Is it wrong to judge someone because they cheated on their partner(s)?/ Do you know someone who has or have you cheated on someone/been cheated on?
Relationship is no longer an alien word requiring a wedlock. Adolescents as young as 13 years are in a relationship. Being in a relationship comes with certain responsibilities, so to speak. However, the question, is would you consider ‘remaining faithful’ to your partner, a duty or a moral? The complexity of a relationship doesn’t just end at two people being with each other ‘forever’. The concept of open relationships needs to thus be addressed. Every couple individually defines there boundaries to be or not to be crossed in a relationship. Morally demeaning and shaming people with out complete knowledge of their relationship is absurd and unnecessary.
What is considered cheating may also vary from one individual to another and understandings of the same may differ in different relations. For some, flirting serve as grounds for breakup. Others may feel that only being completely intimate is cheating on them.
A person may not be content in their partner. Every individual has an idea, even a tinted one, of what their healthy relationship looks like. They may simply not find that one thing they look for, and may discover that outside the realm of this relationship. In friendships, we don’t necessarily find every aspect and quality in one friend. We may have work friends whom we speak to for our office troubles, our 3 a.m. buddies and even drinking pals. This doesn’t mean that we need to have a different partner for every different role in our life. Let’s say they do, then why do we feel we have the right to belittle someone of their morality? If their respective partners of the person being with multiple people at the same time, the society, which is us, need not put in our long noses and sniff for gossip.
More absurd is that we accept cheating if it is an unhealthy relationship, or an abusive one. Women in cases of domestic violence are judged less when they cheat. Furthermore, if the ‘cheater’ apologises and comes clean, the whispers become more subtle.