Fidelity in Relationships

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I found this article on msn.com, and it really surprised me. Evidently, infidelity in marriage is something that is tolerated much less in America than in many other nations the world over. Even taking away such cultures like Japan that has institutionalized sex within it, the general sentiment in Europe, Africa and the Middle East is that, at least for men, cheating on a spouse is "no big deal". I find this very curious. I know I wouldn't be OK with my wife having a side job going on, and therefore, I feel that the reverse should be true as well.

According to the article, nearly half of all marriages end in divorce in the U.S., and of those that do end, marital infidelity is sited as the reason for divorce one in five times. So half of one fifth is one tenth, meaning that one in ten marriages will end because at least one member of the couple is unfaithful.

I can't do the article justice in this short message - the entire artilce is three pages long, and I'm not going to go through it point by point. The general sentiment is that marital infidelity is tolerated much less in the U.S. than most other nations. For most Middle Eastern countries, men are allow to be unfaithful, but women are not. And in Europe, far fewer marriages end in divorce due to infidelity, despite the fact that the article claims the incidence of infidelity is much higher in Europe than the U.S. Also, it appears that people in the U.S. feel more guilty about it, and one of the reasons that a higher percentage of unfaithful spouses get caught in the U.S. than elsewhere is because the guilty one admits to it.

What are your thoughts about this? Personally, I was very surprised that this is tolerated in many places. Since we have many non-Americans on the board, I have to ask if anyone would be OK with their spouse having an affair. I know I wouldn't be, and I would seriously consider a divorce if my wife cheated on me, and likewise I would expect my wife to feel the same way if I cheated on her - your thoughts?

 

OK is a relative term. There's a big difference between forgiving something and accepting it. I'm likely to be forgiving of a physical affair, but an "affair of the heart" would be a different matter. In all likelihood, an affair is going to be discovered through confession rather than taking an early lunch, and it's reasonable to assume that if the person feels guilty enough to tell you about it, they aren't liable to do it again. If, on the other hand, the affair is due to falling in love with someone else, a serious heart to heart would be necessary to ensure that you still both want to be together. That said, given that infidelity touches more marriages than it doesn't, I'm inclined to forgive such an instance in my own marriage. We're all only human, after all.

 

I'm not sure I'd put any trust in that. Its as easy to say that since (s)he did it once, (s)he can do it again.

I thought he said 1/10 marriages?

Anyway, if my gf cheated on me, it would be a BIG deal. Not necessarily a relationship killer, because I love her more than I can say, but a BIG, BIG deal. In the same way, if I'm even tempted to do something along those lines, I feel like I've almost taken a jack-hammer to our relationship. I would readily expect her to be pissed for a VERY long time if I did anything like that.

 

For my own account I tried to continue the relationship after my ex was unfaithful, it wasn't sex actually, but a sex type thing that she did with another guy. Maybe if an bad stuff hadn't hit the fan big time and maybe if I would've gotten a place in that town's university we'd still be together. Maybe.

After a while I probably would have stopped trying to seek retribution, but during that final year we were together after she confessed her unfaithfulness, a bad thing happened and I couldn't be there for her even if I wanted to.

We were talking about couples counceling, but things just got too painful to continue and having a difficult long-distance relationship was something neither of us wanted.

Personally I think that a part of her wanted to get rid of me, so she acted in a way that made it happen. Eventually. So in any case I think that it woul've ended with her in any case. But her infidelity wasn't actually the thing that tore us apart. I think we could have handled the situation, but bad things started to pile up until it reached a breaking point.

In any case I don't think that my girlfriends infidelity would be something I couldn't cope with eventually, but it would just take a lot of time. Several years. And even then it would be 'two strikes and your out' -type of thing.

 

Well, the article was only discussing marriages that ended in divorce. One-half of marriages end in divorce, and one-fifth of those that do are because of infidelity. That's how I came up with the one-tenth. However, I'm sure there are instances where cheating occurs that don't result in divorce, and the article does not take them into account. So I would expect that the actual incidence of cheating is greater than one-tenth.

 

My own family (well, my parents) are going through this right now. My father, at the age of fifty-six, has decided that he is not happy, and has turned to hooking up with skanks he meets at bars and on the internet. The best part: he tried to make it as obvious as possible to my mother, but since she didn't choose to confront him (imagine, my parents not communicating... ), and he didn't have the backbone to tell her himself, he told me knowing that I would tell her. And I did. And I have since cut ties with my folks.

Infidelity is an act of absolute selfishness, especially considering the acceptability of divorce. It is like I told my father, "As adults we can step outside of ourselves and examine our own actions..." That was our last conversation.

I think in my father's case, pornography had a lot to do with influencing his decision about whether or not his sexual needs were being met. According to him, he did this stuff cause my mom wouldn't give him head...

Yeah, you don't get to choose your family...

 

It certainly IS a 'big deal' in this part of Europe. *Please* Aldeth, there's been a few 'Europeans' flag up Americans here for using that word. We genuinely don't like 'Europeans' because the continent is so diverse.

I don't think I could ever stick with a relationship where our girl has cheated. Once the doubt and mistrust is there, you can't fully get rid of it. To be honest though, most girls with me know where they are better off anyway. I've only ever been cheated on once (I'm pretty positive... ).

 

There is a lot of infidelity in the Navy -- 'what goes on cruise, stays on cruise' was a Navy phrase long before Las Vegas decided to use it in their advertising. Some couples choose to ignore infidelities that take place when separated, some are quite condemning of those practices (and commonly called white rats when they choose to share their knowledge of infidelities).

Typically, I've seen infidelity as a manifestation of a greater problem. Whatever excuses are given it really boils down to lack of respect for your partner (for whatever reason).

 

Aldeth, what about Catholicism or at least Catholic culture? That's something to prevent you from divorcing an unfaithful husband or wife. The US have a large number of Catholics, but there is a dominant protestant feel.

I wouldn't divorce an unfaithful wife, but quite a lot would be shattered. I would try to understand her, but I can imagine some scenarios that would be more difficult than others. If there were signs of inability to stay faithful, or if it came out she didn't intend to stay unconditionally faithful at the point of marriage, that would likely mean the marriage was invalid - on the grounds of Catholic canon law, not civil law. Then I would sue for nullity rather than convalidate such a marriage. That would be a tragedy. Besides, I like to think I wouldn't end up with a woman unable to stay faithful, you know, as in someone who can't control his sexuality. Or with someone who doesn't intend to marry for real, without allowance for cheating or divorce. But you never know and it's always a tragedy when you find out.

I don't like the sentiment in the article that adultery is something so normal and almost healthy. "It bears no reflection on her," my ass. If I were his woman, I wouldn't even hit him. I would just ask him to leave the house.

What a load of crap. People are magnificent in creating crappy excuses and whole houses of cards of them.

And now a load of crap from the author. It's neither rigid nor demanding to expect a marriage to be exclusive.

Err... What? Ekhm. It was like that before. Historically. Except there was no therapy but the concept of forgiveness and making an effort.

There's a difference between fidelity and expectation of fidelity, and morbid jealousy. I don't accept cheating in any form, but I don't read people's mail, text messages, don't screen their friends or anything.

 

Regarding how often marital infidelity happens, it's been estimated that 60% of men and 40% of women are unfaithful at some point in their marriage when you include emotional affairs and sexual relationships without intercourse in your figures. If intercourse is required to "count" as infidelity, those infidelity figures drop substantially. Here's a relevant link for anyone who is interested in taking a look.

 

Sexual affairs with no intercourse I can understand. But what's the definition of "emotional affairs" and what are the limits? I understand that "emotional affairs" can be damaging, but unless people are engaging in seemingly platonic affairs strictly for sexual gratification, what's the defining point? I can't see it on par with sexual cheating unless someone's deliberately getting off on it.

[ March 22, 2007, 15:53: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Kissing isn't sex, Chev, and falling in love with someone else ends a lot more relationships than ****ing someone else ever has. An "emotional affair" is when a person not only invests more of their emotional energy outside their marriage, but also receives emotional support and companionship from the new relationship.

In an emotional affair, a person feels closer to the other party and may experience increasing sexual tension. About half of such emotional involvements do eventually turn into full-blown affairs, sex and all.

 

Not sure if I know what you mean... But you surely mean kissing in a romantic way, or sexual, well, that would be cheating. Making out is not always romantic, it's often sexual. Think of drunk people making out, what love of romantism is in that? Does it break relationships apart? Oh sure it does. I can't really imagine continuing a relationship after something like that.

What kind of emotional energy, emotional support and companionship are we talking about? Some kind of it we receive from friends and it's legitimate, but there is definitely a kind that's wrong. I don't know, however, if you'd draw the line at the same point I did.

What you talk about in the last paragraph, well, that would be sexual in a way and quite obvious. And yeah, it obviously leads to sex. First it starts as a "friendship", then there's full-blown cheating. IMHO people deceive themselves because they want to keep that relationship at any price, so it may seem more important than marriage even. That's probably how one can tell.

 

I don't really know where the writer comes from with the "no big deal" attitude - I personally hold a one strike and you're out - for good - attitude.

 

It was intuitive to me as well and I used to hold it with regard to relationships before marriage. I've made at least one exception and I generally don't hold to that on principle, but I'd be disinclined from continuing any relationship in which it happened so early and all unless the case were very special. After marriage, I wouldn't be divorcing, as I've said, but it would be a big deal indeed.

 

I agree, especially if it is with an ex-SO. Unless they have a damn good excuse (like a roving band of pirates captured me and told my girlfriend she had to have sex with someone else or I would die - I would excuse that ), they're out.

 

I would see infedility as a personal betrayal and a rock hard proof that I cant trust that person and that obviously that person dont really care overly much about me. This of course leads to "kkthxbye" as they say on the internet.

 

My ladyfriend's husband always cheats on her, always has. Yet she did the same only twice, he was furious. She still lives with him despite his infidelity, and she she cannot help but feel guilty for her two times (compared to probably 22 times on his part).

Id never sleep with her because she is still married, but I have asked her a few times to marry me and she is having a hard time getting her head around the fact that a hot young guy half her age is interested in her. I trust her not to cheat on me if we were married because I would never ever ever even consider cheating on her.

At the moment we have been emotionally involved for about 4 years, and nothing has ever happened physically, and I dont mind at all. Id rather wait until she left her husband anyway. Im not going to be the one that breaks up a marriage, if she wants to leave him she should do it because she wants to. At the end of the day, Im happy with whatever makes her happy.

 

I don't have any problem with people seeing more than one person at a time, provided they're not married and are open about it. If one person isn't okay or don't know about it though, especially if the two are married, then I find cheating to be a very serious issue in couples.

 

Marriage is a sacred covenent. Adultery is a severe violation of such covenents. Basically, in marriage, you promise to be faithful to your spouse, and cheating on them basically breaks it, meaning you have no promise.

Having said that, if, when I get married, my wife cheats on me, I would likely end up in divorce, but if she were truly repentant, I could try to forgive her and may not divorce.

Also, what could count as infidelity? If you were married, could pornography count as infidelity? You are looking at naked women other than your wife, and likely thinking about having sex with them...