What if you cheated on your ex-spouse. I’m not talking about serial philanderer, but you got involved with
someone and it lead to the end of the marriage.
When would you tell a new love interest…sooner or later?
If you were the new love interest, would you continue seeing someone who told they’d cheated? – jp?
You wouldn’t tell your new love interest. You’d never go into details about why your marriage ended other than to say something vague like you grew apart.
If your ex is especially vindictive, she might spill that can of beans. If you feel that might happen, you wait until absolutely necessary to come clean. When you do, you tell the truth. You don’t make anything up or make your ex out to be a shrew or a psycho. If you messed up, own it. But do not make a martyr of yourself and offer this information under the guise of being honest or whatever other nonsense you read in some magazine or on a website.The only reason you’d be doing it is to beat your ex to the punch or out of a fear of being caught. If you know enough women, you learn that all that yammering about wanting to know the truth is a crock. They don’t. They can’t handle it no matter how much they insist they can.
Remember…women will tell you to be honest because they want to see you fail and hate the idea of being duped and deceived. Nobody likes that, obviously. It’s bad enough to know that a guy made a fool of you. It’s much, much worse when you believe (or rationalize) that you were fooled or humiliated by another woman.
Keep this news to yourself. No good can come from it. No, you will not score points with your refreshing honesty. You’ll stir up a shit storm that will never calm back down. The woman you tell will never trust you again. If your ex wants to be the one to reveal that, let her. Then you’re a victim and you’ll have a better chance of using the tried and true, “I was just unhappy but that all changed when I met you, baby” line. Which will work on most women because, again, women are competitive with other women. We like the idea of beating out another female, even in competitions that only exist in our heads.
I’ve always felt that if you’re a married man and you slip up once and cheat on your wife and you feel guilty about it because you feel it was a mistake, then you should keep your mouth shut and bear the burden to the grave.
Telling her about it only causes her anguish and damages the marriage. You might feel relief from confession, but that’s a selfish motivation. Pay the price. Live with it.
( I never have, but a few times I wish I had … )
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Why get married if you are going to cheat? Marriages are formed by a covenant between spouses and God. One discretion breaks that bond and promise.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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No one sets out to have a failed marriage.
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Well, MAYBE Kim Kardashian.
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Marriages are formed by a covenant between spouses and God.
Opinions vary on this topic. My marriages were legal contracts formed by the state government, not covenants from any ethereal entity or omnipotent deity like Yahweh or Allah or Mithra or Zeus.
Why get married if you don’t believe in God? There are some really nice legal benefits, and if you’re planning on having kids then it really helps if the parents are married.
It also helps get your religious parents to shut up and leave you in peace.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Read the Bible, check out the major religions of the world and you’ll find that GOD is the author of marriage.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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There are two institutions that happen to use the same word to describe themselves:
Marriage — the religious institution indicating some type of covenant with spouse and God.
Marriage — the legal institution conferring certain legal rights and protections (e.g., inheritance laws, spousal privilege in court, tax benefits, medical decision-making rights, etc.).
The two are VASTLY different. Your church cannot grant you the right to inherit from another person in the event they die without a will. Neither can the state stand in lieu of God to recognize your marriage in the eyes of a given faith.
Regardless, none of this is relevant to the discussion of cheating since, whether discussing secular or religious marriage, I rather doubt that anyone plans to cheat when getting married. You might as well ask a different question: Why do otherwise good people do bad things?
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Thanks EB, for giving me something I haven’t enjoyed in years; the kind of mindless knee-jerk response that only a fresh, naive convert can supply.
D, I think the state should get out of the marriage business altogether and simply provide a variety of contracts for various living arrangements, contracts covering the usual civil aspects of marriage like rights, benefits, etc.
Then let the believers own the word, and those who care about it can fight over what a marriage really is.
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An old man once told me about the price of messing uo and being sorry about it. You have to feel he pain of keeping bottled up inside of you. Dont you dare lay that pain on her.
Now when it comes to telling the new love interest about mistakes n your past, tread carefully too. However she has to heat about any past foibles before you give serious committment like marriage. If she cant handle hearing how you messed up before she even showed uo, then she is not worth your time. After all, it was not her you hurt.
And whle we’re at it, let’s flip the script, and say a woman shouldn’t be held accountable for past actions that are completely removed from her typical current actions. People on the whole, have to stop this imagned perfection model in their heads. Most people have messed up at something in the past.
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Yeah. I actually just learned about a pretty horrible affair my gf was involved in not that long before we met up. She lied about it because it would blow up a lot of things in everyone’s lives.
The craziest part is that before I knew, we would go to events and such with him there. He would flirt with her, but as we moved closer and closer to being in a relationship, he would flirt harder, touch her on the small of the back, hips, whisper in her ear. Anyway, I ended up having to confront her and found out about the recent-ish relationship, which she finally came clean.
In that case I told her, we all have secrets, but don’t take your significant other (me) into a weird social, formerly sexual minefield especially when there’s going to be that much exposure with the individual. It just made me more angry with every escalated attempt by the guy.
Sometimes it’s good to know so you can be equipped if things do get weird!
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Moxie is absolutely right. Never, never, never reveal this information. It’s really not anyone’s business than yours. But, jp, you have to not only own it, you have to be clear on why it happened. It seems to me your question reveals more than a bit of guilt, even if the indiscretion was years ago.
In the other comment thread you wrote:
How do you handle the fact that you f*cked up? Or do you just stay alone the rest of your life?
That’s a completely false dichotomy. You handle the fact that you fucked up by yourself. That has nothing to do with having a relationship or “staying alone.” If it bothers you so much that you feel you have to confess or not have a relationship at all, you need to deal with that.
If you choose to confess your cheating to a potential partner, it will at best only ever put a question mark in their mind and most of the time will send them running. Don’t sabotage yourself before you get started.
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This is a good point. Fucking up doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a loser. It just means you made a mistake. The important thing is to learn from it.
Caveat: repeated fuck-ups that form a pattern should be a serious reason for concern, or at least re-thinking what you want. If you find yourself cheating in every relationship, that possibly means you should seek out open relationships or at least not dangle the opportunity for lifetime commitment.
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Yup totally agree with Moxie… especially about women not really wanting the truth and being competitive with other women.
Would just like to re-iterate by throwing in a Bible verse.
Proverbs 17:28
Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.
NIV 2007
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OK, I’ve had people ask me on the first date, ‘why did you get divorced’ and naturally it’s none of their business. But if things progress and get serious, the question is gonna come up again. And why shouldn’t it? You’re getting serious with someone, they’re gonna want to know why your long term marriage ended. And so you either tell them the truth or you lie, and if you lie aren’t you sabotaging the new relationship with dishonesty? Don’t lies create distance?
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They can! Especially if other people know it. It makes you question why you couldn’t be trusted with the information, but someone else who’s less invested could be.
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How you answer questions about why your marriage ended depends in part on why you cheated and how it unfolded. Obviously that other relationship, if there really was one, didn’t work out, either. RD is also right that it also depends on how many other people know the truth and who knows the truth. If it’s likely to come out as your SO gets to know your family and friends, then, yes, you’ll have to come up with a strategy. If few people know and it’s not likely to come out, then it’s probably not a bad idea to keep it to yourself.
Everybody has secrets and everybody has a past. Complete honesty is a chimera; unless you are a habitual and compulsive liar, keeping some of your past to yourself isn’t going to harm your relationship (assuming you’ve gotten over the whole cheating thing).
So, just going on the bare facts that you cheated and it ended your marriage, I’ll stick with the advice to not bring it up, especially when just dating. Instead, you answer that inevitable question like the rest of us do, with vague palliatives like “we grew apart” or “we fell out of love.” They’re not actually lies, and until you’re getting really serious, it’s not anyone else’s business. If that’s not enough for some people you date, move on…
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There’s telling the truth, and then there’s telling the truth….every single detail, blow by blow, minute by minute. One you start feeding the beast with the details, more questions will come about and potentially more insecurities in the woman you’re seeing now. If the indiscretion was years ago, barring any reason that you have to come clean with all the details (i.e. you fathered a child with the former mistress during the course of the marraige), no you don’t have to get too deep. Bare bones but honest, and take a stand. “I’ve grown a lot from that experience, and I’d like you to continue to get to know the man I am today.” And end the discussion.
Perhaps later on as the relationship progresses you get into more detail…after this person really knows who you are as a person today. But initially? Not warranted.
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Exactly–just own up to your errors…and acknowledge, you didn’t handle it well. Perhaps you weren’t satisfied (physically, emotionally or both) in your marriage…and your interest went elsewhere…OK…but you did learn from your past, and it makes you who you are today. You don’t need to go into all the minute details. You cheated, and you regret the hurt that it caused…whether you were dissatisfied and unfulfilled in the marriage–or you just lost attraction. Any normal person will respect the fact that a certain level of disclosure comes with more time and there are unspoken boundaries when first meeting someone. As we get closer – sure, we want to know the truth, but in time, the truth has a way of getting out. No need to lie, just don’t embellish too much.
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how could you ever have an honest relationship if you didn’t reveal this major fact of your life??
if I belatedly found out such a thing I would no longer trust that person as they were clearly not honest at all….my god if people actually followed the terrible adive you give them. as often is the case- you only contribute the craven and shallow dating culture we find ourselves having to deal with.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Then it’s a good thing you repeatedly come back.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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As we all know, mistakes, mishaps and just bad luck create “skeletons in the closet” as we get older. It’s not a matter of being “evil” or “Machiavellian” or whatever. It’s simply a mark of adulthood that we can’t maintain the innocent honesty of children.
The seemingly lost art of discretion is vital. You can’t be totally deceptive about everything you do but you can’t be totally revealing either. You’ll have to find a balance. Sometimes, as noted above, you’ll have to tell a lie or bear a painful secret forever. Other times, you might have to be deliberately vague or evasive or flattering. It’s called relationship maintenance and I would bet every marriage has a big dose of it.
Conversely, if your sole communication style is blunt honesty, you’re going to have trouble not only in relationships but all areas of life.
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Why do you feel it necessary to share that, jp? Do you still feel really guilty or want your ex- back?
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Hold on here! I disagree about how women feel and NEED the TRUTH. First of all, if you cannot be honest with yourself you cannot be honest with another person, the one you are married to or the one you are in bed with on the side. The other, not the significant one, does want the truth. She or he has a right to know if you are being deceptive. WHY? So that he or she is not your next victim.
Yes, we all turn our heads during affairs for a while, until we either get attached, which usually happens over time, or we can no longer take the deception to ourselves. We all want love and respect. We all deserve to give it to one another.
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The other, not the significant one, does want the truth. She or he has a right to know if you are being deceptive. WHY? So that he or she is not your next victim.,/i>
Thank you for proving my point. That kind of mentality is exactly why people shouldn’t say anything about cheating in the past.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Actually, I think one should share about it….we all have to embrace the whole person we are with! Who they are is often determined by what they do and DID in the past. If one cheats before, he or she is likely to cheat again. Perhaps I should have said this before. Secrets are a form of deception.
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eb: I don’t fully agree. There are people who DO learn from their errors…and they are able to see the wrong they did – and take ownership for it. And we are only human, we do and will make errors, inspite of it being partly out of selfishness. But once a cheater, no always a cheater. I agree, there are people who are repeat offenders…but you are only doing yourself a disservice by lumping every man or woman that has had an indiscretion – in a category, without giving them a chance to redeem themselves. Some of us learn from our indiscretions–and some of us sadly don’t.
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Eliza
Yes, I agree some do learn. I met a married guy who cheats non stop as often as he can with NO regret. Can’t figure him out–he is sad. The point is, that cheating hurts the cheater more than those being cheated on or with.
I believe we can all try to do better and we should love our selves for this. I do think that we need to forgive ourselves.
EB
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Completely agree with Moxie, especially the quoted text. Obviously you haven’t been in the OP’s situation, so the platitudes you write are not designed to help him deal with the situation at hand but designed to protect you. You want to urge everyone to be oh so honest just so you don’t get burned.. Until you’re in a serious relationship, it’s not up to someone else to protect your heart; that’s on you.
There are different levels of cheating, though I doubt you’ll recognize that. If someone cheats once, as is implied in this case, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll cheat again. If the fallout was consequential enough–like destroying your marriage–it’s not likely to happen again. If someone is prone to cheating as a way of ending relationships, that should become clear before you fall too hard. If someone is an habitual and serial cheater, it’s a major character flaw that will evidence itself in other behavior, assuming you’re aware enough to be looking for the clues.
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I see two not-very-good reasons why people divulge this kind of thing without being asked.
1.) They’re still guilty and are seeking absolution. They want their new interest to “forgive” them and assuage the guilt by letting them know they don’t mind.
2.) Similar to #1, they feel as if they’re now somehow tainted or are worried they’re undesirable. So, rather than (or in addition to) absolution, they seek reassurance that the other person hasn’t been scared off.
My advice is suck it up and live with your guilt. You’re divulging is a purely self-interested act, rather than some act of noble self-sacrifice. Process your guilt and move past it to the point where you’re remorseful for your actions, but not constantly beating yourself up.
From my perspective, a person’s past is their past. They don’t HAVE to tell me they cheated. And there are a LOT of different ways that cheating can manifest. Cheating in an abusive or loveless/sexless marriage is not the same as cheating because you were 20 years old and were bored with your current boyfriend/girlfriend, nor is it the same as being an emotional wreck because a family member died and you were acting out or whathaveyou.
Cheating is never a good thing, but there are a LOT of different explanations for why it happened, and that means there are a lot of different paths someone can take after cheating. I know people who’ve cheated whom I consider to be good, decent people. People who fucked up, yeah, but they’re still good people. “Once a cheater, always a cheater” is nonsense. Habitual cheaters are not the same as people who screwed up once.
Ultimately, I just don’t see a purpose for telling someone. And frankly, I wouldn’t care to know if someone else had cheated in the past. I mean, if they told me, I wouldn’t necessarily judge them harshly, but that’s precisely why I wouldn’t care. “I cheated on someone once.” Ok. You gonna tell me how you stole a candy bar when you were 5, too? Do I look like a priest? Te absolvo. Can we get back to dinner now?
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If a girl asks a guy why he got divorced and his answer is “I cheated”, then he is an idiot and I am glad he did it because it lessens the competition by 1 for this male dater. You know that girl probably wont keep him around a long time. Especially when she tells her friends the reason he got divorced was because he cheated.
So for all you guys who think its wise to fess up, then keep on doing it. You just made life easier for me.
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Anyone so clueless to just blurt out “I cheated” deserves the chronic celibacy that will be their life.
No, the only proper way to admit cheating is only once you’re in a serious relationship and then it’s just frame control: “I am divorced because I made a terrible mistake in a moment of weakness and cheated on my spouse. The fallout was devastating for everyone involved and destroyed my marriage. I would never want to go through or put anyone else through that kind of pain again. I’ve grown since then…”
But you’re right. A clueless answer only thins out the competition for the rest of us.
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I’ve got to disagree, that is absolute madness. Suicidal practically. Why on earth would you ever do that to yourself? Look at the words you are using weakness, destroyed, fallout, devastating. Never, ever do that.
Instead look at how the experts handle things like this: have a look at some problem pages in the paper.
You were in a failing relationship that had nowhere to go. In your heart of hearts you knew it was over. A sad loveless marriage, a life sentence really. Doesn’t the caged bird wanted to sing? It had reached the end, it was so sad and you felt so empty and lost, would you ever smile again, but there was a fleeting chance for happiness. Etc etc. Can you really call being true to yourself ‘cheating’? Is that how you would describe a person being clinging on to hope? That isn’t ‘cheating’, that is what it is to be human.
OK, so, the way it works is like this: people do exactly the same things but the guys always mess up by talking about what happened (this gets them slated). Delving into implications is even worse. Do what women do, talk about your feelings and what happened is just unnecessary detail in a wider narrative of what it meant to you.
Check out “Eat, Pray, Love”. She got a book and a movie deal out of leaving her husband because she was bored. Yet somehow its an almost heroic tale of spiritual self-discovery and that millions claim to find deeply inspiring. Thats how you frame something like that.
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Listen here: dodging accountability and using different terminology to “rebrand” your actions does not take away from the absolute truth of the matter. Which is the party cheated. It’s one thing to not want to discuss it, but what you are advocating is outright lying and justifying one’s actions. When you’re in the wrong, you’re in the wrong – regardless of the reason. Period. Own it. Face it. These kinds of excuses aren’t cute and will do nothing to further a successful relationship. It’s like building a house on a foundation of sand. Unnecessary evasiveness erodes trust. Save that type of reasoning for the courtroom.
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I’m not the one who is dodging accountability and being evasive here.
You are failing to understand that if we can say one thing about cheating its this: the reason people cheat is because they want to. Really, really very much want to. Probably planned and schemed a bit to, over quite a long period of time. So all that is left to you is to explain why you’d want to, not burbling on about about ‘mistakes’ and a ‘moment of weakness’.
It wasn’t an Act of God, it was something most people do happily and deliberately. I’m acknowledging that, you are not. Its like people who pretend drugs don’t get you high, not really the best long term strategy for keeping the kids away from them because eventually they realise you were full of it.
So inviting everyone to your pity party of devastation in which you claim the only reason you wouldn’t do it again would be the consequences of getting caught…hrm. You want to be accountable, you’d say you cheated because you wanted to and it was great and it was a pity you got caught. But that isn’t what you are saying is it?
The reason cheaters stop cheating isn’t because they get scared straight, its because they eventually learn to make better choices about the person they are with. Nobody wants to be with someone who is white-knuckling their way through fidelity, they want to be with someone who has no thoughts of cheating of them because the circumstances don’t exist here.
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Let’s break this down, shall we?
“You are failing to understand that if we can say one thing about cheating its this: the reason people cheat is because they want to.”
That’s obvious, and in fact, that’s part of my point. Regardless of whether or not a person would make the same choice again at a later point in time – the fact is: you did what you did. Period. Own it. Weren’t you the one who offered up this little gem above? “Can you really call being true to yourself ‘cheating’? Is that how you would describe a person being clinging on to hope? That isn’t ‘cheating’, that is what it is to be human.” That’s a load of bullshit, and that’s what I’m calling out. The statement in itself is evasive and lacks accountablity. Hence my response.
“It wasn’t an Act of God, it was something most people do happily and deliberately. I’m acknowledging that, you are not.” Really, now. Did you see my earlier comments above? Did you even read the entirety of my statement? Please. As a matter of fact, depending on how long you’ve been reading the blog, I gave a personal example of my poor behavior from years ago, the only time I’ve ever cheated. And yes, I was fully accountable both then and now. I made a conscious decision at that time to own my own bad behavior, to do my work, and improve as a person. It was internal and took time, but it was worth it. Therefore I am speaking partially from experience, as I’ve never been married. Speedy, you were too speedy in this case to jump to a conclusion.
My overall point was, and still remains, this: once you are dating someone new – you don’t owe this new person ANY sort of “accountability” for why you cheated in the past. We are all adults who are capable of critically thinking. This person cheated because they wanted to at some point in their past and chose to let you know about it. That’s all you really need to know. Take that, along with whatever knowledge you’ve been building about that person and make a decision. Either you decide that you think the person may be untrustworthy and leave because it’s a dealbreaker, or you decide to give the person a chance based on what you know. That’s it. That’s life. It is not for this guy to attempt to convince you, the new person he is dating and never cheated on, that he would never do this to you through answering a litany of questions about a past situation that has nothing to do with you. Period. End of discussion. It is however, for the new person to pay attention, get to know the person they are dating over time, and make a judgment call for themselves.
“Nobody wants to be with someone who is white-knuckling their way through fidelity, they want to be with someone who has no thoughts of cheating of them because the circumstances don’t exist here.”
This world simply does not exist. Seriously. And I love how you painted everything in such an extreme but unrealistic manner. Stop it. Stop it right now with the ridiculous moral posturing. Life is about choices. We think about a scenario and decide how we will handle it based on the values we choose to have. In fact, if you want to remain faithful and be successful at it, you choose to limit your access to temptation and stay out of questionable scenarios that “could” escalate given the perfect storm of circumstances. Everyday we choose.
I’m even going to take this one step further: I’ve found that the types of people who insist on an insanely detailed explanation once they find out that you’ve made a mistake in your past (be it cheating or whatever) are the types of people who upon dating, seem to feel as if it’s your job to never, ever disappoint them. And if you do, they hold it over your head as if your disappointing them is a debt to be repaid as if they themselves are perfect. That, to me, is a real dealbreaker. Not only is that personality difficult to please in the long term – those consistent unrealistic, unforgiving expectations actually can lead future partners to cheat on them or just leave as the resulting misery isn’t worth it.
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Speedy, I have never advocated talking about past cheating at all. All I said was that if you absolutely must reveal past infidelity, you shouldn’t just blurt out “I cheated.” It’s lame. You need to control the frame to minimize the damage from the admission.
But the course of action you propose would be suicide for any guy. Saying you wanted to cheat, that it was “great” and it’s only wrong because you got caught? You cheated because you were “being true to yourself”? Bullshit. That’s just solipsism talking and anyone who would put cheating in these terms to a potential partner should never be trusted. Ever.
Men see “Eat, Pray, Love” as the ultimate bullshit and precisely why the sexual and relationship marketplace is so screwed up these days. Better to title it honestly: “Abandonment, Self-indulgence, Lack-of-Character.” Any woman who used this approach to confess past infidelity to me would be hitting the bricks before she finished talking. She’d be unworthy of commitment.
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No, the only proper way to admit cheating
The only proper way to admit cheating is to be caught while doing it.
All other ways are pathetic.
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Someone answer this! WHY do some people cheat ongoing? The serial type? What is that?
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When I was married to my ex, she cheated on me after ten years of marriage. We tried to work it out, going to counseling and the like, but she couldn’t get past breaking the vows. I could’ve been alright but she couldn’t live knowing she had caused me so much pain. She ended up lying to me about being bi curious to get out of the marriage and she became a Jehovah’s Witness as soon as she left. My tkae, honesty is the best policy because the pain will be tripled if she finds out on her own.
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