Did your parents cheat? How did you feel about it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, so if I say to my husband, "You are too conservative and repressed and can never fulfill me sexually, therefore I'm divorcing you," that won't traumatize my children? Or would you only be happy if I settled for solo sex?

You should neither divorce him nor cheat on him.

So do I ever get to be in a sexually satisfying relationship?

If you don't, so what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, so if I say to my husband, "You are too conservative and repressed and can never fulfill me sexually, therefore I'm divorcing you," that won't traumatize my children? Or would you only be happy if I settled for solo sex?

You should neither divorce him nor cheat on him.

So do I ever get to be in a sexually satisfying relationship?

Yes, if you are honest about it. This just in: yes men want their wives to be sexually satisfied. It's part of what makes us men.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The marriages today are quite, quite different from what they were over "thousands of years of human history". That you don't understand that is a dumbass joke on you.

That you think the current state of "marriage" is normal and sustainable shows that you are the dumbass. The "joke", unfortunately, is on all of society.

That's not really your call. Mind your own marriage. Other people don't care what you think of their marriages. Your opinion means nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, so if I say to my husband, "You are too conservative and repressed and can never fulfill me sexually, therefore I'm divorcing you," that won't traumatize my children? Or would you only be happy if I settled for solo sex?

You should neither divorce him nor cheat on him.

So do I ever get to be in a sexually satisfying relationship?

Yes, if you are honest about it. This just in: yes men want their wives to be sexually satisfied. It's part of what makes us men.

So why don't you rise to the occasion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, so if I say to my husband, "You are too conservative and repressed and can never fulfill me sexually, therefore I'm divorcing you," that won't traumatize my children? Or would you only be happy if I settled for solo sex?

You should neither divorce him nor cheat on him.

So do I ever get to be in a sexually satisfying relationship?

If you don't, so what?

I don't know how to answer this, other than to say that to me, a satisfying sexual relationship is essential. Some things you think are important I could probably live without easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, so if I say to my husband, "You are too conservative and repressed and can never fulfill me sexually, therefore I'm divorcing you," that won't traumatize my children? Or would you only be happy if I settled for solo sex?

You should neither divorce him nor cheat on him.

So do I ever get to be in a sexually satisfying relationship?

Yes, if you are honest about it. This just in: yes men want their wives to be sexually satisfied. It's part of what makes us men.

That's not true if the husband has a Madonna/whore complex, and there are now children in the mix.

[Anonymous]

NP- haven't read all the posts but my dad cheated with multiple women, full on relationships, when I was growing up. Never talked to him or my mom about it but I was very aware and he had to know I knew. I've always been a total daddy's girl and close with him but his cheating certainly felt like a betrayal to the family. Now I'm an adult with a child of my own and I'm still close enough with my dad, but he irritates the bejesus out of me (not related to the cheating, he's just needy and thinks very highly of himself). After I spent a couple years in therapy in my 20s my relationship with him felt different. I (ironically?) became angry with him and haven't been able to let it go. Probably because of the cheating and also his personality. It's rough. I feel for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eventually, Ossie and Ruby decided the open marriage was not for them because they found that they really fulfilled each other, but neither regretted trying it. In the end, it is about respect and realizing your partner is a different person with different needs and aspirations. It is about your partner and not about you. Your jealousy is your problem, not theirs. If you both agree that you can both have outside relationships, it is just not cheating. The cgeating comes in the lies and deception, not the outside sex act. There are as many flavored of marriage as there are ice cream. Grab a spoon and dig in, but don't expect your flavor to be my favorite not force me to eat it.

Bullshit. What your SPOUSE does sexually IS about you. It cannot fail to affect you emotionally and perhaps physically. The cheating most definitely comes from the sex act. You are completely deluded if you think you can redefine "marriage" in the terms you describe here. Whore it up all you want, but don't try to pretend it is a marriage, because it isn't.

Who died and appointed you the arbiter of what marriage is?

Thousands of years of human history, dumbass.

Do you really want to hold up thousands of years of marriage history as the standard for what marriage should look like? Marriages where it was expected that the male would cheat, especially if his wife was about to have or had recently had his child, while a wife cheating would result in her social and economic ruin? How about the parts of history where women were actually given no input into who or when they married, when or how many children they bore or whether they even wanted to get married in the first place?

I'm the OP of the remark that has spurred the conversation about parents putting their needs before their kids' needs. I'm not pro-adultery, really, but being against cheating is not the same as being for a person letting their desire to be loved (whether emotionally or sexually or both) be completely disregarded because they believe that their children require a nuclear family. My parents are divorced, and I do not believe that their divorce ruined my childhood. My siblings do not believe that their divorce ruined their childhoods either (and they are younger than me so had more childhood to experience with divorced parents). I know that many people found their parents divorce to be ruining of childhoods, but it's certainly not a universal experience.

I suspect that you really just do not believe that parents are entitled to any happiness outside their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, so if I say to my husband, "You are too conservative and repressed and can never fulfill me sexually, therefore I'm divorcing you," that won't traumatize my children? Or would you only be happy if I settled for solo sex?

You should neither divorce him nor cheat on him.

So do I ever get to be in a sexually satisfying relationship?

If you don't, so what?

I don't know how to answer this, other than to say that to me, a satisfying sexual relationship is essential. Some things you think are important I could probably live without easily.

I haven't posted on this little tidbit of the thread before, but the person you are arguing with basically doesn't think your sexual satisfaction is relevant - or that sexual satisfaction in general is of any value. There are women and men who do this, and yes, they do get cheated on - because they are selfish and neglect their partners.

[Anonymous]

Marriage has been many different things in many different places over the past thousands of years. Mostly it's had to do with property and mostly it was something the upper classes worried about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the expectation that parents should allow their children's needs to completely supersede their own is damaging.

Bullshit. Putting your kids needs before your own is called "being a parent" and "being an adult".

People can have affairs without neglecting their children.

I disagree, if you were not with your affair partner you would probably be with your family instead. Unless you are with your partner during normal working hours, you are taking time away from your children.

Are you with your children seven nights a week, every week? No time out with friends, to volunteer? And children are so needy that both parents must be home each evening? Absence = neglect?

Honestly yes. Dh and I do date nights twice a month but that's it. My friends have kids so when we hang out we do it together. I'm sure your kids know you have an affair partner. We always knew when my dad was cheating because he would be around less often. It was like the elephant in the room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You realize now as an adult that your father's cheating had nothing to do with his relationship with you, right?

That is horseshit.

Howso?

OP - When you destroy your children's home because you can't keep it in your pants, it definitely speaks of disregard for them, at the very least. That has a lot of bearing on your relationship with them.

I don't know. My mom cheated (with me and my sister in tow) and eventually divorced my dad. What she did was wrong, asking me to keep that kind of secret was bad parenting, and having divorced parents has made my adult life inconvenient, but I don't think she has disregard for our relationship. I think she is a morally flawed person. And I think she is selfish in some ways, but I think we are all.

My bigger issue is having never seen a healthy relationship, I have bad relationship habits in my own marriage. Like I impulsively keep secrets about really stupid stuff.

You really don't think your mom showed incredible disregard for the impact on you and your sister by bringing you along while she got her back thrown out extramaritally?

PP sounds insightful and seems to have a clear understanding of how her childhood impacted her adult life, while you just sound bitter and crude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eventually, Ossie and Ruby decided the open marriage was not for them because they found that they really fulfilled each other, but neither regretted trying it. In the end, it is about respect and realizing your partner is a different person with different needs and aspirations. It is about your partner and not about you. Your jealousy is your problem, not theirs. If you both agree that you can both have outside relationships, it is just not cheating. The cgeating comes in the lies and deception, not the outside sex act. There are as many flavored of marriage as there are ice cream. Grab a spoon and dig in, but don't expect your flavor to be my favorite not force me to eat it.

Bullshit. What your SPOUSE does sexually IS about you. It cannot fail to affect you emotionally and perhaps physically. The cheating most definitely comes from the sex act. You are completely deluded if you think you can redefine "marriage" in the terms you describe here. Whore it up all you want, but don't try to pretend it is a marriage, because it isn't.

Who died and appointed you the arbiter of what marriage is?

Thousands of years of human history, dumbass.

I keep picturing the above poster as Kathy Bates in Misery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the expectation that parents should allow their children's needs to completely supersede their own is damaging.

Bullshit. Putting your kids needs before your own is called "being a parent" and "being an adult".

People can have affairs without neglecting their children.

I disagree, if you were not with your affair partner you would probably be with your family instead. Unless you are with your partner during normal working hours, you are taking time away from your children.

Are you with your children seven nights a week, every week? No time out with friends, to volunteer? And children are so needy that both parents must be home each evening? Absence = neglect?

Honestly yes. Dh and I do date nights twice a month but that's it. My friends have kids so when we hang out we do it together. I'm sure your kids know you have an affair partner. We always knew when my dad was cheating because he would be around less often. It was like the elephant in the room.

That's interesting. Of the evenings I am away from my family, they are almost always for work or volunteering for my civic organization. You never go out with girlfriends? You don't exercise or volunteer? Are your children numerous and/or quite young? You don't sound like you think it's a good idea to be away from children at night for any reason.

[Anonymous]

Jesus Christ. Who do you expect to read all of this?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - I, too, was glad when my parents divorced. It was a relief from their constant fights and from always waiting for the other shoe to drop in the form of another mistress coming to light. It sounds as if you feel your mother deserved to be cheated on though, so that probably made your father's cheating easier for you.

Well, I wouldn't say deserved to be "cheated on" so much as deserved to be dumped...and yes, she very much deserved to be dumped. And her ongoing martydom and bitchiness are responsible for that fact that she remains alone and unhappy, while my father and the rest of us (with the exception of one sibling) have gone on to lead lives and seek happiness.

On the "cheating" vs. "dumping" - people lie to themselves; they say, over and over "it's not the sex, it's the lying". Bullshit. It's being rejected and left behind: it's the dumping. That's what hurts. That's where the heartbreak comes from (I have been dumped and I have even been cheated on once; I'm not talking out my ass here). People pretend it would have all been OK, if only the person got a divorce first: more bull shit. They would then protest just as vocerifously, "but you swore an OATH...you PROMISED to love me forever...you swore you wouldn't divorce"....just as loudly as they protest "you promosed to be sexually monogamous and faithful". This is one of the biggest pile of self-deception out there. No, they would not be happy - leaving is leaving and they would be just as heartbroken; nobody who has been dumped by a spouse stops and says "well, it's not so bad, they didn't cheat on me."

The same thing with children who feel abandoned by their parent: they feel abandoned when the parent leaves home, regardless of whether it's for an AP or just because they don't want to be married anymore. The children worry just as much that it's "their fault" whether or not there is an affair.

What cheating does is give the cheated on person a moral high ground of outrage, so they can be 100% victim. They don't have to look at their own behavior, or consider whether they in any way contributed to the demise of the relationship. Cheating is almost always about problems elsewhere in the relationship; it is not generally just about sex. Yes, often times the other problems are due to issues one partner or the other (or both) have, but it's not generally about either enough blowjobs (complete lack of sex is another matter) or about "inability to keep it in your pants". Those are both gross over simplifications which are actually more harmful, precisely because they are often a way to avoid addressing the real issues.

I'm not an advocate for cheating; I do not think it's a good way to get out of a dead relationship, nor is it a good basis on which to start a new one (as people have noted in the thread: the success rate for affairs which convert to marriages is terrible). I think cheating is a way of avoiding doing some of the hard, honest work that sometimes adults have to do.

My mother has a huge pile of issues; she is a deeply unhappy and frequently mean person. When I was a child she was incredibly emotionally abusive and nasty. I'm very surprised my father tolerated it for as long as he did. In my adult relationship with her, I've pounded home the message that, unless boundaries are respected, there will be no relationship. Only by constantly vigorously enforcing that limit has appropriate behavior been extracted. I wouldn't bother with this except that she is the only mother I have and I feel somewhat duty-bound to work at having a relationship. I absolutely recognize - as an adult - that despite her constant complaining about how bad a man - what character flaws and "weakness" my father had - that instead of his cheating and leaving representing weakness, they were really some signs of life - he finally had enough abuse and got up on his two feet and got the fuck out. He used cheating as a way to dynamite the relationship, which wasn't the mentally healthy mature way to handle it, but it was really just a way of leaving.

I understand why my mother has the issues she does; I'm sympathetic - she has some real challenges which are difficult. However, we all have challenges in life, shortcomings and things we don't like about ourselves. We all have to, as part of becoming healthy adults, come to terms with our own flaws and shortcomings and accept them - accept ourselves - and love ourselves. My mother isn't willing to grow up (and she's in her 70s now, so it's unlikely to happen ever); she wallows in self-loathing and self pity. Her emotional maturity is stuck somewhere in Middle School, and I think she still nurses wounds from back then. She has been this way for as long as I can remember. She is mean and nasty to other people, to tear them down, which is what she does to herself continually. This makes her a miserable person; there's no way my father would ever have gotten anywhere near her, except for the fact that he had some pretty bad issues himself (which he got into therapy for, post-divorce) when he met her. She also wasted no time getting pregnant (I haven't checked the actual dates, but I am pretty sure I'm a shotgun wedding baby) to cinch the deal. She does not love or like herself, and this makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to like or love her; yet, my father lasted for 3 kids and 12 years - when I looked back with adult eyes, I was like "WTF is wrong with you? Why didn't you GTFO a lot earlier?!?". My mother refuses to see her contributions to the issues though, and refuses to really make any changes - she remains bitter, angry and alone...I have one sibling who is the same. Framing it as all Daddy's fault for having a "Character Flaw" and "cheating" lets them continue to ignore that, even 35 years later - at the same time two siblings and Dad are all leading much happier and more fulfilling lives - they have to take some responsibility for their own happyness. Fuck 'em - they make their own pain and they drag it around with them everywhere. I personally avoid seeing them as much as possible, and while I do my familial duty, I will miss neither a moment when they are gone.

So yeah, that's what I hear when I hear people - particularly the people who weren't actually cheated on themselves - bleating about some cheating that happened years ago. If your ability to have adult relationships is fucked up because your parents had a terrible relationship, then it's your job to go to counseling and learn how to have happy adult relationships - not some shit to keep griping about that your parents did to you.