A cheating Guatemalan woman faked her own kidnapping in Barcelona, so she could keep cheating with her Spanish lover. Ay carumba! Mark Sanford, are you taking notes? A woman in Spain texted her hubby in Guatemala that she’d been kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held against her will with other kidnappees. In truth, the two-timer was boning a guy she met online. Her worried hubby alerted the Embassy of Spain in Guatemala, who called cops in Spain. Police found her in Barcelona, where she claimed she’d escaped her captors. However, when a medical examination found she had no injuries befitting a rape or kidnapping, the woman admitted the whole charade. And she did it all for a little nookie on the side. [Barcelona Reporter, Euro Weekly]

You don’t have to be Jennifer Aniston to think the four women who Krazy-Glued a cheater’s penis to his stomach were way harsh and beyond psycho.

But in our less scrupulous/mature moments, many of us want to punish our ex, especially if he was a cheater. Ladies, let’s keep it legal (and Krazy Glue-free), OK? Refer to our list after the jump for some ideas:

Usually when a man finds himself tied to a bed, he’s having a freaky good time. But for one husband, who was cheating on his wife with two women, what sounded like sexy time with one of his lovers was really a revenge plot. When she found out her man was sleeping around, instead of going after her husband’s two lovers, the wife contacted them and they banded together in the name of scorned women everywhere. The girls got scheming, and a few days later put their very “9 to 5” plan into action. The husband thought he was meeting lover Therese Ziemann for a tryst at a Wisconsin motel. He allowed her to tie him to the bed with the sheets and to blindfold him for a “massage.” Ziemann quickly texted the man’s wife, his second lover and, just for kicks, her own sister, who was secretly waiting outside. The women burst into the room and began taunting the bound man. But they really “stuck it to him” when Ziemann super-glued his penis to his stomach. The man eventually got loose by chewing off his sheet cuffs and calling the police. Now, the women face charges of assault and false imprisonment for their creative revenge tactic. Too bad that the whole cheating-on-your-wife-with-multiple-women part isn’t punishable by law. [MSNBC] 

“Be careful who you cheat on” isn’t a famous, old adage, but it should be, because some scorned women go freaking crazy trying to get revenge on unfaithful spouses. Just last night, a 67-year-old woman in Queens, NY, woke up at 6 a.m., boiled a pot of water, and poured it on her husband’s private parts, leaving him with second- and third-degree burns from his knees to his abdomen. Oyinda Ojofeitimi told police she had recently learned her husband of 20 years had been unfaithful. “She was hurt and angry that after all this time married, he was stepping out on her,” a police source told the New York Daily News. “She wanted to shut down that possibility forever because he had treated her with such contempt.” Ojofeitimi then regretted what she had done and called 911, but that’s not really enough, is it? She has been arrested on assault charges. This isn’t the first time (and it certainly won’t be the last) that a woman has retaliated against her cheating husband. After the jump, a hall of fame for scorned women.

• Bar Rafaeli will take over Gisele Bundchen’s spot as the new face of Rampage. [Just Jared] – The Israeli beauty may no longer have a sexy boyfriend, but she’s got a very hot new business deal.
• This amazing graphic of “Things To Say During Sex” just took a big ol’ weight off our shoulders. [Incredimazing]
• In a blog for the Huffington Post, Jamie Lee Curtis admitted she was once addicted to painkillers, and empathizes with Michael Jackson and his addiction to drugs [People]—Sadly, Jackson never got over his drug abuse, as Curtis did.

A columnist for the Examiner examined this week the meaning of infidelity. “The definition of infidelity in the dictionary,” she writes “is: ‘marital unfaithfulness or an instant of it.’”  While I think most of us would agree that a couple needn’t be married to be unfaithful, how exactly do we define unfaithfulness? Is it, as the columnist suggests, “a broken promise”? “If you promise to someone that you will not sleep with someone else and then do so anyway,” she writes, “I believe that constitutes as infidelity.” But what if the promise is never articulated? What if it’s just assumed? And is it only sleeping with someone else that constitutes infidelity? What about kissing? Or cyber-flirting? Or having an “emotional affair” that’s never physically consummated? How do you define cheating? And, most importantly, does your significant other share your definition? [via Examiner]

I don’t believe that once a cheater, always a cheater. That specific aphorism is a bitter, moralizing form of self-deception. We all are cheaters; none of us is invulnerable to temptation. What defines a person is not whether they are faithless. It is a simple, easy thing to impulsively take that which you want. No, what defines a person is whether they chose to stay faithful. That is difficult, and that active decision, that vigilance, is the steep price love demands.

Along with the rest of America, I’m rubbernecking at South Carolinian Gov. Mark Sanford’s affair with an Argentinian lass, Maria Belen Chapur (and I’m quietly cheering for Sanford’s wife, Jenny, for leaving him).

Cheating doesn’t speak well for a conservative Republican politician who preached “family values.” Sanford’s hypocrisy alone is gross.  But married politicians dropping their drawers for women who aren’t their wives isn’t as interesting to me as the fact that Gov. Sanford told everyone he would be hiking on the Appalachian Trail when he was actually south of the border with his mistress.

Sen. Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, admitted at a press conference this afternoon that he has been having an extramarital affair with a “dear, dear friend” in Argentina for the past year. Incidentally, he and his wife were on a trial separation.

Cuckolded wives and politicians go together like gravy and mashed potatoes. Maybe the wives aren’t surprised—Sanford’s wife apparently knew about his Argentinian affair for months—by the cheating the same way as the public is. But what gets me every time is when Silda Spitzer stands up next Eliot while he grovels for the public’s forgiveness, or Elizabeth Edwards invites Oprah into her home to talk about John’s affair, or Larry Craig’s wife, Suzanne, walks hand-in-hand to his press conference where he denies being gay. I just roll my eyes.

You would think that with all the different advancements in communication having an affair would be easier. Not so, according to a survey by Telstra Corp, a dominant phone company in Australia. The survey found that 25 percent of Australian cell phone users found out their partner or someone else’s was being unfaithful through text messages.

There’s this scene in “He’s Just Not That Into You”—the point to which most Tough Love posts will eventually return—when Justin Long tells Ginnifer Goodwin that she’s special, she’s an exception to the rule. It’s all very sweet and there’s crying and hugging and a bit of kissing and that all distracts you for a moment from the fact that it’s utter bulls**t.

You see, you are not special and rule-defying, unique in your ability to change someone chronically terrible into a nice, devoted guy. This is not to say that you aren’t special in other ways, merely that the expectation that you’d be able to subvert ages-old male behavioral patterns is quite a lot to ask of yourself. When you read it, this should seem fairly obvious. And yet I continue to field weepy calls and enraged emails from a whole slew of women absolutely shocked that their personal awesomeness wasn’t enough to change a guy completely.

Most mystifying of all are the girls who poach their boyfriends from other women and are then shocked when said guy goes on to cheat on them with someone else. Did you really not see this coming?

My first semi-legit boyfriend was a year older than me and leaving for college while I was still a lowly high school senior. It was essentially over when he boarded the plane to Connecticut, but the first few school breaks bore strikingly few signs that anything had changed. Where I expected stilted awkwardness there was a normalcy that almost made me forget that I’d been kissing other boys and he’d probably been screwing everything that walked slow enough to be caught. We’d unwittingly invoked the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy, beloved by oft-separated couples everywhere: do what you like while apart and then act as though nothing happened when together.

Eventually, of course, we broke up because we were too far apart, I had grown taller than him and and we’d both moved on. But for a few months, Don’t Ask, Don’t tell was surprisingly useful and believable. Peripherally, we both knew that everything was different and a bit sloppier, but it didn’t so much matter as long as we neglected to say anything about it. I called it selective memory, my friends called it “deluded” and opinion on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell remains sharply divided. It worked out for me but it’s been suggested that’s only the case because I have “the emotional range of a snail.” (Thanks Mom.)

In an effort to put together slightly more empirical data on the merits and pit falls of extracurricular action while the boyfriend’s away, I’ve hit up some people who’ve had their way with others and then gone about their girlfriend/boyfriend business to see how it worked for them. Check out their answers after the jump and let us know if it’s worked—or failed miserably—for you in the comments.

Most of us have some version of ourselves on a social networking site. We seem to lead a real life, in which we interact with significant others and coworkers in person, and an online life, in which we have the possibility of catching up with our best friend from sixth grade or rekindling a first love. At some point, our real life melds with our online life, especially in regards to affairs of the heart. 

According to a new study cited in The New York Times, infidelity is on the rise. The study also concluded that young women are closing the gap on what has largely been thought of as bad behavior for men—apparently, nearly as many women are cheating on their partners and spouses. This did not surprise me in the slightest—a large number of women I know in my age group have cheated on boyfriends. So why do women cheat? What are the circumstances that led to their infidelity? And how did they feel about it in the aftermath? After the jump, 13 anonymous confessions from women who have cheated.

Much has been written in the media this week about men cheating on their wives. We have the tale of two Jo(h)ns: John Edwards, whose scorned wife, Elizabeth Edwards, appeared on “Oprah” yesterday to promote her new book, Resilence, in which she addresses her husband’s much publicized affair, and Jon Gosselin, costar of the hit TLC reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” whose rumored affair has become tabloid fodder. The former is a tale as old as journalism itself: a man in power cheats on a wife who, from the outside, seemed a supporting and loving spouse undeserving of her husband’s unfaithfulness. The latter is another familiar tale: a man under an enormous amount of pressure is regularly and publicly emasculated and treated like dirt by his wife and seemingly seeks solace with another woman. In both cases, the men are vilified—but is it possible that maybe, just maybe, at least one of the women had it coming?

By the time you hit your Saturn Return, the probability that you’ve been on the giving or receiving end of a romantic infidelity is about as high as your credit card debt. But what happens when you’re privy to the less than virtuous activities of a friend or acquaintance’s significant other? The moral conundrum of whether or not to out a cheater is fraught with shoot-the-messenger peril and weighted with Golden Rule considerations. And the potential outcome of ratting out a rat is just as complex and diverse. Should you risk life and limb to unveil the truth or keep your nose out of someone else’s business? Two ladies argue the costs. 

The next time you get caught cheating, just blame nature and your physiology. Women who have a high level of the sex hormone oestradoil may be more likely to cheat, according to a recent study of 52 women aged 17 to 30. Women with high levels of oestradoil are highly fertile and feel more attractive, which makes them more likely to flirt, kiss, or have a serious affair. Highly fertile women apparently tire easily of long-term partners and are motivated to find more desirable partners. This excuse, however, won’t work if you’re just having casual sex on the side because women with high levels of oestradoil are usually serial monogamists. But then again, I doubt your man will be able to tell whether you have a lot of oestradoil. Can they make a T-shirt for that? [Science Daily via AOL]

A 40-year-old Japanese man named Tatsuhiko Kawata has been sentenced to five years in jail for having cold feet and a cold, cold heart. Kawata, who had been married since 1994, started cheating on his wife three years ago with another woman whom he agreed to marry last October at the Risonare hotel. Still married to the first wife, Kawata tried to delay the wedding on the eve of the ceremony by dumping petrol in the hotel and setting it on fire!  Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the woman Kawata was set to merry dodged a bullet, too. The presiding judge who sentenced Kawata called him “egoistic and short-sighted.” Guess we need to add a #10 to our Signs He’s A Cheater post: He carries a can petrol around with him and sets a hotel on fire. [via Telegraph U.K.]

I thought I had heard every excuse for cheating—it’s payback, my needs aren’t being met, I was drunk, etc.—but this excuse takes the cake. A woman revealed to an acquaintance that she is cheating for her kids. Yep, you read that right. She’s not planning on staying in her marriage, so she’s trying to find a daddy replacement for her children before kicking their jerky father to curb.

When my friend Stephanie was out to dinner the other night, she saw a young, twentysomething couple having dinner together at a table near hers. When the woman got up to go to the restroom, the woman’s boyfriend/husband, grabbed her phone and began searching through it, in an obviously suspicious way. Stephanie said she felt super guilty for not having said anything to the woman when she returned; that not letting her know that her man was spying on her and checking her call logs was a violation of girl code. I disagree. While I think women should look out for each other—hell, I think people should look out for each other—sometimes I think girl code treads too much into “none of your business” territory.