Is Cheating Worse When You’re Married?

katnohat
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 10:56 am: [report]

Amen, sister.

Perceptible
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 10:57 am: [report]

It’s just as “serious.” Committed is committed, whether there are rings and a license or not.

Whoopi’s View comments of late are concerning me. First Polansky shouldn’t have to pay for his decades-old rape (not rape rape), and now cheating after 20 years but not “married” isn’t as serious? So Whoopi, if a gay couple were committed, but lived in a place where they could not legally marry, and one cheated, would that not be as serious as if they lived in a state where they could legally marry? I’m just sayin’...

powplz
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 10:58 am: [report]

word

Amelia McDonell-Parry
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 10:59 am: [report]

@Perceptible Very well-said in regards to gay relatioships. Whoopi is a celeb bad deed apologist.

C.Munro
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:00 am: [report]

I don’t think one should need a piece of paper to remain committed.  Then again, I also think that most of the people who would cheat wouldn’t let that piece of paper stop them anyway.  For me, cheating is an instant relationship ender, the unforgivable transgression, regardless of what the official status of that relationship may be.

_jsw_
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:04 am: [report]

Agreed. Cheating is as bad in terms of the pain inflicted regardless of marital status - it’s just not as punishable legally.

In my opinion, the “wrongness” of a given act, such as cheating, depends on the agreed-to expectations of the people involved. If two people are dating casually and one of them sleeps around and the other feels hurt, it’s unfortunate but not truly wrong. If two people are in an open marriage and one of them sleeps around, it’s technically wrong but not hurtful to either party. But if two people are aware that each agrees to be committed to the other - by word regardless of marital status - then cheating violates that agreement, regardless of how long they’ve been together or what their legal status is, and it’s wrong.

amandabear
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:05 am: [report]

Totally agreed. I don’t particularly want to get married, but I do want to be in a committed relationship, and I don’t think for a second that a ring or a marriage license should be a prerequisite for that. Once you decide to be monogamous, cheating is cheating.

SCRMOM
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:08 am: [report]

When looking at cheating from the outside, I find it much worse that a person cheated on their spouse (as opposed to a bf or gf), and even worse if a person cheated on their spouse when they have kids.  I feel like there was more invested and promised in the relationship in these situations.  However, I’m sure the pain felt by being cheated on in a non-marriage relationship is just as painful as in a marriage.

H. Blue
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:14 am: [report]

I’m up in the air about marriage, having been divorced once already.  I totally agree with you, Amelia.  And as Perceptible said, Whoopi’s made some really awful comments lately.  I used to think she was cool.

qnzmami718
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:15 am: [report]

wut is with whoopi?

JenniferRly
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:30 am: [report]

@SCRMOM - I kind of agree, esp. when there are kids involved.  I just found out a girl I thought I knew cheated on her husband at least 8 times in the past year, all with their 18 month old daughter in the room… Kind of ups the ante, no?

C.Munro
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:43 am: [report]

Yeah, kids definitely complicate things.  I mean, being single, if a girlfriend cheats on me I can end the relationship and never have to see or talk to her again.  If I were married without kids, I could do the same thing but it would be expensive and it would take at least a year to do it.  But with kids in the picture, it’s not even an option. 

So, OK, I can see reasons why people say it’s worse when more responsibility is mixed in with the relationship.  But it’s awful to begin with.

retro chic
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 11:52 am: [report]

Exactly Amelia. Agreements and commitments are Contracts. If the couple sets the Terms of those Contracts to include Cheating as a violation of those Terms, then their Contract is just as breeched. How does the State’s legal status change the definition of the same Cheating act? (don’t say lawyers) A marriage just happens to carry the added unfortunate legal/financial/societal implications.

shaking my head at whoopi: strike one, two, three… how many are we up to now?

Jitterbugs232
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 12:10 pm: [report]

Cheating is cheating no matter what your relationship status is

pragmatryst
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 12:10 pm: [report]

“Is Cheating Worse When You’re Married?”

Worse in the sense that it’s harder to sever ties with the lying bastard/miserable trollop when your lives are legally entwined, but from a moral or ethical standpoint there is no difference.  Whether you make a commitment to someone with a wedding band in front of 200 people or one-on-one over coffee and the Sunday Times, betraying that person’s trust and going back on your word is a vicious cut to the very core of a relationship and it’s just as destructive.  Adding kids into the mix doesn’t change the despicable nature of your actions, it just means you’re also responsible for the collateral damage to innocent victims in addition to your partner.  Good luck dealing with that Karmic debt.

AlisonNoelle
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 12:21 pm: [report]

As someone who was never (to my knowledge) cheated on before I got married but have been cheated on since I’ve been married I just can’t say. I’m kinda with SCRMOM on this one. You made vows when you got married, yes if your in a comitted relationship, you would hope that the other person would still stay loyal and faithful but when you are married you PROMISE to do so. In any case its sooo hurtful and I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. (Except the wh*re that my husband cheated on me with.)

Tart and Soul
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 01:44 pm: [report]

Sometimes, I think we value the form of things rather than the essence, for example, we decide marriage is more precious than the love that made it happen. Is a marriage really valuable if there’s no love in it? Is love worthless if there’s no marriage certificate attached? 

Most important in our relationships is how we treat each other, how we make every effort to preserve the love between us.

If you tell your partner you love her, are committed to her emotionally and won’t sleep with anyone else, then you’re trashing the love you share if you do otherwise. I’m sure Letterman’s wife wouldn’t be having any less trouble dealing with this BS if they’d never gotten married. That’s what matters.

Perceptible
wrote on October 7 2009 @ 01:48 pm: [report]

Oh, well said Tart!

Derrick Watkins
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 08:37 am: [report]

When a partner cheats, is normally because he or she feels their needs are not being met. David Letterman is a famous and powerful man who is just taking advantage of his fame. This is nothing new in our society. It does make his actions right but his wife knows who she married and probably knew what he was doing! Most women know when their husbands are cheating. And sometimes, women wait until others find out to do something about it.

Derrick Watkins
Author: Why Good Girls Date Bad Boys

bumbler
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 08:58 am: [report]

Cheating while married or married with children is probably more complicated.  It is much more of an ordeal to get a divorce than to break up and even more so to deal with custody arrangements. But that doesn’t diminish the emotional turmoil that everyone who believes they are in a committed relationship and loves their partner goes through when they are cheated on.  I would wager the emotional devastation is the same only the financial and legal aspects become more complicated when marriage is involved.

majicksand
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 07:31 pm: [report]

I find it amazing that all of the replies to this article say cheating is cheating, married or not considering that many of the responses to the article a few weeks ago (I can’t remember the title) said hitting on a guy with only a GF was fine.  Help me out here, it was something like, “If he’s says he’s taken, believe him”.

I’m not saying the posters are the same, only that I think sometimes comments vary according to the angle of the article that spawns them.

That said, cheating is cheating.  For the record, I said the same thing in my comments on the other article.

draymond
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 11:47 pm: [report]

The thing about marriage is that it is absolutely unambiguous to both the parties and the cheated with third party too.  People scoff at rings or peices of paper but what it really boils down to is having an easier exit route without dealing with property or support on top of the hurt feelings.  And when you have made a choice which in practical terms means that you have an easier exit route that implies an ambiguity. 

Besides how many couples where one believes that they are in a completely committed state have really been sure that the other person has a comparable attituce?  Mostly they assume, and assumptions are ambiguous.

Then there is the ambiguity of the outside party in the affair.  “I have a girlfriend” is not the same clarity as “I’m married”.  The married person may be just as interested in cheating as the one with the girlfriend, but there is no ambiguity to the outside party that they are REALLY cheating.

So I would say that cheating in marriage is somewhat worse because it is cheating in a situation where there is absolutely no gray area to any of the parties.

Asphyxia
wrote on October 9 2009 @ 01:04 am: [report]

Yup! Cheating is chaeating no matter what the circumstance may be.. Whether done before/after marriage, it’s still a big “CHEATING”..

BenJamn
wrote on October 9 2009 @ 11:10 am: [report]

I can not agree more Ms. McDonell-Parry. I recently wrote a letter to ask Wendy on a similar situation. Commitment is monogamous and there are so little people out there that still believe that. Perhaps it is time to lead by example. Then maybe other will follow suit. Good article.

SouthOC
wrote on October 13 2009 @ 10:03 am: [report]

Cast my vote with the “cheating is cheating” group.

Additionally, those of you who reduce being married to “having a piece of paper”  are way off.

The only people I know who live together without being married and have the same level of commitment are gay (and therefore cannot be legally married in most states).

Getting married won’t solve all of the problems in a relationship, but it gives a lot of people the guts to stick it out when they go through tough times that commonly lead to break-ups.

wonderfultonight
wrote on October 15 2009 @ 07:17 pm: [report]

To me, also, Cheating is Cheating. However, I must disagree slightly with South OC in that many umarried couples are just as committed as married ones and they are not all gay couples. Some have had children together and that to me is more evidence of a real commitment. As one poster said, the children are innocent “collateral damage” when cheating leads to a break-up whether the couple are married or not. And the heartbreak is terrible for the one cheated on -married or not.

It seems cheating has become much too acceptable. I don’t think there is that much ambiguity to an outside person if a guy says he has a girlfriend. That means the relationship is more than just dating. To me, that doesn’t give a gal the OK to hit on him just because he doesn’t have that piece of paper.

Iammina
wrote on October 15 2009 @ 10:43 pm: [report]

Yes, because that is why we got married. It is a life long commitment that I made to my husband and he made to me. It might be just a piece of paper to some people but it carries a lot of weight. I feel more secure seeing that gold wedding band on his finger and I am sure that he does too. Cheating is a deal breaker and if he cheats on you before you get married he most likely will after you are married. I don’t think that my husband cheated on me before we got married but I am almost certain he did not. He is a good looking guy and had to go away on business trips so there had to be a certain level of trust on both sides.

BlueVibe
wrote on October 16 2009 @ 10:35 am: [report]

I think it’s serious in any situation, but when you’re married, you’ve taken a deliberate and conscious step into [theoretical] permanency, and violating that seems like the ultimate . . . Doh!  With messy and expensive consequences that the not-legally-married don’t usually have to face.

I mean, if my boyfriend cheated on me, I’d dump him, but I wouldn’t have to pay a lawyer and jump through hoops to do it.  If I were married and he cheated, I’d have that much more hassle from that many more directions.  All the emotional wallop, plus a lot of expense and trouble.

m2d2
wrote on November 30 2009 @ 09:12 am: [report]

I’m a one man woman and expect that, once we become intimate, my man will be a one woman man.  Cheating in a monogamous relationship is so destructive.  It devastates you and leaves you mistrustful of future relationships.  I married a man who had cheated on me before we were married but I believed him when he gave me a bracelet at our wedding that was engraved “Forever”. He turned out to be very narcissistic and when confronted with midlife crisis and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder simultaneously, became involved with one of his nurses 20 years younger.  We had tried for 5 years to have our second child with 5 miscarriages and one stillborn twin and yet he left me and the children when the baby was only two.

Cheating is definitely more devastating when you’re married.

Black Iris
wrote on December 10 2009 @ 03:14 pm: [report]

It depends.  In general, cheating is worse when you’re married.  Most people stand up and take a vow to be faithful when they get married.  That makes it more serious.

Married people are also more likely to have children or build a life together.  They may make financial decisions together like buying a house or taking a less well-paying job to be near each other or even staying home with kids.  That makes it more serious if one of them cheats because if the relationship falls apart there are more consequences.

It’s never right to cheat on someone, but if you cheat on someone you’ve been dating a few months, you don’t destroy other people’s lives the way you do if you’ve been married for years and have kids, etc.

On the other hand, Letterman was with his girlfriend for years and had a kid with her.  So I think it was basically like being married.

katykat
wrote on January 25 2010 @ 02:58 pm: [report]

To me the difference between a monogamous, committed relationship and marriage is that in marriage you haven’t just made promises to each other, but they have been witnessed, supported and celebrated by your friends and family. 
To violate a marriage by cheating is to break a vow you made in front of everyone you hold dear, and God, depending on your beliefs.  It’s one thing to “feel married” in your daily life, and other to Be Married in the sense that your commitment has touched more than just your two lives.  For that reason, I think cheating in a marriage is worse, by degree, than cheating in a serious relationship.  Though neither is free from heartache.

PrincessThunderKitty
wrote on January 25 2010 @ 03:23 pm: [report]

I do agree along with everyone else that cheating is cheating whether you are in a committed relationship or married. Cheating is somewhat worse when you are married because of the legal issues it would take to resolve it if you choose to divorce and also because most people pledged their love, devotion, and to be faithful in front of friends and family. You announced to all you knew, your monogomous intent. That said though, marriages survive cheating far more often than couples who are in committed relationships, because there is so much more to lose when marriages disolve.

Jenn27549
wrote on January 26 2010 @ 11:40 am: [report]

Cheating is cheating if there is a mutually agreed upon, monogamous relationship.  At that point you are breaking a promise or going back on your word, which are terrible in ANY circumstance.

However, I do think it is WORSE in marriage.  Or “traditional” marriage, where there is a religious and/or spiritual component.  If you just view marriage as a contract, a government endorsement, piece of paper, or “official status,” then an agreement is an agreement whether its on paper or verbal.  But for those of us who honor the sacred aspect of marriage and for whom that was one of the most important reasons to marry, and in that context breaking a vow is worse than breaking a promise.

snarky
wrote on January 26 2010 @ 01:39 pm: [report]

I don’t think it’s so much as to someone is married or not, but I think it’s about the level of commitment.  Once you have ‘the talk’ about the level of commitment and someone cheats, it’s just wrong.  If you are just dating someone and they still see other people . . . is that cheating?  I’m sure well all know those people who have one date and they have a ‘boyfriend’!!  It’s important that both parties are on the same page!

apearson
wrote on January 26 2010 @ 02:16 pm: [report]

Cheating is cheating. I lived with a jerk for 3 years and then married him. The relationship only lasted 2 more years due to amongst other things; his cheating. I found out that he was a total Tiger Woods. He cheated from the very beginning and if I even questioned him at all then he freaked out and said I was crazy. Point is IF YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP, THEN CHEATING IS WRONG. PERIOD. A marriage license means nothing now days and just remember people, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck - HE’S CHEATING!!! AHAHAHA (but it’s true really).

singlegrl@31
wrote on January 26 2010 @ 02:20 pm: [report]

i hate this subject because i have struggled with cheating. Keep in mind i am not married, but i think that when i meet the person that i would be willing to marry, in turn i would be unwilling to cheat! the types of guys i have cheated on were wrong for me and i knew it, therefore i did not feel guilty about cheating. even worse still is the fact that the people with whom i probably cheated were also cheating so go figure…

J-Angel
wrote on January 26 2010 @ 04:28 pm: [report]

I agree with SCRMOM.  Cheating is bad regardless, but is worse when married and the worst when there are kids involved.  If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, there is a commitment to be monogamous and so cheating is wrong.  If you get married, you have taken a commitment between the 2 of you and chosen to take it to the next level, making a vow before God and your loved ones.  So cheating is worse because you are now breaking a bigger promise.  If you don’t believe in God, then you will probably disagree… Oh well, that’s your choice!

Mr.Downtown
wrote on January 27 2010 @ 07:03 pm: [report]

Hooey—Cheating is cheating, but that’s not even the issue here.  But does a man have to be unhappy to cheat?  No.  Men can just want variety.  If a man loves his wife, is attracted to her, but knows himself enough to understand that sexual monogamy is not a requirement of commitment, then it comes down to trust.  Does his wife trust him enough to know that he’s going to return home to her after he has his fun?  Does he trust that his wife supports him to do this?  Whether it’s completely an open marriage or a don’t ask don’t tell set up, it’s all about trust.

ch
wrote on February 1 2010 @ 12:14 pm: [report]

I agree that cheating is cheating no matter what your matrimonial status, but being cheated on hurts more if you are married than not (not that it won’t hurt either way).  It is unexplainable but true.  I’ve been cheated on both by an ex husband and an ex boyfriend (yep apparently I sure can pick em), both were long term fully commited relationships and by far it hurt worse to be cheated on by a spouse.

alohajoe
wrote on February 1 2010 @ 07:09 pm: [report]

oh, the ugly, uptight Americans; mostly women and pussy whipped men. in france, not only does a politician have a mistress, but she has a child and is invited (and looked upon favorably) by the general public.
its always been a joke, but what is it the lat year that “cheating” has been acceded the same level of criminal level behavior as say, rape, murder and child molesting.
this is the sad, pathetic, desperate cry of women who’ve been raised so utterly incorrectly that its they who are in control of every facet of any relationship, marriage contract or not (and yes married screwing around is far, far worse esp. if children are involved) because after all, you’ve laughably bought into that crap about how you can.
and the wimp/boy involved involved is supposed to sit down, shut up, do what he’s told, worship your every emotional regurgitation and ass-scratch, listen to you blab endlessly about nothing (and care about it) and look good even as you add a dress size every year like a tree ring.
sorry, thats the only ring (or committment) you’re getting from any guy who’s sharp enough to have options of lower maintenance, less needy and whiny women.
men or women who are that needy/whiny/self important dont realize what an unneeded emotional boat anchor they really are.

AnitaBath
wrote on February 1 2010 @ 07:28 pm: [report]

@alohajoe: I have no idea what you’re saying. Are you trying to say that we Americans are uptight because we are against the thought of mistresses and/or that the people who have mistress are stupid?

C.Munro
wrote on February 1 2010 @ 07:50 pm: [report]

@AnitaBeer:  Perhaps his first language is French.  :shrug: 

Either way, I found it an ugly post. 

Apparently only women are supposed to be faithful, but y’all aren’t supposed to expect that from men, because, y’know, we’re made to bang everything we see with a skirt and asking anything else of us would suppress our very essence.  And besides, all women do is age and put on weight.  How are we supposed to remain attracted to that, right? 

What a load of horsesh*t.  Such sexism would be offensive if it weren’t so absurd.  I find it backwards to call a guy “pussy whipped” because he can keep it in his pants. 

Let me make this absolutely clear:  The wimp is the guy who takes orders from his dick.

Lexington
wrote on February 1 2010 @ 08:30 pm: [report]

@C.Munro- seconded! Well put.

Jacqueline Rose
wrote on February 2 2010 @ 03:46 am: [report]

@ C. Munro:

I rather enjoy your witty comments

apearson
wrote on February 2 2010 @ 11:50 am: [report]

I think I’m in love with you CMunro! HAHAHA!

jodibell
wrote on February 3 2010 @ 02:43 am: [report]

I don’t see how anyone who has never been married can even comment on this subject. It is worse, believe me, I know. When you are in a relationship, you commit to each other, that’s true. But when you get married, you also make that commitment to God and to your family and friends. I am not so elloquent that I can put that in words, but I have been thru both situations and it is definitely much more painful and devastating.