Hello. So last week I went to a school reunion for the 20th anniversary of my hometown school. I’m not the kind of person who enjoy this kind of social events, but for this time I made an exception. My old friend from that time asked me to go and I thought I would be funny (spoiler alert: it wasn’t funny). After the event and speeches, all my classmates and I went to a restaurant. I sat in front of a girl that I had a bit of a crush on when I was a kid. During the dinner I was mostly in silence, they were talking about gossips, old memories, relationships, comparisons… At some point she talked about a boyfriend she had. She said that she cheated on him like 10 or 20 times, she didn’t know the exact number. The thing is… She was laughing about it, and so the others. “I told him I cheated on him, I don’t know how many times…” She said, like nothing happened. My ex girlfriend told me that she also cheated on his fiancée some time before the wedding. She always said that infidelities are always there, like it is normal… But is it? I’ve been thinking about it for some time now, because I know some other cases. But I don’t understand… There is no sense of morality ot loyalty or empathy?
Infidelity is somewhat common but I would say it’s not “normal” at all to openly discuss and laugh about it at dinner with a bunch of people that you haven’t seen for years.
Seriously- wtf is wrong with these people? That one person sounds especially horrible.
Also - don’t go to any more reunions. I’ve managed to avoid 40 years of that shit and I like to believe that I’m happier for it!
I went to my 10 year to make sure I was right. I was. I haven’t gone to any others and don’t even get asked.
The only thing I get from meeting again people I haven’t seen for decades is to, using the abilities I’ve been acquiring with time and life experience to read other people beyond the superficial, find out that
mostmany haven’t really mature much from the people I knew and at times how much I misjudged them back in the old days when I was very naive and ran around pretty lost.The “I’m better than that” feeling would be highly satisfying if I was a different kind of person, but it’s actually just sad that some people turn out to either having always been less than I made them up to be in my mind or failed to actually turn into well balanced mature adults.
The other possibility is that it’s all in my mind and I’m just deceiving myself, as having become more more self-deluded when it comes to others with time looks exactly the same from the inside as having become a little wiser in interpreting others.
Yes, Right? It was too much to talk about it. Definitely that was my first and last reunion
I’m not sure what kind of infidelity happens in high school, but I suspect if someone cheated on me by kissing someone else while we were in high school, I wouldn’t be upset, mostly because the nature of relationships in high school I don’t think of as long lasting. I’ve never cheated nor been cheated on though.
I agree. In high school is different. We all fall in love with a different person every day. But I think she was talking about her mid twenties.
My ex was always rambling about how men were always unfaithful, “oops I slipped and my dick ended up inside her” she used to say, to describe how easily men are unfaithful. She made it absolutely clear she wanted a monogamous relationship.
I was never unfaithful to her, but of course it turned out she was herself unfaithful numerous times, and it was crazy how bad she was at hiding it, almost like she wanted me to break up. So I did, and good riddance!!!
Later when I was moving in with a new girlfriend, and I was collecting some of my things at my ex, she was all dressed up, and all over me, kissing me and trying to win me back. She tried to kiss me on my mouth but I turned my head so it was on the cheek.
My girlfriend was waiting in the car outside, and she saw the lipstick on my cheek when I came back, obviously not too happy about it. But I explained it was all my ex and not me.
Lucky for me she didn’t ditch me, and later my new girlfriend agreed to become my wife, and we’ve been together for 20 years now! 🥰A friend of mine had just bought a very expensive apartment in Copenhagen together with his girlfriend. The papers were signed and the deal was closed. There are a few days where you can get out of the deal, and in that period my friend was told his girlfriend had been unfaithful. He didn’t believe it at first, but the day after the deadline for getting out of the purchase, his girlfriend broke up!
I’m not saying women are worse than men, but the idea that men are more unfaithful than women is bullshit. There are more men than women in the relevant age groups, so obviously on average women have more sex than men do. That’s simply a statistical necessity.
Hah I’ve never heard the Pigeon Hole Principle applied to infidelity. Pecker Hole Principle?
I never heard of this Principle, despite having applied this myself to male/female dating society (including infidelity).
I always imagined it as a Pairing Musical Chairs Principle, where m and n are the amount of chairs and people in team A, and n and m in team B, where n > m.
Thus team A mostly rushes for any chair doing little else, while team B either don’t bother playing the same game and instead decorate their respective chairs at team A or they fight for the taken chair that’s always greener than the free ones.It’s math principle. But it assumes the massively oversimplified scenario that you’re pairing up groups A and B in basically one go. This is nowhere near reflective of reality.
As for your description…how do I put this delicately…I think you’re overthinking it. I wish you well, bud, I really do.
Pigeon Hole Principle
Thanks I never heard of that, but that seems to perfectly describe the principle.
I think the quote was “that’s what high school was, cheating and bad lunches”. Or something like that anyway. I never cheated. I don’t think I ever got cheated on either. I think in junior and high school a lot of people are figuring themselves out and make a lot of mistakes. But I think if someone is bragging about it as an adult, that’s just shitty.
It seems fairly common. What seems to happen a lot is people get dissatisfied in their current relationship but don’t want the drama or risk of breaking up.
For some odd reason it seems easier to meet people when you are already in a relationship so they take the opportunity to cheat while still staying with their stable partner.
There’s been a decent amount of discussion online that when you are already in a relationship, you’ve been “vetted” so to speak. Obviously bullshit, as what your current partner may find acceptable can have jack to do with what anyone else finds acceptable. Also, if you have a break up, somehow you’re no longer vetted because clearly you have some problems if you had a break up.
It’s all pretty/petty bullshit but it’s definitely a thing. Even my clueless ass has noticed it. Women are more comfortable around me now that I’m obviously taken (wedding ring). Not that they weren’t before, but diving into deep/private conversation stuff at a far faster rate. Like I pride myself on being trustworthy and a good listener, but you gotta chill.
That increased comfort also includes more comfortable to make passes at me. No thanks, wife and I aren’t looking for a third.
Cheating makes stories, gets talked about by both sides and is overall contentious. Fidelity is literally having nothing to tell, so when a cheater talks, it seems like everyone is cheating, but that is far from the truth.
Best answer.
A lot of people cheat at some point in their lives, but most have the good sense to be less flippant about it. People who act like this are not the kind of people that you would want a relationship with anyway. You’re not rare, but they’re not common either.
If you are really interested in learning more about infidelity I would suggest you read / listen to Dan Savages’s columns / podcast. Unsurprisingly there are a lot of different calls and discussions about fidelity and monogamy. I would also suggest you read Ester Perel groundbreaking novel The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
To answer your question directly infidelities are fairly common because monogamy is difficult and society typically puts a lot of stress and pressure on monogamy that makes it even more difficult. The foremost is the idea that monogamy as a default setting and that one person can be everything for one person sexually, emotionally etc… So we have a situation where two people are assuming that their partner will be the only person they can be attracted to, the one person that can fulfill all their emotional needs and will have to be a perfect roommate / life mate. This coupled with the idea that you have to be perfect at monogamy or you are a complete failure at it. So you have a hard situation and hard expectations so people slip and some people who slip on something small (a micro-cheating which is a ridiculous concept) they go all the way. All these expectations are common in “Straight-land” while those in “queer-land” have a different set of expectation that work better for everyone.
We should all make monogamy an regular opt-in conversation for relationships (I would suggest ~6 months in when you go exclusive and then at most every 5 years). Moreover, we should understand our monogamist partner finds other people attractive and chooses to not pursue anything not that they don’t find anyone else attractive. Finally, we should understand a our partner needs friends, hobbies and confidant who are not us to rely on. Until that happens “cheating” will likely remain something that happens fairly regularity
That’s interesting. I wonder how much religion plays into it. My marriage is monogamous but we are both open to each other about attractions outside the marriage. It is OK to be turned on by someone else or some other situation, and we can use that together. It also helps that we both don’t generally like other people; we have a close knit group of friends but most folks we meet outside that are obnoxious and gross.
Like everything there’s some puritan morals involved. Most of which are around how sex and sexual desire are gross and not important. Couple that with the idea that suffering makes you a good person they all connect.
Also I think media plays a big role as well. Some toxic relationships are glorified in rom-coms and other media. Add in the normalization of weaponized jealousy in reality TV. Throw in the new micro cheating that the Internet and relationships experts who make mountains out of molehills. It’s a complex mix
Welcome to The Against Matrimony Club, we have mimosas.
The against monogamy club has coke and group sex
All said and done, the concept that people should be monogamous isn’t natural. Look at the animal kingdom. It’s pretty rare.
Some people just don’t fit that mold. But society tends to look down on them. So for some, bucking the system is probably a source of joy and achievement that they want to share. For the listeners, humans often go along with things to avoid awkward interactions. Then go home later and say to someone, “I can’t believe she just said that.”It’s not the standard approach, but there’s definitely examples. The trick being that swans have secret affairs fairly frequently as well.
That being said, it sounds like you’re talking about being poly, and as far as I can tell most philanderers just aren’t. They cheat but don’t want to be cheated on.
Not really poly, just more fluid about changing relationships. Basically, more short term, not life long, commitments. When it isn’t enough for a person, move on. And that shouldn’t be considered a failing of the other. People change, interests change, newness wears off. That’s natural. Society considering unmarried men as unstable, and unmarried women as somehow broken is just not right.
If there are kids involved it gets more complicated of course. Then it gets into some kind of marriage contract or something. But raising kids these days is broken too. You almost need a professional involved full time just to keep up with all the things kids really need. Most of us parents just can’t do it all, both from a time/energy perspective and a skill perspective.Yep. The whole idea of unbreakable marriages, and of being chaste outside of them, almost certainly comes from there being no contraceptives until recently. Although, it gets more complicated when you consider extended families used to play a big role in raising children as well.
I’ve been on both sides of it. While not super regular, I’d say it’s not uncommon. Discussing it openly isn’t.
My buddy went to Amsterdam and had the restraint to only get handjobs and has never otherwise gone behind his wife’s back. I’d be surprised if any of my other friends did anything. One couple has guests over for mutual threesomes, so no need for infidelity for them. I know my ex hooked up with another female despite knowing she had a bf. People are ok with lowering their standards when an opportunity presents itself.
My understanding is that infidelity is very nearly binary in its commonality.
There are groups of people for whom infidelity is normal, it is the norm. They believe that everyone cheats, and in their experience everyone does, because they are cheaters and are friends with cheaters. They believe that fidelity is impossible, and claims to the contrary is just social posturing
Then you have groups of people for whom infidelity is basically unthinkable. That it is the greatest breach of trust possible. It is not just not normal, it is non-existent— you don’t cheat, your partner doesn’t cheat, your friends don’t cheat, no one you know cheats. If someone you know cheats, or someone known by someone you know cheats, it is legitimately horrifying: this is not merely social posturing, it is literally shocking to you, because in your world, cheating simply does not happen. It is horrible.
Cheaters think everyone cheats. Non-cheaters believe no one cheats, or only horrible people cheat. These two groups tend to self sort themselves into groups. Bad things happen when the two groups intermingle, in fact.
What’s also a tragedy is when someone who would naturally be in the non-cheating group ends up, mistakenly, in a cheating group. They will begin to feel like everyone ELSE in the world cheats, while they themselves never would. They keep getting hurt, they keep getting betrayed, and they don’t understand why. They need a better friend group… and let me be clear: non-cheating non-groups ABSOLUTELY EXIST. Those groups simply don’t interact with cheating groups— they basically don’t even know that the cheating groups exist, and would be horrified to find out. So if you’re caught up in a cheating social circle, getting out is really hard! You need to find people who have literally nothing in common with the people you already know!
It kinda sucks. I don’t know a solution.
Yeah. IDK how people can fit cheating in to their life.
I just don’t have that much time apart from my spouse I guess.
Also I’m not particularly attractive I guess so even before I was a balding 40 something I’ve never encountered someone who wanted a quick fuck in the broom closet or whatever.
I’d like to believe I’m a non-cheater, but what I’m saying is that’s never really been tested.
Also having kids changed things. I wouldn’t want to betray my partner, and that’s very important to me, but it’s a lot more important to me to not mess up our young family. My spouse and I are romantic partners, but we’re also a parenting team.
Huh. I don’t think I know anyone who cheats so I guess I got lucky. Your post is plausible
From time to time I get a ride from someone at work I have zero interest of becoming friends with. In those rides I get glimpses of a complete different reality where he and his friend group lives. It is horrifying and it completely matches the description of the parent comment.
Yup, this was me at a lunch table at work. Dudes were pulling the most repulsive stories about fucking another chick while their GF is doing XYZ or not washing between their side girl and main chick and i just couldn’t sit there. Pretended I got a notification and was like “whelp I got work to do, later!”
I get being a slut when you’re younger, I was, but why have a SO if you wanna fool around? Like why hurt someone?
Absolutely. I belong to a non cheating group. It’s just seems completely unfathomable that it could happen. Most of us are in 15+ year relationships and are friends with everyone. It’s not just a “the women are friends with the women, the men are friends with the men” situation. We got a blend of genders all participating in the same hobbies. There would be so much social cost to cheating it would be kind of insane.
Where I work though there’s a decent amount of drama in that regard though and I have noticed that one common factor is that the relationships are atomized. They either keep their old friends going in and there’s almost zero expectation of their partners integrating into each other’s friendships or there’s just this expectation that men and women are fundamentally different creatures. That whole men are from Mars women from Venus shtick. From the outside it seems like emotional distance where people look at each other like they aren’t targets of empathy - more like they play by a book as if they can just put the right inputs in they will get the desired outputs.
I know this is entirely anedotal and that anybody could theoretically cheat for any number of reasons… It’s just something that I noticed about the groups of cheats that I am aware of.
Cheating is definitely in the minority of my social circle. I know of 2 amongst 100. At least people who were shameless enough to be admitting it.
That said, I do have maybe 5 open relationships in my friend group? I don’t usually ask, so maybe 10 total. My wife and I are monogamous. If you’re not, whatever, you do you. It isn’t a religious thing, it’s just how we roll.
But good lord at least talk about it, agree on it and stick with it. If you don’t then you’re a dick.
You have to consider a few things here. You’re not the only one with social anxiety at that event. Your reaction is not to go in the first place (my MO as well) or to sit quietly hoping it shall pass with haste. Others talk too much. School reunions are such a rich vein for neurosis because you’re guaranteed to be judged by your peers. Peers who knew you very well when you weren’t a more well put together person yet. Few people behave like themselves there. So if the woman says she cheated a million times lol, her neurons may be on the fritz as well because she’s more thinking about how she dunked Sharon’s head in the toilet in freshman year or whatever. And that memory is haunting. And she’s sitting just over there! WHY HASN’T SHE SAID ANYTHING? … So you need to have a salt shaker handy for anything you hear.
Also, some people like attention and will say anything to get it. People like to construct a public persona around their worst character traits, the ones they’re unable to change. It’s like they’re putting a cool leather jacket on, aviator shades too. To distract themselves from their inner monolog, which very well might be telling them what a piece of shit they are.
And cheating is common. In my social group I know of a handful of cases. Drunk and horny, sober and crushing - the motivations are on a scale. In some relationships these secrets never get revealed, in others they’ve made the bond stronger, others have broken up. I would say very few people brag about it but hey, we contain multitudes. Some people end up in an unhealthy game of hurt oneup(wo)manship. Relationships are hard fucking work.
It is also a different picture when you have children with your partner. The willingness to forgive infractions increases for the good of the children.
And while centuries of indoctrination of monogamy and loyalty to your spouse can make this hard to accept: some people make open relationships work. I think it’s more often than not the last stepping stone to disaster but if you can make it work, vaya con dios. I have a hard time with it but I’m trying not to judge.
None of this needs to change how you feel about cheating though.
Incredibly common. I haven’t seen any recent estimates but I recall at one time that ~15% of children did not have the biological fathers than they thought they did. It’s not to point the finger at women - rates of infidelity may be even higher among men, it’s just harder to track independently.
I believed it was ~15% of fathers who did paternity tests, thus already suspecting infidelity, not overall numbers?
It’s not to point the finger at women
Just point it at humans unless you’re talking about cheaters who step out to swing for the other team.
I think infidelity varies, but one thing doesn’t: people who cheat and have zero remorse are not trustworthy.
You may have had a crush, but it sounds like you got lucky by missing out.
I guess there is some cultural nuance - my impression is that for some people, sexual exclusivity is understood as an impossible virtue which it is important to appear to uphold, but where breaking it is kind of like sneaking a cigarette after having quit.
Which doesn’t make them untrustworthy necessarily, they just have a different understanding of how big of a deal it is.
