat and a perv, everyone has a go at him, he storms off home tells his gf it was me, she starts kicking off and I just tell her everything and we are now friends forever.

I can't tell if I did good or bad.

Cheating is terrible. Someone did that to me once, and I hired someone to light his car on fire. Fucker.

>>83466
Either troll or there is way more to this story I'm curious.

>>83496
First guy I had sex with, at 23 because I'm a fuck up in life and everyone at my college was either an artfag or bro, not touching any of that. Was 'with' him for 4 months, told him I casually mentioned the weekend hike we did to my parents. He freaks out, admits he's been sleeping with a close friend (who i have been chatting with and hanging out with the whole fucking time). For 3 and a half months. No protection with her (got a test immediately after, cried with relief and so glad I never sucked his dick or fucked him without a condom). Best part is, I ran into the bitch of a 'friend' recently - she's got terrible skin and acne that's only gotten worse because she went full 'gluten sensetivity' and 'vegan' so she's a fucking stick, and not in a thinspo way. Oily ass hair, and this dickbag has her so wrapped up she drives 3 hours each way just to work, while he walks 5 minutes, but he refuses to consider moving.

Pic related, got a burner phone and when I got the 'its done' message, so fucking happy.

>>83497
>no protection with her
Assholes who cheat and don't even have the decency to stay safe and not put their SO at risk are stupid and terrible people.

I've been thinking about why exactly is cheating so abhorrent a lot lately. I think it's because a life-long monogamy has been presented in mainstream culture as the only norm for a long time. Even though barely anyone ever spends their whole live with the person they met at 16 and lost their virginity to. Hell, more and more people live through multiple marriages and it's not a big deal.

Most people won't accept polygamy and affairs out of jealousy and possessiveness, both of which stem from insecurity and lack of trust. I've been thinking about why exactly is having sex with an other girl regarded as so much worse than getting drunk with buddies. Both of those are burdened with risks, both of those take time and resources away from relationship, both of those are unshareable experiences that drive apart.

But I still wouldn't want my bf to hook up on the side, because while I'm positive he'd be very hard pressed to find a better life companion, I'd still be scared about him getting blinded by hormones and turning our lives upside down, only to regret it two months later when the sparks stop flying. If he had a one night stand and admitted it was a mistake, I'd be upset but eventually got over it. But a secret affair is just insulting. You think I'm so dumb that I wouldn't find out? You think I'm so hysterical that we can't have a discussion about our relationship? You think I'm so meek that you can have it all with no consequences? Fuck off and take your STDs with you.

But in the end, I think it's because being cheated on feels like the other person has put their own desires above treating you with basic respect. Like they forgotten about your existence, or worse, actively decided to breach your trust. Building a long-term relationship requires a lot of work and it's difficult when you realize that your partner might treat some aspects of it superficially. But people rarely discuss what they actually want and why.

>>83501
You made so many excellent points , especially those about stds and it being important to discuss things in a relationship.

When things get stale with my dude and I in 10, 20 or however many years it takes, I'm open to swinging, polyamoury and such things. I think it's a healthier attitude to have rather than either expecting your dudester will cheat 100% or being completely naive about it. Like with everything in life, it's all about the middle road. Trust your guy, but be reasonable and aware. Eg. If he's not getting anal with you, he might cheat because of that, or he might not. Talk to him about how important certain sex acts or fetishes are to him and how you'd like to explore them. That alone can keep things spicy for ages. It's all about dialogue and offering one another what you need. Sexually, mentally, emotionally etc

>>83435

You are not responding to OP

>>83498
In hs ex cheated on his new gf with me by having unprotected sex with me once. I hated myself for it and eventually cut off all contact with him, but because of that experience it completely changed the way I view relationships and myself.

He would constantly compare us sexually, and would tell me she would try the same things I would but would do a crappy job, and I'm pretty sure he thought it made me happy so that I'd continue. I'm also sure he would convince her to do things she was obviously not comfortable doing because he said she didn't look into it at all. That was the last straw for me because I got disgusted by thinking of her feeling like she has to please him just to keep him, and then I hated how hypocritical I was being because I was doing the same. She eventually stopped talking to him too.

The sad thing is that prior to us going out, he'd done something similar to his ex using me. He had been going out with his gf of about 2 years and had started flirting with me (a freshman). He'd kissed me and left hickeys on me which everyone knew about because he bragged, while still dating his ex. I did not find out till after they broke up and she confronted me about it. The only reason I didn't break up with him then was that the way she way she went about doing this was incredibly disrespectful and I did not know whether to believe her because of that. It wasn't till months later that my bf (her ex) confirmed it and I regretted not breaking up with him sooner when my feelings weren't as strong (we were going through stuff).

>>83365
You are thinking of cheating in itself. While there may be no downside for you, it has emotional consequences for your partner that you will be responsible for. You can decide whether to cheat or not and if you lack such basic self-control, you're a subhuman.

>>83518

I don't care.

>>83394
Hmm? I guess the point I was trying to make is that it really doesn't matter in the end (for me). When deep emotions become involved things get tricky, and I honestly think the sense of betrayal people feel after cheating/being cheated on is more of a disruption of whatever image you've built up about that person.

Even if it was just a kiss, my ex probably felt more torn up about it because he had been cheated on previously, and was constantly worried I'd do the same, and then I kinda did. I felt bad when he told me about the cam girl because I believed that since he had been horribly cheated on before, he wouldn't do that to me. And I also felt bad about cheating (kinda) because I believed I wasn't that kind of person (even though I had no prior experience in this regard).

>very attractive
>kind
>always make sure my partner knows hat they can talk to me about anything
>down for anything
>support them all of the time
>cook
>clean
>more sexual than my partner, so he is always desired
>I've only ever been with him
>we've been together for over half a decade

>he cheats on me twice by getting into emotional (and possibly physical) relationships
>because he's bi and ashamed? And feels icky when he has boy love feelings? So he talks to other girls?

>I
>I'm absolutely crushed
>still stay with him for some reason (probably because I have the lowest self esteem and I've spent so much time with him)
>every day I'm paranoid
>every day I log into all of his accounts
>feel like I will never be good enough, no matter what, because even when I was so good I still wasn't good enough for him not to cheat
>depressed
>anxiety attacks
>nightmares every night
>feel like I can never trust him again, yet still stay

I'm a fucking idiot

>>83536
>>83524
After deliberately removing myself from the casual dating pool – which is how >>83497 happened – holy fuck. The amount of selfish asshats of any gender, who talk casually about cheating or joke about it is unreal. To me it's just a piece of shit thing to do - either get into a relationship or don't. If you can't stop yourself from sticking your dick in random or getting stuck with random dick, maybe a 'relationship' isn't for you. And no, that doesn't mean you're 'poly'. Polyamorous is just that, multi-love. You can't claim to love someone if you're willing to deceive them, and all poly relationships have their own rules and codes it doesn't just mean 'fuck whoever' it actually entails commitment. By the sounds of most people under 25 around me, they just fucking can't commit. That's it. They just cannot fucking reign themselves in enough to know getting drunk or being attracted to someone isn't an excuse to be a shit bag. No no no, what about my feelings, remember my ex who did blah blah blah…all these excuses just to avoid having the balls to say "hey, __, I can't commit to one person. At all. I need someone who is okay with me having sex with someone else, and you need to be okay with me telling you so after the fact and not ask too many questions k?" If people just fucking owned up to their inability to function in a relationship, a ton less people would get hurt.

>>83541
Thank you

>>83536
How did you find out about his login details?

>>83561
I knew his password for one email because it's his xbox live log in. That led to finding out his other emails (he used the Xbox email for the security email for his other accounts). I also remembered him telling me one of his passwords way back when we first started dating, so I used that a various combos of it for his other emails and his Facebook.
I initially found out stuff was going on by just straight up looking at his phone one night though.

Lol, the crazy shit one with anxiety and trust issues will do when they feel betrayed.

>>83589
Yeah I'd just hazard a guess most of the girls posting and replying around here are not the kind of people you want to face when they're pissed off. Heaven help you if they are pissed and you don't know it.