When I was maybe fourteen or fifteen, my father, who was always full of such therapist-inducing words of wisdom, sat me down and said, "You should never get married because men cannot be faithful to one woman. Marriage as a concept will never work and you should just save yourself the trouble by understanding this now."
They say that we emulate the behavior of our parents. If this is the case, then I have a poor future ahead of me- my mother was another man's mistress for seven years and otherwise didn't date and my father has always had multiple girlfriends at the same time. He has a wife now, and one main girlfriend- at whose home he stays on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and some of the other women still call him sometimes.
For that matter, my step-mother also has other boyfriends, though I'm somewhat of the opinion that if my father wasn't screwing around, she'd cut it out as well. But who knows. That's really just speculation.
I haven't been in enough relationships to cheat on anyone. Though I think I tend to fall into the monogamous category, I'm not sure either. I've now been casually seeing Mr.Aloof for eight months. But we've never had a discussion about monogamy. I'm not seeing anyone else, though I did toy with screwing an ex when Mr.Aloof was on one of his many week disappearing acts once. But it's since occurred to me that I didn't really want to screw my ex, I was just frustrated by Mr.Aloof's absence.
My old flatmate C kept asking if Mr.Aloof was my boyfriend to which I resoundingly answered "No."
"But you aren't seeing anyone else", she would say, "and you aren't actively looking for anyone else." and I would agree with her. "So what if he was seeing someone else? Wouldn't you be upset?"
And I have given that some thought. In general, the answer is no. We have never said we are exclusive to one another, and there is a lot of time in between when we see each other, normally. If he was seeing someone else, well, it doesn't seem to impact or change the relationship we have. I suppose I would be upset if I thought that by spreading himself too thin this was part of the reason I didn't see him that often, but I don't believe that's the case. If pressed, I'd have to say that I don't actually think he's seeing anyone else, but I suppose I could be wrong, and the fact is, if I am wrong, I don't actually think it bothers me that much.
My first ever boyfriend cheated on me. But we had a long distance relationship, and it was my first love. It doesn't even blip on the radar now except that I was just about to type 'and no one has cheated on me' when I realized that wasn't actually true.
Many of my close friends have cheated on their partners, both male and female alike, both hetero and homo sexual. Sometimes they have been found out and other times not. Sometimes it was a one-off occurrence, and sometimes it was habitual. Unfortunately, it hasn't done much to change my overall assumptions about human nature introduced so long ago by my father, except my father was being rather sexist by restricting his comments to men.
I don't actually believe that all people cheat, and often I think people who cheat are expressing some other emotion or feeling that they are not dealing with otherwise. But for those who just do it because they want to, not meaning to harm their partner, but not willing to pass up the thrill of the unknown or an opportunity, I suppose what it comes down to, is 'is your partner on board with what you're doing'. And in this respect, I perhaps am more lenient and open minded about such things. Polyamory, polyfidelity, and swinging are all fine by me, as long as one is honest with one's partners.
I guess it can be hard for other people to understand, but when it works well, it really does seem to work. And you don't get all the problems associated with cheating which inherently implies dishonesty by it's definition.
Of course, it takes people a while to figure all these things out for themselves. To understand their motivations, to figure out what it is they really want- and then have the integrity and motivation to act on those realizations. To be honest, a lot of people never determine either, and even those that do often don't find the energy to act on it. Though I think society would be a lot better off if everyone did.
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