Cheating: Whose Fault is It?

[BonsaiK]

As happens on occasion, I've been sucked into a discussion about whose responsibility cheating is. It seems like there are three main answers (with combinations of each, leading to seven total responses), and that the level of support for each depends on which gender is cheating.

Some people I've spoken to have said that it's the cheating partner's fault, and no one else's. The person with whom the cheater slept isn't culpable or responsible for being the other man/woman, it wasn't his/her job to keep someone else faithful.

Others have claimed it's the person who slept with the cheater's fault. If they knew he/she was in a relationship, and pursued it (or gave into it) anyway, they're a scumbag.

Still others have claimed that it's the cheated-on partner's fault, he/she must have been emotionally unavailable, not satisfying in bed, or abusive, to "deserve" being cheated on.

There's the combinations, of course:

- Cheater/other woman are responsible
- Cheater/Cheated on
- Cheated on/other woman (though this hasn't come up)
- Everyone in part.

When a man cheats, it seems that people are more likely to invoke him and the other woman as being at fault. The other woman is (obviously) a skank for sleeping with a taken man. The man is a bastard for cheating. The cheated on woman is a blameless victim.

If a woman cheats, it seems that we're more likely to give her a pass on it. She must have been "driven" into the arms of another man. Her boyfriend must have been a terrible boyfriend. Interestingly, there are mixed results about the other man. Some see him as being a noble person, comforting a woman whose boyfriend sucks, others see him as a bastard.

How do you folks feel about it?

It takes two people to have a relationship. It takes three people to cheat. Everyone is usually culpable in some way.

Men tend to do more "frivolous" cheating. If a guy cheats, that doesn't mean something is necessarily wrong with the relationship per se (although there might be), sometimes he might just be someone who isn't a very responsible person and who just got horny.

Women tend to cheat more when there is something seriously wrong with the relationship they are currently in, and they've essentially given up hope of fixing the problem. When a woman cheats usually the relationship was just about to end anyway for unrelated reasons.

Of course, these are just tendencies, not hard and fast rules. Plenty of exceptions to both cases do exist. However, this explains why cheating is treated differently by the courtroom by gender. Statistically, men tend to cheat more for more frivolous reasons, therefore men tend to get the rawer deal in the courts. In cases where the guy cheated for a more sensible reason... well, he's got to convince the court of that, and if the court has seen lots of "I was just horny and she looked good" cases, they might be a bit cynical. Unfair, but hey, don't ever cheat and you won't ever have to be in this position.

 

[Kortney]

Cheating is no one's fault except the cheater. If you aren't happy in a relationship, let the other person know and talk about it - if need be, break up. Don't go behind their back and cheat.

That's my views on it.

 

[SnipErlite]

The person who cheated.

Nobody else is at fault, unless the person who the cheater cheated with was aware of the relationship, but even then their not as much to blame as the cheater.

I think?

I mostly agree, cheating is pretty cowardly. Yet, there have to be some pretty significant underlying issues in the relationship for a person to cheat. Rarely are those issues only one person's fault.

Though, the person ought to work within the confines of the relationship to fix what ails it rather than going after someone else as an easy escape.

Precisely, there are far better ways to deal with relationship problems (ie. TALKING TO THE PERSON, it seems hardly anyone does that anymore) than going off with some randomer.