2w ago

I don't get why people cheat on their significant others

So, a while ago it came out that my uncle（who's from outside the family and married in) cheated on my aunt (mom's sister).

They're still married. Honestly not sure what they'll do since he is the one with the job and our family doesn't have enough to support her and her children.

But I just don't get it. I get falling out of love or even finding other people besides your spouse attractive, but cheating is just such a layered lasagna of shit.

1.You want to eat your cake and have it too. (There's an entire community of people who cheat on their spouses called "cake eaters."). I don't understand what you get out of that though unless you're just really lustful (and even I wouldn't do that and I'm a lustful removed). If you want to break up/divorce that's fine but you can't just have emotional/physical relationships without changing anything. Which leads to point 2

2.How little fucking respect do you have for your wife and family? Because the thing is that youre denying your partner any autonomy in the relationship. You dont even respect them enough to even talk about it, or you don't respect them enough to think they deserve to know about it or will ever find out.

I mean look, there been some stories I've heard where I understand, if the relationship is already dead. It still sucks but I can understand if it's inevitable anyway. But otherwise i just can't conceptualize how selfish and shit you have to be to do it.

And I wouldn't ask if it wasn't so common. I mean it doesn't happen in every relationship but it's so common basically everyone is paranoid their partner is cheating on them. So I just really don't get it

32 comments

It's a tough but really interesting subject that touches the relationship between the nuclear family and private property. I'll try not to write a whole book so I'll focus on what you need to explore to understand the whole infidelity paradigm.
Firstly, observe how much housing and property is tied to family status. Ultimately, marriage is not a love affair it's an economic one.
Secondly, explore how the reunion of private property, love and sexuality is a historical construct that has and had many alternatives.
Finally, understand how social constructs corners us into absurd dilemmas. Cheating is dishonest, yes we should always say that we want an open relationship before lying to somebody who trusts us, unfortunately, that's not how things present themselves in reality. Your uncle might be an ass, idk, or maybe he knows wanting an open relationship would mean divorce, aka, personal level economic crisis, and that nobody wants this, so cheating is the lesser evil. You might say well just give up on sex/love if you're married, but I don't think we should expect people to renounce that very prevalent aspect of the human life because of some private property shenanigans
Hope that helps seeing a different perspective, I personally got way more involved in questionning love/marriage and family after I experienced living together as a couple. Some stuff you gotta live it in your flesh to understand why people do the things they do
- You might say well just give up on sex/love if you’re married, but I don’t think we should expect people to renounce that very prevalent aspect of the human life because of some private property shenanigans
  Eh, on this part, I feel like these are two pretty different points:
  (1) Giving up on sex: Sure, it's a pain, but you can live without it. There are people who have trouble even finding a partner in the first place, which can last for decades. I'm not sure sometimes if this is made easier by having supplementary ways of getting off, like porn, or if porn actually makes it worse because you can get close mentally but don't actually get the real thing. But either way, you aren't dying of thirst in the desert for not getting the real thing. It can suck, yeah, but you can get through it without doing something dishonest/hurtful to another person.
  (2) Giving up on love: This one I more understand (and I suspect is more the part that people who think they badly want to get laid are actually after). Loneliness can really eat at a person. Maybe it's even more intensified if you're in a loveless marriage, so close to intimacy and yet so far (I don't know from experience, just trying to give credit to the possibility). But also, romance is not the only way to have emotional or physical intimacy (and I'm not even thinking of sex atm when I say "physical"). Friends can be extremely close sometimes and not have it be romantic. Though socializing probably gets in the way of this at times, shoving this idea into people's heads that if they are close and sync up in the right gender or sexual preference combo, then they must be needing to make it romantic. As if this is the ultimate form of adult closeness and everything else is on a sliding scale, with romance as the endpoint.
  This kind of socializing, I think, is toxic to people being able to be happy without romance. What they need as a basic human thing, is closeness. What they (tend to be) taught is that for an adult, romance is the ultimate way to do this. So then, they're going to extrapolate from that, that they will never be satisfied until they have a good romance. But romance itself is not a static feeling thing, where you find somebody and feel exactly the same toward each other forever. Feelings can deepen or fade, and it seems to be a consistent thing that the initial "high" early on is not something that lasts and has to be replaced with something more slow-burn affection for things to be maintained.
  But if somebody believes the high is what love is and keeps chasing that, they're going to have a harder time "settling down" and building love, not just searching for it. This is not to say all failed relationships can be fixed by "trying harder" or something, just that if someone views it as a magic that has to stay in the air and loses sight of the action part of any kind of relationship, I'm sure that'd increase their temptations to cheat.
  
  What they need as a basic human thing, is closeness. What they (tend to be) taught is that for an adult, romance is the ultimate way to do this.
  I guess this also ties on the capitalist (and other "structures of power") need for a "docile and growing workforce".
  
  Completely agree! "sex as a need" is very deserving of criticism since it's often tied to r**** culture. Also yes friendship is best and we should develop more tenderness and care towards friends, undeniably.
  Actually I didn't mean that sex/love were needs I just said they were cool, and that depriving ourselves from it for private property reasons is sad. But I should reaffirm that making other people suffer for it is also really sad, and that yes ultimately we should thrive for a complete relational revolution where exclusivity isn't the dogma

In my ideal society, polyamory would be normalized enough that people who wanted to date multiple people would simply do it openly. The whole cheating business is based on a failure of the current social construction of the family to systemically accommodate and normalize polyamorous relationships.
- What would have happened to the couple in the OP though if the husband had asked and the wife said no?
  
  Depends on what the uncle did after that, just like in the current situation. In my ideal society it would be considered essential for people to verify that they align on polyamory before seriously committing to a relationship.

You will find that most people simply do not consider the consequences of their actions, or think things through at all, before doing things.
On top of that neurotypical people tend to be ok with doing morally bad things if they think nobody will know. Where as people with ADHD or ASD etc tend to follow their own moral code regardless of who is watching.
Combine these two things, and inhibition reducing narcotics like alcohol being involved at times and its no wonder these things are common.
- where in the hell did you come up with the generalization that people with adhd are moral in their behaviours than people without an adhd diagnosis?
  
  Im inclined to agree, so many behaviors are attributed to autism when id say its more just people with good moral compasses and who have empathy enough to consider how actions affect others.
  Of course, people with autism may be inclined that way, i've also met complete reactionary fash who are autistic, its a bit tokenizing.
  
  You need to first understand that morality is subjective. We are talking about a persons own personal opinions on morality. Their moral compass. A racists moral compass says that racism is okay. Most people would disagree with them on that.
  As for where i am getting it. Scientific research. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31489833/ https://neurolaunch.com/autism-moral-rigidity/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691823000719 https://neuroclastic.com/autistic-people-care-too-much-research-says/ Quotes from this one: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/41/8/1699
  "ASD participants and healthy control subjects (HCs) decided in public or private whether to incur a personal cost for funding a morally good cause (Good Context) or receive a personal gain for benefiting a morally bad cause (Bad Context). Compared with HC, individuals with ASD were much more likely to reject the opportunity to earn ill gotten money by supporting a bad cause than were HCs. Computational modeling revealed that this resulted from heavily weighing benefits for themselves and the bad cause, suggesting that ASD participants apply a rule of refusing to serve a bad cause because they evaluate the negative consequences of their actions more severely."
  Its not that they are more moral per say it's that they are more rigid in their morality and less likely to make exceptions to their own personal moral code. A person who cheats usually will know what they are doing is morally wrong (being that if they were the one being cheated on they wouldn't like it), but they will rationalize an exception for their specific case as to why it is ok for them to cheat. To justify their own actions to themselves. A neurodivergent person is much less likely to do this sort of rationalization. Since they just generally speaking do not make as many exceptions to their own moral code.
- I can't see the comment to directly respond to it on Hexbear for some reason, but do you have a source for the ADHD portion of the claim? The source seems to only concern ASD, not ADHD.
  
  I do not no i just listed 2 of the most common neurodivergences thats why it says etc too. I was talking about neurodivergent people in general. Keep in mind this is some study i read years ago i just had to search up to find for you so it wasnt exactly fresh in my mind when i made that comment lol.
  When you are reading that study notice it wasn't just a study of autistic people but of neurotypical people too. The neurotypical group were the ones more likely to engage in the "bad" option behavior. Since this study specifically selected for ASD and Neurotypical people you cant make any determination on ADHD, or otherwise neurodivergents from it specifically.
  So i did make a mistake there the non-ASD neurodivergents should be their own group as an unknown as to how they'd generally respond. But i would guess theres atleast a bit of overlap with ASD and some other types of nuerodivergency on this. Since its pretty common to have overlaps like that.
  So we have,
  Neurotypicals: Data shows their moral decision making is more flexible especially when not being observed.
  ASD: Data shows them as much more moraly rigid and even when not observed will do what they feel is morally correct more often.
  ADHD, and other neurodivergencies: No Data

Sex and love are different.
- Yes but also there is a complex dialectical relationship between sex and love

Emotional maturity does not have a linear relationship to age. And that does not mean young people think cheating is fine, but rather emotionally immature people do not digest their ability to affect (positively and negatively) other people. And older people typically have a partner and the outcome of that is someone gets hurt. Other people posted great reasons.

I think it just sometimes comes down to feeling trapped by circumstances. I'm not saying there is no other choice but sometimes the person does not feel there is another choice or cannot perceive another realistic path.
It may be in this situation that your uncle wanted to go his own way but felt like he couldn't because his family depends on him, as you said, so he was trying to do the right thing while also taking care of his needs. All of the pain and uprooting of the family which that would cause is avoided by staying and stepping out instead, especially if undiscovered. Is it still deceitful and hurtful to your aunt and the family? Of course, that goes without saying, but maybe he felt trapped in a corner. I'm speculating, I don't know your uncle nor the situation beyond what you've shared.
As someone who had partners who cheated and who has very close friends that were shattered by cheating partners, I think the most important thing we can do is accept that this sometimes happens and it's not always because someone in particular is at fault. The worst thing someone can do is get mired in how impossible it is to understand, how it could ever happen to them, unbelievable that this person would do that, how can anyone ever be trusted again, love is not possible, etc. I was there myself for a while and one friend of mine was bitterly for many years, just recently getting out of it, and no one should be stuck there. People need to be able to accept it and let it go. I won't go so far as to say forgive, but it's not a mystery of the universe that most human beings need and want to fuck and the social and legal construct of a relationship or marriage may not hold that need and desire back under certain circumstances. Ultimately, the person cheated on will need to take care of themselves (emotionally, at least) and they will have to be able to let it go to avoid prolonging and maximizing damage.
I also am a fan of poly or open relationships, and I've done that before, but it's still possible to cheat in those circumstances if rules are broken so unsure why people are bringing that up like it resolves the issue. That being said, it would probably help in some situations like these if people could agree to it and understand the love/romance aspect of their partnership is gone. I agree with the adage that you can go from open to closed but you can't go from closed to open, though. It is too difficult on the relationship, in my opinion.
All of this reminds me of the Before Trilogy, including the cheating. I can't recommend that trilogy enough to anyone who is at least over 30 and has had at least one major relationship fail, even better if you're older and had more pain. Same goes for the Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, 2046 trilogy. Just amazing films about humanity in relation.

I've always found it kind of funny that it's called "cheating" specifically. I feel like that word implies so much about how we view love/sex as a "game".
- In Portuguese we use the word "traição", which means betrayal. So it's a much stronger word. Despite that, a lot of men cheat (or betray) their wives in Brazil.

There are going to be 1000+ different reasons someone chooses to cheat on their partner.
It’s important to understand the base drive to do it in the first place, and that is the lizard brain drive to propagate our species. I’m looking at this from a males perspective, but it’s impossible to fully turn off this part of our brains. There’s always an underlying subconscious process running that evaluates a member of the opposite sex (in this case, a female) as a prospective mate. You have to remember that this is happening subconsciously. No guy (except creeps like Elon) is fully thinking “I want her to have my baby” because most of us know (without having to remind ourselves) that that’s a ridiculous thing to try and do, and something we don’t necessarily want to do. BUT, that evaluation process and resulting level of sexual attraction is still there. Our brains are so fine tuned to the process it’s why you can determine within seconds of looking at somebody’s physical appearance wether or not you’d want to have sex with them. There are of course other factors that will turn you on or off towards somebody, but that first check is always there because it can be done without interacting with them. Our minds are always looking for the next mate. 99.9% of the time it’s a fleeting thought (“girl. pretty.”) and you don’t dwell on it, but that .1% of the time you can’t overcome the allure to explore a sexual relationship it is when you start the path towards infidelity. Along the path there will be numerous checks, and it will usually fail right off the bat, but there’s always that perfect string that can land you at infidelity.
Another thing to consider is that it’s fully possible for someone to have a sexual encounter with somebody that is not their SO and have no change to their relationship from their perspective. Consider swinger couples. They have their life, their family, and occasionally they go out to a swinger party, have sex with other people, then go home and resume their lives like nothing has changed. We’ve been raised and taught all our lives (either directly or indirectly) that this is abnormal, and that once you find “the one” then that’s it. I would argue that wanting to have multiple sexual partners is the more normal experience most people feel throughout their lives, therefore forcing yourself to abstain once you’ve gotten married goes against our basic instincts. It’s a conscious CHOICE to suppress those feelings, usually out of respect for your partner and your commitment to the relationship. It may be easy for some, but there’s always going to be the others where it’s extremely difficult to always suppress such feelings. It doesn’t necessarily mean they love their partner less than someone who doesn’t cheat. Our brains are all wired a little bit differently and can behave very differently day to day and under different circumstances and environments. Even if you could filter your potential partners on Earth like a search page and distill it down to your ideal mate there would still be tens of millions of people on that list. And you will eventually run into them, and your brain will notice them, and then it’s another game of walking the path that could land you at infidelity. There will inevitably be people that reach it, and there will be any number of different factors and decisions that got them there.
You’re takeaway from this may be that “oh, so anyone who cheats is weak willed” but that’s not necessarily true because it insinuates that they could be stronger if they tried harder. Bud I’d ask you to consider things like addiction. You could look at an alcoholic and ask yourself “why do they do that?” or a nicotine user, or chronic gambler, food addict, sex addict etc. and endlessly wonder why someone would have such a “destructive habit”. The only logical conclusion is that, because of our individual brain chemistry, certain people will be predisposed to addiction while others are not. Addiction also ties into another base brain function, involving dopamine and the brains reward center. The same logic holds true for our drive to procreate/have sex. Some of us will be predisposed to cheating while others not so much.
TL;DR - It a very hard question to answer and varies case by case why someone cheats. The desire to cheat has to do with our brains and how humans are programmed. Ultimately it’s a choice, and we all have to individually weigh the consequences. Nobody is exactly the same, so it’s entirely possible to see someones behavior and not understand it yourself.

The thing that always bothered me about the cheating stuff was that there is an implicit property relation attached to someone's genetalia that people just seem to go along with.
Two consenting people have sex, outrage I have exclusive rights over that.
- I guess someone could see it that way, especially under capitalism, but I don't think that's generally where the hurt comes from. If somebody explicitly says I don't want monogamy, that's different from going in with the belief that it's exclusive and then going behind someone's back. Whether monogamy makes sense or not is kind of beside the point about trust and the breaking of trust. If I agreed with you that I'm going to play tennis with you and only you, however absurd that might be, I'm still going back on my word if I go play with someone else without telling you. And sex and romance together are generally going to be a much more personal thing than playing tennis together, with a lot more intense feelings tied up in it.
  To simplify: Breaking trust generally doesn't go over well.
  
  We also need to talk about how coercing your partner into being monogamous is... a bad thing?
- I think this view only slides if you do actually already have inherent misogynistic or misanthropic tendencies, and those tendencies mix with the natural jealousy feeling that cheating invokes. I think of asexual people who also don't love being cheated on.

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