Originally Posted by Synnen
Amazing how you try to be non-judgemental, yet judge the first person that tries to give you the other side's point of view.
I, too, cheated on my husband once. It was the only time in my LIFE I ever cheated. You know why I did it? I did it because for all my husband cared, I wasn't there. I cooked, cleaned, held down a job, paid my share of the bills, dressed sexily for bed, I did everything I was supposed to do to get even SOME of his attention. It didn't work.
So when someone started paying attention to me, complimenting me on the food I cooked, or the way I looked, or NOTICED that I'd cut 2 feet of hair off...it was heady. It was like nothing I'd ever known. Did I know it was wrong? Sure, I did. Did I care at that point? Nope. I felt so degraded, so used, so taken for granted, so lost, and so alone, that I couldn't give a flying duck what my husband thought at that point. Did I still love him? Absolutely. I would have done anything to make him happy, but the point was that he was barely acknowledging my existance.
Me having an affair was the wakeup call we BOTH needed. Me, to realize how I *should* be treated, and him to realize that he wasn't the only person in the world who wanted me.
Did we work together on our relationship from there? Yup. And it's stronger than ever. Did it take a long time for us both to be able to trust? Absolutely.
But...don't go judging the "other woman" or the "cheater" until you have walked in their shoes. Your moral judgements are NOTHING compared to the self-recriminations I went through.
Maybe, just maybe, the person that cheated on you was going through the same sorts of emotions I was. Were you ignoring them? Forgetting about sex? Never going out together anymore? Too tired for anything? Maybe your anger is part guilt for knowing that something you could have done might have prevented the cheating?
I hate to preach about something that actually is wrong. People shouldn't cheat. I shouldn't have cheated.
But guess what? People shouldn't put their jobs/friends/addictions/family/whatever before their partners, either. Everyone has needs, and the need to feel loved is a HUGE one. If you think that that's not the motivation behind half of the cheating out there, then you should pull your head out of the dark hole where you've stuffed it.