Infidelity

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I'd like to do some informal data gathering here via poll regarding infidelity. Before anyone runs for the door, let me make it clear that I'm not asking anybody to confess to any personal infidelity; you may if you care to, but be aware that you would be doing so to your own peril and that once posted here that information would no longer be secure. i.e., I don't recommend it. What I'm moreso interested in is your knowledge (or lack thereof) of people you know who have cheated on their spouses or significant others. You are of course free to include yourself in that group anonymously if you like. You should also feel free to share stories (but remember that this is not the MUG) in order to better frame the context of the data if you so choose. (I would actually encourage this.)

What I'm primarily interested in is the whom and what (poll), followed secondarily by the how and why (posts). I'd largely like to see here if the trends in my personal observations bear out in a wider sample. In my own experience there are some very distinct trends reagrding infidelity that seem to have formed in the 'modern era,' but I will refrain from tainting the sample pool by stating what they are ahead of time.

As you will see from the poll options, the basic categories are heterosexual married couples, heterosexual unmarried couples, and homosexual unmarried couples. (I don't include homosexual married couples because I don't think there enough of them yet to be significant, but if you know otherwise, please say so in a post.) Each category then contains subsets for the sexes: husband cheating; wife cheating; boyfriend* cheating; girlfriend* cheating. Each subset then includes the co-conspirator - man or woman - and may involve either heterosexual or homosexual cheating partners.

(*the terms 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' sound intrinsically teenager-ish, but I mean them to indicate any non-married committed relationship.)

You may vote for as many options as are applicable, but I think you can only vote once for each, so if you, say, know of 50 married men who have cheated on their wives, please say so in a post so the numbers can be reflected accurately.

Also please refrain from linking to any articles or statistics gathered elsewhere about this sort of thing. I'm interested in the findings of the SP membership specifically, not the entirety of the internet or any outside sources.

I would also avoid naming names ("My good friend Tom Jones cheated on his wife with seven women over a period of eighteen years"), because those types of phrases have a strange tendency to appear in internet search results, and we wouldn't want Tom's wife to idly search for her husband's name and 'cheating' one day and find this thread.

Lastly, this info is intended mainly for BoM discussion and edification purposes and will not be published or appear in a study ('Study shows SP members cheat like rabbits!') or anything like that.

Post-lastly, feel free to share your own beliefs, conclusions, absolute certainties, false certainties, straw-men, sweeping condemnations, sweeping aquittals, ridicule, defense, or any other rationale or vitriol you would care to include. Everybody loves a good gossip rant, so have fun.

 

I see no poll. [edit -- now I do]

In terms of infidelity, it all depends on what you actualy mean by infidelity. To me, it means sexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse / significant other. It also means (to me, anyhow) developing a serious romantic attachment to someone other than your spouse. Both are no-nos in the Book of LKD.

However, there are psycho crazy women out there (not that I am judgemental) who believe that a man walking in the mall who looks a little too long at a hot young blond has committed an infidelity, and she immediately starts <female dogging>. Such psycho women are the bane of men everywhere.

In the interests of fairness, I also know that there are men like that too, and sadly some of them turn into real pieces of feces. But I haven't seen that firsthand, whereas I have seen insecure Perditas make life miserable for men.

 

I would say that's a fair estimation. There are also a variety of other 'gray' areas - sexual contact less than intercourse, etc. Let's say everything including and greater than 'a serious romantic attachment to someone other than your spouse/significant other.'

[edit] Polls are always posted after the fact, it seems.

 

What do you mean by "know of"? Personally? I mean, I've heard of all of those type of things, so I "know of" them. Do you mean only people we know personally who have done these things?

 

I was going to say "know" and leave it at that, but I wanted to include non-direct relations, such as a story you heard from your co-worker about his uncle. If we limited it to direct relations, the pool might be kind of small. So, not 'know of' as in you've heard of the phenomenon, but 'know of' as in a literal example that is of a personal nature. (So that Jesse whatever biker guy who cheated on Sandra Bullock doesn't count, but your buddy once removed does.)

 

I don't understand the point of the specificity in the poll questions. They can all be simplified by their common denominator, "they cheated." Who they cheated with seems irrelevant since everyone is so different and everyone's reason for cheating is unique to them. Obviously at a base level a married person cheating is a more selfish and harmful act than a single cheater, but still - I find the framing of this topic perplexing, especially when you consider the grossly unrepresentative sample you're bound to get from our community.

 

All data is useful. Obviously what I hope to learn is what trends the SP membership's experiences indicate, and the answers will indeed include who and upon whom and with whom - all relevent to me.

If at the end I conclude "a-ha, more members of group x cheat on group y with group z than anyone else, according to SP ... this means that group x is evil - EVIL!", feel free to land on me. More likely I will simply take the numbers within the limited sample at face value.

[edit] Why would the community sample necessarily be grossly unrepresentative?

 

My votes are in. This topic is a real hot button for me. Infidelity (particularly marital infidelity), for me, is high on the list as one of the most reprehensible things a person can do. I saw it tear my parents' relationship apart, and the relationships they had with their future spouses. It's a vicious cycle that is apparently tough to break. It's especially horrible when there are kids involved.

If you're married, be true to your spouse. Period, end of story.

If you feel the need to sleep with other people, and just can't get past that... then it's probably better that you not be married. I think a person must have a bit of a wicked soul to sleep around, then go home and pretend that nothing's going on around their spouse and children.

I know a lot of people cheat (I've been hit on by my share of women who are married or otherwise in a so-called "committed" relationship), so presumably my post will be taken somewhat offensively by those people. But this is how I see it.

 

Most of the posters here are guys of varying nationalities, non-athletic, interested in computers, gaming and fantasy/sci-fi entertainment. That's a fairly specific group, Gaear. And of that group, you'll be lucky to get a few dozen responses. If you are only interested in the fidelity habits of...for lack of a better term, us dorks...I guess it's somewhat useful. But in general your results will be pretty much meaningless, especially considering the dearth* of options in the poll.

But hey - as I too am posting here while I should be working, who am I to judge how others waste their time. Best of luck.

* typo. See next post.

 

While I think you're being far too generous with the 'geek' stereotype for SP (there are a variety of persons here from all walks of life and backgrounds - citizens of numerous countries, married, single, homosexual, heterosexual, young, old, professionals, students, etc. - details all more significant imo than whether or not they play video games or like Star Wars), that's exactly what I'm looking for. It's kind of why I asked the question here in the SP forum in the first place.

If you're assuming that everyone here will most likely fit the victim profile, I think you're jumping to conclusions.

[edit again] What other options could there possibly be in the poll - cheating with animals?

 

No, just cheating with Rabbits.

 

I jumped to no such conclusion. I'm merely pointing out that if you asked the same set of questions of an otherwise identical D&D-themed message board, you may find you'd get wildly different results, mainly due to all the variables involved. So many options, so few respondents, so many different reasons why they did what they did, culturally, morally, situationally...aside from amusement, I can't see any substantive knowledge gained from the exercise, is all I'm saying. Any patterns you observe would be offset by a margin of error so large it would make any resulting conclusion meaningless. I think you'd gain more incite from any anecdotes our members are willing to share from their own personal experience.

Edit: Woops, I said "dearth" of options, when I meant "overabundance." The opposite of dearth. As in, I've had a dearth of coffee this morning.

 

You only included single orientation pairings What about bisexuals or pansexuals?

As for those who I have known have cheated, I have heard a fair number of sob stories from girls at high school being cheated on but most were along the lines of "Oh god he flirted while drunk, how could he?!"

So discounting those I know of a serial female cheater married with two kids, I know of an ex who has cheated on me (He denies... they didn't, but he admits freely he cheated on the lass before me... ) I know of several men who have cheated on their female partners, strangely the only unmarried straight women I know who have cheated have been caught with other women. I don't know directly any homosexual cheaters.

Though now I've already voted I've remembered an instance...

 

If I narrowed the options, I wouldn't get all the potential data I'm looking for. I really don't see how they're unreasonable - either you know (of) such a person or you don't. That's all I'm after. If there were fewer options, possibilities would be left out. And I can't think of any extra options. It seems fairly comprehensive to me as is, but if anyone has any suggestions as to how to frame the inquiry more effectively, I'm all ears.

Additional insight, I would agree ... which is why I also asked for such input.

As I stated in the opening post, I want to see if the SP membership's experiences mirror my own. I'm not really looking to draw sweeping conclusions. And being as I specifically asked for SP input, I don't see how SP's input will reflect anything other than SP's input or how it might not effectively reveal SP's experiences, unless voters/posters lie.

Otherwise, thanks for your cautionary statements DR, but I think it's time we moved back on-topic.

That's a good point - pansexuals might be a bit far afield for my purposes, but I did leave out bisexuals. (I guess they could technically fit into any of the categories though - bisexual married woman, bisexual man in a committed homosexual relationship, etc.) Also some of the outcomes would already imply bisexuality - e.g., straight woman cheats on boyfriend with other woman, etc.

 

As a kind of follow-up to 8's question, I was a bit confused by some of the choices. The options I checked all involved appropriate gender pairings, i.e., I know of a straight guy that cheated on his girlfriend with other women, and I know of a gay woman who cheated on her girlfriend with other women. But I don't know of, to use one example, any straight men who have cheated on their wife/girlfriend with another man, because IMO, if they did, they wouldn't be straight (and vice versa of course).

 

* sigh * Alright Gaear, fine. I won't derail your thread by pointing out the numerous logical fallacies in your last response, as I have nothing invested in this topic. I was just trying to help you out a little. Carry on.

 

The straight part of that is implied by the existing stated relationship, I guess ... for the sake of framing the query, we're calling men and women in a committed heterosexual relationship 'straight,' even though the fact of their cheating with same sex partners means they're technically not. Sorry if that's confusing, but please just focus on the initial relationship as the qualifier. Rest assured that the info will be no less valuable to me.

Thanks. I actually know full well what I'm asking for here DR, even if you don't.

 

Gaear, DR is a good-guy, you shuldn't spread rumors like that!

On topic, I voted yes to several of the choices. My eldest brother had his wife cheat on him. With the neighbor's 18 yr old. And some of his friends, apparently. She was pretty good-looking too, but it was hard to get past her personality. She was a nut-case with a 7th grade education. That's right. 7th grade. Gotta love chics from West Virginia. Though she would buy me beer when I was under age, so she could be cool at times.

Also, my best friend in High School married his High School sweethart. She cheated on him with her best-friend, a female. At first, he didn't think it was cheating, he thought it was awesome as they blantantly started making out in front of us and other friends of ours. Until she cut him off and continued with her friend regularly. Then things changed really fast. I use to tease him that I couldn't believe it only took him 6 months to turn her lesbo. It had to be a record. Now he is a bachelor for life and treats women like crap, no matter how great they are. Funny how these things can change a person...

 

Yep, that's perfectly fine.