Cheating means that you don't love your partner the way you're supposed to?

[Zenstudent]

Part of my reason for focusing on this is due to the many MW's who rationalized away their interactions with myself as not being infidelity and professing love for their spouses. I found the confluence of those perspectives to be both, at the time, confusing and also profound, but I really had no frame of reference to understand what was going on in their mind since, yup, I can't read minds. I could state that no way they could have loved their spouses the way they should have while interacting with myself and deceiving their spouse but that would be me projecting my own value judgments onto them. Since I still firmly believe in that premise, I guess I'm still projecting those judgments. That's life.

Yes, it is projecting values on someone with different beliefs. But still, I believe it's fair to say, that if cheating is the WS idea of loving their spouse, I won't have any of it. I would rather stay single.

[William]

"cheating means that you don't love your partner the way you're supposed to"

 

Agree or disagree?

 

I've talked to my WW at length about this very topic. My love dictates that I could never hurt her by cheating. Is that what is really wrong when someone cheats? That their type of love does not prevent them from having someone else? Because so many WS's seem to profess love for their spouse yet they still cheat.

 

As a reminder, this is the original post. While it's understood that this topic leaves a lot of grey area, posters are still asked to stay close to the original intention of the thread.

Topics this thread is NOT about

1. The ethical dilemma of infidelity

2. Questions of blame or fault

3. Contributing influences outside of the marital relationship

4. The OM/W

 

We have plenty of threads on all of these topics already, I see no need to convert this one. From this point forward, moving off track will lead to closing this thread and possible sanctions. ~Thank you

[KingwoodMan]

Sometimes it's hard for the betrayed spouse to accept but cheating means the other does not love you. Cheating is literally the ultimate betrayal. No human being would be capable of doing that to someone they love. If they do it, they don't love that person.

[drifter777]

Sometimes it's hard for the betrayed spouse to accept but cheating means the other does not love you. Cheating is literally the ultimate betrayal. No human being would be capable of doing that to someone they love. If they do it, they don't love that person.

 

This is the fundamental statement we have been debating so we are right back to where we started.

[KingwoodMan]

This is the fundamental statement we have been debating so we are right back to where we started.

 

Sometimes even the wayward spouses can't consciously admit it to themselves but it's the actions that show us the truth. You can't love someone you are willing to betray at that level regardless of how many times the wayward says differently. At that point those are just words. The actions are all that matters.

[Noirek]

Sometimes even the wayward spouses can't consciously admit it to themselves but it's the actions that show us the truth. You can't love someone you are willing to betray at that level regardless of how many times the wayward says differently. At that point those are just words. The actions are all that matters.

 

It is a simplistic answer that many believe. But not everyone and so in the end it comes down to a matter of opinion. I personally still believe character and morals has far more to do with it than the concept of love. After all we have all on some level been selfish and hurt the ones we love. In order to do it at such the level of cheating it takes a truly damaged person. Not lack of love just, imo, broken and worthless love.

[carhill]

For a moment, let's harken back to the days of my youth and the stereotypical traveling salesman who's married and has a family and is, yep, a philanderer and keeps a black book of ladies to contact in his travels and with whom he has sexual relations while ostensibly out on the road 'working'.

 

When he's at home, he's a loving spouse and father, or so his wife and children believe. Only he knows what he does when he's working, of course along with the ladies in his book but they only know him as the man in the hotel room, not anything concrete about his personal life. For him, that's separate.

 

Now me, I think he's not loving his wife and family the way he's supposed to. However, mine is just an outside opinion. Could his wife feel that he loves her and their children the way he's supposed to? IDK. See, I can't read her mind. She might or she might not. In their marriage, relevant to her, it's her opinion and perspective that matters, right? Could her husband, the philanderer, feel he doesn't love his wife and family the way he's supposed to? Definitely possible, but again we have no way to verify that.

 

To me, this aspect is totally separate from the general morality debate regarding infidelity or infidelity with deception (cheating). It goes to state of mind.

 

I could apply this criteria to almost any form of deception in a purportedly loving and trusting relationship. Would the form matter, or not? Is it really state of mind that matters? Is it the color of infidelity which imbues the whole dynamic with decidedly red and angry tone? What is it?

[Zenstudent]

For a moment, let's harken back to the days of my youth and the stereotypical traveling salesman who's married and has a family and is, yep, a philanderer and keeps a black book of ladies to contact in his travels and with whom he has sexual relations while ostensibly out on the road 'working'.

 

When he's at home, he's a loving spouse and father, or so his wife and children believe. Only he knows what he does when he's working, of course along with the ladies in his book but they only know him as the man in the hotel room, not anything concrete about his personal life. For him, that's separate.

 

Now me, I think he's not loving his wife and family the way he's supposed to. However, mine is just an outside opinion. Could his wife feel that he loves her and their children the way he's supposed to? IDK. See, I can't read her mind. She might or she might not. In their marriage, relevant to her, it's her opinion and perspective that matters, right? Could her husband, the philanderer, feel he doesn't love his wife and family the way he's supposed to? Definitely possible, but again we have no way to verify that.

 

To me, this aspect is totally separate from the general morality debate regarding infidelity or infidelity with deception (cheating). It goes to state of mind.

 

I could apply this criteria to almost any form of deception in a purportedly loving and trusting relationship. Would the form matter, or not? Is it really state of mind that matters? Is it the color of infidelity which imbues the whole dynamic with decidedly red and angry tone? What is it?

The angry tone is IMO derived from the feelings from being betrayed as well as the fact that many people just don't seem to get why betrayal is something to get angry about in the first place.

 

The feeling of being immediatly removed from the world and the life you thought you had, being robbed from the right to chose who to share your life with, having trust and belief in other people totally shattered.

 

And of course you wouldn't know unless you've experienced it, unless you possess empathy to a certain degree.

 

But to address this in the light of the OP - I know now that I have been naive, because the problem is the phrase "supposed to". Nobody is supposed to do anything at all, or some might say that it's a matter of opinion what one is supposed to do, and opinions differ.

 

So, of course I shouldn't have supposed that my wife loved me the same way that I loved her, with respect, passion and compassion. She wasn't supposed to do that - it was me projecting my idea of love on her. Big mistake.

 

The question remains then, how am I supposed to love my wife now that everything is out in the open? That's the really hard part.

[autumnnight]

Carhill, it would be interesting if, instead of the philandering black book, you had told of the man who had a black book of horse numbers and casinos. He shifted the finances around to hide it from his wife, but all the while he is lying about their financial state, getting them deeper and deeper in debt, while playing the loving provider at home.

 

I have zero doubt that the redness of tone would be a faint pink. Which begs a whole lot of questions. If the man who is betraying his wife by risking and losing all of their life savings and livelihood more or less of a cad than the man who betrays his wife by philandering? They are both lies and deception that could irreparably impact an entire family. Does one mean love is impossible while love could be possible with the other?

[carhill]

I didn't want to get into scenarios but I went through one with a friend whose wife surreptitiously gambled away over six figures without him knowing about it, until one win getting a big 1099 got him an IRS audit and then the poop hit the fan. Now, for him, it's annoying. For me, that's a house. Was the wife loving her spouse as she should when she was gambling away their hard-earned money deceptively? Until the poop hit the fan, he thought she was. Did she? I can't read her mind.

 

Oversimplified for brevity but the thrust of my prior focus on state of mind. Again, to an outside observer having all the information, things might look one way. Inside the relationship, it could be quite another. An outsider would be placing a value label upon the participants that may or may not reflect their authentic, to them, feelings and perspectives.

[William]

As it appears the thread starter has moved on and hasn't posted here in nearly a week and the thread has drifted to a more general discussion from the specifics which began it, I'll move it to GRD and leave it open to posting on the more general subject of cheating meaning one doesn't love their partner the way they're supposed to.