So, a while ago it came out that my uncle（who's from outside the family and married in) cheated on my aunt (mom's sister).
They're still married. Honestly not sure what they'll do since he is the one with the job and our family doesn't have enough to support her and her children.
But I just don't get it. I get falling out of love or even finding other people besides your spouse attractive, but cheating is just such a layered lasagna of shit.
1.You want to eat your cake and have it too. (There's an entire community of people who cheat on their spouses called "cake eaters."). I don't understand what you get out of that though unless you're just really lustful (and even I wouldn't do that and I'm a lustful removed). If you want to break up/divorce that's fine but you can't just have emotional/physical relationships without changing anything. Which leads to point 2
2.How little fucking respect do you have for your wife and family? Because the thing is that youre denying your partner any autonomy in the relationship. You dont even respect them enough to even talk about it, or you don't respect them enough to think they deserve to know about it or will ever find out.
I mean look, there been some stories I've heard where I understand, if the relationship is already dead. It still sucks but I can understand if it's inevitable anyway. But otherwise i just can't conceptualize how selfish and shit you have to be to do it.
And I wouldn't ask if it wasn't so common. I mean it doesn't happen in every relationship but it's so common basically everyone is paranoid their partner is cheating on them. So I just really don't get it
That's a great point. And I think part of that comes down to experience, or a lack of it. Like in the sense that sometimes getting a taste of what you don't want will tell you more about what you do want. But also, as you get at, being honest with yourself about what's you wanting something and what's the position that is expected of you.
It reminds me of something that's come up in therapy for me before. Basically this idea of like, say I don't feel like doing some kind of cleaning. I could approach this in way where I come up with reasons for why I don't need to clean right now and why it's justified that I don't need to, and get into what is sort of a moralistic, ego-saving argument with myself against inner critics about what constitutes "good behavior." Or I could be honest with myself about the fact that I simply don't feel like doing it and that many people don't feel like it with a lot of things, and it doesn't mean I'm a bad person in need of defending myself; and that in spite of not feeling like it, I can choose to do it anyway, if it's something I believe in doing. And a lot of what could be made very tangled becomes instead pretty straightforward. Doesn't necessarily make the action easier, which might still be painful to do depending on what it is, but it cuts through layers of confusing self-narrative.
Sounds like you had a pretty good therapist, and you did/are doing the necessary work of getting to know yourself. That's a pretty big achievement, one a lot of us tremble to contemplate. Thanks for this exchange. It's important to have models of healthy approaches.