Would you agree with this statement about monogomy?

I believe it is true.

Agreed.

Eh, it depends..but for the most part, I think it’s true.

There are plenty of people who didn’t cheat while dating, but cheated later. I’m sure there are also plenty of people who cheated while dating but never cheated during a marriage. I don’t agree with the statement.

In addition, dating is a less serious state of affairs. You’re trying each other out. You may be involved with a lot of people. In fact, the term “cheating” may not mean that much. In any case, it seems to me that people could have looser constraints while dating, yet consider marriage to be the commitment to one other person.

It’s not that black and white, but I understand the point.

I would actually be inclined to not cheat while married because of the legal bite in the ass. The wife or husband could use that to their advantage in divorce court.

I really can’t say it better than @wundayatta. Each and every person/relationship is different. I don’t like statements like this.

Married or not, the odds are that someone who cheats on you once will cheat on you again.

I generally agree with the statement. @diavolobella makes a good point.

No connection , I don’t think. Don’t married couples tend to take marriage more seriously than just dating?!

There are far more variables that go into such an assertion between simply now and later. @wundayatta for example mentions, there are people that didn’t cheat while dating but cheated while married.

So no, I can’t exactly agree.

I’d go with true for 80% of the cases.

If they know how to cheat, and didn’t think it was a problem when they were just dating, especially if they got away with it, they are very likely to cheat again, even if they get married. Most people who cheat probably just don’t think it’s wrong and it’s pretty easy to get away with it and that’s why they do it. They don’t think of the person (spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend) that they’re hurting, it just doesn’t play into it in their minds. I think cheaters think that their cheating is a totally separate event that has no connection to their main relationship.

If you’re with someone who has cheated on you, or with someone else before you came along, I would think long and hard before I married this person. It would be a good idea to insist on couples counseling before marriage. It’s no guarantee, but it’s better than just going in blind.

I agree, more or less.

I wouldn’t marry someone that’s cheated in the past.

If they can not be faithful to you well dating I hardly think a piece of paper is goign to make any difference.

Armed with only a limited knowledge of friends’ sexual experiences, I tend to think that those that cheat pre-marriage are willing to do so post-marriage. I’ve had some really close relationships with males that were in a committed relationship, and three have suggested having sex while the rest have not. Two that did are now divorced; one is not, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that he had an extra-marital affair. The ones who did not attempt to take the relationship further are still married.

Oh, and one of the men who gave a drunken booty call one night while engaged ended up leaving his wife to be with another co-worker. The office gossip is that she had a previous extra-marital affair with yet another co-worker. Her husband finally walked out. The two cheaters are now married. I think that there is an office pool on how long they last.

@wundayatta I’m just having a hard time picturing this relationship where they start dating, going steady, and one partner cheats, and they get serious and talk about moving in together, and that partner’s still cheating, and they get engaged, and that partner’s still cheating, but then they stand under a chuppah and all of a sudden this person is totally monogamous and committed. That some people don’t cheat while dating but do while married seems like a totally different issue. Some people don’t gossip when they’re young but do when they’re old, but someone who starts gossiping earlier in life is more likely to continue to do so later in life.

@papayalily Are you only speaking about habitual cheaters? There are people that have cheated once, then never again.

@jonsblond For the purpose of this question? I wouldn’t count one stupid night for this question. I would, however, count having another person on the side, as well as those who have one-night stands with other people. Also, I should have phrased it as “someone who doesn’t have a problem cheating when you’re dating…”. So someone who has a stupid, drunk night or a 2-week affair but feels horrible and guilty and comes clean about wouldn’t count, but someone who doesn’t have any issues with what they did would.

I agree. A person who is not sufficiently committed before marriage should not marry.

I agree with @diavolobella.

I generally agree with your statement. And I think people who cheat are quite adept at rationalizing their behavior, to the point where a cheater will get married thinking it will be different after they get married, fooling themselves they’ll be committed.

I think that’s probably most likely true. To dominish the relationship status while dating seems rather lame to me. It’s sort of like a test run, isn’t it? You can say; “Well, we wereonly dating.” but that excuses nothing, the dating was supposed to be an exclusive relationship. The diminishment of the dating relationship, to me, indicates a predilliction to find excuses for any other behaviour that may not be acceptable to the other partner.
I can see the points that some have made, but I would hesitate to marry a man who had cheatedon me while dating. The ring may not have been on my finger, but he obviously cared nothing for my feelings.

Marriage is a contract—potentially different. But it depends on the person, and how that person views the contract.

@skfinkel Marriage isn’t about the contract. Many people are married without any contract. The whole point of marriage for most people is because they want to be with one person and one person only. Other wise, it’s just an open relationship with benefits, which doesn’t require a marriage at all.

There are other types of relationships besides a monogamous marriage, but this question specifically mentions cheating which means sneaking around on a person who thinks they have an exclusive relationship and they really don’t.

Open and honest would be completely different, not cheating.

I don’t necessarily see a connection, because dating is not necessarily the same sort of commitment that marriage is. Once someone proposes, and commits to a person, then not honoring that commitment is a horse of a different color.

I do think that someone who will cheat on their taxes, cheat on a business deal, and cheat at Monopoly or cards, will cheat on their spouse, because they have a tendency to bend the rules.

I don’t agree with it. It may be a guideline, but it isn’t a rule.

Marriage won’t change that behavior. You should only marry someone who you can trust, anyway, because it will end the same way it began.

I’d say the rule to remember is this:

It will end [either in death or divorce] the same way it began.

@squirbel Huh? How does that even work? I mean, sure, for all the couples that meet at funerals…

Meaning it will end in death the same way it began [meaning those who stay together];
or,
It will end in divorce the same way it began.

Sorry, English is not my first language.

It’s not a certainty, but I’d say that it definitely ups the chances.

@BarnacleBill Many approach dating as the test drive for marriage.

@Nullo I agree, I know I approached it that way.

@Nullo What other approach to dating is there that still ends up in marriage?

@noelleptc How is courting not more marriage-focused?

@papayalily If your definition of cheater while dating is someone who habitually cheats, then sure. There’s no reason to think habitual cheating would stop.

But that’s the exception, rather than the rule, I suspect. As far as cheating goes, I’ll bet that most cheaters have done it only once or a few times.

I also think that both partners in relationships where someone cheats have contributed to the situation that resulted in cheating. It’s not a black and white situation and every single relationship is different and has its own factors in play.

If you are suggesting that cheating while dating (whatever that means) is a sign to not get involved with someone, I’d say that for you, that may be the case. It isn’t the case for every couple.

I think that a lot of people who have been cheated on are very bitter about it. It kind of really hurts their faith in humanity. They feel unfairly treated. They don’t understand how this can happen because didn’t we have an agreement?

Things happen to every agreement. They never end up the way you thought they were supposed to. If a relationship is worth fighting for, you figure out how to get past the cheating.

I don’t think people cheat for nothing. I don’t think they intend to lie and cheat. I think that they are miserable for one reason or another, and at some point it is too much, and they break the agreement.

Some cheaters are pretty immature, and have no idea what it means to be trustworthy. A partner of such a person should have seen this before they got married, but far to many people get married without knowing nearly enough about their partners.

Some cheaters have holes in their psyches of one kind or another. Problems with self-worth, or mental illness, or many other things. Ideally, these problems could be identified within relationships and the partners could work on them and get help before the cheating happens. But with the American pioneering ethic (do it yourself) and the fear that seeing a counselor will make you seem crazy and ignorance, too few people ever get help before very hurtful things happen.

I suppose there are cheaters who are just purely evil, immoral sociopathic beings. I’m sure everyone who has been cheated on finds their spouse to be one of these people. They could be right.

I think humans and their relationships are far more complicated than that. I’ve met a number of women here who have been cheated on, and they seem to take very hardline attitudes against any possibility of reconciliation. We all do what we need to do, but I think that hard and fast generalizations like the one we are discussing here probably hurt the people who make that generalization as much as the cheaters do.

@wundayatta Um, ok. If it would help, this question doesn’t necessarily reflect my views on cheating (which I did define further for the purposes of this question). By dating, I mean a monogamous relationship of the “going steady” variety. And this wasn’t at all about reconciliation, it was actually brought up (in my head) by one woman’s stance that after having two years-long supposedly-exclusive relationships, she wouldn’t have gotten STDs from either of them (which she did) had she waited to get married. My stance was that if they didn’t have a problem cheating on her while they were dating, marriage wouldn’t have changed a God-damned thing.

Here is a short and to the point answer:

My wife and i were engaged. i had been dating this girl and i just had to make absolutely sure that i was over her, before i married. we met in an open lake area with plenty of people around and talked. it was over. i never believed this was cheating. my wife knew about it. we married shortly after and never has the C word come up again in our marriage of 45 years.

People are all different. i think it depends on the circustances, if cheating is really cheating. only two people can make that determination.

Many people feel that it is ok to cheat if they aren’t married. Marriage could have made a difference in this case @papayalily, but that’s the thing, everyone is different. You never know. That’s why I hate statements like this. You can’t generalize.

For some people, yes. It’s a bit old fashioned but I’ve heard many family men say once they married then they changed because for them, just the title/status of marriage came with a lot of stuff to live up to socially as well as personally. In my eyes though the title of “married” just eased it for them to “do the right thing”.

I do agree.

@papayalily I was referring to the tendency that some people have to date for the purpose of dating. Such a relationship, I think, would be more vulnerable to infidelity.

@Nullo That’s true. However, in those relationships, marriage isn’t really an option, so then those relationships are sort of moot for this question.

I think there may be a few people for whom marriage makes enough difference that they would stop cheating. However I think the majority who do it before would just carry on doing it after marriage as well.

Pity that some people can’t be bothered to take the “forsaking all others” part seriously.

I don’t think the statement is true. For many or most, a dating relationship differs significantly from marriage in the degree of loyalty and committment. A person may not perceive themself as ‘cheating’ during dating, or the cheating might not be viewed as being as heinous compared to how it would be perceived if it occurred in the context of marriage.

@Nullo: some people must be assuming there’s a magic that happens when you say those words that stops you from being attractive or attracted to others. Marriage doesn’t make you exempt from being an active participant in monogamy. I wish people got that.

@Neizvestnaya It’s a promise to keep your pants on. You’d think that it wouldn’t be difficult. :\