FunkMistress said:

Thank you....I am touched....

....

SisterGirl said:

I don't consider what I said to be an insult. Religious people who think they have a lock on 100% faithful marriages make me giggle.

1. Is your relationship with the creator ruined over your sins?
2. Some relationships can survive adultery as long as both parties can be completely honest about why the cheating took place in the first place.
3. All adultery does not lead to broken homes.
4. You can learn to respect and trust your partner again.
5. While cheating on a spouse can lead to STDs, I still think this is just a ridiculous statement.

reneGade20 said:

I realize that the IMHO also was an indicator as well.

I guess it depends on the "severity". Was it an affair or a casual fling or one night stand? One night stands/Slip up is one thing. An Affair where you hvae devoted your heart to someone else is another matter.

IMHO..I think monogamy is way over rated and I really don't think it's in most human nature to be monogamous (I tend to think that more of men than I do women). It's kind of a choice/an agreement you make with someone else. That said, while I don't think it's in human nature to be so, I think most people have issues when trying to decide on something other than monogamy.

And if you want to know where I am coming from...I am a gay male in San Francisco where the majority of gay male couples are not monogamous. There is also a huge poly amourous community (straight) here. So I suppose I hear more arguments on this than most and know people who choose this life style.

Stymie said:

Living proof that couples can recover.....

NAnomaly said:

Asserting that my comment was somehow based in a perfect world, based on the tone and tenor of my previous posts, seemed to suggest otherwise.....

...but to each their own.....

reneGade20 said:

no, but ok

If there wasm ore adultery going on, our president might not b so hi-strung, leading to no war in Iraq.

INSATIABLE said:

I second that. Enough said.

Stymie said:

You've made me giggle too, it still amazes me how picky people can get on this board. I could say that what you wrote was ridiculous but I respect your opinion and would not pick it apart and downplay it in any way and it isn't ridiculous. I've already stated the list of things that could happen and have happend. Do I have to explain myself with every post or something? Was it picked apart because I believe in the Bible? It is also my personal decision to avoid adultery as many have also chosen to do, not just religious people. This way I can avoid the consequences of such actions in my own marriage. Don't you think it's ridiculous when someone brings back an STD to their spouse do to sleeping with someone else, when they could have avoided it in the first place?

While I agree that marital problems can be fixed, I'd very much rather it be money issues or parental issues than, "Honey I cheated on you." I would NOT want to hurt my husband like that. Learning to respect your mate and trust them again? Sure, but won't it always be in the back of your mind, like, "what if?" And yes broken families are on the rise and yes many times adultery leads to it.

I do have to say though that what common sense means to one, does not mean the same for another. Not many people use it and choose to create excuses for hurtful behavior which not only affects their significant other and their family, but themselves too. That to me personally is ridiculous.
[Edited 2/18/07 20:25pm]

You will never, i repeat never, look at your significant other the same way ever again. Unless you are guilty of the same act.

Couples can sometimes recover and stay together, but what is lost in the relationship can never be salvaged.

Sex and humans inability to control their privates is the root of all evil. Dont misunderstand me, I love sex as much as the next person, but sex rarely has much to do with love.

DarkKnight1 said:[quote]You will never, i repeat never, look at your significant other the same way ever again. Unless you are guilty of the same act.

Couples can sometimes recover and stay together, but what is lost in the relationship can never be salvaged.

Sex and humans inability to control their privates is the root of all evil. Dont misunderstand me, I love sex as much as the next person, but sex rarely has much to do with love.[/quote]

I agree
[Edited 2/18/07 21:45pm]

i have issues with it for reasons i am sure are obvious to most.


but my first reaction was to forgive him. had i already not had huge issues with trust, it might have worked.

Mach said:

I think it takes a certain kind of person to be able to cheat. I'm not sure if I believe once a cheater always, a cheater, because everyone is different, but theres a lot of truth to that. If you have a cheating mind and way about you, I'm not sure that, that ever changes.

I've always cheated, in my past relationships. I've never had one boyfriend, that I didn't cheat on. I wasn't married, so some people would say I had no obligation to these people, but the truth is, I STILL cheated. On every single one. I loved one person out of all of these guys. He was my first serious relationship, we lost our virginity to eachother, and the whole thing was very sweet.

I still cheated on him, a couple different times. Looking back it was insecurity. If I'd be out and he wasn't with me. I needed to feel wanted. Even thought I knew I was loved by someone else, (who was really really the most awesome guy ever) I needed a guy, just for that nite, to want me.

Fast foward a couple years, to my second most serious relationship. To a man, that was THEE ABSOLUTE most loving (and hot) guy ever. Who loved me, probably more than I will ever be loved again. We had a four year relationship and were engaged.

I cheated on him numerous times in those four years. With 5 different people. (That I can remember) The last guy I cheated with, happens to be my husband today.

Why did I cheat? Same reason. Needing valididity from men. Wanting to feel wanted by numerous men. Feeding some kind of insecurity.

Another thing. I loved Bryan. The way you SHOULD love somebody, but I didn't realize that at the time. We started out as great great friends. We had so much fun together, and I WAS ME around him, and he loved me.

But I always, wanted sparks, and that "beginning of a relationship" feeling to last through the whole relationship.

So I would cheat on him to get that feeling else where.

The ending of this relationship, you could say, may be, the biggest mistake I ever made. or the best thing I ever did. Its probably both.

Now I'm married for 5 yrs now, together 6. I've never cheated on my husband one time. I've thought about it, and I've had an intimate mental relationship with a man besides my husbnd.

I already know that I will never be unfaithful with my husband and have physical contact with another guy. But some consider the whole 'emotional affair' to be cheating.

And in my heart, I know that in a way it was, and it was a betrayal. This one was also out of insecurity, but a much MUCH deeper insecurity than I felt with the others I cheated on.

This was the insecurity of an abused woman.

But it was still led by insecurity.

I will never cheat on my husband.

But my point is, that people who cheat, usually continue the cycle.

DarkKnight1 said:

I agree that sex does not HAVE to do with love..that is for sure but some times it does in the purest sense. Some times making love is just that"making love".


I think it is possible to love someone and make love to them and have great sex. I used to think it was not possible to have both so I settled for the love and no real sexual connection thing and that did not go so well for me.
I think we are all different and have different needs. Some ppl enjoy sex without love and they are happy with that.
To each his/her own really...

Mon would hate that I would post this here, but still, I had one particularly horrible xmas after it transpired she'd not been faithful to me. It was before we were living together and I was back and forth between Thailand and England for 3 or 4 months at a time. It hurt worse than anything I'd felt, thinking about how I was working hard to raise money to come back out here and she was messing around purely for fun and not another relationship (which made it hurt more for some reason). I didn't trust her at all for a long time, but grew to trust her again in that regard. She's not the most trustworthy person in some respects still, and to be frank is a natural born liar. Tonight she was supposed to be back in time for us to have dinner together, yet I know she's down Khao San road with Ple. My sister in law has just gone out to meet a friend and will see her there and tell her to come back, but whether she will or not, who knows? She doesn't have a phone and won't bother to call even if she's going to stay out until 1am. She can go out with the best intentions (as today, going for coffee with a Thai friend who's just come back from the US), but once she's playing pool and having a few drinks she just can't do it. It sucks, but I can't go out with her every time she goes somewhere, and trying to control her rarely works or does anybody any good. She's slowly getting the whole nightlife thing out of her system, but damn if it's not a long and difficult thing for me to deal with. She's not an alcoholic as she hardly ever drinks, but when she does she's like a completely different person.

ufoclub said:

Thats totally true, in all my cases above.

Fauxie said:

I'm sorry about all this Nick. Your a great guy to understand who Mon is and give her another chance.


.....natural born liar.

My mom is a liar about the smallest things. She lied to me my whole life, and my poor old man.

I lie too, about stuff like Mon. How much I drank. I say I did stuff when I didn't.

I wonder if I'm a natural born liar.

Fauxie said:

Wow- you are an understanding and loving man. That is what I said in a post long ago- we all have our limits and boundaries.

Every one deals with things differently and can accept different things in their loves.
I am sorry you had to go through what you did long ago but in the end the two of you are the only ones that can work it out and deal with it.
every situation and relationship is different.

Also I think it is important since we are all different to discuss those limits and boundaries with our loved one..

[Edited 2/19/07 5:41am]

SureThing said:

Yeah, it's weird. She'll lie about small things too, little white lies and half-truths. I don't worry about her cheating on me anymore. Her love for me has changed, somewhat similar to how I've always loved her, but there's just this lack of thought for me and how I feel sometimes that's a killer. It's not often, but it's a constant still. It never goes away. When I took her to the UK she was incredible. She didn't drink anything, was really helpful, sweet and kind, and grateful to my parents for putting us up and taking us out to see things. There she was 100% of the time what she's like here 80% of the time. I think when she's in Thailand she still misses her independence and the nightlife and our life at the moment just doesn't give her enough to be able to give that up or at least be reasonable about it. I want her to go for girls' nights out, and have talked with her about it before, even suggesting how often and everything, but she still ends up sneaking out while doing daytime errands and stuff and doesn't come back til after midnight. She left home at 15 and didn't come back to live here until a good 4 years later. She'll never be controlled, and I wouldn't want to do that, but I hope that she can continue this steady (but very slow) progress towards settling down a little and being a bit more thoughtful.

this is a reaaaaally touchy subject for many...

Let me go for the child-of-the-marriage viewpoint. My Mum cheated on both my Father and my StepDad. well, I should say that 100% my StepDad but my Dad tells me after she passed away that she cheated on him too... asked him to wait in a Hotel for a week while she chose between him and the man she stayed with (who was a complete asshole to me and my Brother) needless to say my Dad said no and took off to live 12 hours away where he's been ever since (uh, 26 years ago now)

My Mum, if you'd have met her (Mach you would have loved her, I know it) was someone most people would say "never" do anything like that... she was a beautiful soul with nothing but love to give. the point I'm trying to make is that we're all human and NEVER is a biiiiigass word. I must admit it has (and in the beginning really badly) made me lose respect for her in a way. I really loathe saying that but it's true

I despise cheating, no doubt about it... BUT having said that, again we're only human

Shanti1 said:

Thank you. I just do my best to do what I believe is best for her and us when I think she's not moving in the right direction, all while trying not to control her too much or suppress the amazing bubbly personality and energy she has. It's a long old process but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Fauxie said:

Sounds like you are doing the right thing my friend...you are thinking about both of you- how amazing is that..She is a lucky girl but I am sure she already knows that.
This whole topic is has really made me think and resolve some things but it has also stirred up a few things in my head and my heart.
I had an emotional affair towards the end of my marriage. Though I do not recommend ppl doing this type of thing- when I got caught it finally opened up the lines of communication. We both discussed what was happening to us and the fact that we were just room mates but we were just ignoring that fact to stay in our comfort zone I guess.
Once things were out in the open and we started to discuss things and seek professional help we realized there was nothing there to save- it had died or withered away long ago- from lack of caring and nurturing on both of our parts. I also realized that we were way different in our beliefs, needs and wants. He was willing to live together without sex and do the pretend things for several reasons... I was not willing to live the rest of my life like that so we decided to go separate ways. So- in my case it has all been a good thing I guess you can say because it forced us to see things now and getting on with our lives sooner rather then later.
He had expressed/hinted many times that he was ok with me having some thing physical just so I would stay and not disturb our lives...which in turn made me feel unwanted and unloved. It was all so I would find the connection I needed elsewhere and he would not have to do the work in fullfilling my needs. It was an excuse to do what needed to be done to salvage what we had left but it all worked out in the end as it usually does.
[Edited 2/19/07 6:08am]

Fauxie said:

She sounds a lot like me/ or vice versa. Read my story up above. Does that sound like her?

Shanti1 said:

That's so tough and I can only imagine how you must have been worn down as a woman and human being in that situation, but it's wonderful you're coming out the other side aware of what happened and why and with a determination to be happy just as you most certainly deserve to be.

SureThing said:

Some parts but not others. She would say she adores me and wants to spend her life with me. She would mean it too, and were I ever to say I was walking away (which I won't), she'd fight all the way to make me stay. Like you, she loved a man and cheated on him despite really loving him. However, it's tricky for me now to be able to determine quite how much she loved me then as time has passed and my more recent memory of how she feels about me is clearer in my mind. She had never been in a serious relationship and had no idea how it worked (this despite being married before for just under a year, to someone who cared about her deeply and had good intentions but never truly loved her in that complete way).

Perhaps it was an insecurity of sorts which led to her cheating in the sense that a few previous boyfriends she'd had were foreigners who'd come over once or twice but eventually given up on the long distance thing. Here was me, certain I'd be in this for the long haul, but she deep down may have wondered if I'd be like the others. Like you, she wanted the male company and attention, and I was thousands of miles away. We weren't serious enough, or at least perhaps she hadn't fully committed herself to the relationship and basically 'got' the idea of love, to stop her from cheating. With me she hadn't really seen anything different at that point to the other relationship she'd been in. Gradually she started to understand all of what I felt for her and she grew up (fiercely independent and self-reliant as she was, but so naive in many ways) and began to realise what it is to love somebody completely. She didn't want to leave me, she wasn't unhappy. I just wasn't there and she was used to someone being there.

Now I'd have no worries about going to England without her and trusting her here without me, but I was naive myself at the time (first relationship for me) to think that all I felt for her was transmitted perfectly to her and would be enough to make her faithful at that time, especially with her living the party life back then and working amongst it too.

My concern now is this going out business. Everything is great nearly every day of every month, but the going out thing is still there. She'll drink just 2 or 3 times a month, but those times she'll come home plastered at 1 or 2am after going out in the daytime to do something, telling me beforehand she'll back around a certain time, then sneaking off to a bar and never once calling me at least to let me know. It doesn't help that she still has many old friends (not all the best people or greatest of influences) who haven't moved on from that party life down in Khao San Road. Both our friend Ple and Mon's sister Ta are single too and go out quite a bit. It matters not that I make an effort to go out with Mon sometimes and take her to eat out often several times a week. She just seems to need these nights out and can't get it out of her system. Under other circumstances I could be cool with it, if it were controlled and mutually arranged and understood, but it's sneaky and shows a lack of thought about my feelings the way she's doing it now.

Damn, another epic post. Sorry guys.

i've been on the giving and recieving end. its really sad when i look back on when i was younger and i thought i needed to be with somebody to validate me who i was. i felt bad about doing it and i felt bad about hurting the other woman. nothing good ever came of it. the sex part is bad enough but being lied to is the worst. i have a very very low tolerence to being lied to about almost anything period so cheating is the definite end. it could never be the same. no matter how much i feel for that person i don't think i could ever get over it. i envy those who have the strengh to do so.

There is a lot of honesty being expressed about this subject, and in my case, I am soaking in all the different perspectives because they will help me even further in fixing my self imposed mess. I am seeing a preponderance of folks who think or say that the trust can't be repaired and what not; I disagree to an extent because its the honesty, no matter whether it precedes or follows the cheating, that will repair the trust. All the time I spent lying about the incident caused more and more pain, which ultimately led my sig-other to question her feelings for me and for our marriage. When she allowed me the final opportunity to deal with this, I decided that it was about damned time that I stop running from myself and deal with the shit that I caused and when I did, we had and are having a dialogue and a reconnection that I really didn't think was possible under the circumstances. The hardest thing to deal with, as the transgressor, was to sit there with my mouth shut and ears open (instead of the other way around) and HEAR how much I'd hurt her...knowing that outside of me being a pod person, there was nothing I could offer as a legitimate excuse other than my own selfishness.

Bottom line, folks....if you and your sig-other think that its a worthwhile venture, then give yourself over to it....cheater, be honest with them and with yourself...understand that any topic, no matter how unrelated, could potentially remind her about some detail that she discovered about your affair.....cheatee (bad word!! ), if you're serious about wanting to work it out, understand that nothing is gained by the "one step forward, two steps back" approach...in other words, don't undermine progress by arbitrarily reaching back into the past to exact some measure of revenge if its totally unnecessary...

Thank you all who have shared their opinions and experiences ...

hopefully u can put this stuff 2 some practicle use.