I’ve noticed this trend in some of these blurbs but also on other websites for those seeking advice.
Many times somebody will ask a question about cheating and wanting to come clean. Invariably, somebody will say that it will only ease their own mind and make things worse. It’s not everybody, but always at least one.
My question is whassupwitdat? Some people believe in honesty about the situation and I understand that because I identify with that. I’m trying to understand the other side.
Thoughts?
LemonVibe 
[The other side is that it was YOUR mistake, and you should live with it. Confessing is ultimately a selfish act because it makes YOU feel better and your partner feel worse.
I honest to god don’t know which side I believe in. I feel like I would want to know if my boyfriend was cheating so that I could make the decision whether or not to stay, but at the same time, if it was one time, if it was a huge mistake, if he felt like total crap over it, and never did it again… I can see how keeping it a secret would be a valid option.
Everyone has secrets in a relationship, I guess it depends on the individual situation.
[So this is a great question. Do you believe that ommiting is lying, because in the case of cheating I do! Sure, if my husband said he was cheating on me, I would be broken-hearted. If he never said anything, I wouldn’t know and thus, NOT be broken-hearted. But in a commited relationship, if you cheat the other person has a right to know. Ultimately, cheating hurts both people, but regardless, it should be out in the open.
[There will ALWAYS be things you don’t know about your significant other, ALWAYS. As I’ve said elsewhere, that’s part of what trusting them is all about! You’re not trusting them to always be honest with you, or to tell you every detail of their life, you’re trusting them to always have your best interests at heart.
Now cheating is where that becomes such a gray area. Not the cheating itself, that’s pretty black and white, but the aftermath. Some statistics say that upwards of 80% (80%!) of people will cheat at some point in their life. Why? Because life is weird like that. Situations come up that you could’ve never accounted for and you wind up just as surprised as everyone else around you.
A quick side note: I am NOT condoning cheating or giving those that do a “free pass.” The ONLY time I’d consider not telling as a viable option is in the case of a spontaneous one time accident. If you’ve plotted out how to go behind your SO’s back or it’s a continuous thing, you don’t have your partner’s best interests in mind. You’re being selfish.
As others have said, sometimes telling will only bring pain. Pain to someone that you never wanted to hurt in the first place. Are you really going to cause them even more pain to relieve you of your own shame?
Every relationship has it’s secrets. Some of them you share (like where you both buried the neighbor’s annoying dog), but some of them are your own demons you have to fight yourself.
[If you have cheated and you know it was a one time mistake that came from stress in your life/meant nothing/will only hurt your SO… I understand not telling them. If you know that you were wrong and are positive you’ll never do anything again, telling your SO will only end the relationship that you just realized you DO want to keep.
However. If you’ve cheated a few times, or even once but didn’t really feel bad, maybe tried to justify it to yourself somehow… You need to end the relationship you’re in. Clearly you aren’t in love with the person, and if you can cheat so easily you’ll continue to do so. You don’t need to say “hey I’ve been cheating on you” but just end the relationship. Tell your SO it’s not what you wanted and you need to go find something else.
The third scenario hits close to home with me. I sort of accidentally cheated… My BF’s friend was hitting on me and coming on to me and stuff, when we would hug goodbye after hanging out, he’d let his hands wander onto my butt or something. Totally inappropriate behavior. I thought that I could just ignore it, and he’d stop. I did not tell my BF. Well eventually this friend pulled me aside and kissed me (I pulled away, but the kiss still happened). Again, I didn’t tell my BF. I didn’t want to cause a fight between him and this friend, and I didn’t want him to be mad at me since I hadn’t done anything wrong. My boyfriend recently found about about all of this, and was angry with me because I had kept it from him. He doesn’t know if he can trust me, he doesn’t understand why I didn’t tell him, etc. I realize now that I should have told him from the beginning, but I was too scared of his reaction that I kept it from him and made it so much worse.
Anyway, the point of all this is that telling/not telling really depends on you, your relationship, and how you feel about what you’ve done.
[Note to everyone that when it comes to lying and cheating, the truth always surfaces. (Key word: ALWAYS). So, the real choice in the matter is, would you rather be the cheating partner who loves your spouse enough to be honest with them and throw yourself at their mercy, OR, the cheating partner who gets busted for cheating and lying about it for years. Granted, your relationship may be DOA either way, so it’s simply a matter of your character and how you want to be remembered. I have seen people attempt to take these secrets to the grave with them, but they always surface. (Face it, once you’re dead, everyone talks about you freely without fear of retribution.) Imagine how painful it must be as a grieving widow to learn these things only after it is too late to discuss.
In my case, I am committed to always being honest with my wife… and everyone for that matter. That alone keeps me from ever being in a compromising position!
[I’m biased based on what I’ve been through in my life and can obviously only respond from my point of view with my values.
Assuming that you’re in a relationship in which fidelity to each other is an important factor (though I suppose the question itself implies that it is, why else would you need to hide it?) I reckon it’s something you should own up to doing. Why? Well, firstly it’s not solely up to you to decide whether what you did is a big deal or not, it’s something your loved one needs to weigh in on as well. And the notion that you’d keep it to yourself to stop them from feeling any pain rings a little hollow anyway. It’s more likely that you’d keep it to yourself because you know either a) you can get away with it that way b) you don’t want to face the consequences of your actions. It’s like deciding that hey, they won’t understand that it meant nothing so I won’t tell them. Which sounds somewhat wrong. And I agree with resullins above, there’s no guarantee that you’ll necessarily be caught.
The idea that if you don’t tell them = they’ll be saved from pain while you have to live with the guilt rings false to me as well. Yes, you’ll feel guilt, maybe even considerable guilt initially…but remember, there were no serious consequences to the fact that you were unfaithful therefore other than the occasional pang of sadness now and then it’s unlikely that you’ll live in shameful remorse forever. Which means that you will have essentially forgiven yourself for it in some fashion, with no input from the other person it most certainly affects the most. However, if you do own up to it, and you see the pain your actions have caused..that’s when you’ll truly feel guilty. Even if you did live in shameful remorse forever by hiding it, what kind of life is that? And wouldn’t your partner notice? What do you say when they ask?
Back to my original point, it’s not something that you on your own can decide to be OK with. If your loved one is with you because they trusted that you would not ever do that to them, hiding that you did seems fundamentally dishonest, at least to me. It was a promise you both made, and they deserve to know that it’s now been broken…that you were capable to allowing it to be become so. Harkening back to the murder example used earlier, let me change it up just a bit. If you were with someone and you both deeply believed that the other would not murder someone and that was an important part of why you were with them/attracted to each other. One night you unfortunately murder someone (whoops). Now you are in fact a murderer. You can hide it, they’ll never know, but you have changed…you are what you promised you weren’t. Or maybe you can try to try to explain the context, that you think it was much closer to self defense, although admittedly you provoked them in the first place and you probably shouldn’t have been where you were (murders tend not to happen at complete random). You can argue semantics. Maybe they’ll understand, maybe they won’t…but you’ll have moved forward together or moved apart honestly. Look at it as a chance to explain and instead of deciding that they wouldn’t understand give them the opportunity to, maybe they have more faith in you than you do in yourself. Unless of course deep down you know they really shouldn’t…
I’m aware it’s not perfectly analogous, but it’s a shot. Anywayz, just my random thoughts.
[I go back and forth on this issue, and I’m not sure which one I believe. I see both sides, and they both have some convincing arguments.
If he cheated on me and he knew it was a huge mistake and it was purely physical and he knew he would never do it again, I’m not sure that I’d want to know. It seems weird to say that, if my boyfriend cheated on me, I’d trust him enough to evaluate the situation and see what the best course was.
[Also the question wasn’t, “how do you see cheating?” It was. “what is the thought process of someone who doesn’t believe in confessing to cheating.” Saying something like. “the truth is all that matters, they have a right to know etc” is not answering the question, so i went into that sides thought process. I believe in both sides being acknowledged, even if i don’t necessarily agree.
[Every single one of your partners could be cheating on you right now. You just believe they aren’t because you trust them, or love them. As long as you don’t know they are cheating on you, you assume they are not and are therefore happy. Maybe even if they are cheating they still love you, maybe they just have random sex with random strangers, or maybe even prostitutes. There is no emotional connection, they might just like having sex with lots of people. We all have our vices, if you found out all that would happen is you’d become sad, or angry, or want to leave. If you are cheating purely for sexual reasons, you should not tell your partner, if you are cheating for emotional reasons, you should leave your partner because obviously you don’t love them. We all like to think that wed prefer to know if we were being cheated on, but the truth is, deep down, we don’t ever want to know.
[I think in the grand scheme of things, if you do end up having a long and happy relationship with a person, then you might not want to know about one night where they had made a mistake.
[It seems to me that the people that are staunchly against keeping a (one-time) fuckup a secret have probably never been in a situation where they were truly tempted. It happens, even to the best of us. For the record, I’m against cheating. However, I have known some truly good people that fell victim to a whirlwind romance – some were able to step away and some weren’t. In all of these cases, the person intensely regretted their actions and never placed themselves in a position where it might be possible to go against their own conscience again. In fact, they were just as surprised about their actions as anyone else would have been had they known. They have loving and fulfilling relationships, sometimes with children, and I just don’t see where confessing something that happened once would have any positive effect at all.
On the flip side, I’ve known habitual cheaters. To this day they have yet to be happy in a relationship.
In the absolute black and white sense of the situation, yes – keeping a secret like this from your significant other is wrong. But since when is this world so black and white?
[I have mixed feelings on this, and agree that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. I was in a really long relationship, and about 8 months in, my boyfriend confessed that he had cheated on me when we had been together about two weeks. This was before we were “in love”, before he truly felt committed to me, and a lot had changed since then. Still, it was completely emotionally devastating. That was the biggest heartbreak I have ever felt in my life, and I really wished he would have spared me by just keeping it to himself. Why did he have to tell me so much later, when it didn’t necessarily matter but was still just as heartbreaking to hear? BUT, then, three years later, he cheated on me again, and told me again. At this point, I recognized this as a pattern, and broke up with him. But if he hadn’t told me the first (or second) time, I wouldn’t have realized that he had actual problems with fidelity. I don’t hate him at all, but fidelity is important to me, and I feel that I deserve to know if I can’t always expect that with who I’m with.
[This is such a tough question, and clearly everyone has differing opinions. Personally, I do think the option exists for a “get out of jail free” card, if you will. Let’s face it – people are only human, and they make mistakes. If it is a one time deal, and completely out of character for that person, I can see why they wouldn’t want to say anything to their partner – they are probably beating themselves up pretty well on their own. And, as some have mentioned, sometimes it takes losing control or acting out of sorts to truly realize and appreciate what you DO have. Why would you then risk that for something that will never happen again?
That said, there are habitual cheaters which are in a totally different league. These people don’t deserve their partner’s trust, and typically have little to no remorse about their actions. Their partners should definitely know in these cases, but the catch-22 of this scenario is the person who is a habitual cheater doesn’t have the conscience to feel as if they need to confess.
Ergo, those cheaters which desire confession to their partners are typically those which found themselves in an unusual situation, and are unlikely to repeat their actions. In this case, I don’t see the harm in keeping it to yourself, and I completely disagree that these people will NOT live in remorse forever; this is something that person will live with for the REST OF THEIR LIVES, and will not be forgotten.
[Anybody who thinks that lying or keeping secrets from their partner is protecting them is possibly delusional.
Answering the original blurb, I suppose I could see the line of thinking if someone were cheating for a while and decided to leave the person they’re with because of it. At that point, no, they don’t need to know and it will probably hurt a lot less if you just leave without explanation.
However, all this “If it was a one-time mistake I wouldn’t want to know” stuff blows my mind! If someone honestly makes a mistake and gets way too drunk or lets someone catch them off guard or whatever, the first thing a truly honest person would do is beg their partner for forgiveness.
Two scenarios: 1.Partner A has one too many while hanging out with some friends and wakes up next to someone who is not Partner B. Partner A runs home to tell Partner B and talk it out. Partner B is pissed, sleeps at moms house for a day or two. Both partners hit the clinic just in case and a week later the whole mess is behind them.
2. Partner A has one too many while hanging out with some friends and wakes up next to someone who is not Partner B. Partner A decides it’s in everyone’s best interest if no one finds out about this and that it will never happen again. A few months later Partner B has some questions about why their routine checkup went so horribly wrong. Now, Partner A is drowning, trying to explain, but B is so pissed they refuse to hear it. Relationship ends, anti-biotics are issued. No one wins.
Granted, that’s pretty out there, but not so much so that it’s never happened. I’d rather find out first hand, personally.
[The other side is that they are protecting their own butt. Since that seems a tad bit selfish… even to them… they justify their bad behaviour and convince themselves that they are “protecting” their partner by trying to hide the truth. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone who would live a lie with their most-trusted partner wouldn’t also lie to themselves as well… it is consistent behaviour.
[Wow, what a massive thread. I’ve done my best to catch up, but sorry anyways if someone’s covered this. Human beings are stupid creatures: our ability to rationalize our way in and out of guilt and wrong doing has produced pretty much every terrible thing in history. To reason that not telling a significant other about cheating on them “because it would hurt them unnecessarily” or “only relieve my own guilt, which would just be even more selfish” is awfully convenient in that it also completely avoids any kind of conflict or responsibility for our actions. Too convenient. Like when I meet a stripper who believes she’s being a liberated woman when she gets on stage; so convenient that it coincides with exactly what men want.
When you’ve cheated, you’ve broken the implied social contract you had with the other person. So you’re basically lying if continue the relationship with the same understanding (even if “it was only a one time thing that will never happen again; how can you even know this? Was this one time planned? Yeah, didn’t think so.).
So what? People lie all the time is the counter argument. But this is just another excuse to muddy the issue. Yes, people lie all the time, but surprisingly, some lies are worse than others. Can I say this objectively (like a god or some kind of super intelligent robot)? No. But plenty of dicks play the subjectivity card to excuse their dickish behaviour. I am not their friends. Don’t go out with these people. They’ve got the ultimate excuse for anything awful they do to you.
So should you confess to the cheating? Yes you should, you rationalizing prick.
[Long thread. I’ll say this, cheating is not something you should do and its a really easy thing to avoid doing. You can either not be in a committed relationship or you learn to keep it in your pants. However in that case where you made that mistake once, you didn’t get any STD, or pregnant (if your a woman), and you don’t ever make that mistake again, than yes stuff it. Eat the guilt and avoid the heart break and pain you’re going to cause.
However if you’re an inveterate philanderer or you contracted something you can pass on to your partner, or you are carrying on another relationship you need to come clean; maybe too, avoid being in relationships that are exclusive.
Also don’t cheat. If you are in a relationship and suddenly you really really feel the need to be with someone else, maybe its time to end that first relationship. In this urban world of ours that is something people need to be better about.
[Puuuuhlease! No one tells their partner they cheated because ” they have a right to know”. Where is this righteousness before the cheating occurs? I mean, don’t they also have a right to know that you’re going to cheat? Sure, in the case of a one night hook up you don’t always want to put what you’re about to do on hold so you can have a heart to heart with your bf, gf or spouse but it’s the “right thing to do”, right?
If you’re confessing that you’re a cheater because you want them to know that you’re planning to cheat again then you can claim to be doing it for them. Otherwise, you’re just doing it in an attempt to unburden yourself.
[Really? You’re asking WRONG to understand RIGHT. Good luck with that. It doesn’t really have anything uniqely to do with cheating. Replace the word cheating with any other sin word, like “stealing” or “killing” and you will STILL have the people who will say, “Well, if you only killed 1 person during a moment of drunken weakness, and the person you killed wasn’t really anyone you cared about, there is no sense risking your relationship by going to prison…” Hence the phrase, “slippery slope”. One transgression always justifies the next.
[I’m not surprised this topic has generated such a heated discussion.
Please allow me to share my own personal experience, which some of you may already have heard. And know that it’s hard for me to relate this publicly.
I was always the girl that was completely and utterly disgusted by infidelity. I had a really good girlfriend that confessed to me one night that she had been cheating on her husband with her best friend that was living with them at the time. I was dumbfounded. I had no idea what to do with this information. My moral compass told me she was an evil person, and unworthy of my friendship. It made me sick. So I kept my mouth shut but also removed her from my life. To this day, I regret that decision. She was in a terrible place, and she was reaching out to me – her friend – who then sat in judgement and left her when she really needed some support. Little did I know at that time that her husband had been abusing her, was involved in gun trafficking and drugs, etc. Not that his behavior meant that it was OK for her to cheat, but it shed a bit more light on the situation and made me see why she may have been seeking comfort outside the confines of her marriage. And why she was scared to simply leave him.
Fast forward a number of years. I am in an extremely long term relationship with a great guy. About 5 years ago, maybe more, I can’t really remember – I met this guy and the chemistry between us was something I hadn’t experienced before. Things were a bit rocky in my relationship at the time, and this other guy was simply there and making me feel better about myself. Before I even knew what was happening, we were texting every day and sometimes meeting for lunch. His texts were explicit; mine, not so much. Yet I still allowed it to continue. One drunken night we kissed, and I felt so ashamed. I realized I was in a precarious position, and cut off contact with this guy. In fact, after that small kiss (it really was a peck), I literally ran away from him in mortification. It never went beyond that, and I realized I was dangerously close to having an all out affair with this guy. I never in a million years expected something like that to happen to me. ME – the person who deliberately cut out a friend from my life because she cheated. ME – who was always SO judgmental about infidelity and was always so confident that I’d NEVER do anything like that.
So when someone above said that sometimes things happen which are out of character, I can totally agree with that. It is not in my nature to cheat. And while I don’t consider what I did to be technically cheating, it was close enough that I’ve carried guilt about it all these years since. Do I plan to tell my guy? HELL NO. It would be the end of us. I’m not willing to take that chance, and you all can sit and judge me for that if you like. But I did learn a lesson, and the lesson was to never be so comfortable as to think yourself immune to moments of weakness. It was a scary, scary thing and I’m glad that I was strong enough to recognize where it was headed and cut it off. I intensely regret that I allowed myself to get sucked in by smooth talking and physical chemistry. But I actually did realize after that what a great guy I have… we made it through our rough spot and things are essentially wonderful. There is no way I’d risk that for an almost affair that happened years ago, and which I’m fairly certain will never surface.
So yes – those of you that are so adamant that you’d never do it or that you’d never allow yourself to be put in that position… just don’t be too sure. Because I felt like that once, and no amount of convincing otherwise would have changed my mind. It was, in fact, largely due to my mentality that “it would never happen to me” that things progressed even as far as they did – because I felt in control, at least before I realized I wasn’t. And honestly, I *am* supremely confident that I will never ever ever put myself in a situation like that again… but I have a bit more sympathy now for people and understand that sometimes you really fuck up big time – it doesn’t mean you’re a horrible person, and it doesn’t mean that you’re a total untrustworthy asshole if you don’t fess up immediately – or ever, for that matter. It doesn’t mean that you are unworthy of your partner’s love and loyalty.
I know that I made the right decision for my relationship by not saying anything. And I know that I will carry that with me forever, and it’s simply the price I’ll pay. But I ask you all to not sit in such scornful judgment, and to admit that sometimes we are not infallible. And those of you which are of the mind that this *IS* a black and white issue… well, it would be wise to recognize that there actually ARE shades of grey mixed in there sometimes.
[I don’t think most people plan to cheat on their partner and there’s certainly a case for human beings losing control and doing something stupid (like murder, which seemed to provoke an unnecessary slippery slope argument up there for reasons that aren’t clear to me). Or maybe just take bumping into someone on the street. You didn’t plan it. You couldn’t help it. You say you’re sorry anyway. Then you try not to do it again with varying levels of success. We take responsibility for our actions even if they weren’t intentional is what I’m saying. And if we’re on the other end (the one who’s bumped into, cheated on), we do our best to not be too judgmental and try to forgive. Why? Because it’s what we should want people to do for us when we fuck up. And we will fuck up.
Of course, that doesn’t mean taking all the crap people dish out to us either . If someone’s consistently dickish or you feel you can’t trust them again after a cheating incident or, worse, they’re abusive, you try not to be too judgmental and forgive from a distance. And hope that other person gets some help.
[I just came across this site and this blurb– I’m fascinated by this question, as I’ve been charged with keeping secrets by my male friends– I think they’ve felt like if they confess it to some girl, then it may alleviate some of that ‘about-to-burst’ feeling without coming fully clean with the wifey.
Recently I came across another site called JustDecide that basically crowdsources advice for a dilemma you enter. I had heard that someone I used to know was considering having a vasectomy behind his wife’s back– she wants kids and he doesn’t. So I posed the question ‘what do I do with this information’. (instead of typing it all out, here’s the link: https://www.justdecide.com/decisions/i-heard-a-rumor-that-someone-i-know-is-talkingjoking-about-having-a-vasectomy-behind-81637b )
I decided to keep my lip zipped, but it is really under my skin. Not that he confessed to me, but I feel terrible knowing something about her relationship that she doesn’t. Anyone have any thoughts?