Infidelity Trauma: Is cheating considered a type of sexual assault?

What defines assault in a relationship?

D Day means Discovery Day to someone who has been cheated on.

It’s often a day that happens over and over again if the cheating partner decides to trickle truth through their confession.

Trickle Truth = When small pieces of the story are told with periods of time in between.

Usually, it involves more lies, minimizing, getting caught in the lies and being forced to admit things. Each time, this adds to the trauma and has the cheated on partner feeling like it is day 1 all over again.

It is messy and painful to have trickle truths happen to you.

So what happens when this trickling of information does not include admitting to having sexual interactions with another partner? What happens the the partner thinks it is an emotional affair? What happens if there is no trickle and they find out all at once about the sexual affair?

What about that time between the sex beginning and the spouse finding out about it?

No Grey Areas

When it comes to consent there is no in between. Either consent was given or it wasn’t.

You can’t sort of consent to doing something, you either do or you don’t, but you can be tricked or coerced into consenting to something based off of false information.

When we are in (what we believe is) a committed relationship there are a lot of things that are just given. These assumptions are part of the deal we make with our partner even if they are not explicitly stated. Leading someone to think an event or belief is the truth is the same as making a pact with them.

A simple example of this would be: You and I both have ice cream. I say to you, “We should share. Can I have a bite of yours?” I take a bite. Then when it is time for me to let you have a bite of mine I say, “No. I wanted to share yours only.”

That is a deception. The implied message of we will be sharing both, did not need to be stated explicitly for the gist of the situation to be understood. This manipulation tactic may be a legal argument, but it isn’t of good character. It’s not a way to promote being a good citizen of the world.

When we get married, we do not have to say, “I expect you to remain faithful to me sexually.” That is implied unless you have that discussion about outside relationships or an open concept marriage.

There is a status quo for every relationship. If you want to travel outside of the current parameters, you must do it out in the open to maintain integrity.

When cheating has occurred you are no longer in that accepted state of affairs. Which means everything that was consented to before, is no longer that way now.

This includes sexual consent as well.

If you cheat on your partner, you have broken the consent status in your relationship.

Is Sleeping With Your Partner After Cheating Equal To Sexual Assault?

In my opinion it is.

This is one of the big issues that comes up for many partners of cheaters. They feel violated sexually.

I have heard it often and I recall saying it as well after finding out about my ex-husband’s affair. “I would never have touched him again if I knew…”

In my case, it was clear cut and he knew this for many years. It was not implied or assumed. I spoke the words out loud. If he were to sexually contact another woman, I would never want him to touch me again. This was said many times in marriage counseling, had it written in our therapeutic agreement for his rehab, as well as prior to any of that. So when the other woman showed up at the door and told me their relationship had been sexual for over a year at that point, I was disgusted with myself as well as with him.

I felt dirty. I felt violated. I felt like I had been sexually assaulted.

And this sentiment has been repeated to me by many clients. It is baked into the cake with infidelity trauma. It is one of those concepts that you can understand mentally by hearing or reading the words, but feeling it is completely different. The way it feels is not something that is described easily.

The invasion of your body feels like a core wound. Like something you cannot get over. Have you ever experienced that feeling? That you as a person are dirty? It’s destabilizing. This is one of the ways betrayal can cause PTSD.

This is often not spoken about enough or thought about by those who are cheating because they were informed of what was happening all along. They knew where they had been. They consented to it. Their partner did not.

When Is It Consensual and When Isn’t It?

This is also very clear.

It is consensual when your partner knows.

If they do not know, they do not have what they need to make an informed decision.

Until then, if you are cheating, you are having non-consensual sex with your partner. More than that, it is typically unprotected sex.

So unprotected non-consensual sex. Sounds criminal to me.

Here’s the BUT… But is it actually illegal?

There are a lot of things that are unethical yet are not illegal. Or at least, they aren’t illegal enough. Or illegal yet.

I can drive 3 mph over the speed limit and I won’t get a ticket. It is technically illegal, but not enough to warrant any police action.

If I tell my friend a lie and say I am going to be at their house at 1 even though I know I won’t show up until 3. That is unethical but not illegal.

Legality is a slippery slope. Like with anything involving the law, it is open to interpretation.

Laws are meant to maintain order and protect citizens. How is it protecting anyone to exclude this sort of behavior from the rule books? It protects the cheater only. Which is one sided justice. Is that truly just?

Many will argue that morality should not be on trial. That cheating is an integrity issue.

While that may be true. It is not the totality of it. The sentence doesn’t end there. It’s more than just integrity. Cheating encompasses a lifestyle, a legal contract (when it comes to marriage), a family, careers, money, health, and trauma… cheating is never just cheating.

Why Does It Feel Like Assault?

In the most simple terms, it is because of the lack of knowing what you are allowing to happen to your body.

If you choose to drink coffee you know you are making a decision that involves putting something inside you that could have effects.

You can choose how much you drink. If you drink it. If you won’t.

When you sleep with a partner you don’t know is cheating, you have been stripped of all of that choice. You don’t know the risks you are taking about your health.

Even if the cheater claims to have had protected sex, that is not a real assurance of safety. Protection is never 100% and not all diseases are passed through sex. Many can be passed through kissing. As a PTA I had many clients get mono, Covid, or pneumonia from their partners.

STDs may get all the notoriety in the cheating world but they aren’t the only thing that can be spread. People do die or get seriously sick from other more common ailments.

The symptoms of cheating are also detrimental to the person being cheated on. It is uncommon that it is flying under the radar completely. While there may be a few who don’t treat their spouses any differently than they did before cheating, many turn to gaslighting, lying, manipulating, insulting, and berating. This takes a toll on the overall health of their partner as well.

These are all types of emotional or psychological abuse. Add this to the issue of potential sexual battery and a person dealing with a cheating partner is set up for a bleak outcome by the sheer amount of negatives they are facing.

So again I wonder, why is this not considered assault or battery? Is it because it is common? Why is it an abuse that is okay simply because it happens a lot?

I do hope this opens up one day to be more common knowledge. As well as possibly a legal term. The victims need more support.