what i find illuminating?

the (only) two people who experienced being the "cheated on" side?

one said tell now.

one said tell NEVER.

so i say...to each his own.

each person has to find their best chaoice and live with their choices and their karma.

was interesting as always.

I say never tell. Its best that way. Why ruin a relationship or marriage over a little indiscretion? Its not worth the cost to the kids in the long run. Then again I would love to have an "open" marriage because I truly don't believe that humans were meant to be monogamous. It goes against our very nature.

I am speaking from personal experience here BTW. After 13 years together with my spouse, whom I truly adore. I have been having a "sex" fling for the last few weeks. It has nothing to do with love and quite frankly I don't really like this person. Its been about the desire to just have wild sex. In my case I think its a midlife crisis that I hope to work through soon. I don't have any moral qualms about it because religion has never been something that I can grasp.

It really is a decision that we must make individually based on our own
thoughts and not the mores of society or what our neighbors think.

short and sweet. if the guy has the b*lls to admit his wrong he maybe worth keeping if not and he continues to live a lie then he has no respect for you so kick em to the curb........

IMO honesty is the best policy! Chances are if said couple were openly honest with each other from the beginning, it probably would have never happened.

Touche'

Sometimes sex is just sex.

life is too short to live a lie......
once a cheater always a cheater.

that's just sad. where is the trust? morals? respect? what about disease if someone really cared for you they wouldn't do it and put you at risk and sorry but humans are meant to be monogamous it just depends on where your brains are if there in your pants then there's a whole different problem not many people take marriage seriously that's why the divorce rate is so high its really freakin sad.......

married 1 man for 27 years without stepping out and still going strong..I will unsubscibe from this thread now it's ridiculous

I'll state for the record, not that it matters, that I've never cheated on my husband, nor has he cheated on me--that I know of. And I WON'T.

But.

That does not mean that EVERYTHING (trust, morals, values, disease, etc.) is tied to the ACT of sex for EVERY person. The ACT of sex is just that--an action taken to fulfill our needs for self pleasure, reproduction and, maybe, to show our affections to our partners.

That being said, though, I do believe MARRIAGE should equal monogamy. Marriage is between one man and one woman (or two people who love each other and want to share a lifetime committment with only each other, I have to also admit that I'm a proponent of gay marriage, even though it drives my family crazy. You love who you love.)--FORSAKING ALL OTHERS.

Regardless, I'll stand by my statement: sometimes sex is just sex.

I think for this particular case the OP said it was a one-time, just sex, thing.

While I wholeheartedly agree with this statement if taken out of this context I think that in the case of cheating on a spouse, it's about the promise to remain faithful, not about the sex. It's about the lying and/or deceiving. I would feel hurt and betrayed if my husband did anything that he has promised not to do, sexual or otherwise.

I'm hugely supportive of everyone's right to choose their own form of relationship... monogamous or otherwise, involving as many partners as they desire... when that is agreed upon by all members of the marriage/relationship.

Ahhhh, well, then it depends on whether it's him or me.

The problem is they didn't exchange vows to be "faithful, except when it's just sex." If they had, it would be different.

I think terms like "little indiscretion" are much more popular on one partner's side than the other, and it's not hard to guess which

And a sample of two isn't much of a sample. In any event, the real sample of one (the actual party cheated on) cannot be predicted from the response of two people. I would think it's terribly hard, no matter how good your intentions, to truly decide to tell or not tell based purely on what is best for your partner and not on what you want to do. I can only wish them both the best.