Marrying the Cheater

Someone had the perfect words for it:

"If you marry a man who cheats on his wife, you'll be married to a man who cheats on his wife."

These words have far more truth in it that we realize. In fact, it goes both ways since marrying a woman who cheats on her husband means you'll be married to a woman who cheats on her husband. Makes sense? But of course!

What makes a person think that things will be any different once he/she marries the cheating spouse? Does the subsequent mariage have any power at all to stop the cheating ways of a person? There is actually no assurance to this since the same reasons used for the previous cheating, if left unresolved, can again come up and wreck the relationship.

Men and women who enter marriage as a previous 3rd party of a prior relationship of their present spouse cannot help but feel some degree of uncertainty and doubt of whether the same thing can happen to them. They have to live with the fact that their willful participation in cheating can be construed as an acceptance of shared affections. Going through the cheating experience from the other side as a "partner-in-crime" and then transcending into the role of a doubting spouse is one of life's ironic realities.

Although not all relationships having a history of this nature fail, ghosts of past indiscretions have a way of haunting the present. Life has a way of delivering justice, the most painful of which is the "eye-for-an-eye" type, which in this case means cheating for cheating. This could sometimes be seen as the sweetest revenge a cheated spouse can have on a ex-spouse and the new partner. On the lighter side, a former paramour can have no better forewarning than having travelled the same path before with a cheater.