Like rjl - I look at everyone and wonder. I know that I have to get over that. I see happy couples and think - what do the two of you not know about it each other that makes you so happy?

I also look at couples - for example - if one is standing outside of the car and the other is in the drivers seat, and they kiss - I wonder, is that their spouse or their lover? They're obviously in two different vehicles.

I see a car parked discreetly - looks like there are people in it and I assume they are up to no good. Hurting someone in the process and deceiving themselves with a false sense of happiness at the expense of their relationships.

Yeah - I need to let it go.

I myself found my brother's profile on a dating site with another woman beside his wife!!! I would of never thought my own brother would cheat....
Now I look at everyone and wonder what little secret they have......

my secret- is I come here to vent........

Since my husbands affair I group everyone I know into those two groups, cheaters and non cheaters. So yeah.

For years, decades really, I was the sort that picked up on things that others did not. Ex and I would go to a party and I would see a certain interaction, and on the way home would tell Ex ... so and so are on the skids. He used to be skeptical in the first ten years of our marriage until he realized how good I was at ferreting things out . Time after time, I would make that observation, and a month or two later, we would hear about a pending divorce.

I saw the cheaters everywhere, but I would NOT admit it to myself, nor did I discuss that aspect of it with him. I would mention that the couple in question "had problems". Despite my ability to make very intuitive and consistent calls on a high percentage of occasions, I would NOT focus on all the fatuous byplay I was perceiving. Would. Not . See. It.
No exceptions.

I believed in marriage, was totally faithful myself, believed my husband would "never do that".... thought none of that would ever happen, blah blah blah. It was hysterical denial. I refused to heed the evidence of my own "lying eyes" about what was going on with at least 80% or more of the people I observed. Cheating is everywhere and the internet/cell phone/texting is allowing people more ease of sneaking around, more access to porn, more connections..... all this has amplified the matter. Psychologists sometimes use the term "pandemic". In my opinion, that is real.

Now I realize: I needed to believe that everyone was on the up and up. I had an almost fundy-type belief in monogamy, which I now find laughable because it is like having the hots for unicorns. Good luck! It was a need of mine, to think people could love and be faithful for life. It is a lovely idea.
And..... in my experience and observation, fidelity just almost never exists. And now, i can see that and deal with it.... sorta. I liked my illusions a lot, and ultimately my ability to talk myself out of seeing what was in front of me all those decades when others did it also kept me in the dark, probably for the same reasons and by the same mechanism, when my ex cheated on me and broke both our lives.

I think faithful people are very very rare, and even more so now than ever. Now I realize that I always knew that and was too scared to face it. I did not want o be made a fool of an abandoned. Happened anyway. I am fully awake now.

I don't think faithful people are that rare, just not the type to stand on the street corner and yell it out, "Hey, I've never been with another woman than my wife."

And personally, I believe myself to be faithful. And I'm sure there are many more. I think sometimes we're like Elijah, lamenting to God that he was the last faithful person in Israel, but it wasn't true.

I've never had an intimate relationship with any other woman than my wife. Other than the girl I dated before my wife, but all we ever did was kiss and hug.

And until my wife had her affairs, she'd never been with any other man, for well over 40+ years. While she can now not classify herself as faithful any longer, she was for the biggest part of her life.

Maybe I'm an anomaly, and most people are not faithful, but I'm not ready to hand that over to the enemy yet. Because I really can't say it is or isn't with any certainty, despite what's happened. And I don't think anyone else can either. So until there is definitive proof that 99% of the population is cheating, then I'm not going to automatically buy in that everyone does it, so throw in the towel.

But I've never been the type to attempt to read people and guess what is going on with them. And I generally don't care when people think they can read my mind (they are wrong 80% of the time). I only wonder about cheating now when I hear someone is having a marital problem, separation, or divorce. But I don't form opinions about people until I have words and actions to base them on.

But I have sat at a light before, and thought about the fact that at least around 50% of the people sitting in their cars around me have experienced an affair or done one. And that's weird to think about. But I usually am thinking about other more important things than that.

I think I'm more sensitive to it when I hear that a couple is breaking up. I think almost automatically, "was one of them not faithful?" Beyond that I don't think I've become completed jaded that I think that about everyone.

Consider this: A long time ago in college I took a class called "critical thinking" and there was a question posed to the class "On average, how many years of a life sentence do convicted murderers serve in prison? It was a multiple choice question with times raging from 5 years to life.

Almost the entire class chose every other answer except the correct one which was "life in prison". I was floored. I was positive that I knew the answer especially with all my knowledge of law that I had received from the news and newspapers.

Here was the point of the class though: Items that make the news have to be (drum roll please) NEWSWORTHY! Go figure. We all make the inductive, yet incorrect leap, that newsworthy news is the majority but far more often than not, it's the exact opposite.

We are inundated with news about infidelity from Hollywood and politics (Rielle Hunter springs to mind or Monica Lewinsky) or the millions of married men that populate the website Ashley Madison. We live in a pretty big world though and these percentages might not be the significant numbers that we think they are or the news would have us believe there are. Also, most of us BS are not also CS so at least half of us in the marriages are faithful.

For these reasons I'm trying not to be that jaded. Whatever works right?

I often wonder if "negotiated infidelity" is the way forward.....that instead of assuming it won't happen - we should assume that it will - and deal with it upfront.