a female friend and i were talking about cheating in relationships and both of us agree that if our significant others were to do it, we might be able to forgive them and continue the relationship. but apptly our boyfriends disagree; if either my friend or i were to cheat, the boyfriends would likely just end the relationship. i realize that two people of each sex is not a huge sample group (i don't even know if you can call it a sample group. i think any group is three people or more?). but i did think the differences were interesting. i asked rip about it and he came up with a pretty good explanation:
women get hit on more than men. generally, a lot more. so they also have more opportunity to cheat (tho i think that depends on how you define opportunity. rip travels a lot more than me, with his friends who don't know me, for non-work related reasons, to places he's familiar with. which i think is the best opportunity right there. but anyway). so if a woman cheats, it shows that she's susceptible to doing it again, since it comes up much more often for her anyway. which is why a man don't trust a woman who's had a one-time indiscretion.
my friend and i think that people mess up. and sometimes that's all it is. you get stupid, or you get clumsy. that's not to say that a significant other should get a free pass to fuck up every once in a while, or even once at all. but i'd certainly be more interested in finding out why it happened than he would be.
2 comments:
I think the circumstances leading someone to cheat do make a small difference.
But now that I'm married, my wife is the most important person in the world to me (I would hope that I am the same to her as well). When I make decisions, I do so with her in my mind. So if I were to cheat, that would indicate that I was either not thinking about her or that I was and didn't think she was more important than the matter at hand.
I agree that sometimes people mess up or get clumsy. But if the reason for cheating was as simple as that, then that person might not be taking the relationship seriously enough in the first place. Or at least that's how I would feel.
this is an interesting article about intention vs impact: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psysociety/2013/10/14/intent-vs-impact/
people prioritize differently. for some people, their spouse (or kid maybe) is the most important person to them, more important to even themselves. for others, they're number one to themselves.
some people cheat very selfishly (my husband is, by all accounts, a fantastic man/husband/friend but i'm still attracted to the pool boy). others cheat for "rational" reasons (my wife was cheating first / is frigid / doesn't love me anyway).
you decide how (un)happy you want to be, and at what cost.
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