Have you ever cheated on your spouse? Why?

No. But I’ve been the one cheated on and I can tell you that it was not a pleasant experience. It has given me unique hindsight, and thus insight on the topic – and I am committed to never cheating on any future spouse, and indeed, never going out with a cheater.

No. Don’t plan to either.

No, coz I like living see.

No.

Yep, while separated waiting for the divorce to come through I had a couple of one nights stands, so technically I cheated….. Still, I needed the release, The divorce was imminent
& the sex was great BTW, it was good to feel wanted I guess, even if we were just using each other…….. Since the divorce I’ve been single, and I do have several regular partners now… Am I addicted? :-/ maybe…….. “but it’s all done in the best possSSSSSible taste”
;-)

Is it ok when you’re really young? Some people make it really hard to break up with them.

Oh yeah, and the time between separation and divorce.

And of course it was great. Why would someone cheat unless they really wanted the other person very badly?

Not physically no… Nuff said?

I have never cheated on a g/f, and to my knowledge the closest to being cheated on I’ve come is that an X g/f cuddled with another guy, and made out with another guy in a drunken stupor after we had a huge fight.

I have however helped a girl cheat on her boyfriend. It started out with us just being friends, we had a ton of mutual friends and we all hung out all the time. Then she and I started hanging out alone. We tried pretty hard to keep it on the up and up, but her boyfriend lived a few hours away and I was definitely falling for her. Eventually things got somewhat out of hand. We never had sex, but things did progress a ways. There were huge conflicts with one another about her leaving her boyfriend, or us just finally not doing it anymore, etc, etc. She was a very “passive” girl and was afraid to make changes on her own, so she would never break up with her boyfriend. Even though it was apparent to me and her friends that she was unhappy with him for several reasons (and this is even before I entered the picture).

Finally one night at a party another girl and I hit it off flirting. The girl I had been quasi-seeing was somewhat drunk, and she came over and interjected herself into the conversation. She didn’t say anything mean but she put out a very possessive aura with regards to me, and it turned the girl I was flirting with in the other direction very quickly. It basically occurred to me at that point that this needed to end. Not only was she not leaving her boyfriend for me because of her own passive/scared personality, but she was going to hinder me from moving on to someone else who wasn’t seeing someone. So I killed it the next day. I was kind of mean about it (in fact she was so upset she has barely spoken to me since, despite still having the same friends and what not… and this was several years ago now)... But it needed to be done.

But really I suppose this was less in the context of an affair, and more in the context of relationship issues. So I dunno how well it fits your description.

It was very exciting though, at times at least. I mean our friends saw what was happening, and with the exception of my room mates they weren’t very keen on the idea of us cheating on her b/f. So there was the aspect of keeping it secret from them. There was this aspect of would we make some kind of a move. Like our first kiss almost came about a dozen times. She would pull away one time, I would pull away another time, people would be around. One time we were hanging out at my place and I was joking around like covering her eyes for some reason, and I was finally like, “well no better chance than now”... and I just kissed her, and it was one of the most passionate kisses of my life. On top of all that there was still all the regular excitement and joy of a new relationship.

There was a fair amount of shame in it too though. I had always told myself I would never help a girl cheat, or cheat myself. It was one boundary I never wanted to cross. I wanted to be a better person than that and always believed I was. But here I was in a situation with a girl I was falling hard for, and I simply couldn’t stop myself. And every time I found the will power to avoid her or something, she would go out of her way to come to me because she couldn’t stop herself. It was like being helpless almost. There was one time when we were making out and being semi-intimate, that she just suddenly broke down into tears, realizing how wrong what we were doing was with regards to her b/f and our situation. It was a bad situation that I wish could’ve come around under totally different circumstances.

No. I have my code I live by.

For nearly a decade things had been getting colder and colder between my wife and I. Sex dropped to a few times a year. I didn’t think I could stand it any more, but I didn’t want to lose my marriage. I had this idea that if I could have sex outside the marriage, it would save my marriage.

In a way it did. I felt so dishonest about what I was doing that I confessed to my wife, and she got very concerned about me, since this was behavior she believed to be very uncharacteristic of me. She took me to a shrink and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I started taking meds and getting therapy and we started getting couples counseling.

She admitted that she had not been very present in the relationship, so with each of us taking half the blame, we committed to working things out. Four years later, we are still together. It hasn’t been easy, although who would expect it to be?

I do love her, but it is not the same as it was before. I don’t think we will ever achieve the level of intimacy we had at the beginning. There is just too much I can’t talk about. Things she has indicated that she doesn’t want to hear. She told me to tell her only the things that are necessary for her to know.

So we have this history between us, and while things are much better, I don’t know if we can create the intimacy we need to really stay together until we die.

I think we both always had and have good will towards each other. I think we both love each other. I think we are both totally committed to our children. But without intimacy of the soul, I don’t know if that’s enough. I know a lot of people would say to suck it up and follow your vows. Unfortunately, we wrote our own vows, and we don’t seem to have a copy anywhere, so I don’t remember what they were. I don’t think we put “in sickness and in health” there. Hmm. There was a video tape. I wonder if I could find it.

So I feel trapped between wanting to be there for her and my family and wanting to feel true intimacy. Two very important things, and both are important for my own ability to remain stable and present and positive. Yet they may be incompatible with each other, given the circumstances.

No

Nope. Why would I want to jeopardize a wonderful long term relationship for a temporary roll in the hay?

No.

@wundayatta You’re so open and honest…That’s awesome! You deserve to be forgiven…

No. In one relationship though I did have emotional detachment and then fantasized about someone else to where I knew it was time to cut free. I knew I was cheating in my heart, wanting to be elsewhere.

Nope. It’s wrong in so many ways. These so called open marriages are bullshit. Just an excuse to fuck around. That’s why there aren’t many still intact and the ones that are, are on borrowed time.

@woodcutter What about the relationships that aren’t intact or are on borrowed time not involving infidelity?

No. I’m just not built of a deceptive nature.
I divorced 9 years ago and had several friends that encouraged me to hide money and prepare myself. I couldn’t do that either. My ex was a cheater, and he did pull out all the stops when he realized I was finally dead serious about leaving him. I was at a disadvantage in many ways, but, I am proud that I did not sink to his level of deceptions.

I am almost too honest for my own good, but, I value a guilt free conscience and am not a very good actress. Some people are just naturals when it comes to their deceptive ways, not me.

I’m a regular George Washington..I am COMPELLED to tell the truth. haha

No. I’m not a cheater.

@Blackberry Then end it like like you would a hopelessly mutilated animal in the ditch. There’s no need to suffer.

I have cheated on ex-boyfriends. That was part of the clue that they were not the one for me. And those ended quite poorly. Now that I found someone who is very good for me, those past experiences taught me what not to do. I would not want to hurt him like I’ve hurt others, but luckily we’re very compatible, and I am disinclined to even put myself in situations where I might be tempted to stray. It’s part of growing up.