Dedeker: Sometimes it’s not always obvious upfront. I think when people make agreements with partners that they end up not being able to keep, often it’s not a very obvious thing in the front of their brain right away of, “Oh, this isn’t something I can do, and so I’m just going to lie and say that I can.” I think for some people it is, but for many people, I think they do feel positive, like, “Oh yes, I can agree to that. I can totally agree with that. That makes sense.”

Lori Beth Bisbey says that in non-monogamous relationships, cheating is less about the activity, and more about violating the trust you’ve built up in your relationship

Dedeker: Yes. Then they’re actually in the situation like, “Oh gosh, well actually I probably shouldn’t have agreed to that. That’s really hard for me to maintain. Maybe it’ll be easier for me to just break that agreement, but not be honest about it.” I could see that also being a situation.

Jase: We’re going to go on in the second half to talk about what cheating looks like in non-monogamous relationships in a little more depth and look at some input from other people including our Patreons. Before we go to that, we’re going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this show. Please, take a moment, check them out, listen to the ways you can support this show, because it really does go a long way to helping us make this show and bring this content to you all out there for free every week.

We’re going to read a quote from an article in VICE that was published in 2019, titled What Cheating Looks Like in a Polyamorous Relationship

Dedeker: We are back. Now that we’ve talked about the traditional relationship viewpoint, let’s move on to what it means to cheat in polyamory or other non-traditional relationships. Read more