In the open relationship thread several people talk about how common it is for thier freinds to cheat on thier spouces.

I found that to be very foreign from my experience. As a child we had only one couple in our subdivision get divorced. I only knew one kid in High School whose parents were divorced. I only know one of my friends who is getting divorced and that is because his wife went out and cheated on him. None of my friends have ever cheated on thier wives/husbands to my knowledge and I am the "keeper of secrets" in my group of friends.

So divorece and cheating seem to be pretty rare things to me. So am i living in a bubble? is my experience normative?

When I was young (7-10 years old), the divorces came fast and furious. True, I lived in "projects," but still. Over half split up.

Today, though the divorces among our immediate friends is almost non-existent (only two I can think of), you can see some of the relationships cracking around the edges. One couple is verifiably experiencing cheating (husband told me) and a few others we suspect of it. Body language is an indication of strain and there's plenty of that happening among MANY of them, so I expect to see the breakups happening with more frequency in the coming years.

I'm pretty sure the national divorce rate in the United States is still hovering around 45%, so its actually quite common.

Hey, I'm the last to admit that there havn't been some hard times in my own marriage, but cheating wasn't part of it.

And I only know of 1 that it was a factor in their marriage.

I'm not so niave that I don't think it happens, but I think it's more strain of everyday pressures of life.

Amonm my more affluent friends it's trying to maintain that balance or work and family, and making time for each other as a couple.

Among my more "blue collar" friends (for lack of a better phrase) it's money issues. Putting in 40-80 hour work weeks and just living paycheck to paycheck. Paying for healthcare which can be easily $1,000/month for a family hmo plan.

All of these stresses may or may not lead someone to take refuge in another person, but I think more often that not, cheating in and of itself was not the root prob.

I think again, marriage is partly a decision. And if you know that you want to be with this person, you know that as long as you work on things and try to keep growing, things usually get better. I guess that's if there was a solid foundation to begin with though...

I dunno. My 2 cents.

quote:

Originally posted by Heroic:
In the open relationship thread several people talk about how common it is for thier freinds to cheat on thier spouces.

I found that to be very foreign from my experience. As a child we had only one couple in our subdivision get divorced. I only knew one kid in High School whose parents were divorced. I only know one of my friends who is getting divorced and that is because his wife went out and cheated on him. None of my friends have ever cheated on thier wives/husbands to my knowledge and I am the "keeper of secrets" in my group of friends.

So divorece and cheating seem to be pretty rare things to me. So am i living in a bubble? is my experience normative?

I think way back (when dinosaurs roamed the earth and there was no internet) that there were fewer divorces ...at least in my sheltered life. The divorce explosion started to get quite huge around the end of the seventies So Heroic...I don't think you lived in a bubble.

As for cheating..I haven't done that..theres no reason I would want to. My opinion is that you cheat because somethings lacking in your life...whether it be communication or trust or sex or whatever. When you can't talk to your partner about what bugs you then that trust is broken...and thats when cheating happens.

I'm hesitant to chime in on this one, but here's my 2 cents:

Staying married is a choice that we make. There have been a lot of days in my 20 years of marriage that I didn't *feel* like I loved my husband -- it was more of tolerating him. I'm sure it has been the same for him. But we made a vow to each other that promised until death do us part. I think a lot of people think that "love" is a noun that denotes a certain feeling or emotion. It is my belief that "love" is a verb denoting an action. It is something that we do regardless of how we feel emotionally at times. Staying married is work. It is a job.

I think that our society is becoming more and more 'disposable'. Marriage is not entered into with the same regard as it was 20 or 30 years ago. There is more of an attitude of "if this doesn't work, we'll just get divorced". Also it is much more acceptable for people to live together first. I wish I could remember where I read/heard this but statistics show that people who live together before marriage are about twice as likely to get a divorce as those who do not. (I believe that was the number, it was at least that or higher if my memory serves me.) Plus, second and third marriages are even more likely to end in divorce than first marriages.

I think it is that attitude of disposableness, that makes it easier for someone to cheat on their spouse. Maybe there are underlying issues such as something lacking in the marriage, self-perception, feeling that one is possibly missing something, but it still comes down to a choice that is made.

I'm still in the midst of this very situation myself. I'm sure some people would not view what I did as cheating since it was all online, but when my husband discovered emails that I exchanged with another man, his very words to me in the ensuing conversation were "if you ever cheat on me again" and "how do I know it's me pleasing you when we're making love or are you fantasizing about him".

I fell into this situation very innocently. I probably said some things that I would have never said in person and before I knew it I was being invited to "play". Maybe I was in need of the excitement and reassurance that I was a desirable woman, maybe I just wanted to escape the daily grind that we all live... kids, bills, more bills, laundry and cooking and cleaning that never end.... whatever the reason (I'm still trying to figure all of that out, btw but I really don't think it was because of anything lacking in my marriage. My bedroom couldn't be a more exciting place and our lines of communication have always been pretty open. I really think it was something within me.) I took the bait and for 6 weeks was involved with this other younger man who made me feel beautiful and desired. Guilt eventually drove me to confess part of my sin to my husband. I only wish I'd been totally honest with him to begin with and that he didn't find out the extent of my "cheating" accidentally.

I'm just very thankful that he loves me enough to still want me in his life and that his attitude is "until death do us part"...

I'm not sure any of this makes sense because my emotions about all of this are still extremely raw. I only know that I am making a choice every single day now not to get on the computer and seek out my online friend again. And for the record, although he's on the opposite coast at the moment, his parents are here in my hometown and he's asked me if I would meet him in person when he comes home again... that's another time I will have to make a choice to *love* my husband and be faithful to him.

My 2 cents... Thank you to a certain board member here for the PM/email therapy sessions. To everyone else, Sorry this was so long...

Honey, if you read this... I love you and you will always be my choice! You are the love of my life and I would be nothing without you!

Wow, Cyber Lady! Your wisdom and candor are much appreciated.

Just a question about your cyber romp. Do you think there were any benefits to your experience? You have said that the heat in your marriage continues to grow. Wondering if this helped or hurt.

I've been reading Gail Sheehy's book "Sex and the Seasoned Woman." This is the same author who wrote "Passages" many years back. She talks about a pilot light lover who rarely stays in your life, but can reignite a flame within you. Just wondering if your cyber relationship may have acted at all in this capacity.

Yes, I did notice you mentioned that things were good before this happened, but sounds like things are getting better for you all the time, so I thought I'd ask.

Out of my group of friends, all of them had parents whom either got divorsed before they were born and were with their second spouse or divorsed while i was friends with them. I don't think that it is this common, Ive probably just had bad luck with finding friends who have had pretty good lives, parentally.

Unfortunately, the media portraying cheating and divorse and having it occur so often makes for people to question their loyalty in some cases and stray in other cases.

Also unfortunately these days, I think that the reason why divorse is so much less a taboo than it was before is because one finds their 'soul mate' earlier in life, without realizing that they may not have found him/her, but perhaps the 'mate' at the time. People are simply not waiting as long to find out if this 'feeing' will last.. rather tying the knot because " it has to work out' instead of it will.

~Kathy~

In my circle of friends, most are intact families. Problem is that, as Freddy notes, many of the relationships are fraying apart at the seams. I wonder how many will dissolve when the youngest goes off to college.

Thank you for your kind words Cecily. I was wondering how my post would be received so I'm glad to know that maybe someone has benefitted from it.

To answer your question... things were already great in my bedroom. Bragging about them are probably what got me into the situation I wound up in! I don't really think it made that much of a difference in what was happening in my "real" relationship. The only thing I can say that was a possible positive is that my husband and I have really talked a lot since this has happened. He was listening but maybe just not getting my message beforehand and this situation painted the picture he needed to see to really get my message. So maybe it was a positive thing in that regard.

I've thumbed through the book you mentioned btw, but I must have missed the part you refer to. I thought it had some interesting thoughts, but I found that, imho, it too had a "disposable" attitude regarding marriage.

quote:

I think that our society is becoming more and more 'disposable'. Marriage is not entered into with the same regard as it was 20 or 30 years ago. There is more of an attitude of "if this doesn't work, we'll just get divorced". Also it is much more acceptable for people to live together first. I wish I could remember where I read/heard this but statistics show that people who live together before marriage are about twice as likely to get a divorce as those who do not. (I believe that was the number, it was at least that or higher if my memory serves me.) Plus, second and third marriages are even more likely to end in divorce than first marriages.

Your stats are just a tad off, read this interesting article...

Will This Marriage Last?

A wedding-season guide for handicapping the newlyweds. A variety of factors can lower the odds of divorce to 20%, or raise it to 70%

By PO BRONSON AND ASHLEY MERRYMAN

Posted Friday, Jun. 30, 2006

Wedding season is here again. Your attendance has been requested. Dust off your finest, buy a well-wrapped gift, and slap on an optimistic smile.

One of the great bystander sports at weddings is looking for clues that forecast whether this couple will last, or whether they'll just become another divorce statistic. You'll keep these thoughts to yourself, but the mental guessing is nearly impossible to turn off. You've got your hunches. You would have more confidence in the wedding if this couple had moved in together for six months to test-drive this relationship. You might not worry that she was raised in a broken home, but you do worry that he was married before. And the groom hasn't darkened a church door in years, but the bride insisted they get married in a chapel — you're not sure what to make of that.

The truth is that some of these factors actually matter, and some do not. Every wedding is haunted by that axiom, "Half of all marriages end in divorce." But it's not a random coin flip. At the time of a couple's wedding, there are factors already present that can raise the odds of divorce to as high as 70%, or lower it to nearly 20%.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the divorce rate has stabilized. An average couple now has a 57% chance of seeing their 15th wedding anniversary. If they make it that far, most will reach "til death do us part."

Let's group the risk factors into three. The first grouping is the couple's relationship. The second grouping is financial issues. The third grouping is their family history.

Regarding the couple, their age matters. If they are just out of high school, that's not so good. (No surprise.) The odds improve dramatically if they're at least 25 — but don't assume the older the better. Marrying at age 35 is not any better than age 25.

Most couples today cohabit before they marry. The crucial issue here is whether they moved in together with the full intention to get married, or whether they moved in together just because it was the logical thing to do, since he was always at her place anyway. You might think that living together is a sort of "trial period" that helps prevent bad marriages, since they can break up before taking an oath to each other. But the odds suggest the opposite; they divorce more. Why doesn't this filter work? Very likely, whatever it was that made them not want to get married in the first place ended up becoming a problem long-term.

If the couple has ever invited you over for dinner, you've got a good clue there. Does the groom substantially help with the housework, cleaning, and cooking? If he does, this may be one of the most important predictors of all. We don't usually think about this when they are standing at the altar, but the bride will definitely be thinking about it in two years if her husband has left all the chores to her. A man who does housework is also going to be involved in childrearing — another major benefit to the couple.

If this is a second marriage, for either bride or groom, their odds of divorce are somewhat higher. Remarried families have more complex issues to confront: exes to deal with, and stepchildren to raise. But this risk is often overstated; a middle-class second marriage has only 3% more risk than a first marriage.

Being religious doesn't make a couple happier with their marriage, but it does mean they might try a little harder to stick it out. FYI, among the major religions, Catholics get divorced the least. Protestants the most. But what is really important here is not what religion they are, but how devoted they are to practicing their faith. You're right to worry if the bride insisted that they get married in the chapel, when the groom really wanted a wedding at the beach.

Let's talk money. Money helps, a lot — but a relatively small amount of money goes a long way. If this couple will earn a modest $50,000 as a family, their odds of seeing their 15th anniversary jump to 68%. By and large, well-off couples divorce over personality conflicts while poorer couples divorce over alcoholism, physical abuse, and money problems. (Infidelity is a frequent deal-breaker, rich or poor.)

If you've heard that the bride and groom have been hunting for a house to buy, that's a good sign. Homeowners aren't happier in marriage than renters, but there's a permanence to their life — a connection to a community. The house is also a roadblock to divorce, being hard to divide.

Now for the really fun stuff — their families. Pay close attention to the parents of the bride and groom. Are they divorced? If so, it's been known for some time that their children are at higher risk of divorce when they marry. It's quite significant — it raises their odds of divorce by 14%. But you need to know a little more before applying this handicap. Before the parents divorced, was their conflict loud and visible to the children? Or was their conflict kept hushed behind closed doors? Surprisingly, it's the children of the latter who are getting divorced. Growing up in a home where they thought everything was fine — until their parents suddenly announced their divorce — leads those children not to trust their relationships.

Watch the bride and her father as they walk down the aisle. Are they tense with each other? If so, that's bad. Women with poor relationships to their fathers are more likely to get divorced from their husband. That's not the case for the groom — the quality of his relationship to his father does not impact his odds.

By now, all these risk factors probably seem overwhelming. Even worse, it seems that there's very little an engaged couple can do to help themselves. They can't reverse their parent's divorce, and they can't elevate their financial status overnight. They might be able to attend church, but if God hasn't spoken to them, faking it doesn't help.

But it's not all a fait accompli. There are many things a couple can do to improve their odds. Wait until they're 25, for instance. And a young man can learn to wash a toilet and roast a chicken. He can also learn to change a diaper — it's not that hard.

If the bride has a poor relationship with her father, her fate's not sealed either. Among those women, those who've created a strong bond with the groom's family counteract their risk.

The couple's expectations are a huge factor in the longevity of their marriage. Couples who have attended premarital classes or counseling cut their odds of divorce by almost a third. We don't know if the classes actually change the couples, or if those couples are already realistic and savvy to the dangers (which is why they were smart enough to take the class). But premarital counseling might be the best wedding gift any newlyweds can receive.

Bottom line, the weddings you attend this summer are likely to have much better odds of lasting than a coin flip. That's something to relish, when the champagne has run dry and the band covers Kool & The Gang and one of the bridesmaids has run off in tears.

Wow. First off let me say that my parents are still married 45 years. Not only that, they were dating since like the age of 9 and 10, Or should I say they had crushes on each other. They lived across the railroad tracks from each other back then. LOL and about 4 years ago they moved back to the same Road, and on the same property which my dad lived on, back when they first met.

I think its AWSOME, how my parents are with each other. I think it has worked because my dad keep no secrets from my mom, that I know of. They have great communication.

So I know that Marriage do work.

Now, back when I turned 18, I got hired at the job I work at to this day, im 38 now. Back then all I heard from the married guys was how bad marriage was, or how they had to pay child support and how they lost dang near everything to thier ex wives and such. I admit it scared the crap out of me, that and the fact that my girlfriend at the time, was constantly sneaking around cheating on me. We were each others first, so to this day I am not upset at her for wanting to experience other guys. Knowing what I know now, I think I should have been doing the same thing at such a young age.

The thing that hurt me the most was everyone knew she was seeing the other guy behind my back, but I did not know. The previous times I caught her, were simple things like finding love letters she wrote to other guys and such and her best freind told me she was cheating on me once, and there were a few other things I caught her doing.

Well I would drop her off at work everyday and then I would drive to work. Often times I would drop her off and I would often see 2 guys standing outside her job. She was sleeping with one of the guys on her lunch breaks, all her friends at her job knew, and they would always talk to me, like nothing was going on. But when I caught her, and found out the details, I found out lots of people knew. I felt like the biggest dumb dumb. LOL

I think that hurt me the most, not the fact she was humping some guy on her lunch breaks down the street from her job at her boss apartment. LOL

Her parents knew, her sisters knew, her friends knew. Talking about feeling used. LOL

I have been over it a long time. To this day her parents and sisters often contact my parents or other relatives trying to convince me to speak to her. I have not seen her since I moved her crap out my place back then. Its been a lot of years.


I know lots of couples who have been divorced and I know couples who are in the process of being divorced. Not only that, but where I work, there is this company called "We The People" (a chain of stores) which process the paper work for divorces and lots of other legal problems people have.

Well each day I would go into that business while working, the clerk there show me a blue stack and a red stack of folders full of customers information. The stacks are often get over a foot and a half high, One stack is for bankrupsy and the other stack is for Divorces. LOL

The girls there, get hundreds of new divorcies each week. Lots of people get divorced here in So cal. I last heard that our divorce rate is over 50%.

Seems like I need to move to the towns which some of you live, instead of here in So cal if I ever decide to marry. LOL

Since I do not want kids, I do not see any other reason to get married. I feel if my girl loves me she will be with me regardless I marry her or not.

I think a couple who stay together say 40 years and have never got married love each other more than a couple who did get married for the same length of time, because they do not have all the legal crap keeping them together, to me its obviously True love and not the fear of some Judge in a court house screwing on or the other over in a divorce. lol

Thats interesting Freddy. We are invited to Melissas best friends wedding next month. YIKES
Maybe I will print that and put some Happy faces next to the ones they pass on while sitting there as they walk down the isle. lol

The groom, is a LAPD officer here in the area and he often drive to the front of our place and flash that powerful light into our windows to get us to come outside and talk with him and his partner. Im thinking about getting one of those lights and flash it in his face as he is saying his vows next month. lol

quote:

Originally posted by Susexful:
The groom, is a LAPD officer here in the area and he often drive to the front of our place and flash that powerful light into our windows to get us to come outside and talk with him and his partner. Im thinking about getting one of those lights and flash it in his face as he is saying his vows next month. lol

Susexful that is a great idea, but save it for the reception during the toast! taht and get some flasher strobes!

Freddy, that's a great article, perhaps my stats were from some older research. I think it makes some great points about predicting which marriages will last. If you come from a background where marriage was highly regarded ie your parents are still married, etc. then I think you will probably be of an attitude that is committed to making your marriage last. If Mr. Right is willing to help with the dishes, then that says to me that he is a team player and has respect for his mate and that would tend to help the relationship last. Lots of things in there I would definately agree with. However, I stand by my observation that we are becoming a more disposable society in general.

I'm sad to say it, but even my kids have an attitude of: this toy/whatever broke, let's go buy another one. I know this is a broad generalization but I see it in a lot of adults I know too. I think it's important that we teach our kids that everything in life, but especially our relationships, have to be cared for and respected.

Life is full of the choices we make...

Susexful: I am so sad to read how your view of relationships has been so negatively impacted. I know a lot of women and only a handful (I can think of 3) who have cheated on their men. Perhaps I'm not one to talk right now, but I can assure you that I did not go out seeking to cheat on my husband, cyberly or otherwise. I can promise you, that had my encounter taken place in the physical world I would have been flattered by the attention, but promptly walked away. Somehow this thing called the internet makes some things seem way too much like a fantasy world with no consequences. I'm here to tell anyone who wants to listen, that's not true. Anyway, I'm not here to try to change your mind about how you feel. It just makes me really sad. I do think you're wrong about thinking that women are just cheaters though.