ThatGirlInGray
New member
No, there really isn't any integrity in doing that. Got a family? Be honest with them. Got kids? They can handle "Mommy and Daddy aren't in love anymore" better than "...and one of us has hurt the other in order to see if we could all still live under the same roof. Be grateful!"
Never going to accept "for the children/family" as an excuse, sorry. And I'm never going to forgive the kind of person who does this to a family, because of what it did to mine.
You're assuming that the spouse is going to react at all rationally to honesty. Case in point: a friend of mine's marriage was failing. Badly. She didn't love him anymore, wouldn't sleep with him, they had yelling/screaming matches in front the kids, he wanted them to try counseling, but she wasn't willing to do any work. AND, if he left, there wasn't enough money for two households so his kids would suffer even more, AND she was enough of a manipulative bitch to keep their kids from him until she was absolutely legally FORCED to let him see them. So he stayed and did what he could. He stayed in a broken, fucked-up situation so that the kids would have at least one dependable parent around. Was it GOOD for the kids? Hell no. But as far as he could see it was better than the other options available at the time. His cheating (because that's what some of you would call it) and lying to his wife-in-name-only could hardly be seen as a betrayal when she was already so far off the deep end. He was trying to keep a little bit of sanity to keep himself together while keeping the peace as best he could in the situation he found himself in. Did I feel at all guilty in aiding and abetting that? You bet your ass I did NOT. And a year or so later (long after I was out of the picture) was I happy to hear he had managed to get a divorce and was dating again? Absolutely.
So for those who, as children, had homes broken apparently due to cheating, I'm sorry for your pain, but it's likely there were other problems contributing. Cheating in my experience is the symptom, not the cause. I will say, though, that it's never a solution either. Long-term cheating is something I have no patience for. Especially if you get caught, but even if you don't, it should only ever be something short-term that drastically alters your perception of what's going on in your life and opens your eyes to what you need to do to change things.
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