What Do You Do When Your Friends Cheat? (marrying, mistress, attracted)
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What are your thoughts? Would you cover for a friend who cheated? Would you still be friends with them? How much are you willing to forgive your friends for and what point do you say "this is not the kind of person I feel good calling my friend"?
1) Cover for them? No. I wouldn't want to get involved AT ALL. Plus, what if they ask me to cover for them and I screwed it up and they got caught blah blah blah.
2) It depends what type of cheating they were doing. Most of my good friends are married and no way I'd be happy about them getting a little something something on the side.
I do have one friend in a complete sham marriage at this point though. His wife is frankly nutty and he gets no loving whatsoever. While I would prefer he divorced her, I would not judge him if he had an affair given the circumstances.
I guess every situation is different but in most cases I'd just want to be left completely out of it.
I don't think you would understand Denny...I think you would feel abandoned by that friend and angry at them for quitting on you when you felt you needed them most.Unfortunately I have been on both sides of the fence and speak from experience.
If the cheater is angry about a friend "quitting on" him, he shouldn't have "quit on" his SO.
I don't think you would understand Denny...I think you would feel abandoned by that friend and angry at them for quitting on you when you felt you needed them most.Unfortunately I have been on both sides of the fence and speak from experience.
Speak for yourself, please. Just because you've been in that situation doesn't mean you can accurately predict how others will react. I've made some serious mistakes in the past, one of which cost me a friend. When I look back, I don't blame my friend for walking away. I blame myself for doing something that I knew would push them away, but doing it anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coolhand68
First of all my friends shouldn't be using me as their moral compass. You should have it within yourself to do what's right or wrong. To think it's ok to do something because a friend didn't object is a huge rationalization and pushing the onus of the blame onto others. You take responsibilities for your own actions. If you choose to cheat and get caught, then you face the consequences.
So you feel that a friend would be unreasonable in ending a friendship with you if you started smoking, but you can't see how it is unreasonable to end a friendship with someone because he is having an affair. This is a perfect example of how we all have different standards, and it's very difficult to define who is right or wrong. It's an individual scale that we use to judge others as friends. For example, I would not be friends with someone who is extremely religious. That doesn't mean that extremely religious people are bad, but they just aren't a good fit for me. I wouldn't end a friendship over it though so long as he/she understood the boundaries. I also choose not to be friends with people who are drug addicts, but if a close friend were to become one I wouldn't just turn my back on them without trying to help them.
I have all types of friends, from rabid sports fans, outdoor adventurists, couch potatoes, techno-geeks, and hippies to ex-cons, mobsters and veterans. Some are nerdy, lazy, hyper, laid back, funny, sober, crazy, wild, shy, inhibited, uninhibited, jealous, generous, cheap, nosey, private, outgoing etc. I tend to look for the things I like in people rather than the those things I don't like. I can always establish boundaries in any given freindship by how much of my time I devote to them. If one of my friends likes to gamble, drink heavy and party hard that doesn't make me guilty by association. You can always find flaws in others, including your friends and family, but wouldn't you rather focus on the positive?
People rationalize cheating in all sorts of ways. I agree that people should take responsibility for their own actions. But most people don't. There are people out there who cheat and then manage to blame the partner they cheated on. And there others who defend their infidelity by saying that everyone else is doing it too.
I find it hard to believe that you only look for the good qualities in a person. Most people evaluate a person based on their good AND bad qualities. And I would hardly describe infidelity as just a flaw. Someone gambling, drinking too much, or smoking are flaws. But infidelity is much more serious. It speaks to a person's character. I'm just floored how trivial some of you make it out to be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
I do have one friend in a complete sham marriage at this point though. His wife is frankly nutty and he gets no loving whatsoever. While I would prefer he divorced her, I would not judge him if he had an affair given the circumstances.
That's where we differ. I would. I had a friend who was in a bad marriage and he'd regularly joke about getting some on the side. But I didn't see the humor. I didn't care for his wife, but I didn't think she deserved to be hurt that way. So I encouraged him to either seek counseling or get out of the marriage. After a painful divorce, he thanked me for not letting him do something stupid like cheat.
Not saying I don't see flaws in others, but I don't go out of my way to look for them either. You have to weigh the good against the bad. My point is, if I have a close friend who gets involved in an affair, I stay out of it. If he asks me to lie for him the answer is no, but I don't shut him out of my life either.
We have a married friend who was once intending to have an affair, just because of the perfect way he described what he was going to "do" to her. She was very excited to tell me all about it. I was very surprised. (We are friends with her husband, too.) I asked her, "Well, what about (her husband)?"
She said, "Oh, I will always love him. He's the father of my child. We'll never break up."
I was speechless in the face of that logic. Anyway, I told her that I was sorry, I couldn't get excited about it with her, and that I didn't think she should do it. It was kind of odd to see the expression on her face because it was like she really hadn't stopped to think of how this looked to an outsider. I'm not really sure what she ended up doing.
Like someone else mentioned, if a person betrays their own partner, how does that bode for their loyalty to their friends?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mearth
If the cheater is angry about a friend "quitting on" him, he shouldn't have "quit on" his SO.
The disloyal have no right to demand loyalty.
There are sides to every story....A cheater is a cheater I understand that,but some have "reasons" other than just screwing around.Emotional needs not being met,incapatabilty issues that NEVER rear there ugly head the first year etc etc etc.
I'm not a judge and neither are any of the other posters.I just go by what's working for me...to KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT AND STAY OUT OF IT,because trust me,there WILL be fallout from it when it comes to light and I don't want some mushroom cloud laying woman mad at me or the two idiots getting back together and then using me for a scapegoat.
.A cheater is a cheater I understand that,but some have "reasons" other than just screwing around.Emotional needs not being met,...
No one should rely on an SO for the meeting of the entirety of their emotional needs. If they do, that is their own fault, and the SO doesn't deserve to be punished for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by muleskinner
...trust me,there WILL be fallout from it when it comes to light and I don't want some mushroom cloud laying woman mad at me or the two idiots getting back together and then using me for a scapegoat.
Good reason, but the best way to avoid that fallout is to drop both parties.
There ARE 2 sides to every story, as you say. And I wouldn't deny anyone the right to get divorced.
But cheating is the selfish coward's way out, and evidence that such a person has ZERO concern for anyone else's feelings. No matter how badly you have been betrayed, you can retain your integrity by divorcing before getting together with someone else.
I have a couple of female friends who cheat on their husbands. They know to never use my as a cover, however, I'm still dear friends with them. I don't condone it, but I value their friendship and they have their reasons - I don't live their lives and am not in their marriages day to day. Unless I'm in someone's circumstances, I try not to judge.
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