Lying, cheating, and deceiving are human traits. They're bad, of course, but that's human nature for you. Cheating in a romantic relationship is probably the worst, as it's a betrayal of the most intimate kind.
It's hard to determine whether cheating is common. Many people don't want to admit they've cheated – for others, it's hard to describe what exactly is cheating: does texting count? Is flirting cheating? Not everybody draws the line at extramarital sex – for some, emotional infidelity is just as bad. However, researchers have attempted to do surveys on the topic. According to Professor Nicholas Wolfinger, 20-25% of married men cheat, and 10-15% of married women cheat.
But what this netizen was interested in wasn't how common cheating is. They wanted to know what reasons people had given their partners for having an affair. They asked: "What excuse did your partner give you after cheating on you?" And people came with some incredible, hard-to-believe stories.
#1
"You just had a baby by emergency c section 5 weeks prior. I was lonely." Threw the whole man away and got a real one. So much happier now. Glad he did it otherwise I might have stayed.
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129points
#2
“She’s so much like you, it didn’t feel like cheating.”
“It’s your fault you found out, I did nothing wrong, I tried to keep you from knowing so you wouldn’t be hurt.”
“You weren’t in town, what was I supposed to do?”.
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97points
#3
I have a scar on my tummy from a C-section and he said he wanted to see a real woman's body. Gotta say that effected me for a long time.
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94points
#4
I was working 3rd shift to provide for our family. She said that it was my fault for leaving her alone at night knowing how horny she gets. I moved out so fast it made her head spin.
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94points
#5
“I forgot to take my depression/anxiety medication for the last week..I think I was hallucinating..”.
slappy_mcslapenstein: I've actually seen that happen. I worked in behavioral health. A woman came in during a manic episode and was hallucinating. She thought every man was her husband. We found her in the shower with another patient. She was mortified when she became balanced again and realized what she had done.
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87points
#6
"I NEED to have some form of polyamory, and I didn't think you'd be open for that"
after I said REPEATEDLY that I would be open to that, just to communicate. Turns out he just wants to f**k anyone they think is hot while his partners only sleep with him. F*****g bastard of a human.
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77points
#7
"My psychiatrist told me to." Yeah, sorry but no doctor is going to recommend that you cheat on your partner of 7 years. 12 years later and it still kills me inside.
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71points
#8
"I thought I could do better". We'd been together over 25 years.
crazygirlinthehall: My husband said the same thing. Together for 27 years.
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68points
#9
“She was gonna k*ll herself” when he explained that he didn’t cheat he actually saved a life ❤️❤️❤️ with his penis.
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68points
#10
“You weren’t acting like a wife” - i was the sole financial provider, stressed out, mid-pandemic, son was just diagnosed with Autism and I lost my father to Cancer.
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64points
#11
"It's a girl. I'm not into girls but I was curious." Nah, still counts.
SweetPotatoMermaid: I know, right?! I went through the same thing with an ex-girlfriend.
It took about a week to untangle myself from that mess. She managed to cheat again during that week, but with a guy this time, and assumed we'd just hit a rough patch and could work it out.
I had been adamant and very clear since I found out about the first cheating that this was the end and that I wanted nothing to do with her.
Like nah, girl, I value myself more than your nonsense. I cut all ties and contact. She's tried to reach out through various methods over the years and I've never replied to her.
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59points
#12
They came home one day with a huge hickey on their neck.
I asked,"So where did you get that?!"
They said, "I fell down and hit my neck on a curb."
I can laugh about it now. 🤣.
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59points
#13
"We had already kissed, I would've looked stupid if I stopped there!".
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58points
#14
"I figured you were already sleeping with someone else". I wasn't.
RudeTheories: This literally just happened to me today in a way. My fiancée and I broke up last year and I thought it was mainly us drifting apart. Found out today she was cheating and when I asked her about it she confessed it was because she thought I was cheating on her anyway.
Bullet dodged I guess.
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56points
#15
"You're too good for me".
thepumpkinking92: My wife is definitely way too good for me... which is why I do my best to not f**k up and make it last as long as possible before she realizes it and leaves me for someone better.
And if any of you tell her, I will hunt you down and catch you like a fish!
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54points
#16
"I thought he was you."
I'm a tall white guy, she cheated on me with a much shorter black guy. Lol.
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51points
#17
Me: We've been dating for nearly a year, why haven't I met your friend Richard you always talk about?
Her: Because he's a guy and I know how guys don't like girls having guy friends.
Me: I've never had an issue with that, and as you know I have female friends, who you've met.
Her: I'm protecting you from your own anxiety!
- I get suspicious and look through her phone and find sexting, them meeting up etc and absolutely no mention of me ever, I confront her -
Her: if you wouldn't have looked through my phone you wouldn't have been hurt, that's your fault.
- I end the relationship, she hopes Richard leaves his wife for her, he doesn't, she gets back in touch with me-
Her: What you did was wrong, two people have to agree to end a relationship you can't just end it.
-i blocked her-.
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49points
#18
"We were on a break."
We were not. She just said she wants to go to her hometown because she missed her family and childhood friends and having a little me time would be fun. I don't know in what world that even indicates a break.
Zeikos: That's like saying you're on a diet between lunch and dinner, lol.
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48points
#19
It was a long, messy story. The short version is that my ex was suffering from depression (which I didn't really understand or recognize at the time), and she decided that I was part of the cause, so she started having an affair.
When the guy's wife found out about the affair, she call our house to confront my ex and to let me know about it. (The guy had started the affair with my ex because his wife was pregnant with their child. Lovely guy, right?)
Anyhow, that affair ended, but my ex still wasn't happy. In less than 6 months, she found another guy who was single and lived a bit further away. In early December, she told me she wasn't going to be home for New Year's Eve because she wanted to spend it with her new boyfriend.
By that time, I had already decided that it was over, so I just said, "OK. Now I can send the letter to the landlord cancelling the rent of our apartment, because I'm moving away." We divorced about 3 months later, and I moved from Germany to Switzerland. (It sounds more dramatic than it was - I only moved about 8 km / 5 miles from the old place, but on the other side of the border).
When I talked to my ex, she claimed that she had the 2nd affair because I wasn't jealous enough and didn't fight hard enough to keep her after the first one. We had been living in a dead bedroom situation for nearly 7 years by that time, and I was just f*****g tired of the whole thing. I never cheated on her, and she treated ME like I was the reason she had to go f*****g other guys.
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46points
#20
He said, 'I thought you knew?' What a bulls**t excuse.
Looking back, he probably was high. He turned it into this whole thing about how he thought I was so smart that I just must have KNOWN he was cheating, and since I wasn't angry since I had to have known, I must have been okay with it. The mental gymnastics of it all.
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46points