Infidelity, a question.

[Drifterwood]

I had an experience earlier this year.

By coincidence I hooked up with four women that I have been seeing over a period of eight days in different parts of the world. Three are married. One for twenty plus years, she has had a string of lovers, she has one back home and I am just a sexmate, her husband chooses not to know. One has a much older husband who knows that she goes out to meet her sexual needs, the other chooses not to tell me her situation. The fourth is single and has never talked to me about expectations.

I greatly enjoyed the sex with all four women separately. All are so different, got different things from the relationship and gave me different things. Personally this confirmed my own polyamorous nature. I have no desire to have them monogamous to me, and with the possible exception of the single woman, they have no demands on me. I found all four encounters sexually and emotionally fulfilling and as I said all different, but not in a way that I would even think to judge between them.

It also confirmed to me that sexual monogamy is not or does not have to be a deal breaker for people. I think people make it such, rather than it being a natural state. With the exception of Helga and SG, most women seem to be saying that they expect and make known their need for monogamy, yet my own experience is with a string of married women?? The three I am seeing have no intention of leaving their husbands, and if they don't know, they have no intention of telling them.

I think that if you want to be monogamous, you should not expect it and rather realise that you need to work incredibly hard to preserve it, otherwise people become miserable or leave, or cheat on you in the hope that you won't know, ever.

 

[AlteredEgo]

I fully expect monogamy, and am likely to retaliate if cheated on. I make this clear up front, and my prenuptial agreement has stiff penalties for hiding debt, or hiding sexual partners. I would prefer to have the relationship dissolved if sex with some other person becomes so important to my husband. I certainly would not want him fucking me anymore. Half the point of monogamy is to control my level of exposure to infection and disease. The other half is just my feelings on the matter. I don't feel as loved if I can't be the only one. I'd rather be with someone who feels the same way. But people change, and my husband knows me well. If in the future, he is no longer content to have one lover, he's free to try to change my mind. If after all the time I supported him through insecurity and fear, and sexual dysfunction, he cannot be content with just me, I'll be very hurt, and probably move on. But who knows? People change, myself included. I can't swear I will always feel this way, so I'm open to the discussion.

 

[Drifterwood]

I fully expect monogamy, and am likely to retaliate if cheated on.

I don't have any issue with this AE. You know yourself, you know what you want and you know why you want it. You are also honest enough to see that things may change.

The point of the OP is more to examine what you might call a blind reaction to infidelity where the fidelity has been taken as an expectation.

You might equally turn round to me and say that my non expectation of monogamy is a guard against comittment and the desire not to have the responsibility of someone else's comittment to me. You might be right and I do think about that.

 

[deleted3782]

The point of the OP is more to examine what you might call a blind reaction to infidelity where the fidelity has been taken as an expectation.

I think we all go into relationships with expectations...whether it is the expectation that we will be polyamorous or monogamous. Of course its a good idea to talk about your expectations before you become deeply connected, that should reduce the chances of a "blind reaction". I think most people have a pretty strong sense of where the other person is on that spectrum...those who don't are probably jumping the gun.

Years and years ago I was in a monogamous relationship with a guy...we were together a couple of years. One evening a mutual friend made a comment "you know ___ is sleeping with random guys, right?". In reality I was not aware that my partner was cheating on me, and it made me feel like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. I had the same feelings AlteredEgo had... if you want to sleep with someone else, then go for it, but you won't be doing it in addition to me.

For me, some of my ego was involved as well...or maybe I just felt rejected, or maybe even undesirable, or maybe all three. To the question of the OP, within the next week or so, I found one of the guys my partner was sleeping with on the sly - a college kid - and messed around with him myself. I felt vindicated that I could cheat on the partner who was cheating on me with the guy he was cheating on me with. Turn about is fair play. To my knowledge, neither my (ex)partner nor the guy he was having a fling with knew what I did...and never put the whole equation together. I still go out of my way to avoid that ex.

 

[Bbucko]

It is "correct" not to care about the other person, but I am not sure that I would always believe people so easily signing up to this POV. Several reasons, first, why do people take revenge on the other person? Secondly, why do I hear so often people talking about "my man", my BF, my GF? This implies a form of ownership or at least an entitlement of expectation. This is mine and I am not sharing.

What value the trust in the sex of monogamy, when it is at best infrequent and mediocre as we hear so often on this board? I have never had a problem distinguishing, relationships, intimacy and sex and like MB, I had to think way back to find a time when I should have been upset by cheating, but when I thought about, I couldn't have cared less.

First of all: I have never technically cheated on anyone, though (especially when I was in my 20s during the 1980s) there was a sort of anything-goes-until-I-say-it-stops kinda thing going on, and discovered that, even within the context of an open relationship, some (unspoken) rules were just waiting to be broken. And I always seemed to be the one committing the faux pas :redface:

These, of course, were the reactions of a rather insecure young man to my choice in extra-marital beaux. He wasn't so mad that I'd "stepped out" (the monogamy ended at his instigation after less than a year of what was, ultimately a four-year relationship) rather than the guy with whom I'd been seen cavorting in a bar, while he was visiting family in Venezuela.

In his case, it was the person, not me, who angered him so. But that came directly from his feeling uniquely threatened by this one person (not without a sort of insecure rationality [if you forgive the contradiction in terms]). That is not to say that I didn't have the wrath of God hanging over me the moment he found out, but I know that if it had been any other guy (and I'd been more discrete), he'd have never known nor cared a fig.

On the other hand, I've been betrayed, more often than I'd care to think about, by guys who demanded monogamy yet were entirely incapable of practicing it themselves. The older I got, the less drama this caused, and to repeat so many others, it wasn't the sex so much as the lie that enraged me, as well as the narcissistic double-standard. But still, if I laid "blame" anywhere it was at my partner, not whatever hunk of flesh he wound up with.

I think that a big part of it is that I've always had something of a sexual compulsive with a libido run amok-type reputation. I am capable of monogamy (my last nine-year relationship proved that conclusively), but it always felt more alien than natural and required sublimating much of my sexual tension into other areas. I am also an effortless flirt, which I'm not always aware of doing.

The default position, or rather what I constantly hear, is that sex is better when emotionally attached, and/or in a relationship. This has not necessarily been my experience, personally and in as much as I can speak for the people I have had sex with.

I can speak with some authority on this, though it's entirely personal and highly anecdotal (though with over 1000 sexual partners over 33 years, more of a survey, actually ): my most fundamental breakthroughs and flat-out most memorable encounters were with people with whom I felt no emotional attachment whatsoever. That is to say that they were either one-offs or very limited run fuckbuds, and the best was almost inevitably the first. Much like chasing a drug buzz, recapturing that elusive first time can be a very difficult thing, indeed.

I will be the first to admit that the troubles/abuses I experienced during adolescence obviously have had an impact on this; I also believe that the generalizations about differences between male and female sexual response are, in my experience, totally valid (at least to me: I do recognize that not all men are pigs or dogs, just nearly all the ones I've met). And, of course, I've always readily admitted to having deplorably shitty taste in beaux.

 

[Drifterwood]

I think we all go into relationships with expectations...whether it is the expectation that we will be polyamorous or monogamous. Of course its a good idea to talk about your expectations before you become deeply connected, that should reduce the chances of a "blind reaction". I think most people have a pretty strong sense of where the other person is on that spectrum...those who don't are probably jumping the gun.

I have found this to be complicated by two connected factors. An expectation is not the same as a need, and our needs change and develop. On top of this is the complication that many expectations are only received morality that we have not developed into a true personal morality.

I can speak with some authority on this, though it's entirely personal and highly anecdotal (though with over 1000 sexual partners over 33 years, more of a survey, actually ): my most fundamental breakthroughs and flat-out most memorable encounters were with people with whom I felt no emotional attachment whatsoever. That is to say that they were either one-offs or very limited run fuckbuds, and the best was almost inevitably the first. Much like chasing a drug buzz, recapturing that elusive first time can be a very difficult thing, indeed.

I will be the first to admit that the troubles/abuses I experienced during adolescence obviously have had an impact on this; I also believe that the generalizations about differences between male and female sexual response are, in my experience, totally valid (at least to me: I do recognize that not all men are pigs or dogs, just nearly all the ones I've met). And, of course, I've always readily admitted to having deplorably shitty taste in beaux.

Manwhore :tongue:

Well with slightly less experience, but with women, I see the generalised differences in a subtly different light. Most of the women I have known (and maybe it really is just me and the type I attract) need earthy unfettered sexual expression. Perhaps many suppress this because they have other more highly prioritised needs, but the need is there. Interestingly many ancient cultures recognised this and wove it into the fabric of their morality.

But anyway, the point is that it is perhaps safer to let this need go (men and women) with someone whom you choose purely for sex and maybe only once. I don't know, but it has been my experience that no strings attached has lead to free expression of desire.

And of course, some have this in their relationships.

 

[chefgreg]

Both.

 

[tamuning]

The "rules" were that any outside-the-marriage action was to be disclosed, discussed, approved before the activity occurred. The reality was that there was plenty of action going on outside the marriage with no disclosure, no discussion, and no approval.

How did I feel? Stupid, humiliated, angry, betrayed. Stupid that I could have been so naive to think I could actually trust the woman I loved and had married, humiliated that the disclosure happened in a very public way, angry with her and with the pencil-dicked attorney she was fucking but mostly angry at myself for being so damned stupid and not man enough to keep her satisfied, and betrayed by my wife and her PDA lover and by mutual friends who knew what the hell was going on long before I did. Like I said, stupid.

But the greatest of these is trust. I may be nothing else, but I am trustworthy. I should have been a dog.

So, 10+ years hence, I am over it but will never forget the lessons learned. In that regard perhaps one is never truly "over it".