Alex PattersonPoint: Cheat Away, Friends
Just to give a disclaimer, I’d usually suggest fidelity, but if a breakup is on the horizon, it’s important to get ahead on working on the rebound. As long as your relationship is in that transition phase between “taking a break” and “dead to me,” there’s little wrong with pencilling in a few hump-happy checkpoints. Make like Scrat and get that nut.
Face it, breakups are processes, not events. You’ve checked out, they’ve checked out, you just need the bill. If you’re careful and time your infidelity in that transitional phase, I wouldn’t call what you’re doing cheating; it’s a scheduling conflict.
You owe it to yourself to keep in practice while waiting for the final straw to break that hairy, sun-bleached back that you spent the last 18 months checking for “weird bumps.” If you’re caught, you might even get to be the straw. Go forth and seize the day. Spend those first raw days after the breakup in the arms of your homewrecker. Be the one playing the game. It’s 2018 baby, don’t be a cuck®.
One of these days, for your own good, you’re going to have to bring yourself to forgive, and it’s much easier to forgive yourself than it is other people, especially the kind of reptilian sociopath that would seize the day on you.
— Tom Ndekezi
Counterpoint: Take the Loss
“Reptilian sociopath” is a very good description of the kind of person you turn into the moment you cheat on your partner. I would usually advocate for “taking matters into your own hands” and playing the game, but it definitely feels better to be cheated on.
Though being cheated on often leaves you feeling helpless and messes with your ego like there’s no tomorrow, at least it leaves another important part of you intact: your conscience. The bitter that the guilt of cheating (and the subsequent regret) will leave in your mouth is never worth the sweet feeling of one night’s adventure. Shushing your conscience isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Once you find out about your partner’s hump-happy checkpoints, you are put back in the position of power you deserve while your partner crawls back to you. Are you going to put up with their mistakes made? Are you going to dump them the way they deserve? It is up to you. You, my friend, are officially the leader of the game at this point, your pure and noble innocence wrapping around you like an evening gown.
There is always hope that everyone learns from their mistakes, at least for people that have enough conscience to not act like reptilian sociopaths (A.K.A you). And while cheating will not teach any lessons at all, being cheated on will definitely teach you to be smarter when it comes to picking a partner.
— Pia Saunders
