If someone is really in love can they still cheat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to boil most of the responses here down to this:
Men can. Women can't.

Yeah. All the women had/have to believe it was love to make themselves feel better. Otherwise, they feel like a Ho.

Contrary to what most of you are saying, I am a woman who was in love with my husband, and I had an affair. Our marriage was not great at the time due to work/financial/kids/moving out of state etc stress (aka the usual life stuff), but I loved him. I was having my own personal self esteem/unworthiness crisis and sought approval from other very high status men. I didn’t even so much actively seek attention as I did accept attention from these men. A more self-confident, grounded, self-aware, thoughtful woman would typically fend off this common unwanted attention, as we do on a daily basis. When was invited over I accepted under the guise of friendship. I wanted to be wanted by some high status people/men. Turned out of course they just wanted sex, and I got tangled up in emotions along the way. Of course I lost my marriage to my wonderful hardworking husband along the way. Don’t do it, people. If you love your spouse, reign in all of your broken-ness so you don’t inadvertently destroy your family. Lust and your personal issues can literally blind (limerence, cold vs hot emotional states) you to your real priority in life- your family.

It’s good that you can admit your responsibility for your actions, although you don’t really take full responsibility - telling a story about how you were vulnerable, fell into the affair under the guise of friendship, that you “got tangled up in emotions”, and how “they wanted sex”. All of these constructs of story telling minimize your personal responsibility and position the affair as something that was done to you by predatory people. You did it. You are the predator.

People who often carry out affairs tell themselves and others that they really loved the partner they cheated on because it makes them look less bad.

The reality of your story is that you cheated on someone and whatever you felt, it wasn’t love because hurting and betraying someone isn’t a part of love. Every step you took was a conscious choice to manipulate and betray your husband. You did that because you didn’t value him. You wanted something for yourself. You saw a way to get it. You took it without any thought to how it would impact anyone else. That is not love.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to boil most of the responses here down to this:
Men can. Women can't.

Yeah. All the women had/have to believe it was love to make themselves feel better. Otherwise, they feel like a Ho.

Contrary to what most of you are saying, I am a woman who was in love with my husband, and I had an affair. Our marriage was not great at the time due to work/financial/kids/moving out of state etc stress (aka the usual life stuff), but I loved him. I was having my own personal self esteem/unworthiness crisis and sought approval from other very high status men. I didn’t even so much actively seek attention as I did accept attention from these men. A more self-confident, grounded, self-aware, thoughtful woman would typically fend off this common unwanted attention, as we do on a daily basis. When was invited over I accepted under the guise of friendship. I wanted to be wanted by some high status people/men. Turned out of course they just wanted sex, and I got tangled up in emotions along the way. Of course I lost my marriage to my wonderful hardworking husband along the way. Don’t do it, people. If you love your spouse, reign in all of your broken-ness so you don’t inadvertently destroy your family. Lust and your personal issues can literally blind (limerence, cold vs hot emotional states) you to your real priority in life- your family.

It’s good that you can admit your responsibility for your actions, although you don’t really take full responsibility - telling a story about how you were vulnerable, fell into the affair under the guise of friendship, that you “got tangled up in emotions”, and how “they wanted sex”. All of these constructs of story telling minimize your personal responsibility and position the affair as something that was done to you by predatory people. You did it. You are the predator.

People who often carry out affairs tell themselves and others that they really loved the partner they cheated on because it makes them look less bad.

The reality of your story is that you cheated on someone and whatever you felt, it wasn’t love because hurting and betraying someone isn’t a part of love. Every step you took was a conscious choice to manipulate and betray your husband. You did that because you didn’t value him. You wanted something for yourself. You saw a way to get it. You took it without any thought to how it would impact anyone else. That is not love.

My ex-wife will tell a sob story like that and she actively was looking for an affair/men on Ashley Madison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to boil most of the responses here down to this:
Men can. Women can't.

Yeah. All the women had/have to believe it was love to make themselves feel better. Otherwise, they feel like a Ho.

Contrary to what most of you are saying, I am a woman who was in love with my husband, and I had an affair. Our marriage was not great at the time due to work/financial/kids/moving out of state etc stress (aka the usual life stuff), but I loved him. I was having my own personal self esteem/unworthiness crisis and sought approval from other very high status men. I didn’t even so much actively seek attention as I did accept attention from these men. A more self-confident, grounded, self-aware, thoughtful woman would typically fend off this common unwanted attention, as we do on a daily basis. When was invited over I accepted under the guise of friendship. I wanted to be wanted by some high status people/men. Turned out of course they just wanted sex, and I got tangled up in emotions along the way. Of course I lost my marriage to my wonderful hardworking husband along the way. Don’t do it, people. If you love your spouse, reign in all of your broken-ness so you don’t inadvertently destroy your family. Lust and your personal issues can literally blind (limerence, cold vs hot emotional states) you to your real priority in life- your family.

Your comment about high status men constantly giving advances that you have to fend off is so true. I worked at a company with many of them and I was propositioned constantly by men whom are otherwise seen as upstanding community members and loving husbands

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to boil most of the responses here down to this:
Men can. Women can't.

Yeah. All the women had/have to believe it was love to make themselves feel better. Otherwise, they feel like a Ho.

Contrary to what most of you are saying, I am a woman who was in love with my husband, and I had an affair. Our marriage was not great at the time due to work/financial/kids/moving out of state etc stress (aka the usual life stuff), but I loved him. I was having my own personal self esteem/unworthiness crisis and sought approval from other very high status men. I didn’t even so much actively seek attention as I did accept attention from these men. A more self-confident, grounded, self-aware, thoughtful woman would typically fend off this common unwanted attention, as we do on a daily basis. When was invited over I accepted under the guise of friendship. I wanted to be wanted by some high status people/men. Turned out of course they just wanted sex, and I got tangled up in emotions along the way. Of course I lost my marriage to my wonderful hardworking husband along the way. Don’t do it, people. If you love your spouse, reign in all of your broken-ness so you don’t inadvertently destroy your family. Lust and your personal issues can literally blind (limerence, cold vs hot emotional states) you to your real priority in life- your family.

Your comment about high status men constantly giving advances that you have to fend off is so true. I worked at a company with many of them and I was propositioned constantly by men whom are otherwise seen as upstanding community members and loving husbands

I worked with a bunch of middle managers and Feds, being a woman I get those advances all the time —from high value or not.

The woman cheater sounds just awful. She wanted to trade up, men just wanted to use her for sex, she got caught and now looks back at her husband with rose-colored glasses, casting herself as a poor lost soul who was a devoted, loving wife that just lost her way. Give me a break. Even her comments, demonstrates she does not accept full responsibility. And you don’t “reign in your brokenness”, you go to therapy to find out why you are so f—-d up and lacking in character, and to insure you don’t cruelly lie and betray the next victim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to boil most of the responses here down to this:
Men can. Women can't.

Yeah. All the women had/have to believe it was love to make themselves feel better. Otherwise, they feel like a Ho.

Contrary to what most of you are saying, I am a woman who was in love with my husband, and I had an affair. Our marriage was not great at the time due to work/financial/kids/moving out of state etc stress (aka the usual life stuff), but I loved him. I was having my own personal self esteem/unworthiness crisis and sought approval from other very high status men. I didn’t even so much actively seek attention as I did accept attention from these men. A more self-confident, grounded, self-aware, thoughtful woman would typically fend off this common unwanted attention, as we do on a daily basis. When was invited over I accepted under the guise of friendship. I wanted to be wanted by some high status people/men. Turned out of course they just wanted sex, and I got tangled up in emotions along the way. Of course I lost my marriage to my wonderful hardworking husband along the way. Don’t do it, people. If you love your spouse, reign in all of your broken-ness so you don’t inadvertently destroy your family. Lust and your personal issues can literally blind (limerence, cold vs hot emotional states) you to your real priority in life- your family.

It’s good that you can admit your responsibility for your actions, although you don’t really take full responsibility - telling a story about how you were vulnerable, fell into the affair under the guise of friendship, that you “got tangled up in emotions”, and how “they wanted sex”. All of these constructs of story telling minimize your personal responsibility and position the affair as something that was done to you by predatory people. You did it. You are the predator.

People who often carry out affairs tell themselves and others that they really loved the partner they cheated on because it makes them look less bad.

The reality of your story is that you cheated on someone and whatever you felt, it wasn’t love because hurting and betraying someone isn’t a part of love. Every step you took was a conscious choice to manipulate and betray your husband. You did that because you didn’t value him. You wanted something for yourself. You saw a way to get it. You took it without any thought to how it would impact anyone else. That is not love.

My ex-wife will tell a sob story like that and she actively was looking for an affair/men on Ashley Madison.

It’s the evil men that made her do that. Lol

[Anonymous]

Yes. Some people can love their spouse and have an affair. In the mind of the spouse having an affair, they are looking for an escape. If they aren’t having sex with their spouse, that escapes is a sexual relationship. If they have other emotional problems, the affair can be a coping mechanism. It’s ego, entitlement, secrecy. People do bad things all the time. It doesn’t mean they don’t love their spouse. It’s a compartmentalized act.

Some counselors that people have an affair because the cheating partner does love their spouse. If they didn’t love their spouse, they would just divorce. The fact that they lie, hide, and stay in the relationship is because they do love their spouse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Oh and my wife isn’t a nag. So the irony was I was hearing somebody else’s nagging, complaining wife and that is part of what snapped me out of it and why I ended it and put myself in therapy.

I’m virtually positive you are actually the wife that posts about her DH cheating after 20+ years due to childhood trauma even though you had regular sex. The vocabulary and writing syntax are the same and all of these posts claiming to be the man that cheated sound like they were written by a woman. WHY do you do this? I was sympathetic to your story when you first posted almost two years ago, but you have become obsessive about sharing this narrative and it’s unhealthy.

He’s the husband, and he and she post constantly. It may be their couples therapist rec? He cheated courtesy of Ashley Madison. They’ve been on here since the pandemic - but since you called him, her, he’s got an out to lie. Much like these traumatic childhood lies that led to the old in-n-out with another woman for 2, 3 years. But he’s been redeemed! He is risen! (Hopefully he won’t try to shove his risen thing into another woman, again, for a moment or like 2 years, again.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Some people can love their spouse and have an affair. In the mind of the spouse having an affair, they are looking for an escape. If they aren’t having sex with their spouse, that escapes is a sexual relationship. If they have other emotional problems, the affair can be a coping mechanism. It’s ego, entitlement, secrecy. People do bad things all the time. It doesn’t mean they don’t love their spouse. It’s a compartmentalized act.

Some counselors that people have an affair because the cheating partner does love their spouse. If they didn’t love their spouse, they would just divorce. The fact that they lie, hide, and stay in the relationship is because they do love their spouse.

No. They reason they stay is not love, but because they want something from their spouse - household management, access to the kids, social standing as a good parent, financial stability.

Despite my now exDH professing he loved me, he did not. He wanted the facade that I provided. I was merely his beard so he could appear to others as a nice guy, a good dad, a family man, have regular sex (while he was also sleeping with others), access to my earning potential, etc.

That is not love.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Some people can love their spouse and have an affair. In the mind of the spouse having an affair, they are looking for an escape. If they aren’t having sex with their spouse, that escapes is a sexual relationship. If they have other emotional problems, the affair can be a coping mechanism. It’s ego, entitlement, secrecy. People do bad things all the time. It doesn’t mean they don’t love their spouse. It’s a compartmentalized act.

Some counselors that people have an affair because the cheating partner does love their spouse. If they didn’t love their spouse, they would just divorce. The fact that they lie, hide, and stay in the relationship is because they do love their spouse.

No. They reason they stay is not love, but because they want something from their spouse - household management, access to the kids, social standing as a good parent, financial stability.

Despite my now exDH professing he loved me, he did not. He wanted the facade that I provided. I was merely his beard so he could appear to others as a nice guy, a good dad, a family man, have regular sex (while he was also sleeping with others), access to my earning potential, etc.

That is not love.

This. Abuse is not love. And yes cheating is a form of abuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Some people can love their spouse and have an affair. In the mind of the spouse having an affair, they are looking for an escape. If they aren’t having sex with their spouse, that escapes is a sexual relationship. If they have other emotional problems, the affair can be a coping mechanism. It’s ego, entitlement, secrecy. People do bad things all the time. It doesn’t mean they don’t love their spouse. It’s a compartmentalized act.

Some counselors that people have an affair because the cheating partner does love their spouse. If they didn’t love their spouse, they would just divorce. The fact that they lie, hide, and stay in the relationship is because they do love their spouse.

No. They reason they stay is not love, but because they want something from their spouse - household management, access to the kids, social standing as a good parent, financial stability.

Despite my now exDH professing he loved me, he did not. He wanted the facade that I provided. I was merely his beard so he could appear to others as a nice guy, a good dad, a family man, have regular sex (while he was also sleeping with others), access to my earning potential, etc.

That is not love.

This. Abuse is not love. And yes cheating is a form of abuse.

Bbbbbut he confessed and went to therapy on his own like a big boy plus hos (who are always women) gonna ho and we’re going to have a beautiful vow renewal! So excuse you for not being on team true love won. So embarrassing of you to defend the pathetic wannabe destroyers of true love who keep getting these guys to drop trou involuntarily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, monogamy is an unnatural human construct.

This is the real answer but they aren't ready to hear it.

+100 Anyone on here, man or woman, who thinks it all makes sense to have one sexual partner for decades, and want that, is most likely sexually repressed.

Also I absolutely can love my husband and want to have sex or even a full blown relationship with another man. A person does not have only one perfect companion- that idea, when there are billions of people in the world, is absurd.

Monogamy is a social construct. The fact that we tie absolute morality to it is a relic of more religious times. It's especially strange to me that my friends who are not religious have adopted this puritism.

I get that for some people monogamy works better but the idea that people who feel resentful for being forced in this construct are immoral is stupid. And yes, I get it, lying is bad, misleading people is bad but this visceral hatred of sexual freedom is what prevents partners from accepting it in their relationships so people have to cheat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, monogamy is an unnatural human construct.

This is the real answer but they aren't ready to hear it.

+100000 ‘the one’ doesn’t exist and many of us are trapped with the wrong people for life

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, monogamy is an unnatural human construct.

This is the real answer but they aren't ready to hear it.

+100000 ‘the one’ doesn’t exist and many of us are trapped with the wrong people for life

Some people are really tethered to the wrong person but often it's just tjat the sexual connection dies as it always does and people get resentful of having to be celibate or have bad sex for years. Like PP said, few people are monogamous which is why most people cheat or want to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Oh and my wife isn’t a nag. So the irony was I was hearing somebody else’s nagging, complaining wife and that is part of what snapped me out of it and why I ended it and put myself in therapy.

I’m virtually positive you are actually the wife that posts about her DH cheating after 20+ years due to childhood trauma even though you had regular sex. The vocabulary and writing syntax are the same and all of these posts claiming to be the man that cheated sound like they were written by a woman. WHY do you do this? I was sympathetic to your story when you first posted almost two years ago, but you have become obsessive about sharing this narrative and it’s unhealthy.

He’s the husband, and he and she post constantly. It may be their couples therapist rec? He cheated courtesy of Ashley Madison. They’ve been on here since the pandemic - but since you called him, her, he’s got an out to lie. Much like these traumatic childhood lies that led to the old in-n-out with another woman for 2, 3 years. But he’s been redeemed! He is risen! (Hopefully he won’t try to shove his risen thing into another woman, again, for a moment or like 2 years, again.)

I love you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, monogamy is an unnatural human construct.

This is the real answer but they aren't ready to hear it.

+100000 ‘the one’ doesn’t exist and many of us are trapped with the wrong people for life

Can I get an AMEN?!