I am not one to force monogamy on people, though I personally am not interested in being with anyone but my partner. That being said, I think it’s wrong for anyone to violate a partner’s trust. I find it messed up that your high school peer bragged about betraying someone who she claimed to care about (at the time). In a nutshell, it seems like it would be good for society if we got over our puritanical zeal for enforcing monogamy, since some people clearly are wired to need multiple physical partners while still wanting to emotionally connect to one person. But I personally would continue to only be with my chosen partner.

IIRC it’s like a half or a third of the population that cheats, when research has been conducted. So, it’s normal in the sense of common. But, like others have said, your reunion people sound like were trying to convince themselves it’s normal in the sense of acceptable. And anecdotally it does tend to be the same people over and over again.

Polyamoury is also getting mentioned, but that’s a different thing, and poly people are a couple percent of the population at most with far fewer actually living the lifestyle.

Cheating is definitely in the minority of my social circle. I know of 2 amongst 100. At least people who were shameless enough to be admitting it.

That said, I do have maybe 5 open relationships in my friend group? I don’t usually ask, so maybe 10 total. My wife and I are monogamous. If you’re not, whatever, you do you. It isn’t a religious thing, it’s just how we roll.

But good lord at least talk about it, agree on it and stick with it. If you don’t then you’re a dick.

All said and done, the concept that people should be monogamous isn’t natural. Look at the animal kingdom. It’s pretty rare.
Some people just don’t fit that mold. But society tends to look down on them. So for some, bucking the system is probably a source of joy and achievement that they want to share. For the listeners, humans often go along with things to avoid awkward interactions. Then go home later and say to someone, “I can’t believe she just said that.”

I’ve seen a lot of cheating. So I suppose it’s common. Not the norm, but common.

In the end it all just boils down to people not being really good on general.

I guess this means that cheaters are more inclined to go to school reunions.

The “infidelities are always there” part sounds like a cope. I’m not a great authority on relationships or marriage as I’ve mostly opted for single life but I have spent a lot of time around the various aspects of substance abuse and the way you describe this discussion sounds eerily similar to people with substance-use issues saying “everybody drinks” or “everybody uses drug x.” It might be true of the people they surround themselves with but it’s not representative of the broader population as a whole…

-On a seperate note you’re really making me want to attend my 20th reunion next year. /s

-Lastly I just want to clarify that i’m interpreting the term “cheating” to being different than a poly/open-relationship. As I understand there’s an element of deception or lack of communication when it comes to “cheating.”

I can’t answer as to frequency, but I can say that recently a woman I know slightly cheated on her husband of 20 plus years, and the reason I know this is because he hired a private investigator and put the video of her kissing the other dude on Facebook. Apparently he did not include the video of them having sex but it exists. That seems like a really heinous thing for him to do, but if you know this family they’re actually really well raised good members of the community, and he’s clearly extremely hurt, stating that the depth of her lies to him was unreal. This woman’s mother is a saint walking upon the earth, without a shadow of a doubt, and her daughter was what seemed to be a very ethical well brought up mother herself raised in the Christian faith (not the conservative kind but the really decent person kind), so this was all a big shock. Apparently she was just lying to everyone, including her saint of a mother, all along. Her husband asked her to stop the affair (which was with some guy she had known for years) until they separated houses, but she kept on and kept on lying about it until she was caught on tape.

So until someone’s mask slips, you just really never know what someone will do.

Cheating is complicated. Yeah some people just will, they are fooling themselves when they say they won’t. Some people find it sexy, they literally want to cheat, they think it’s hot. Others will if the situation gets extreme, people in dead bedroom situations who want to keep their family together and make the calculation (or miscalculation) that cheating is less damaging than divorcing. I worked with old people when I was younger, my bosses were old Spanish people who married for business reasons but had lovers, they did not love each other in a romantic way.

I’d say that as divorce becomes easier to get, marriage more based on love rather than alliance and monogamy less required, there is probably less cheating. But it won’t ever be zero.

If you are asking is cheating universal? No. It’s not.

If you are really interested in learning more about infidelity I would suggest you read / listen to Dan Savages’s columns / podcast. Unsurprisingly there are a lot of different calls and discussions about fidelity and monogamy. I would also suggest you read Ester Perel groundbreaking novel The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

To answer your question directly infidelities are fairly common because monogamy is difficult and society typically puts a lot of stress and pressure on monogamy that makes it even more difficult. The foremost is the idea that monogamy as a default setting and that one person can be everything for one person sexually, emotionally etc… So we have a situation where two people are assuming that their partner will be the only person they can be attracted to, the one person that can fulfill all their emotional needs and will have to be a perfect roommate / life mate. This coupled with the idea that you have to be perfect at monogamy or you are a complete failure at it. So you have a hard situation and hard expectations so people slip and some people who slip on something small (a micro-cheating which is a ridiculous concept) they go all the way. All these expectations are common in “Straight-land” while those in “queer-land” have a different set of expectation that work better for everyone.

We should all make monogamy an regular opt-in conversation for relationships (I would suggest ~6 months in when you go exclusive and then at most every 5 years). Moreover, we should understand our monogamist partner finds other people attractive and chooses to not pursue anything not that they don’t find anyone else attractive. Finally, we should understand a our partner needs friends, hobbies and confidant who are not us to rely on. Until that happens “cheating” will likely remain something that happens fairly regularity

My understanding is that infidelity is very nearly binary in its commonality.

There are groups of people for whom infidelity is normal, it is the norm. They believe that everyone cheats, and in their experience everyone does, because they are cheaters and are friends with cheaters. They believe that fidelity is impossible, and claims to the contrary is just social posturing

Then you have groups of people for whom infidelity is basically unthinkable. That it is the greatest breach of trust possible. It is not just not normal, it is non-existent— you don’t cheat, your partner doesn’t cheat, your friends don’t cheat, no one you know cheats. If someone you know cheats, or someone known by someone you know cheats, it is legitimately horrifying: this is not merely social posturing, it is literally shocking to you, because in your world, cheating simply does not happen. It is horrible.

Cheaters think everyone cheats. Non-cheaters believe no one cheats, or only horrible people cheat. These two groups tend to self sort themselves into groups. Bad things happen when the two groups intermingle, in fact.

What’s also a tragedy is when someone who would naturally be in the non-cheating group ends up, mistakenly, in a cheating group. They will begin to feel like everyone ELSE in the world cheats, while they themselves never would. They keep getting hurt, they keep getting betrayed, and they don’t understand why. They need a better friend group… and let me be clear: non-cheating groups ABSOLUTELY EXIST. Those groups simply don’t interact with cheating groups— they basically don’t even know that the cheating groups exist, and would be horrified to find out. So if you’re caught up in a cheating social circle, getting out is really hard! You need to find people who have literally nothing in common with the people you already know!

It kinda sucks. I don’t know a solution.

Cheating makes stories, gets talked about by both sides and is overall contentious. Fidelity is literally having nothing to tell, so when a cheater talks, it seems like everyone is cheating, but that is far from the truth.

I think it would be less common if people accepted that monogamy is not the norm. Just be honest with yourself and your partner(s). If you want a monogamous relationship - commit to it. If not - don’t start one. I found out that I am polyamorous the hard way by thinking I am some kind of monster because I couldn’t just be with one partner. I did not cheat but kind of always had other love interests. Fortunately, my partner of 20+ years now was able to accept this as part of me. And now there is no risk of cheating for either of us because we can just be honest if there is someone else. It doesn’t change my love for him, it even made our bond stronger because it needs even more loyalty and acceptance of the needs of your partner to let them be.

No, people who commonly do bad things, will often justify it to themselves and others by thinking most people do the same thing. And despite their protesting and arguing, they’re pretty much always wrong.

I’ve heard more than one petty thief confidently claim that “everyone” steals something like a candybar when they go to the store. And it’s why there are so many stories of cheaters accusing their partner of cheating.

Infidelity is somewhat common but I would say it’s not “normal” at all to openly discuss and laugh about it at dinner with a bunch of people that you haven’t seen for years.

Seriously- wtf is wrong with these people? That one person sounds especially horrible.

Also - don’t go to any more reunions. I’ve managed to avoid 40 years of that shit and I like to believe that I’m happier for it!