Cheating -- partner in crime to blame too?

I had an interesting argument today, on Facebook of all places, on a topic that people tend to get passionate about. The scenario described by the original poster was a woman who was single who had relations with a male who was happily spoken for, and knew it prior to cavorting with him. I must point out that the gender of the person really matters not here, it just seemed to be an IRL example that the poster was describing.

One gentleman adamantly argued that the woman in this scenario is not at any fault at all, that it is not her responsibility to respect the relationship between the cheating male and his woman, that it was solely the responsibility of the cheating male. I argued that while the cheating man in that scenario was clearly in the wrong, that in a situation where the woman knew that he was in a relationship, she should not have interfered with him, and that it was "wrong" to damage the relationship. I also chimed in with the opinion that in infidelity, often times it is the "single" person who initiates the romance.

I realize this is not a black and white issue in the least, but it had me thinking. I certainly didn't budge from my opinion, but if it were the other way around (the spoken-for person initiating the romance with the single person) I could see being more sympathetic. I tend to view cheaters and their accomplices as scum for the most part.

What are your opinions on the scenario above? And please, be civil to each other

both parties are disgusting savages imho

yeah i dont see how anyone could make an argument in favor of blamelessness of either party.

^^

everything said above, and wasn't this already a question elsewhere?

xpost I try to stay out of such arguments but given the likely age of said dude, I'm willing to bet his opinion may have been based on the fact that he's had relationships with "taken" women before.

Of course, his response was more eloquent than the next guy who said "face it, all women are whores". :/.

I don't think you're quite being judgemental enough. I tend to view both parties as a river of human effluent. 'Scum' is too good for them.

I'm having a hard time seeing how the single woman could be innocent in this, if she knows that the man is married, she's equally complicit. Assuming the woman didn't initiate the relationship (where she is obviously responsible), there's the old romanticized notion that the husband is dragging along the single woman with promises of leaving his wife - and I'm sure that still happens with naive women, and sometimes the men do follow through - but she's still a good deal accountable; how does she get off the hook for disrespecting the wife's marriage? I'm under the impression that single people are generally expected to honor other people's marriages - both cheating parties are bad, as everyone is saying.

some ppl think they don't owe strangers any moral consideration - had this argument w/a sociopath on another forum recently who took this tack vehemently. wtf does he care about the feelings of some third party dude if he's getting his rocks off, ws his stance o_O

where I come from we have a word for ppl like this tho: cunts

wtf does he care about the feelings of some third party dude if he's getting his rocks off

lol this is like the ne plus ultra of jerky behavior

just like anytime I talk about a girl I find interesting and someone will say "you should ask her out" and I'll go "well she has a boyfriend/she's married" and they'll go "so?"

o_O. alls I know is, dudes hit on my last g/f and asked her out behind my back, but if any one of them had succeeded, I'd have fucked him up until his face looked like Daffy Duck's with his beak turned backwards....

it's that aggressive streak that made them think she might say yes in the first place, in their heads in your head i mean.

and how badly would you have beaten your last g/f, just out of curiosity

lol xp

o_O. alls I know is, dudes hit on my last g/f and asked her out behind my back, but if any one of them had succeeded, I'd have fucked him up until his face looked like Daffy Duck's with his beak turned backwards....

Surprised you've never been tempted yourself, you must be a hit with the ladies.

seriously in that scenario you'd be wiser to reserve your ire for your g/f and break up with her, since she betrayed you. no beatings necessary. while the guys hitting on her were jerks, it was her complicity that really hurt you, not their attempts.

xp

Seems like a basic bro code thing that you shouldn't even hit on the same girl that your buddy's going after, let alone one that he's already dating. Don't know if I could dispute a justified punch in the face.

yeah i am all down with the tactics of non-violence and whatever, but punching a dude for knowingly sleeping with your S.O. hardly seems like some sort of barbaric insanity yall.

I dunno - it happened to me and no punching was involved. years later I am still friends with bro (shit, now our KIDS are friends) and bitch is to the curb.

lol this was a theoretical beatdown in a theoretical scenario and IRL I'd probably just do something chickenshit like put sugar in his gastank. my post was dripping with hyperbole. I haven't even as much as shoved someone in ten years :)

and yea of course I'd break up with her, I'm not one of those people that would blame it all on the other guy. course it doesn't matter now cuz I'm single anyway...

I realize this is not a black and white issue in the leas

u fuckin kiddin me?

well obviously I'm on YOUR side on this one...

The girl should just not go there, if she knows he's taken.

Someone just did this to me, and I think they are BOTH fucknuts.

I'm sorry Trayce :(

Obviously it seems worse behaviour on the part of the spoken-for guy, as he's betraying someone he supposedly loves whereas the other party is interfering with a stranger's life.

That's what I tell myself, anyway...

I am now an ecstatically engaged dude, so i feel ok about weighing in on this because i feel like i am distanced from whatever hurt occurred at the end of my last relationship (which in retrospect was pretty shitty at the end, whether i realized it or not), but in retrospect i still hold other dude as the more culpable offender. Also, in the interest of full disclosure re: earlier discussion of violent reaction, i made my position clear enough that he left the state, which was prob best for both of us. Not proud of that, but realistically, love mixed with betrayal brings out the worst in people.

I realize this is not a black and white issue in the least

u fuckin kiddin me?

― hobbes, Monday, April 26, 2010 7:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Uhhhh it's actually not a black and white issue. This sort of shit is incredibly complicated, nobody is perfect and emotions are sometimes extremely unpredictable and uncontrollable. Unless you all are complete saints then you are v v harsh and prone to condemn ppl in situations when you may not know even a small portion of the whole story.

Aye, I'm sad to say E is right, as much as I'd like it to be otherwise :(

It is easy for me to be rabidly furious at both the girl who has basically come in and cut my lunch, AND my (now ex) partner of almost 3 years. He didnt say no, she (apparently) didnt care, I lost.

But then I think back a few years and realise I did exactly the same thing to someone else :/ So um. Yeah.

Karma is a bitch, yo.

I said what I did as someone who has both been cheated on and cheated on partners and can say that none of those situations were black and white. I also don't think that ppl are naturally monogamous. I think that monogamy is a choice and a very very difficult one at that. People are flawed and sometimes shit happens. Sometimes that shit can be worked through and sometimes it can't.

Yeah :( TBH in my case I wish my guy had come and spoken to me about it before this all blew up how it did (ie before he'd even met anyone else he had his eye on). We could have worked something more ... flexible out. But he isn't a talker.

TALK TO YOUR PARTNER. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TALK TO THEM I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS.

said move was prompted by phone conversation where i told him that the next time i saw him he was going to end up in the hospital and i was going to end up in jail, and i was dead serious*

*note - dude was my roommate/close friend during the tail end of this (2 months, jerk), and bailed on his rent and abandoned enough shit that it cost me $1000 to get rid of it by vanishing like a thief in the night the day before i got the news from my ex via voicemail. so yeah, no regrets really.

xxpost: ehhh all respect yall, but i think that the fact that we all might have been shitheads doesnt change the fact that uh we were shitheads? and yeah, if you are fairly active in this realm (ahem) the sad truth is that you are prob going to cheat on both sides, which sucks, but its true. i am def not pronouncing from on high on this issue. ive been on both sides of this, and i feel pretty fucking ashamed of that. getting totally pwned by it just makes that more acute.

like tons of xposts and whatever i cant keep count at this point

xpost again: yeah, ENBB, i see where youre coming from there (obv), but issues of monogamy dont remove the answer to the original question, which is yes, if you engage in cheating on either side, yer a dick. i have been a dick several times. doesnt make it more right.

No, of course it doesn't but I guess that in general I think ppl are prone to be dicks.

I mean I won't get too into personal stories here so I'll share one of a friend who had been with her partner for 10 years and married for 2. The marriage was not happy and she met someone at work who made her happy. They didn't actually cheat but did ~emotionally~ and maybe kissed once. She left her husband and has now been with the other dude for three years and is completely happy. Did she go about it the right way? No, of course not. Was it a shitty thing to do? Yes, of course it was but she was miserable and would have made her husband miserable in the long run had she stayed so in some ways what happened was for the best.

Former husband also in a great relationship now btw.

See E, my ex could perhaps say exactly the same thing about why he just did what he did.

Problem is I had no idea anything was wrong :( We were happy!

Aaand i shd stop talking about my personal life on a public thread now heh ooops.

I don't know. I am not saying that cheating is OK. I've just noticed that ppl on ILX seem v v quick to judge and that ime these things are often extremely complex. I mean, when I was in college I dated someone for 4 years. I had transferred schools and was booked on a train to go visit my best friend at the old school the next day when I found out one night that she'd hooked up with my boyfriend on numerous occasions. I freaked out and drank myself into a stupor but got on that train the next morning and rode 7 hours to visit her. We spoke about it for about 2 hours and that was pretty much that. They were assholes for making out but sometimes ppl are assholes and we were young and drunk and in the end her friendship and his love meant more to me than a couple of dumb french kisses and boobie touches. Maybe I was dumb for thinking that way but it made sense at the time.

x-post - Yeah Trayce, I know and maybe that's why the importance of communication is a whole other issue entirely. I mean in regards to the couple I was talking about before, the dude was totally blindsided. Apparently the wife had been miserable for a cpl years but if you talk to him - it came out of left field. Sigh. I don't know. I don't claim to have any answers at all. I just think it's important to realize that ppl are fallible beings and that love/lust are extremely powerful emotions and that sometimes ppl get hurt and . . . i don't know. Btw Trayce I'm so sorry you're going through what you are and I know it's extremely painful. Not, by any means, trying to make light of that. hugs.

drunken french kisses are not some dude penetrating your wife iirc

Yeah I dont ascribe to the "if they cheat on you even once BAM GAME OVER NO RETURN". I'm willing to forgive, as long as trust or at least communication and openness can be worked on.

I am, alas, an intensely jealous person sometimes though.

Whiney: ah funny you say that I was also about to say "and ppl define cheating in diff ways".

IMO even sexyflirting online with someone is cheating, if you are doing it with intent/your heart in it.

A drunk kiss that *honestly meant nothing and will continue not to* is a greyer area - its still shitty tho.

yeah but as a dude who has been a cheater (jerk), and was never (afaik, probably lucky ignorance) on the other end of that until the aforementioned (prob well deserved) comeuppance, im not really willing to justify my shitty behaviour because the feeling on the other end is pretty awful. kind of glad that i got that sort of wake up call, because at this point i understand that the step before cheating is owning up to being unhappy with what you have, which might suck in the short run, but is better than creating more misery for the person you are with.

uh prob many xposts there but i am tired

drunken french kisses are not some dude penetrating your wife iirc

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:41 AM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark

No, of course not but when it actually comes down to it one can lead to the other quite quickly and they aren't all that much different in the end.

You can't just sit there and do nothing but stew when you find out you've been played. Person who cheats with your partner is not entitled to any courtesy; it's very rare for a third party to be unaware that they are a third party (and it is much easier to be mean to that person than it is to be mean to your misbehaving partner). I've run a mile from attached men who put moves on me precisely because I *never* want to be that person and I'm very much inclined to believe that anyone who is attracted to that scenario is deluded and fucked-up, mainly because they've given permission for their new partner to cheat on them in the exact same manner (which is what usually happens).

Back in the days before internet dating etc, there was a woman who was very interested in my then-boyfriend. Nothing happened between them, but not for want of trying on her part. My revenge was well-crafted: I signed her up for Dateline (British 'computerised matchmaking' of the '80s/'90s) and the contact number I gave for her went straight to her very gossipy assistant, who screamed rather than screened the call. To get the same effect today you'd have to ship a large dildo to your rival's workplace with a 'thought you might need this' note of some kind.

drunken french kisses are not some dude penetrating your wife iirc

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:41 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also, by that i mean al shipley taking your wife back for a night of tender lovemaking to baltimore club mixtapes

it's very rare for a third party to be unaware that they are a third party (and it is much easier to be mean to that person than it is to be mean to your misbehaving partner).

I am SO RELEIVED to read another female say this. Most of my friends have been saying "don't be so hard on E, its not like this is her fault, she was single, and so is he now, so you know". HE IS SINGLE BECAUSE YOU SNOGGED HIM, MADE HIM FEEL GREAT AND HE LEFT ME FOR YOU. JUST SAY NO.

lollllllll

OMG SORRY THAT WAS A X-POST

Hahaha its ok :)

btw, part of my take on this is that however bad i may have been during lust/emotodraw/whatever decision making, i can be a paragon of virtue when it comes to the fact that i have never ever ever pursued an involved woman. and as established, i'm a dick when it comes to this sort of stuff, but that is a bridge too far.

And T I'm not trying to excuse her actions at all but, as you said, you know what it's like to be on the other side and sometimes if the emotions are there and the person says the right things, you aren't always thinking about what the other person involved might feel. It's totally shitty but it's also life.

Also as someone who has worked in sexual health I firmly believe that most ppl cheat. Statistics put it at like 50% but that's what ppl answer when asked which is inherently flawed because ppl won't always answer truthfully.

BTW I am totally playing devil's advocate here. I do believe it's possible to be completely monogamous for years but I also think that it's very difficult and, in most situations, a rare occurrence.

Trayce, your friends must think being single is some kind of mysterious ailment that robs you of both your agency and the obligation to respect other women. I got in a huge internet fight about this subject once, because I suggested a woman who *admitted* she got off on being the third party in some guy's life was no better than a spunkbucket.

seems like the kind of thing you would only do if you were seriously psychotic and had too much time on your hands

^new board description?

wait so a sock is a fakeusername?

whew, I thought it was going to be some kind of sex thing (gee now why would I think that, ILX?)

....... American pie?

but that was a pie, not a sock

first scene was a sock iirc

Sock is from sockpuppet, VG.

I have a headache... I will stop derailing the derailment now

American Sock.

shakey mo otm re: socks

frogbs is Treezy Forbeezy and i claim my $5

― motivatedgirl (Matt P), Saturday, 9 April 2011 05:52

LOL hey!!!!

omg hahaha

I rly hope that name sticks.

It seems to be a little heh.

I'm voting for this thread in the 2012 Presidential Election

amazing thread

Unsurpassable. Thank God.

overrated imo

^^overrated post

Who are the self-clowning ovens of ILX?

link to lazy zing catalog thread
- posted by gr8080 who really likes posting that link

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=1017480&boardid=79&threadid=76038

gr80 r u a Libra, or is 10/8 Gr80 day just bcz of 10 x 8

just a day on the rocktober calendar- 31 days and mine happened to be the 8th

rock on

10/8 is my bday

happy birthday max!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rex-oso/extramarital-affair_b_976380.html

Rex Oso leads two lives, one married to a woman, the other in love with a man.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contributors/rex-oso/headshot.jpg

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2011/10/dear_prudence_my_wife_doesn_t_want_sex_so_i_visit_prostitutes_.html

Rex Oso leads two lives, one married to a woman, the other in love with a man.

Rex Oso needs to tell his wife instead of HuffPo

ugh that huffpo article

Sex is normal. Sex is natural. Sex is good.

Love is even better.

And lying to your spouse for 7 years is AWESOME!

rex oso

sex or 0

Sex is normal. Sex is natural. Sex is good.

http://cdn.teenhollywood.com/video-previews/i-want-your-sex-george-michael-308x174.jpg

First thing I thought of too.

I'm not surprised someone with the name Rex Oso fucks dudes

and there it is

and there it is

― the tax avocado (DJP), Friday, October 7, 2011 2:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

froggin bomgbs

I'm not surprised someone with the name Rex Oso fucks dudes

^my ILX-ing is sporadic at best, so apologies if this has been covered... but is this dude for fucking real?

lol

sure this is it

rex oso = "king bear" in some Spanish dialect?

pretty close but I think it's more similar to "dinobear"

hot shit

dude sounds like he's been gay his entire life and got stuck in a straight marriage b/c of denial and remains in denial

yeah but i'm still going to read all his blog posts tho

Entertaining and fucked-up people = My set of friends

As for intelligent people... well, maybe it's time for a Venn diagram.