Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

On a superficial level, in fact, the distinction between good adulterers and bad can be [[Informed Wrongness|entirely arbitrary]]. Most good writing, however, takes clarity and nuance into account.

 

Adultery, good or bad, is [[Not to Be Confused With]] [[Polyamory|open relationships]] where the partners [[Ethical Slut|are honest with each other and not in an abusive way]].

 

'''Some sure-fire signs that someone is a 'good' adulterer:'''

* A couple still love each other but they are going through a rough spot, or they are 'on a break'. However the original relationship is not ''over'' over, so it's still portrayed as a kind of infidelity. Obviously this has a tendency to make the situation worse. Loneliness is often a huge factor in the cheater's motivations.

* The cheating is [[Coming Out Story|with a member of the same sex]].

 

'''Signs that a person is a 'bad' adulterer:'''

* Sheer shallowness. Rather than giving any actual reason for an affair, they just do it because it [[The Hedonist|feels good]].

* In spite of the fact that they're cheating, they have no moral compunction about manipulating their partner for their own ends.

* Plain old dishonesty. Oftentimes, if a character is involved in an open relationship or is simply dating casually, having multiple partners isn't really a big deal. What really sets off the person being cheated on, though, is being lied to. Claiming to have an exclusive relationship, while actually not, is a guaranteed [[Berserk Button]] if the scorned lover finds out.

 

See also [[The Unfair Sex]], where the distinction seems to fall across the [[Double Standard|Gender line]] (but may also use the above to justify it).

 

 

{{examples}}

* Lampshaded in ''[[Planetes]]''. Goro Hoshino is [[Married to the Job|all but married to ''space'']], and spends ''years'' away from Earth. His wife very pointedly mentions how he's extremely lucky to have her, because she ''should'' have gotten into an affair by now, and anyone else ''would'' have. Goro himself agrees.

 

** Mamoru cheating on Usagi is also almost universally used as a way to show what a horrible person he is, making it a case of bad adultery. If he's not sleeping with Rei, it's Setsuna, An, or whomever else the author can twist to Make Usagi fall totally for Seiya, Haruka, or Demand, making it good adultery.

 

* ''[[American Beauty]]'' plays with this: The protagonist, a middle-aged married man, {{spoiler|lusts after a high-school girl, but never fully acts out his fantasy}}. Later, {{spoiler|this wife begins having an affair with another man. While the protagonist is actually indifferent to this fact, his wife is shown to be a confused woman focusing on the wrong things since their marriage is mutually unfulfilling}} but once {{spoiler|the teenager is revealed to have lied about her promiscuity, and is actually a virgin}}, he reacts by treating her warmly and with care.

** The print comic ''[[Doonesbury]]'' mocks this movie, by having JJ leave Mike for Zeke under similar circumstances... except Zeke is depicted as a buffoon and JJ a flighty fool who made a stupid, spur-of-the-moment decision without thinking.

* ''[[Chicago]]'' has this all over the board. The earliest instance is where Roxie cheats on her dull but loving husband Amos, then ''kills'' her lover in a rage, and continues to manipulate Amos to the end despite his continued loyalty. Amos is also one of the the only sympathetic characters in the whole movie, next to the wrongly-executed Hungarian woman, and this trope is lampshaded in his solo.

** In-universe, Velma discovers her husband cheating on ''her'' with her sister and kills them both. This is meant to highlight just what a [[Crapsack World]] they were dealing with. All the other inmates, by contrast, seem to feel justified in murdering their husbands- and are not generally considered to be very good people.

* ''[[Doctor Zhivago]]'' stars a pair of lovers who are themselves married to other people. The woman's husband disappeared in a battle during the War, and she spends much of the movie trying to find him. {{spoiler|It turns out he didn't just survive the battle- he became a high-ranking Red Army officer as a result of it.}} The man's wife...well, nothing happened to her actually. She still loves him and lives with him at the time of the affair and is even caring for their child. Because the movie is pitched to the audience as being about one of the great love stories of all time, the fact that this is technically adultery is nearly an afterthought.

* In the 1989 film ''Cousins'', where a man's wife cheats on him with another man. Where it gets interesting is that the man who was cheated on falls in love with the cheater's wife. ''Both'' the main character's wife and her lover are shown to be...not great; ''both'' the main character and ''his'' lover are shown to be just wanting more.

* ''[[Spanglish]]''. Adam Sandler's character is the one left sexually unsatisfied due to how quickly his wife gets off (and subsequently falls asleep). Later on, when she is discovered to be a cheater, she is villified. Meanwhile, his affections for the Latina maid is justified in much the way that the typical "woman finds love out of marriage" is, but they are both strong enough to realize that they can't have what they want.

* ''Same Time Next Year'' has Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn as two lovers who meet once a year at a particular resort to spend a weekend together, before going home to their spouses for the other 51 weeks. This goes on for many years. We never see or hear the other spouses, and apparently these two love each other even though they also love their spouse as well.

* Entirely averted in the British World War II film ''Brief Encounter'', where two married people meet on a train, and realize they're each other's soulmate. But they end up giving each other up to remain loyal to their own home lives, and this is portrayed as the right thing to do.

** Also averted in the cinema-verite musical "Once" (which has a lot in common with "Brief Encounter"), where the Girl refuses to have anything other than a platonic relationship with the Guy: while she and her husband are separated, and the marriage is probably unsalvageable, she wants to give it every chance she can, for the sake of her daughter.

* Used in ''[[Dodsworth]]''. Throughout the main part of the film, the wife, desperate to feel young, wealthy and attractive, pursues other men and lashes out at her husband whenever he implies any impropriety on her part; the film makes an effort to understand her state of mind, but she's still unsympathetic. The husband, meanwhile, winds up leaving her in the end for a much nicer woman, and it plays out as a triumphant moment.

* ''[[A Fish Called Wanda]]''; Archie is depicted sympathetically, while his wife (and daughter!) are both horrid monsters. In the end he runs off to South America with Wanda without a backward glance. Wanda, on the other hand, is depicted as a conniving, materialistic shrew, manipulating everyone until the end {{spoiler|when she was about to go alone to Rio}}. Sure, she wasn't all that ''happy'' that {{spoiler|Archie was being left behind}}, but that didn't change what she was about to do.

* [[Peter Sellers]] comedies have all sorts of takes on adultery:

** In ''The Dock Brief'' (1962) he plays a lawyer trying to defend a client who openly admits to killing his wife. The meek fellow (Richard Attenborough) ''hoped'' his boisterous wife would have an affair with a boarder whose personality better suited hers, but finds out she didn't because she respected the sanctity of marriage too much. He snapped and killed her right then and there.

** ''Only Two Can Play'' (1962) has Sellers' character trying and failing to consummate an affair with another (married) woman out of ennui with his current life with wife and kids. His wife chews him out over this when she finds out, but says he can do what he wants; it seems she's bothered more by his secrecy. Realizing the other woman doesn't really care for him, he returns to his wife and learns she had an affair with the other's husband during all this! They reconcile.

** One likely reason [[The Pink Panther|Inspector Clouseau]] turned into the [[Breakout Character]] in the original ''The Pink Panther'' (1963) was not only because his wife was cheating on him with the jewel thief he was pursuing, but because at the end she helps frame the poor [[The Fool|Fool]] for their crimes...making him more sympathetic than intended. It helps that the movie clearly sets his wife as being in the wrong. Clouseau is shown to be ''extremely'' devoted to his wife and willing to indulge pretty much any of her whim, and never shows any interest towards the other gorgeous women in the movie. Sure, he's a klutz, but no one can fault his devotion as a husband.

** In ''What's New, Pussycat?'' Sellers is a deranged psychiatrist whose wife, a stereotypical fat lady opera singer, accuses him of being 'a lascivious adulterer'. He angrily replies "Don't you ''dare'' call me that again until I've had a chance to look it up!" When patient Peter O'Toole asks for help to stop his womanizing ways for his impending marriage, Sellers merely suggests he get married and cheat.

* ''John Tucker Must Die'' has three high school girls who find out that the titular John Tucker is going out with all of them at once. Cue them [[Escalating War|attempting to do horrible things to him]]. A good establishment of the "don't you dare lie to me" clause- Tucker went to a highly elaborate effort to make sure that none of his girlfriends found out about the other. As opposed to, say, simply telling him they weren't dating exclusively.

** Compare ''She's Gotta Have It'', which features Nola dating three different men simultaneously. They're all mildly resentful of the situation- but it never explodes into an [[Escalating War]] in part because Nola is honest with them from the beginning what the situation is.

* Used in ''[[Walk the Line]]'', when Johnny Cash is distant and generally a dick to his first wife, while openly pursuing June Carter who, by contrast, is entirely unwilling to betray her husband. But he's portrayed sypathetically, and has a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] when he finally winds up with her. He *is* Johnny freaking Cash though.

* In ''[[Frida]]'', Frida de Kahlo is okay with her husband Diego Rivera's infidelities, as she comes from a period and culture that accepts that [[I'm a Man, I Can't Help It|a man has 'needs.']] (She also sleeps around herself.) What she makes him promise, though, is that he doesn't ''betray'' her. Later on, guess what his sleeping with her sister counts as?

* The [[Mike Judge]] film ''Extract'' [[Parodied Trope|has the lead character hire a young pool boy to seduce his wife while he was drunk and (unwittingly) under the influence of heavy drugs, just so he feels morally justified in sleeping with the new, attractive, younger girl at work due to feeling sexually unsatisfied and realizing that his wife is losing interest in him.]] Once he sobers up he decides against the [[Zany Scheme]] at the last minute {{spoiler|only to discover his wife's already slept with the pool boy.}} As for that new girl at work {{spoiler|he finally gets her into bed by [[What the Hell, Hero?|threatening to turn her over to the police for petty theft,]] sending him into full-on midlife crisis [[Moral Myopia]]}} All of this is played sympathetically, and it turns out that {{spoiler|the girl he was attracted to ''was'' a petty thief, and also a con-artist who was seducing and manipulating one of the lead character's employees in order to extort everything the lead character had away from him. It's heavily implied that while he was attracted to her, she seduced ''him'' in order that he wouldn't call the police (as he was intending to do) and so that she could make a getaway.}} So while he's certainly no saint, he's also not ''quite'' an irredeemable bastard either.

* [[Lifetime Movie of the Week|Lifetime movies]] often use this theme. [[The Unfair Sex|And guess who is the "good" adulterer and the "bad" adulterer]]...

* The main plot of ''[[The Descendants]]'' is George Clooney finding out that his wife, who was recently put into a coma, had cheated on him for a long time. When he confronts her friends about the affair, the female friend tries to justify the cheating, at one point saying, "It wasn't her fault...." Clooney immediately shuts down that line of conversation, saying, "You're talking to me in cliches? It's never the woman's fault? Give me a break!" While the movie does suggest that her motives were not unsympathetic and that Clooney's character had his part to play in the breaking-down of their marriage, it's still made clear that her affair was selfish and destructive to her family.

 

* Kate Chopin's ''The Awakening'' has the protagonist, Edna, is married to one man, in love with another, and having sex with a third (who admittedly probably doesn't care about the other two). And she pretty much tells the second man that she won't let any man control her, implying that she pretty much intends to keep things this way. It's hard to tell how sympathetic she's supposed to be. This also pops up in some of the author's other works.

* Naturally ''[[Anna Karenina]]'''s main plot is Anna's morally ambiguous adultery. Although at first the loveless marriage excuse comes up, Anna later claims to have fallen in love with her husband again, and he expresses similar feelings. This does not stop her affair with Vronsky. Whether her hedonism is good or bad is left in an incredibly gray area- while Tolstoy suggests that her society is forcing most people to be repressed and unhappy, and that Anna is too passionate a woman to put up with it, he also shows her leaving her son with his angry, oppressive father, and of course, committing suicide.

* In [[Ayn Rand]]'s ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'', Lillian Rearden discovers that her husband Hank is having an affair, and since she thinks it's some casual fling with some floozy, she doesn't think twice of it as she believes it demeans both her husband and his lover, so she admits that she will neither divorce him nor tell him to break it off. But when she discovers whom he's having the affair with: {{spoiler|Dagny Taggart}}, and that it's a mutually rewarding relationship, she becomes horribly upset and tries to demand he stop it. She eventually has a thoroughly repulsive one-night stand with James Taggart solely for the purpose of demeaning Hank. She's not happy when she reveals her infidelity to him and realizes that he doesn't give a damn.

** See also: Real Life examples below.

* Used in ''[[The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo]]'' by Stieg Larsson. Features the good cheating as in everybody in the relationship knows about the relationship with a character named Erika Berger. Blomkvist, the protagonist, and Erika were in a relationship when they were younger. When Erika got married to her husband, she tells him after some time has passed that while she ''loves'' him, she ''desires'' Blomkvist. Her husband is pretty much totally okay with her continuing her sexual relationship with Blomkvist, leaving them with an open marriage. On his end, Blomkvist still flirts and has sex with all kinds of women. (Granted, at least part of it might be because he spends a substantial amount of time away from Erika in the first novel. In the third, he starts a relationship while he's working in close quarters with Erika, and she seemingly begins to accept that he might soon have a real partner.)

* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Night Watch]]'', Anton is prophesied by Geser that he and Svetlana will have a powerful Other child. Both are attracted to each other but are apprehensive about the prophecy. During a Night Watch retreat, Anton catches her after she has a theesome with Ignat (an incubus) and another woman. The next morning, she realizes he knows but is mad that he doesn't seem to care. Anton actually tries to justify her actions, which causes her to blow up into a tirade on the stupid prophecy and the fact that she hasn't had sex in years (presumably, since her husband left her). This, of course, begs the question of why she would choose to have sex with another man and ''another woman'' rather than her boyfriend, for whom she has feelings. This is especially jarring because Ignat previously tries to seduce her (it's his specialty) but fails miserably. This incident is never mentioned again, and they end up getting married and having a powerful Other daughter.

* In ''Cujo'', Donna has an affair out of a desire to escape feeling old and bored. While her husband is obviously less than thrilled, they manage to work past it {{spoiler|mostly because she narrowly avoids being killed by a rabid dog and their son ''is'' killed indirectly}}. Donna's lover, meanwhile, trashes her house when she breaks things off with him and manages to convince himself that he was ''heroic'' in doing so.

* Discussed in ''[[How Not to Write A Novel]]''. Among other things, they mention that having the protagonist cheat on their significant other ''first'' is a very good way to make the protagonist [[Unintentionally Unsympathetic]].

* Zigzagged in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. On the "good" hand, Eddard Stark is [[Shifting POV|a protagonist]] and he and his wife Catelyn were "on a break" in the sense that he was away at war for more than a year; Catelyn acknowledges that [[All Men Are Perverts|he has needs]] and doesn't begrudge him finding comfort in some other arms. On the "bad" hand, Catelyn is [[Shifting POV|ALSO a protagonist]], and, even worse, when the affair bears fruit in the form of [[Heroic Bastard|Jon Snow]], Ned insists on raising the boy alongside his and Catelyn's own trueborn children, leaving her with a constant reminder that she is essentially his [[Second Love]]. Catelyn comes off as [[The Resenter]], and no one thinks she was unjustified.

 

* The ''[[Jonathan Creek]]'' episode 'Angel Hair' features an adulterous husband who, adultery aside, is depicted as an otherwise decent man who feels genuinely stifled in a marriage that, from his point of view, is lacking in passion. He's still treated as something of a hapless fool, though, especially considering that the wife he's cheating on is a beautiful pop singer who, whilst she's not quite the passionate sex goddess that the media depicts her as, is nonetheless a loving, caring woman who clearly thinks the world of him.

** In another episode ''House of Monkeys'' a woman has an affair with her father-in-law. However, both she ''and'' her husband are portrayed as utter twits, and their story ends with their mother/mother-in-law shouting at them: "if only you would just take your marriage by the scruff of its neck and ''make it work!''"

** The pilot episode contains both kinds. The victim's affair is considered unsympathetic when it's with an oversexed French model. However it's later portrayed very sympathetically when it's revealed he was never having an affair with the model at all, but with his unglamorous housekeeper with a crazily jealous husband.

* ''[[Blackpool]]'' features both. Ripley's affairs are casual sex, while Natalie's is about love. {{spoiler|Ripley eventually tells her to go be with the man she loves. But who can compete with [[Doctor Who|The Doctor]]?}}

** That was the later seasons. In earlier seasons Trapper John, Henry, and Frank all have continuous, ongoing affairs and feel no remorse.

* ''Goodnight Sweetheart''. Gary Sparrow, the [[Time Travel|time traveling]] hero was in a relationship (and later marriage) with two different women in two different time periods (the 1940's and the 1990's). While the series treated the affair itself as wrong, Gary personally was always portrayed very sympathetically as a man impossibly caught between two women he loved and as feeling very guilty for doing so.

* ''[[Jericho]]'' has Eric Green, the protagonist's brother and aide to his Mayor-father, and all round swell guy. He's quickly shown to be cheating on his wife with the local Bar owner. Yet he is not portrayed as a soulless monster and when confronted points out how his marriage is basically winding down, and how he has genuine feelings for his new lady. {{spoiler|Even when his wife becomes pregnant, and then later suffers from an acute case of [[Death by Childbirth]], he is still shown as a good man who just made a bit of a cockup of the whole situation.}}

* ''[[Will and Grace]]''. When Will's father has an affair, he actually admits it being his own fault, though still decided that he wouldn't tell his wife. When it gets discovered that ''both'' of his parents are having affairs, they actually take an equal share in the blame {{spoiler|and end up separating.}}

* An interesting example is ''[[Rome]]''. Servilia's anger over having been betrayed by Caesar is her driving force throughout the first season, and is one of the major reasons behind his untimely death. But Servilia isn't Caesar's wife, she is his mistress. And he didn't leave her to go back to wifey Calpurnia, he left her for his "real" lover, the Roman republic. Whether we are supposed to side with Servilia on this one or not is up for discussion.

* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' after he and his now-married ex-flame, Stacy, sleep together. Wilson tells her off for toying with House's feelings (of which she believes he has none) and Cuddy refuses to tell her that it would be fine for her to leave her husband.

* Used in ''[[Sex and the City]]'' where Carrie cheats on Aidan with Big, who happened to be married at the time. Aidan is not once portrayed as doing anything to "make her cheat", Carrie more that acknowledges that the affair was hurting everybody all around, and Big of all people is shown the one to be "wanting more out of life" due to his dissatisfaction with married life. "Everything we own is beige" is notes in lament. When Carrie admits the affair to her friends, she's actually ''hoping'' they'll tell her what an awful person she is. Aidan breaks up with her when she tells him, and though they later get back together the second break up (due to differing ideas about getting married) isn't portrayed as anyone's fault.

* ''[[Noah's Arc]]'': Wade cheating on Dre with Noah is "good adultery" that supports the One True Pairing, while just about any other form of adultery seen is of the "bad" variety.

** Another episode revealed that Castle's first wife Meredith, who is also the mother of his daughter, had an affair with a director and abandoned him and Alexis to move to Los Angeles to start an acting career. Castle seems to hold no particular ill-will against her, to the extent that he's willing to hook up with her again whenever she's in town.

* Played with in ''[[Frasier]]'', Frasier suspects that his father Martin had an affair whilst still married to his (now deceased) mother, and is shaken when Martin admits it. This affects his relationship with his father, Frasier being unable to forgive this betrayal, until he learns that Martin lied; it was actually Frasier's mother who had the affair. Martin blamed himself for it, and encouraged Frasier not to let it affect his feelings towards his mother, something which Frasier had little problem with. It should be noted that his brother Niles, however, had little trouble accepting it even when it seemed that Martin was the guilty party, reasoning that the two obviously managed to overcome it and have a happy marriage from that point on.

** Niles and [[The Unseen|Maris]] also encounter this trope. In Niles' case, he is heavily attracted to Daphne throughout the series despite being married, but is portrayed sympathetically, while Maris' affair with their marriage counselor is depicted as selfish and the reason for Niles to initiate divorce proceedings. However, it's presented as obviously a lot more complicated than this; Niles ultimately never acted on his feelings for Daphne while he was married (although he was sorely tempted at times) and is willing to acknowledge that the Daphne situation could have nevertheless had a deleterious effect on his marriage whether he acted on them or not, while Maris' adultery is clearly shown as being the back-breaking straw on top of a large pile of selfish, unreasonable and unfair behaviour towards Niles.

* ''[[Grey's Anatomy]]'', as is [[Gray and Grey Morality|appropriate to its name]], plays the sympathy of adultery off of both ends. The first season cliffhanger involves Meredith abruptly discovering that her boyfriend Derek (better known as [[Fan Nickname|Doctor McDreamy]]) is actually married when his wife Addison flies in. The second season opener works under the assumption that he's done something horrible by getting involved with Meredith- until the very end, when a patient asks Addison how she can stand to be in the same room as Meredith when she slept with her husband. Addison is incredulous, and tells the patient that she cheated on Derek first and that was why he came to this hospital in the first place- to get away from her. She then sternly tells the patient that she owes Meredith an apology. As the season progresses, we also see that she holds Derek no ill will for the affair, and is perfectly willing to accept a divorce if he wants to continue seeing Meredith.

*** Well, and the fact that Mark is [[Bros Before Hos|his best friend]]. (Having said that, Mark is still a regular on the show, as opposed to following Addison to [[Private Practice|her spin-off]], and everyone's more-or-less buried the hatchet.)

** More straightforward later in the show. They're being subtle, but it's pretty clear that {{spoiler|Owen's}} adultery is bad-flavored, with {{spoiler|Cristina}} as the wronged party.

** Matt's girlfriend cheats on him with another cheerleader. This is treated as extremely bad. It is treated less bad however when he starts dating ''her'' girlfriend who has decided she isn't really a lesbian anyway (they met because Matt's lesbian girlfriend convinced him to join them in a threesome, as part of an abortive effort to salvage her relationship with the not-really-a-lesbian cheerleader).

** There's a nuanced portrayal of Sean's affair with a patient, which Sean appears to have initiated on the suspicion that his wife was having an affair with a hunky student. She wasn't. What really screws things up, though, is that their staff psychologist Grace suspects the affair exists and confides her suspicions to Christian. He promptly takes this information to Sean, who is furious at her for discussing suspicions about his personal life and nearly fires her- before she reveals that Christian had sex with her and that unless they have a professional reason to fire her she can file an unlawful termination lawsuit. Christian is either [[Selective Obliviousness|oblivious]] to the fact that Grace was telling him this because he's Sean's best friend, not because she's a gossip, or he's a [[Jerkass]] who was trying to use this as an excuse to get rid of her.

* ''[[Between the Lines (TV series)|Between the Lines]]'' features an example of the protagonist committing bad adultery. Tony's womanising is frequently portrayed as a character flaw that {{spoiler|costs him his marriage quite early on}}.

 

* [[Jonathan Coulton]]'s song "Betty and Me" is about a man whose wife is cheating on him with a doctor under the excuse of making [[Designer Babies]]. The only thing that makes the song funny instead of disturbing is that the man's wife isn't even ''trying'' to hide her affair; the husband is just that oblivious. That being said, it's hilarious and is meant to be so.

I guess I'll keep writing checks until the day that baby is mine! }}

* [[Reba McEntire|Reba]] hits all sides of the scale:

** She also sings the haunting song ''One Promise Too Late'' about meeting her soul mate, but being too noble to drop her husband, who's been nothing less than good to her. "I'm not sorry that I met you... I can't have you, but I never will forget you. Where were you when I could have loved you? Where were you when I gave my heart away?" And also partially in ''The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter'', where she turns down the married man with the ring on his finger.

** And then there's ''When Whoever's In New England's Through With You'' (usually listed as ''Whoever's in New England''), where she knows that her man is cheating on her, but is willing to wait out the affair. (In the music video, {{spoiler|he comes back at the end}}.)

** ''Papa Loved Mama'' has the wife sleep around with various men on the town while her husband (a truck driver) is on the road because she can't stand being alone all the time. Husband comes home unexpectedly with a dozen roses and a bottle of wine looking to surprise her, finds out she's not there, and kills the wife by running his truck through the hotel she was cheating on him in. This song is one that puts both partners involved in a sympathetic light.

** Another of Garth's singles features an "other woman" that isn't even an animal, much less a woman: ''Rodeo''. ("Well, it ain't no woman, flesh and blood/It's that damned old rodeo")

* The guy in [[Steely Dan]]'s "Dirty Work" clearly understands the ambiguity of this sort of thing in reality. He's the guy having an affair with a married (or otherwise taken) woman while her man is "out of town": she's clearly looking for something she can't find with her husband (or whatever), but the man himself realizes exactly how despicable the whole situation is...and still does it anyway, for reasons he can't quite explain.

 

* [[For Better or For Worse]] uses the trope, giving us Anthony constantly pursuing his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth... while married to Therese. While Anthony is clearly ''meant to be the one we sympathize with'', it didn't work too well for many readers.

** An earlier example has Elizabeth at the other end, being cheated on by her long-term boyfriend at college. Intriguingly, when she finally figures out what's going on and confronts him at the other woman's apartment, the other woman immediately turns around and cries "you pig! You're cheating on me!?"

 

* This is whole point to the [[H-game]] ''[[Secret Wives Club]].'' It is portrayed mostly sympathetically for the protagonist and the women involved, though both sides do acknowledge the implications of their actions and lampshade how unsympathetic it looks to another point of view.

* Used in the old Sierra game ''[[Conquests of Camelot]]'' in which the player has to retrieve a veil from a prostitute on behalf of a husband so that he can prove to his wife that he didn't cheat on her. ''He gets away with it.'' This creates some [[Moral Dissonance]] considering the storyline is based on Lancelot and Guinevere's illicit love affair cursing the land, causing Arthur to go out in search of the Holy Grail in the first place.

* In ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'' there are side missions called "beat-up missions". The player must locate cheating husbands and boyfriends and beat them senseless. [[Anvilicious]] enough for you? Making it a bit hypocritical, Ezio is a [[Casanova]] and proud of it, chasing after any woman who catches his fancy. However, the closest he gets to instigating an affair is seducing Caterina Sforza, who is a widow who never loved her husband to begin with (to the point of ordering his death).

 

* Done in an early ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' story arc - while Durkon and Hilgya (of the [[Evil Counterpart|Linear Guild]]) are off alone together, Hilgya [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0083.html tells the story of how she came to live in the human lands]: she was forced into a marriage with an "oppressive" husband ("Would you like a foot massage, sweetie?"), so she fled after unsuccessfully trying to poison her husband ("Cursed dwarven save bonus against poisons!"). Subverted in that Durkon chastises her for it - even though [[Unreliable Voiceover|her story didn't relate her husband's actual words]].

* In supplementary material for ''[[And Shine Heaven Now]]'', [[Word of God|Erin]] hinted that Arthur Hellsing was the result of an affair between Abraham van Hellsing and Mina (Murray) Harker. If true, they'll probably get a pass on the whole 'adultery' thing because...well, if Arthur doesn't exist, then neither does Integra.

 

** Then there's another episode where it turns out John Redcorn has another child who was conceived at the same time as his and Nancy's, the dramatic thrust of the story is keeping the children apart before their pre-pubescent [[UST]] has any squicky side-effects. Nancy is furious with John when she discovers he was cheating on her while she was [[Hypocritical Humor|having an affair with him]]. He also got mad at Nancy when he found her in bed after having sex with Dale (you heard that right) so after Dale bashes him on the head with a lamp (because he's you know ''breaking and entering'') he then apologizes to John, because he didn't know it was him, and then helps him get back some of his tribe's land, and after Nancy decides to end the affair, Redcorn doesn't take it well and at one point bitterly demands why Nancy 'left him' for 'that' (i.e Dale). Hank bluntly points out that Nancy ''didn't'' leave Redcorn for 'that' -- she was with 'that' ''first'', before she even knew Redcorn. Redcorn seems to get the point.

** The trope also comes up as regards Bill's ex-wife, Lenore. In the past, She cheated on Bill and eventually divorced him, but Bill is portrayed as a victim who tried to be a good husband, while Lenore is portrayed as a cruel, manipulative bitch, who is largely responsible for Bill's life being as pathetic as it is.

** Another episode has nearly all women in town revealed to be members of the Ladybugs, a club for women who cheat on their husbands. They do this as a status symbol and for shopping perks (i.e. no good reason). Francine accidentally becomes a member after the women catch her in a [[Not What It Looks Like]] situation with another man. Apparently, all the husbands are clueless, while their wives believe that being a slut is a good thing.

 

* The Gosselin family, of ''[[Jon and Kate Plus Eight]]'' fame, sort of [[Zig-Zagging Trope|zig-zag]] around this - while Kate was originally blamed for making Jon miserable enough to seek happiness with another woman, she's recently began gaining more sympathy after Jon allegedly proposed to his new younger girlfriend.

** Part of this came from the media; Jon was proposed as the villian in the relationship, being weaker emotionally, while Kate was built up as the strong mother trying hold it together for her children. Rare was any story on them were her emotional abuse came into the center, instead it was all about how Jon cheated. When stories of ''her'' cheating came into play, it almost never was her fault for doing so, or as evil as Jon's betrayal.

** Funnily enough, Tracy danced into Bad Adultery territory during his affairs with actresses who ''weren't'' Hepburn.

* [[Ayn Rand]] drew a distinction between good and bad adultery. She had an affair with a prominent player in her Objectivist movement, Nathaniel Branden, a married man, and rationalized it by saying two people of their intellectual caliber were morally obligated to enter a relationship. However, Branden later had an affair with another woman, for which he was practically excommunicated from the Objectivist cause.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Red Fish Blue Fish]]