Anonymous wrote:My dad cheated on my mom.

I don’t hate him for it in the least. Marriages are complicated and private things. Who knows that really went down between them. Maybe she decided she didn’t want sex for years. Maybe she was cold and unloving towards him. Maybe he wanted out of the relationship and didn’t have the maturity to end it properly.

Whatever the reasons, they aren’t really my business and I’m not even that interested. It’s between them.

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Anonymous wrote:NP here. I am a woman in a sexless marriage and I have a friend I have sex with every month or two. Its no grand love affair, there’s no desire to use each other as an escape plan, we are just two people who want to get laid and unfortunately our spouses aren’t interested/able.

Go for it. Just make sure you keep your wits about you. Don’t try and twist it in your mind into something it isn’t. Especially if you get along well in and out of the bedroom. Don’t lose sight of why you are doing this: to get laid while maintaining your marriage. Not to replace your marriage.

Agree 100%. But I would add one extra small step, take 6 seconds to "declare the marriage open" that way you are not cheating, have zero moral dilemma, and don't need to sneak around / lie.

DP. You have zero understanding of "opening" a marriage. It is not an actual, official open marriage if ONE person "declares" it open. This is not a unilateral decison that one spouse gets to make, solo. Simply "taking 6 seconds to declare the marriage open" is cheating, period. Open marriage is a mutually discussed, mutually agreed upon, clear decision. Not one half of a couple saying "I declare this marriage open, meaning, I'll sleep with anyone I want."

You and many others on DCUM seem to think that people like OP can say, "I"m unhappy so I declare the marriage open." Nope. If the other spouse disagrees, or ven just waffles and is unsure and therefore not on board clearly -- it's cheating. Not an open marriage.

But OP came here hoping for strangers to validate the hell out of her wanting to cheat, and she's gotten just that, so I suspect she'll go screw Mr. Take-Me-Now and blithely think she is still in an "excellent" marriage. She's great at self-deception. And yes, he drinks too much, but her instinct is to get laid rather than to push someone she supposedly loves to get help for his addiction. She's about sex, not love. And she got all the validation she could want from the sex-over-love crowd here.

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Anonymous wrote:^ I thought the same thing. My exhusband thought 2 times a week was sexless at 20 years- so he supplemented once a month with some other married ho. They Really did not expect the level of fallout that occurred to two families. All fun and games …

I suspect one reason OP is so willing to entertain this idea is because they seem to be empty nesters so she might think of her kids as unaffected if she gets caught. That's so naive of her; she's happy to risk her adult kids' respect for her. And adult kids, who understand what sex and cheating really mean, actually may be far angrier at a cheating parent than young kids could ever be. She also is arrogant enough she assumes her DH will never find out, her kids will never know, she'll never get caught. And she's using her DH's alcoholism as an excuse to cheat too. But she's already come back to say she's happy about responses which helped her justify her craving to cheat, so she won't ever see this post or think about her adult kids re: her cheating.

I’m an adult and it would not affect my respect and love for my parents one bit if one of them were to cheat. As an adult, I realize there’s more to a marriage than sex. They’ve put in the time; their bodies are their own.

Betrayal is huge. It would feel like a betrayal to the whole family to me.

You’re making it weirdly personal. If my mom cheated on my dad, it’d have nothing to do with me whatsoever. If I cheated on my DH, it would have nothing to do with my parents. It’s honestly their personal matter and that’s how I would see it. Boundaries .

Wrong. You can’t determine how your kids would feel. I know too many people that never got over a parent’s affair and it colored what they thought of them.

I’d be very disappointed to learn my child was a cheater in their marriage. They obviously didn’t learn values and I’d feel responsible. If it broke up the grandkids’ home it would be very disappointing.

Cheating runs in families and causes generational trauma.

Well I’m a kid to my parent and I know how I would feel. I’m also pretty sure that if I cheated and told my parents, they wouldn’t give a crap. I mean they’d probably wouldn’t approve but our relationship would not change.

Your parents wouldn’t care if your actions and poor decisions led to, for example, a divorce? That is odd.

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Anonymous wrote:^ I thought the same thing. My exhusband thought 2 times a week was sexless at 20 years- so he supplemented once a month with some other married ho. They Really did not expect the level of fallout that occurred to two families. All fun and games …

I suspect one reason OP is so willing to entertain this idea is because they seem to be empty nesters so she might think of her kids as unaffected if she gets caught. That's so naive of her; she's happy to risk her adult kids' respect for her. And adult kids, who understand what sex and cheating really mean, actually may be far angrier at a cheating parent than young kids could ever be. She also is arrogant enough she assumes her DH will never find out, her kids will never know, she'll never get caught. And she's using her DH's alcoholism as an excuse to cheat too. But she's already come back to say she's happy about responses which helped her justify her craving to cheat, so she won't ever see this post or think about her adult kids re: her cheating.

I’m an adult and it would not affect my respect and love for my parents one bit if one of them were to cheat. As an adult, I realize there’s more to a marriage than sex. They’ve put in the time; their bodies are their own.

Betrayal is huge. It would feel like a betrayal to the whole family to me.

You’re making it weirdly personal. If my mom cheated on my dad, it’d have nothing to do with me whatsoever. If I cheated on my DH, it would have nothing to do with my parents. It’s honestly their personal matter and that’s how I would see it. Boundaries .

Wrong. You can’t determine how your kids would feel. I know too many people that never got over a parent’s affair and it colored what they thought of them.

I’d be very disappointed to learn my child was a cheater in their marriage. They obviously didn’t learn values and I’d feel responsible. If it broke up the grandkids’ home it would be very disappointing.

Cheating runs in families and causes generational trauma.

Well I’m a kid to my parent and I know how I would feel. I’m also pretty sure that if I cheated and told my parents, they wouldn’t give a crap. I mean they’d probably wouldn’t approve but our relationship would not change.

Anonymous wrote:

I’m an adult and it would not affect my respect and love for my parents one bit if one of them were to cheat. As an adult, I realize there’s more to a marriage than sex. They’ve put in the time; their bodies are their own.

That’s too bad. I love both my parents very much, and because of that if one hurt the other by cheating it would definitely impact how I feel about them. I don’t want people I love to be hurt. I can’t figure out how that wouldn’t affect your respect for a parent.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ I thought the same thing. My exhusband thought 2 times a week was sexless at 20 years- so he supplemented once a month with some other married ho. They Really did not expect the level of fallout that occurred to two families. All fun and games …

I suspect one reason OP is so willing to entertain this idea is because they seem to be empty nesters so she might think of her kids as unaffected if she gets caught. That's so naive of her; she's happy to risk her adult kids' respect for her. And adult kids, who understand what sex and cheating really mean, actually may be far angrier at a cheating parent than young kids could ever be. She also is arrogant enough she assumes her DH will never find out, her kids will never know, she'll never get caught. And she's using her DH's alcoholism as an excuse to cheat too. But she's already come back to say she's happy about responses which helped her justify her craving to cheat, so she won't ever see this post or think about her adult kids re: her cheating.

I’m an adult and it would not affect my respect and love for my parents one bit if one of them were to cheat. As an adult, I realize there’s more to a marriage than sex. They’ve put in the time; their bodies are their own.

Betrayal is huge. It would feel like a betrayal to the whole family to me.

You’re making it weirdly personal. If my mom cheated on my dad, it’d have nothing to do with me whatsoever. If I cheated on my DH, it would have nothing to do with my parents. It’s honestly their personal matter and that’s how I would see it. Boundaries .

Wrong. You can’t determine how your kids would feel. I know too many people that never got over a parent’s affair and it colored what they thought of them.

I’d be very disappointed to learn my child was a cheater in their marriage. They obviously didn’t learn values and I’d feel responsible. If it broke up the grandkids’ home it would be very disappointing.

Cheating runs in families and causes generational trauma.

Well I’m a kid to my parent and I know how I would feel. I’m also pretty sure that if I cheated and told my parents, they wouldn’t give a crap. I mean they’d probably wouldn’t approve but our relationship would not change.

I’m an adult and it would not affect my respect and love for my parents one bit if one of them were to cheat. As an adult, I realize there’s more to a marriage than sex. They’ve put in the time; their bodies are their own.