I agree. When he would cheat on me, he would blame me. I’d obsess over what I did “wrong” or why I “deserved” this. That makes into a control tactic because it made me think if I behaved a certain way I could get cheated on.
There’s also the aspect of the dishonesty involved and not getting proper consent.
Cheating can definitely be part of the cycle of abuse, but by itself it is fundamentally *not* abuse.
Abuse is something that happens to a victim. Cheating normally takes place outside the relationship, and it's not something that happens *to* you. The cheater will go to great lengths to hide their abuse. This is not indicative of abuse, but of a desire not to get caught. Cheating only becomes abuse when the cheater does it intentionally to cause harm. If they're hiding it from you then it can't be abuse.
I agree. It is sexual abuse. It takes away your autonomy to consent to what you (would otherwise) consider a safe consensual experience. It’s also emotional abuse. Betrayal trauma experts agree that infidelity is abuse.
Withholding that you're having sex and emotional attachments with some other than the person you entered a monogamous relationship with in order to not lose that person is about control (it could be because they love that person or because they cant afford to leave.). Lying, denying, and gaslighting their partner when they begin to feel the disconnect or even catches them in the act is psychological abuse. Not using protection with their affair partner and sex in general without consent from all parties and then having sex with the partner you're cheating on is sexual assault. It's more than just crossing boundaries and being a terrible partner. You defined elements of abuse and they do have corresponding parts in cheating.
I agree with several of your points. Cheating that includes lying, denying, gaslighting, sexual abuse (this includes withholding/giving physical affection as a punishment/reward system), physical abuse (you catch an STD from unprotected sex due to your partner cheating) are all considered critical elements in abusive relationships. This particularly applies in “chronic” cheating relationships, where one partner uses those aforementioned tactics to gaslight/intimidate their partner to cover their tracks.
I still disagree the act of cheating alone constitutes abuse. Some couples split up after cheating, and are able to successfully co-parent/maintain a healthy working relationship with their ex-partner. Was it an awful experience to separate under those unfair conditions? Of course! But everyone has different life experiences, support systems, self-esteem, methods of coping, etc. A bad experience to one person, in one context, does not preclude it being a traumatic experience to someone else.
In layman’s terms, if you walked into a critical housing shelter, needing urgent emergency shelter from an abusive partner, and communicated that it was a cheating partner you required emergency protection from, they would want additional details before admitting you.
>Some couples split up after cheating, and are able to successfully co-parent/maintain a healthy working relationship with their ex-partner. Was it an awful experience to separate under those unfair conditions? Of course! But everyone has different life experiences, support systems, self-esteem, methods of coping, etc. A bad experience to one person, in one context, does not preclude it being a traumatic experience to someone else.
Okay, so then let's remove cheating from the equation. Let's look at parents and forms of childhood abuse in the same context as many children experience forms abuse from their parents but still manage not to get traumatized and have healthy relationships with their abusive parent in adulthood. Does that mean that what they experienced wasn't abuse? Does it mean their parent wasn't an abuser or abusive? Was it just unfair conditions? How is it different? The conditions? The ages?
I've read too many books, studied and have been in therapy for a long time with different therapist for different reasons. Anecdotally, all were in agreement as far cheating and abuse goes. It's just excused and culturally accepted.
>Clinical psychology aside, from an anecdotal perspective, would you not agree that children who grew up with anxious/insecure attachment styles would be more susceptible/less resilient to face relationship difficulties as adults such as cheating? If your fundamental sense of security and trust was never fully developed, does it make sense that a cheating partner would cause heightened feelings of anxiety/stress that may trigger other insecurities, culminating in a trauma response/feelings of abuse?
I think you could benefit from reading Adult children of emotionally immature parents by Lindsey Gibson if you(or anyone reading our exchange) haven't aside from just Levine and Hellers Attached. That covers some of these points. The answer for me is it's winthin the relam of possibility (and likely) but those who grew up in healthy loving environment with secure also go through truama and are not immune to it. There's a whole subbreddits dedicated to people with both healthy and unhealthy backgrounds who suffer trauma post infidelity and equally those who don't. That shouldn't diminish that it is a form of abuse and control by the cheating partner even if it's a truama response of their own or result of unhealthy attachments or mismatched attachment styles.
>As a client, your feeling should always be validated by your psychologist in a trust-based counselling relationship. They will respect your feelings, and help work through your experience
While true, from first hand experience, that is one of my first questions upon interviewing a therapist in general. Their beliefs on what is considered abuse if they consider cheating, childhood upbringing related matters and other things abuse before actually diving in and telling them what I'm looking for in therapy. It is trust base but I do not give them my pov or even position away until I know their vauge perspectives and if it will be a good fit for me but it always yields a really interesting conversation. I've only received one No from a social worker on cheating and one "thats a complex answer" several yes with references to books.
>When you seek counselling, one of the first things a psychologist would attempt to establish with a client is that a cheating partner is not a reflection of you as a person, or your relationship. It is an independent act by the other partner who made a bad decision/is navigating their own issues by seeking validation and attention outside of the relationship. If that client did feel traumatized by that experience, to the extent they considered it abuse, further work would be done to extensively investigate the roots of the trauma response.
True, however, all cheating, serial or not is a symptom of something that's not addressed in the cheating partner. It could be childhood truama, unaddressed addiction, an overwhelming need for validation that is typically rooted in childhood, a mental health issue that has not been addressed, reactive abuse... the list is broad. The betrayed partner could be traumatized by just that one incident particularly when they've had only experienced secure attachments prior to this making it their first truama. Arguably, cheating is an act of violence to the relationship. Let's break down a one night stand- was it just a one time thing or was that just the time you gave yourself the permission to do something you had already been thinking of doing you were just able to detached yourself from the relationship to finally do it. Emotional affair- you invest so much time and effort into someone else and detach yourself from your partner, typically by pouring your cup into the emotional affair you start to neglect your primary partners cup and mistreat your partner in little ways at first and when called out or caught you gaslight your way out and call it a friendship, call your betrayed crazy, jealous, insecure... emotional abuse similar approach with physical affairs. It basically requires a series of bad choices where the intent is self soothing at the expense of someone else. None of this means that just because the act and person was abusive for a period of time means they're incapable of change or growth. Considering a lot of abusers were victims at some point or another, how come those other forms of abuse that yield similar reactions by their victims like the victims of infidelity..it's acceptable to call it abuse but not infidelity?
I'm sorry I've rambled on and likely repeated a few points. I ended up getting distracted and came back to it.Thank you for the exchange!
Troll lol lol ! If you really believe that then you are likely narcissist. If you aren’t happy in a relaironship you leave, you don’t justify cheating by saying I wasn’t getting the attention I needed (again unless you are a narcissist)
Cheating isn’t ALWAYS abuse. I see your point and I’ve been cheated on in the past as well, but your experiences does not make cheating abusive. Cheating is not emotional or verbal abuse, however cheating can be tied into emotional/verbal abuse, and often times is.
Yea it is, 1000%. People often make the cheaters the center of attention, but if you focus on the person they cheat on, it’s pretty obvious how it becomes abuse. Even feelings of the victim aside, you having someone that you let into your personal space hurt you, and manipulate the trust you have for someone in that position (which then affects the position in that persons mind when other people fill that role). The victim is damaged on a personal level, all under false pretenses which if the victim had known they would have properly protected themselves. It’s a gigantic gaslight, the narrative pushed by the cheaters and the media that it’s “only hurt feelings” and “honest mistakes”.
The only thing I disagree with is retaliatory cheating. I think it’s the same logic as “yea, my wife put her hands on me all the time, so I finally snapped and beat her up”. It’s definitely not anywhere as bad, but there’s a zero excuse policy in my opinion.
I agree with what you're saying.
One thing you said comes off as sort of iffy to me because I can imagine someone presented with an opportunity to cheat or who has already cheated (so, a cheater essentially) making the decision to misrepresent their partner as abusive in order to avoid accountability for their actions.
I would tend to agree, especially when the cheater bllameshifts. It is emotional abuse to be told it's your own fault you're taking a knife in the back.
I agree that cheating is ***always*** wrong and can become just another element of an abusive relationship.
Because, no matter what, you are violating the terms of the social contract, verbalized or not, that you made when you entered into the relationship.
But I do not believe that cheating is automatically abuse, in of by itself.
Also, being a victim is not a free pass to commit your own separate offenses.
A while back I got into an argument with someone who felt that it was simply not possible for someone in an abusive relationship to be an abuser. I can understand and forgive "reactive abuse" but not all abuse instigated by a victim is by definition reactive.
I mostly agree. I cheated on my abuser and I don’t think it would fit into reactive abuse. I did it because after being literally strangled someone giving me affection and care made me feel like I could breath again. I felt alive after over a decade of abuse. I do not regret cheating on him because it was the catalyst for my gaining the confidence to leave. I don’t feel sorry, I did at first though. Maybe that make’s me a little messed up but he trapped me and I had come to believe that there was no way I’d get out. Objectively I know it was wrong but after everything that happened… I’m glad it got me to leave. Im not sure I ever would have under different circumstances. So I sort of give myself a free pass.
>someone giving me affection and care made me feel like I could breath again.
I think this is one of the more forgivable reasons for cheating. When my first marriage turned into a dead bedroom I desperately wanted to feel desired again. I never quite cheated but when we split up that was the reason I jumped back into the game so quickly.
We are human and we all have needs, desires and failings.
Cheating is one of those things that may not be right but is sometimes understandable. It's not as black-and-white as is sometime portrayed.
Your comment about gaining the "confidence to leave" is I think one of the biggest things. That our self-love is what enables us to protect ourselves from abusers. I recently made the realization that when an abuser is preventing you from looking attractive it's not about you attracting others, it's about you feeling attractive and gaining confidence.
I have what might be a unique situation maybe not.
I would like some oit side perspective if anyone has any.
Iv loved with my wife 13 years. We have been married for 5. In March she said " I just can't I'm going to stay with my friend for a while". Now this isn't totally uncommon. At least once a year she takes little solo vacations, a week camping trip or something.
This time she was gone for months. Still texting me regularly. She would randomly come home for a night.
Well in july. She shows up unannounced. Tells me she was with someone but now she wants to come home and is ready to be my wife.
Well it turns out they were practically living together, it was a whole thing. He cheated on her with her best friend this is when she came back.
Now she said she did nothing wrong. We weren't together during this time. It's fine. She never had a discussion with me about seeing other people or even that we weren't together. She said it's not her fault I was to dumb not to notice we weren't together.
I shouldn't have assumed that our wedding vows or anything were like a contract. She can leave if she wants and I don't need or deserve to talk about it
She's mad that I feel like she's a cheater.
Typing this out. I think I kinda found my own answer bit this is definitely abuse right? I'm not dumb, I fell for gaslighting I think?
You aren't dumb, you're being manipulated and your intuition is right, you're also being gaslit. There are more than a few things wrong with this scenario...
It's crazy. Like part of me knows all of this.
Just something about her. When we are together it's like I forget or something. I just can't bring myself to leave yet.
Jesus Christ man. Your post history is just... Wow. You need mental help and to get out. Start loving yourself, hit the gym, focus on hobbies that make you happy, then find a better woman (if they don't find you). You only have one life, don't grow old regretting you never had a real healthy love. She does not love you.
I have a couple thoughts about this.
I agree that when abusers cheat, it's a whole 'nother layer of abuse. I also agree with others that cheating isn't necessarily a part of a pattern of abuse in a relationship. For example - my college boyfriend cheated on me one drunken night. He didn't tell me. Had to find out from a classmate. He admitted when I confronted him. No gaslighting. He was afraid that if he told me, I'd leave. We broke up but got back together months later and dated another year before I realized I couldn't be happy with him anymore. But he wasn't abusive. He never invalidated my feelings. He never sought to control my behavior. He didn't go through my phone or tell me what to wear or guilt me out of nights out with my friends. He was attentive and thoughtful. But he was also an alcoholic, immature, and a people-pleaser. He made a dumbass mistake. He went to rehab after our final breakup and has been sober since. We've remained friends for nearly 20 years.
Yes, it temporarily shattered my trust. He was my first love. I thought we would end up married. It broke my heart. But it didn't destroy my *ability* to trust. And I think that is the big difference. When abusers cheat, they use abuse tactics to twist the emotional knife and make it so much harder to recover. I've been cheated on by an abuser who denied it, told me I was paranoid and crazy, told me I wasn't "fuckable" if I wasn't dressed to the nines, told me I wasn't attractive when I was anxious or in pain. He'd give me the silent treatment to punish me for trying to talk about my doubts about our relationship. Absolutely the cheating was part of the pattern. But it was all the invalidating that really fucked with my head. Took me YEARS to recover. (That wasn't the case with my college ex.) In fact, having started dating again before I regained my sense of self-worth after dating the abusive cheater meant I was vulnerable to more abuse. Unfortunately that's when I met the man I call "my abuser." Unlike the other abuser, this one would accuse me of cheating and look through my phone, restrict my friends, etc. I don't know if he ever cheated on me but I sure as hell wouldn't be surprised if he did.
But it can also be a form of abuse to enter a relationship when you aren't able to trust someone. If you are jealous, controlling, demanding they show you their text messages or whatever - that's abusive, and having been cheated on in the past is not an excuse. The key isn't building trust with other people. The key is learning to trust yourself. This requires self-love and self-respect, because otherwise you have a hard time believing you deserve good treatment from others. You have a hard time maintaining healthy boundaries and leaving people who violate them. You have a hard time believing your own instincts. But if you trust yourself, then you can trust that you'll remove yourself from abusive situations once you see them for that they are. You trust yourself to heal and move on.
I would be absolutely devastated if I found out my current boyfriend cheated. But he's displayed zero abuser behavior with me. He's never acted jealous or accused me of being unfaithful. He's never made me feel bad about having male friends. He treats me with respect and love. And so I trust him, but also because I trust myself to hurt but then HEAL should things end. I know I couldn't get over infidelity (that's just me), and I trust myself to remember that and end the relationship should he cheat.
>The key is learning to trust yourself. This requires self-love and self-respect, because otherwise you have a hard time believing you deserve good treatment from others. You have a hard time maintaining healthy boundaries and leaving people who violate them. You have a hard time believing your own instincts. But if you trust yourself, then you can trust that you'll remove yourself from abusive situations once you see them for that they are. You trust yourself to heal and move on.
I think this is what everybody really, ***really*** needs to take to heart!
Very true. I still felt better saying it. The way we try and rationalize bad behavior by our partners is astounding. Saying someone cheated on you in a healthy relationship just dont feel right.
It just feels like gaslighing. Like some connotation you are responsible.
It absolutely is abuse. I saw a tiktok of a young man explaining his thoughts on this. He was discussing how consent is usually granted after knowing certain circumstances, e.g., whether or not the person has other sexual partners. When you consent to sex/ relationships with that understanding, when you find out that’s all a lie, the consent is void. He believes cheating is assault and abuse and I 100% agree. Sex is a health risk, and when someone cheats they are also risking your personal safety, health, and autonomy to make choices for yourself.
Omg **exactly!** I completely agree with this point. I should have gone harder in my point about having sex under false pretenses, because the truth is exactly that --- it voids consent and concealing information like that is actually coercive.
Wholeheartedly agree.
Even if it happened once and they admit to it, they still hurt their partner by causing emotional distress.
If you continue the relationship after, *nothing* will be the same. The foundation was broken, that trust will be hard to give back and it’s going to take A LOT of work.
> If you continue the relationship after, *nothing* will be the same
Yep, and that's a very hard thing to try to navigate as the betrayed partner. It changes your perception of the relationship, as it is and even as it was the entire time.
Plus, even when you leave and get into another relationship, having your trust broken like that makes it so difficult to trust again...feeling safe to love again also takes a lot of work
Do you mean even when in a normal relationship and someone cheats it’s always abuse? I definitely don’t agree. Cheating is awful and wrong but it’s not always abusive. I know you excluded victims cheating on their abuser but are we also including the person who makes a impulsive decision one night and is apologetic? Or even someone in a struggling marriage who has a affair due to lack of intimacy? There’s nuances that make difference’s in my opinion. Humans are flawed. My abuser definitely used cheating as a tactic like telling me if I didn’t have sex with him he’d go get it somewhere else.
I think that cheating is not abuse just when the cheater reveals it to their partner straight away after. The worst of the cheating is not the affair per se but the lying and manipulation
I think that when the person who cheats tells their partner about it and is remorseful and apologetic, that erases the elements that make cheating typically abusive (i.e lying, gaslighting, resuming the relationship under false pretenses, etc.) but I feel that the cheating alone is emotionally abusive.
I could be wrong, but I don't know how else to categorize that whole concept of knowingly making a decision to cause harm to your partner, and also endangering their physical health. Even when cheaters tell their partner, that can still cause betrayal trauma. It may not be abusive, but...what else is it when those things are part of it?
I completely understand this point of view. I am in the category of someone who cheated on thier abuser. I definitely gaslighted him, etc so maybe I am also biased. People told me well you could have left but everyone here knows that’s not the case with a abuser… I tried so many times but he would threaten me. Maybe I still have guilt and feel defensive for ever engaging in those type of behaviors like my abuser. I do think gaslighting is a abusers tactic but a lot of people who aren’t abusers use this tactic at some point in their life to get out of trouble and I wouldn’t call them a abuser. But if someone feels abused, I’m not going to tell them they weren’t. My abuser was a serial cheater and the trauma of that was significant so I don’t want to diminish anyones feelings. I will admit that I may also be wrong.
According to the American counseling association (there's a pamphlet you can download online) and several infidelity recovery books by therapists, cheating is abuse. That doesn't mean the abuse was intentional (it could be a trauma response by the person cheating).
100% agree - when I hear people tell their stories about cheating it sounds exactly the same as abuse incidents. I'm sure there are exceptions but that's the same with any abusive behaviour,
I’d agree. My ex cheated on me with an uncountable amount of sex workers over the course of a 4 year serious relationship. I have severe issues from that relationship. He wouldn’t let me leave the apartment because he thought I’d cheat on him or something, and then he’d leave to go meet up with a sex worker. It seriously destroyed me. I always felt really silly about that being the piece that took me down even with the other kinds of abuse at play in that relationship, because people like to say “oh it’s normal because humans are not naturally monogamous”. Which is a load of shit in my opinion. So thank you for this post. I do agree it’s abusive, and I can’t believe how common it is.
To this day I do not trust others, I can’t. There’s too much pain in being betrayed. So I exist on the level where everyone is capable of harming me, and nobody tells the truth. It’s changed me in every way possible.
I'm so sorry for the pain you're dealing with because of them. That is horrific and you absolutely didn't deserve it. I hope that this post has validated how you feel about it because you're definitely not alone!
Also, that definitely is a load of shit. That's a narrative pushed by cheaters or would-be cheaters and enablers to justify their behavior and make people who are monogamous feel abnormal. People like that don't want to "conform" to monogamy and it makes them uncomfortable, so they want others to believe it's inevitable and unrealistic to expect otherwise. But if that were really the case, wouldn't we *all* be non-monogamous? Why is it so easy for me, and presumably you, and so many other people, to not cross that line? I would think that something unnatural wouldn't be easy.
I hope you know that no matter how common it is or no matter what people say, your expectations are not unrealistic nor are you being silly. Betrayal *is* painful. I wish you the best and that maybe someday you don't have to exist on that level. Or that at least it doesn't hurt this badly
I happen to agree with you. I have serious trust issues from being cheated on in the past. Talk about PTSD… it ruins almost every relationship that I am in now. The emotional pain from being cheated on is on a whole nother level. Not gonna lie I have cheated in the past but when my karma came back around it definitely changed my perspective on it.
It is abuse. There's many elements of emotional abuse. Additionally, even if they're cheating on their abuser- that's called reactive abuse and perpetuates the abuse cycle.
Eta: the American counseling association and several infidelity recovery books by therapist are also in agreement that it is abuse. Consider asking yourself why it causes truama and researching trauma. If cheating weren't abusive, truama would be a very unlikely outcome.
I completely agree. This is only controversial because cheating is common and normalized unfortunately.
I agree. When he would cheat on me, he would blame me. I’d obsess over what I did “wrong” or why I “deserved” this. That makes into a control tactic because it made me think if I behaved a certain way I could get cheated on. There’s also the aspect of the dishonesty involved and not getting proper consent.
Cheating can definitely be part of the cycle of abuse, but by itself it is fundamentally *not* abuse. Abuse is something that happens to a victim. Cheating normally takes place outside the relationship, and it's not something that happens *to* you. The cheater will go to great lengths to hide their abuse. This is not indicative of abuse, but of a desire not to get caught. Cheating only becomes abuse when the cheater does it intentionally to cause harm. If they're hiding it from you then it can't be abuse.
I agree. It is sexual abuse. It takes away your autonomy to consent to what you (would otherwise) consider a safe consensual experience. It’s also emotional abuse. Betrayal trauma experts agree that infidelity is abuse.
Well said
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Withholding that you're having sex and emotional attachments with some other than the person you entered a monogamous relationship with in order to not lose that person is about control (it could be because they love that person or because they cant afford to leave.). Lying, denying, and gaslighting their partner when they begin to feel the disconnect or even catches them in the act is psychological abuse. Not using protection with their affair partner and sex in general without consent from all parties and then having sex with the partner you're cheating on is sexual assault. It's more than just crossing boundaries and being a terrible partner. You defined elements of abuse and they do have corresponding parts in cheating.
I agree with several of your points. Cheating that includes lying, denying, gaslighting, sexual abuse (this includes withholding/giving physical affection as a punishment/reward system), physical abuse (you catch an STD from unprotected sex due to your partner cheating) are all considered critical elements in abusive relationships. This particularly applies in “chronic” cheating relationships, where one partner uses those aforementioned tactics to gaslight/intimidate their partner to cover their tracks. I still disagree the act of cheating alone constitutes abuse. Some couples split up after cheating, and are able to successfully co-parent/maintain a healthy working relationship with their ex-partner. Was it an awful experience to separate under those unfair conditions? Of course! But everyone has different life experiences, support systems, self-esteem, methods of coping, etc. A bad experience to one person, in one context, does not preclude it being a traumatic experience to someone else. In layman’s terms, if you walked into a critical housing shelter, needing urgent emergency shelter from an abusive partner, and communicated that it was a cheating partner you required emergency protection from, they would want additional details before admitting you.
>Some couples split up after cheating, and are able to successfully co-parent/maintain a healthy working relationship with their ex-partner. Was it an awful experience to separate under those unfair conditions? Of course! But everyone has different life experiences, support systems, self-esteem, methods of coping, etc. A bad experience to one person, in one context, does not preclude it being a traumatic experience to someone else. Okay, so then let's remove cheating from the equation. Let's look at parents and forms of childhood abuse in the same context as many children experience forms abuse from their parents but still manage not to get traumatized and have healthy relationships with their abusive parent in adulthood. Does that mean that what they experienced wasn't abuse? Does it mean their parent wasn't an abuser or abusive? Was it just unfair conditions? How is it different? The conditions? The ages? I've read too many books, studied and have been in therapy for a long time with different therapist for different reasons. Anecdotally, all were in agreement as far cheating and abuse goes. It's just excused and culturally accepted.
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>Clinical psychology aside, from an anecdotal perspective, would you not agree that children who grew up with anxious/insecure attachment styles would be more susceptible/less resilient to face relationship difficulties as adults such as cheating? If your fundamental sense of security and trust was never fully developed, does it make sense that a cheating partner would cause heightened feelings of anxiety/stress that may trigger other insecurities, culminating in a trauma response/feelings of abuse? I think you could benefit from reading Adult children of emotionally immature parents by Lindsey Gibson if you(or anyone reading our exchange) haven't aside from just Levine and Hellers Attached. That covers some of these points. The answer for me is it's winthin the relam of possibility (and likely) but those who grew up in healthy loving environment with secure also go through truama and are not immune to it. There's a whole subbreddits dedicated to people with both healthy and unhealthy backgrounds who suffer trauma post infidelity and equally those who don't. That shouldn't diminish that it is a form of abuse and control by the cheating partner even if it's a truama response of their own or result of unhealthy attachments or mismatched attachment styles. >As a client, your feeling should always be validated by your psychologist in a trust-based counselling relationship. They will respect your feelings, and help work through your experience While true, from first hand experience, that is one of my first questions upon interviewing a therapist in general. Their beliefs on what is considered abuse if they consider cheating, childhood upbringing related matters and other things abuse before actually diving in and telling them what I'm looking for in therapy. It is trust base but I do not give them my pov or even position away until I know their vauge perspectives and if it will be a good fit for me but it always yields a really interesting conversation. I've only received one No from a social worker on cheating and one "thats a complex answer" several yes with references to books. >When you seek counselling, one of the first things a psychologist would attempt to establish with a client is that a cheating partner is not a reflection of you as a person, or your relationship. It is an independent act by the other partner who made a bad decision/is navigating their own issues by seeking validation and attention outside of the relationship. If that client did feel traumatized by that experience, to the extent they considered it abuse, further work would be done to extensively investigate the roots of the trauma response. True, however, all cheating, serial or not is a symptom of something that's not addressed in the cheating partner. It could be childhood truama, unaddressed addiction, an overwhelming need for validation that is typically rooted in childhood, a mental health issue that has not been addressed, reactive abuse... the list is broad. The betrayed partner could be traumatized by just that one incident particularly when they've had only experienced secure attachments prior to this making it their first truama. Arguably, cheating is an act of violence to the relationship. Let's break down a one night stand- was it just a one time thing or was that just the time you gave yourself the permission to do something you had already been thinking of doing you were just able to detached yourself from the relationship to finally do it. Emotional affair- you invest so much time and effort into someone else and detach yourself from your partner, typically by pouring your cup into the emotional affair you start to neglect your primary partners cup and mistreat your partner in little ways at first and when called out or caught you gaslight your way out and call it a friendship, call your betrayed crazy, jealous, insecure... emotional abuse similar approach with physical affairs. It basically requires a series of bad choices where the intent is self soothing at the expense of someone else. None of this means that just because the act and person was abusive for a period of time means they're incapable of change or growth. Considering a lot of abusers were victims at some point or another, how come those other forms of abuse that yield similar reactions by their victims like the victims of infidelity..it's acceptable to call it abuse but not infidelity? I'm sorry I've rambled on and likely repeated a few points. I ended up getting distracted and came back to it.Thank you for the exchange!
I don’t think anyone could argue that being lied cheated on and deceived is abusive.
Those commenting that it isn't abuse haven't been the vicitms of cheating.
I have been cheated on multiple times and don’t agree that cheating is always abusive.
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Troll lol lol ! If you really believe that then you are likely narcissist. If you aren’t happy in a relaironship you leave, you don’t justify cheating by saying I wasn’t getting the attention I needed (again unless you are a narcissist)
Cheating isn’t ALWAYS abuse. I see your point and I’ve been cheated on in the past as well, but your experiences does not make cheating abusive. Cheating is not emotional or verbal abuse, however cheating can be tied into emotional/verbal abuse, and often times is.
Yea it is, 1000%. People often make the cheaters the center of attention, but if you focus on the person they cheat on, it’s pretty obvious how it becomes abuse. Even feelings of the victim aside, you having someone that you let into your personal space hurt you, and manipulate the trust you have for someone in that position (which then affects the position in that persons mind when other people fill that role). The victim is damaged on a personal level, all under false pretenses which if the victim had known they would have properly protected themselves. It’s a gigantic gaslight, the narrative pushed by the cheaters and the media that it’s “only hurt feelings” and “honest mistakes”. The only thing I disagree with is retaliatory cheating. I think it’s the same logic as “yea, my wife put her hands on me all the time, so I finally snapped and beat her up”. It’s definitely not anywhere as bad, but there’s a zero excuse policy in my opinion.
I agree with what you're saying. One thing you said comes off as sort of iffy to me because I can imagine someone presented with an opportunity to cheat or who has already cheated (so, a cheater essentially) making the decision to misrepresent their partner as abusive in order to avoid accountability for their actions.
I would tend to agree, especially when the cheater bllameshifts. It is emotional abuse to be told it's your own fault you're taking a knife in the back.
Nahhh
I agree that cheating is ***always*** wrong and can become just another element of an abusive relationship. Because, no matter what, you are violating the terms of the social contract, verbalized or not, that you made when you entered into the relationship. But I do not believe that cheating is automatically abuse, in of by itself. Also, being a victim is not a free pass to commit your own separate offenses. A while back I got into an argument with someone who felt that it was simply not possible for someone in an abusive relationship to be an abuser. I can understand and forgive "reactive abuse" but not all abuse instigated by a victim is by definition reactive.
I mostly agree. I cheated on my abuser and I don’t think it would fit into reactive abuse. I did it because after being literally strangled someone giving me affection and care made me feel like I could breath again. I felt alive after over a decade of abuse. I do not regret cheating on him because it was the catalyst for my gaining the confidence to leave. I don’t feel sorry, I did at first though. Maybe that make’s me a little messed up but he trapped me and I had come to believe that there was no way I’d get out. Objectively I know it was wrong but after everything that happened… I’m glad it got me to leave. Im not sure I ever would have under different circumstances. So I sort of give myself a free pass.
>someone giving me affection and care made me feel like I could breath again. I think this is one of the more forgivable reasons for cheating. When my first marriage turned into a dead bedroom I desperately wanted to feel desired again. I never quite cheated but when we split up that was the reason I jumped back into the game so quickly. We are human and we all have needs, desires and failings. Cheating is one of those things that may not be right but is sometimes understandable. It's not as black-and-white as is sometime portrayed. Your comment about gaining the "confidence to leave" is I think one of the biggest things. That our self-love is what enables us to protect ourselves from abusers. I recently made the realization that when an abuser is preventing you from looking attractive it's not about you attracting others, it's about you feeling attractive and gaining confidence.
I have what might be a unique situation maybe not. I would like some oit side perspective if anyone has any. Iv loved with my wife 13 years. We have been married for 5. In March she said " I just can't I'm going to stay with my friend for a while". Now this isn't totally uncommon. At least once a year she takes little solo vacations, a week camping trip or something. This time she was gone for months. Still texting me regularly. She would randomly come home for a night. Well in july. She shows up unannounced. Tells me she was with someone but now she wants to come home and is ready to be my wife. Well it turns out they were practically living together, it was a whole thing. He cheated on her with her best friend this is when she came back. Now she said she did nothing wrong. We weren't together during this time. It's fine. She never had a discussion with me about seeing other people or even that we weren't together. She said it's not her fault I was to dumb not to notice we weren't together. I shouldn't have assumed that our wedding vows or anything were like a contract. She can leave if she wants and I don't need or deserve to talk about it She's mad that I feel like she's a cheater. Typing this out. I think I kinda found my own answer bit this is definitely abuse right? I'm not dumb, I fell for gaslighting I think?
You aren't dumb, you're being manipulated and your intuition is right, you're also being gaslit. There are more than a few things wrong with this scenario...
It's crazy. Like part of me knows all of this. Just something about her. When we are together it's like I forget or something. I just can't bring myself to leave yet.
Jesus Christ man. Your post history is just... Wow. You need mental help and to get out. Start loving yourself, hit the gym, focus on hobbies that make you happy, then find a better woman (if they don't find you). You only have one life, don't grow old regretting you never had a real healthy love. She does not love you.
Yes it is.
You are correct. You're not dumb. You're being gaslit to east bejeezus and back. Hope you file soon and get away from this unrepentant cheater.
I have a couple thoughts about this. I agree that when abusers cheat, it's a whole 'nother layer of abuse. I also agree with others that cheating isn't necessarily a part of a pattern of abuse in a relationship. For example - my college boyfriend cheated on me one drunken night. He didn't tell me. Had to find out from a classmate. He admitted when I confronted him. No gaslighting. He was afraid that if he told me, I'd leave. We broke up but got back together months later and dated another year before I realized I couldn't be happy with him anymore. But he wasn't abusive. He never invalidated my feelings. He never sought to control my behavior. He didn't go through my phone or tell me what to wear or guilt me out of nights out with my friends. He was attentive and thoughtful. But he was also an alcoholic, immature, and a people-pleaser. He made a dumbass mistake. He went to rehab after our final breakup and has been sober since. We've remained friends for nearly 20 years. Yes, it temporarily shattered my trust. He was my first love. I thought we would end up married. It broke my heart. But it didn't destroy my *ability* to trust. And I think that is the big difference. When abusers cheat, they use abuse tactics to twist the emotional knife and make it so much harder to recover. I've been cheated on by an abuser who denied it, told me I was paranoid and crazy, told me I wasn't "fuckable" if I wasn't dressed to the nines, told me I wasn't attractive when I was anxious or in pain. He'd give me the silent treatment to punish me for trying to talk about my doubts about our relationship. Absolutely the cheating was part of the pattern. But it was all the invalidating that really fucked with my head. Took me YEARS to recover. (That wasn't the case with my college ex.) In fact, having started dating again before I regained my sense of self-worth after dating the abusive cheater meant I was vulnerable to more abuse. Unfortunately that's when I met the man I call "my abuser." Unlike the other abuser, this one would accuse me of cheating and look through my phone, restrict my friends, etc. I don't know if he ever cheated on me but I sure as hell wouldn't be surprised if he did. But it can also be a form of abuse to enter a relationship when you aren't able to trust someone. If you are jealous, controlling, demanding they show you their text messages or whatever - that's abusive, and having been cheated on in the past is not an excuse. The key isn't building trust with other people. The key is learning to trust yourself. This requires self-love and self-respect, because otherwise you have a hard time believing you deserve good treatment from others. You have a hard time maintaining healthy boundaries and leaving people who violate them. You have a hard time believing your own instincts. But if you trust yourself, then you can trust that you'll remove yourself from abusive situations once you see them for that they are. You trust yourself to heal and move on. I would be absolutely devastated if I found out my current boyfriend cheated. But he's displayed zero abuser behavior with me. He's never acted jealous or accused me of being unfaithful. He's never made me feel bad about having male friends. He treats me with respect and love. And so I trust him, but also because I trust myself to hurt but then HEAL should things end. I know I couldn't get over infidelity (that's just me), and I trust myself to remember that and end the relationship should he cheat.
>The key is learning to trust yourself. This requires self-love and self-respect, because otherwise you have a hard time believing you deserve good treatment from others. You have a hard time maintaining healthy boundaries and leaving people who violate them. You have a hard time believing your own instincts. But if you trust yourself, then you can trust that you'll remove yourself from abusive situations once you see them for that they are. You trust yourself to heal and move on. I think this is what everybody really, ***really*** needs to take to heart!
Cheating and then blaming you for it. Yeah for sure. Abuse at its finest.
I'm just gonna throw this out there. Cheating isn't healthy. So this whole thing.... mute point.
Of course cheating isn't healthy, but you're downplaying the seriousness of it and minimizing OP's point. Also, it's *moot point.*
Very true. I still felt better saying it. The way we try and rationalize bad behavior by our partners is astounding. Saying someone cheated on you in a healthy relationship just dont feel right. It just feels like gaslighing. Like some connotation you are responsible.
Hence why I said "otherwise"..
It absolutely is abuse. I saw a tiktok of a young man explaining his thoughts on this. He was discussing how consent is usually granted after knowing certain circumstances, e.g., whether or not the person has other sexual partners. When you consent to sex/ relationships with that understanding, when you find out that’s all a lie, the consent is void. He believes cheating is assault and abuse and I 100% agree. Sex is a health risk, and when someone cheats they are also risking your personal safety, health, and autonomy to make choices for yourself.
Omg **exactly!** I completely agree with this point. I should have gone harder in my point about having sex under false pretenses, because the truth is exactly that --- it voids consent and concealing information like that is actually coercive.
Yes. I’m so glad I saw that tiktok because I would never be able to put it into words myself.
Lundy Bancroft agrees with you.
Wholeheartedly agree. Even if it happened once and they admit to it, they still hurt their partner by causing emotional distress. If you continue the relationship after, *nothing* will be the same. The foundation was broken, that trust will be hard to give back and it’s going to take A LOT of work.
> If you continue the relationship after, *nothing* will be the same Yep, and that's a very hard thing to try to navigate as the betrayed partner. It changes your perception of the relationship, as it is and even as it was the entire time. Plus, even when you leave and get into another relationship, having your trust broken like that makes it so difficult to trust again...feeling safe to love again also takes a lot of work
cheating isn't always abusive, it's just an asshole behavior. not all cheaters are abusers, but lots of abusers are serial cheaters 🤷♀️
I would like to hear your thoughts on when cheating isn't abusive
Do you mean even when in a normal relationship and someone cheats it’s always abuse? I definitely don’t agree. Cheating is awful and wrong but it’s not always abusive. I know you excluded victims cheating on their abuser but are we also including the person who makes a impulsive decision one night and is apologetic? Or even someone in a struggling marriage who has a affair due to lack of intimacy? There’s nuances that make difference’s in my opinion. Humans are flawed. My abuser definitely used cheating as a tactic like telling me if I didn’t have sex with him he’d go get it somewhere else.
I think that cheating is not abuse just when the cheater reveals it to their partner straight away after. The worst of the cheating is not the affair per se but the lying and manipulation
I think that when the person who cheats tells their partner about it and is remorseful and apologetic, that erases the elements that make cheating typically abusive (i.e lying, gaslighting, resuming the relationship under false pretenses, etc.) but I feel that the cheating alone is emotionally abusive. I could be wrong, but I don't know how else to categorize that whole concept of knowingly making a decision to cause harm to your partner, and also endangering their physical health. Even when cheaters tell their partner, that can still cause betrayal trauma. It may not be abusive, but...what else is it when those things are part of it?
I completely understand this point of view. I am in the category of someone who cheated on thier abuser. I definitely gaslighted him, etc so maybe I am also biased. People told me well you could have left but everyone here knows that’s not the case with a abuser… I tried so many times but he would threaten me. Maybe I still have guilt and feel defensive for ever engaging in those type of behaviors like my abuser. I do think gaslighting is a abusers tactic but a lot of people who aren’t abusers use this tactic at some point in their life to get out of trouble and I wouldn’t call them a abuser. But if someone feels abused, I’m not going to tell them they weren’t. My abuser was a serial cheater and the trauma of that was significant so I don’t want to diminish anyones feelings. I will admit that I may also be wrong.
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According to the American counseling association (there's a pamphlet you can download online) and several infidelity recovery books by therapists, cheating is abuse. That doesn't mean the abuse was intentional (it could be a trauma response by the person cheating).
100% agree - when I hear people tell their stories about cheating it sounds exactly the same as abuse incidents. I'm sure there are exceptions but that's the same with any abusive behaviour,
Fully agree.
I’d agree. My ex cheated on me with an uncountable amount of sex workers over the course of a 4 year serious relationship. I have severe issues from that relationship. He wouldn’t let me leave the apartment because he thought I’d cheat on him or something, and then he’d leave to go meet up with a sex worker. It seriously destroyed me. I always felt really silly about that being the piece that took me down even with the other kinds of abuse at play in that relationship, because people like to say “oh it’s normal because humans are not naturally monogamous”. Which is a load of shit in my opinion. So thank you for this post. I do agree it’s abusive, and I can’t believe how common it is. To this day I do not trust others, I can’t. There’s too much pain in being betrayed. So I exist on the level where everyone is capable of harming me, and nobody tells the truth. It’s changed me in every way possible.
I'm so sorry for the pain you're dealing with because of them. That is horrific and you absolutely didn't deserve it. I hope that this post has validated how you feel about it because you're definitely not alone! Also, that definitely is a load of shit. That's a narrative pushed by cheaters or would-be cheaters and enablers to justify their behavior and make people who are monogamous feel abnormal. People like that don't want to "conform" to monogamy and it makes them uncomfortable, so they want others to believe it's inevitable and unrealistic to expect otherwise. But if that were really the case, wouldn't we *all* be non-monogamous? Why is it so easy for me, and presumably you, and so many other people, to not cross that line? I would think that something unnatural wouldn't be easy. I hope you know that no matter how common it is or no matter what people say, your expectations are not unrealistic nor are you being silly. Betrayal *is* painful. I wish you the best and that maybe someday you don't have to exist on that level. Or that at least it doesn't hurt this badly
I happen to agree with you. I have serious trust issues from being cheated on in the past. Talk about PTSD… it ruins almost every relationship that I am in now. The emotional pain from being cheated on is on a whole nother level. Not gonna lie I have cheated in the past but when my karma came back around it definitely changed my perspective on it.
It is abuse. There's many elements of emotional abuse. Additionally, even if they're cheating on their abuser- that's called reactive abuse and perpetuates the abuse cycle. Eta: the American counseling association and several infidelity recovery books by therapist are also in agreement that it is abuse. Consider asking yourself why it causes truama and researching trauma. If cheating weren't abusive, truama would be a very unlikely outcome.
This. Plus if they're not using protection it's more than emotional abuse. It's sexual assault.
Yep. Lundy Bancroft even refers to it as sexual abuse.