Anyone out there have any thoughts about serial cheaters?

Personally I would not stand being with one. My wife knows how much she hurt me and if she could do that again to me then I will be gone and she knows it.

I will give her one get out of jail free card...but I only have one to give.

My thoughts on serial cheaters are that they need much more than Marriage Builders can offer in order to straighten out. Their cheating is not a marital problem but a character issue, and MB principles are not equipped to change someone's personality.

I very much believe that people can and will change if they CHOOSE to change, though. And with intensive counseling can change.

Oh yeah, My ex cheated on me before we got married. (found out after the wedding), then 3 months into the marriage. After counceling agian, counceling, then again. I left, he tried to committ suicide. Counceling, then more cheating. We even moved to another country and he had A's with 5 more women, some who didn't even speak the same language as he. I really tried to make that marriage work, but couldn't. He has since had many A's in all of his relationships. He will never stop. I agree that these people need more than MB can give them. If you are in a relationship like this, my advise is to save yourself.
M

This is one of the things that factored into my decision to stop trying to reconcile with WH (now XH!)

Thing is, I don't know for absolute sure he was a serial cheater - but I know he wanted to be. He was putting personal ads on-line for years, claiming that he and W had become distant both emotionally and sexually. Well, that was true, but only because he refused to talk to me, and because he had gotten to the point where he would rather spend time on-line than having SF (yeah, it was on-line porn. Big surprise, huh?)

And the whole time, he was telling me he loved me, and insisting nothing was wrong when I told him it seemed like there was something bothering him, and that we never seemed to talk. Implied that I was crazy.

It became obvious to me, as I found out more and more, that this wasn't a one-time thing caused by problems in the marriage, it had become a way of life for him. Maybe it always had been, and he was just better at hiding it at the beginning. I sometimes even think that marrying me was his attempt at changing, and that it was an unsuccessful attempt.

I tend to believe that if he wasn't technically a serial cheater, it wasn't for lack of trying, but that he couldn't find more takers....

As much as I believe in marriage, and not giving up, I think serial cheaters are a different probem, and if you are going to stay with one, you'd better be prepared to go through the pain of As again and again. And that "normal" marriage counseling that is done in the case of an affair will not work, that the serial cheater is going to need some intensive IC, and even that mya not help.

This is one of the things that factored into my decision to stop trying to reconcile with WH (now XH!)

Thing is, I don't know for absolute sure he was a serial cheater - but I know he wanted to be. He was putting personal ads on-line for years, claiming that he and W had become distant both emotionally and sexually. Well, that was true, but only because he refused to talk to me, and because he had gotten to the point where he would rather spend time on-line than having SF (yeah, it was on-line porn. Big surprise, huh?)

And the whole time, he was telling me he loved me, and insisting nothing was wrong when I told him it seemed like there was something bothering him, and that we never seemed to talk. Implied that I was crazy.

It became obvious to me, as I found out more and more, that this wasn't a one-time thing caused by problems in the marriage, it had become a way of life for him. Maybe it always had been, and he was just better at hiding it at the beginning. I sometimes even think that marrying me was his attempt at changing, and that it was an unsuccessful attempt.

I tend to believe that if he wasn't technically a serial cheater, it wasn't for lack of trying, but that he couldn't find more takers....

As much as I believe in marriage, and not giving up, I think serial cheaters are a different probem, and if you are going to stay with one, you'd better be prepared to go through the pain of As again and again. And that "normal" marriage counseling that is done in the case of an affair will not work, that the serial cheater is going to need some intensive IC, and even that mya not help.

Technically I don't know if he is a serial cheater or not either. We just started our second round of MC so I am hoping we can distinugish that fact. It's been a little over a year since DDay and I am just now able to step back and look at things with a different perspective. Some things he does seem to fit and others don't. Just looking for additional info. Thanks for the insight.