When it comes to infidelity, like most things in life, human beings commit what social psychologists call the actor-observer bias. If you cheat, it’s because you are a selfish, weak, untrustworthy person. But if I do it, it’s because of the situation I found myself in. For ourselves, we focus on the mitigating circumstances; for others, we blame character.
— Esther Perel, The State of Affairs
Adultery in fiction is very much a mixed bag. Sometimes you have good adulterers: those you see as "just messing up" and can be sympathised with. Sometimes you have bad adulterers: those who are genuine Jerkasses and deserve to be caught and humiliated in front of a large crowd. This trope is in effect when there are at least two instances of cheating, and the work treats one as 'good' and the other as 'bad'.
On a superficial level, in fact, the distinction between good adulterers and bad can be entirely arbitrary. The best writing, however, takes clarity and nuance into account, and there are many possible reasons why one adulterer can be seen as better than another.
Signs that someone is a "good" adulterer
- The cheater is the protagonist.
- Their partner is physically and/or emotionally, abusive, which unsurprisingly drives the cheater away from them. This also adds the risk of the partner committing Disproportionate Retribution (up to and including murder) when they learn about the adultery.
- Their partner is neglectful, emotionally unavailable, or physically absent much of the time; they may be a Workaholic, obsessed with hobbies, or care more about partying or spending time with friends rather than loved ones.
- Their relationship is an Awful Wedded Life or romantically dead, and the partner is unable or unwilling to connect emotionally or satisfy their sexual needs.
- Their relationship was never genuine to begin with—it was arranged or done out of pragmatism or convenience. In such a case, one or both of them may take lovers with varying degrees of openness. (In historical or fantasy works with patriarchal societies, expect only the husband to get away with it though.)
- Overlapping with the above is if they're forced together by circumstances, but have Incompatible Orientation. (If done intentionally, see The Beard.)
- The adulterous couple is the work's One True Pairing. It is especially obvious if both adulterers are long-term characters, but the individual being cheated on is only in the show at all because they are married to one of the adulterers.
- Their relationship is in a temporary rough spot or they're "on a break"; whether it's seen as infidelity depends on whether they're expected to reconcile in the near future.
- It's a Coming-Out Story where they're sleeping with someone of the same sex, and their partner is their Last Het Romance.
- Their partner cheated first. However, it gets murky is if it turns out one of the parties is only Mistaken for Cheating.
- Their partner is physically incapable of sex due to age, disease, or injury.
- It's Accidental Adultery where the cheater was completely unaware that it was adultery. For instance, could have amnesia, they could unknowingly be in an Accidental Marriage, they got a divorce that was never properly finalized, or they believed their partner was dead. Alternately, they could be the paramour and the cheater is keeping them in the dark about their other relationship.
- It's a society where it's accepted that marriage is for procreation and lovers are for pleasure, and the roles of a spouse and a lover are mutually exclusive.
Signs that a person is a "bad" adulterer:
- The cheated-on partner is the protagonist.
- They cheat for shallow or superficial reasons, like sleeping with a paramour who's younger, better-looking, or more successful than their partner, or simply because they're a Hedonist who enjoys it.
- They have no moral compunction about manipulating their partner for their own ends. Even if the partner may be fine with an open relationship, being led on and lied to may be their Berserk Button.
- The cheated-upon partner is already under a lot of stress because of prior circumstances, and the affair further aggravates it.
- They're disrespectful toward their paramour, such as keeping them in the dark about their other relationships, stringing them along with empty promises of leaving the partner, or generally treating them as inferior and unworthy of respect. (The paramour may hypocritically be fine with their cheater's behavior toward their partner, but be surprised or offended when they're the victim of it too.)
- The cheater doesn't even bother hiding their cheating from their partner, being callously casual about the whole thing and not giving a damn how their partner feels about it.
- The paramour is a member of the cheated-upon character's family. The "mild" version tends to involve a cousin, sibling, uncle/aunt, etc., while more extreme examples may involve a sibling, parent, or child (which may take on ominous Parental Incest overtures).
- The cheating in general is meant to provoke discomfort in the form of sexual jealousy in the audience—see Cuckold.
- If the setting is very patriarchal, men may be able to do all the philandering they want, but women are expected to be chaste and faithful.
- Inversely, in a very matriarchal or gynocentric setting, a male character may be expected to remain faithful to his female partner no matter what and any adultery by him is seen as inexcusable.
- The partner has gone away, and the cheater has promised to wait for their return, but finds their heart (and other parts of their anatomy) wandering in the meantime. Doubly so if the cheated-upon partner is in the military and has been deployed, or if they're part of a Long-Distance Relationship.
- Or regardless of any such promise if they're in a Long Distance Relationship due to the cheated-upon performing some respectable duty like fighting for their country, providing disaster relief, or tending to a dying relative. Or they're a political prisoner or prisoner of war.
- Their partner is physically incapable (permanently or temporarily) of sex due to age, disease, injury, mental breakdown, or recovering from having given birth. The husband who cheats on his terminally ill wife is a popular example.
- Their partner is still physically capable of sex, but the cheater has lost interest due to an injury or medical condition the cheated-upon acquired which causes long-term disability or alters their appearance.
- The cheated-upon partner is too overworked to have sex because they're busy caring for the couple's newborn baby, forced to work an exhausting job just to make ends meet, etc. Doubly so if the cheating partner doesn't even bother to shoulder their share of the burden.
- The illicit relationship results in an unplanned pregnancy, the transmission of an STD, or both. This often includes the cheater getting a Karmic STD for their infidelity.
- The cheated-on partner may find out by getting diagnosed with an STD that could only be explained by their partner sleeping with someone else.
- If it involves royalty or nobility, the affair ends up resulting in a Succession Crisis.
- The cheater is coercing or outright raping their "paramour", which only gets uglier if the "paramour" is too young for them.
A lot of this probably stems from the fact that adultery in Real Life is complex and difficult; while people cheat for many reasons (some understandable and sympathetic, others less so), it's still considered a betrayal of the other partner in the relationship.
Note that this documents how a specific work varies in its portrayal of adultery and the reasons thereof, not to cast your own judgments on a character's decisions.
Compare Sympathetic Adulterer. See also The Unfair Sex, where the distinction seems to fall across the Gender line (but may also use the above to justify it). May overlap with Hanky-Panky with the Help.
Examples:
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Comic Strips
- For Better or for Worse:
- Good: Anthony constantly pursuing his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth... while married to Thérèse. Anthony is clearly meant to be the one we sympathize with.
- Bad: Elizabeth being cheated on by her long-term boyfriend at college is treated as a great betrayal. 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!?"
- And in between the two there was her boyfriend Paul, who cheated on her with his childhood friend. While this was meant to show how bad Paul was for Elizabeth, she led him on. (Example: When he finally got the transfer to the rural town Elizabeth was teaching at so he could live with her, she decides to move back to her hometown.)
- A pair of Gossipy Hens claim in one strip that Thérèse has been cheating on Anthony. However, no evidence of their claims is ever presented, and comes off as Cheater Gets Cheated On.
Fan Works
- In Dirty Sympathy, Daryan is perfectly fine with Klavier sleeping around with female groupies, as he does the same thing. However, he's also a Domestic Abuser, and dislikes the notion of Klavier getting romantically involved with anyone else. Klavier falling in love with Apollo is treated very sympathetically by the narrative, as he's desperate to escape Daryan's grasp.
- The Draco Trilogy has Ron fall victim to a Bed Trick where the culprit magically disguised herself as Hermione. This is treated as an unforgivable betrayal, even though he honestly had no idea of her true identity. By contrast, Hermione making out with Draco and spending several nights cuddling in bed with him is completely glossed over and treated as no big deal.
- Help Me Hold Onto You: Daniel and Charity are cheating on each other. For Daniel, this is sympathetic because he's trapped in a loveless marriage — and in the Le Domas family, Divorce Requires Death. Charity, by contrast, is vilified for this; when Grace discovers that she's been cheating on him with her husband, Alex, she's so furious that she can't even speak at first, and it fuels her own affair with Daniel.
- Percy Jackson: An Age Gone By: Perseus starts the story married to Medeia, but eventually decides to start a relationship with Artemis, intending to divorce his wife after returning to Greece. Later, following his death, Artemis learns that Medeia had started an affair of her own while her husband was away, and is so infuriated that she kills them both at his mother's request. To make this more palatable, it's heavily implied that either Medeia or her lover had been abusing Perseus' mother.
Film — Live Action
- In Braveheart, the English have quite a few bad cheaters, with their lords raping married (and non-married) Scottish women, and King Longshanks's sniveling son having an obvious affair while ignoring the needs of his wife, Princess Isabella. On the other hand, Isabella then has a romantic affair with the heroic Scottish rebel William Wallace—which she goes on to whisper to Longshanks's ear while he's on his deathbed, powerless to tell anyone else or do anything about it.
- In The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), Mercedes sleeps with Edmond, who she had been engaged to before his arrest and apparent death, was still in love with after all these years, and was the true father of her son. It's also implied to be the only time she strayed from her husband in nearly two decades of marriage. Her husband Fernand, on the other hand, had casual affairs with at least four other women since getting married, some of them already married themselves, and on one occasion killed his mistress' husband in a duel when he objected.
- Dil Dhadakne Do: Kamal's infidelities are presented as a significant character flaw which had led to his and Neelam's marriage turning into a Happy Marriage Charade, but Ayesha's growing feelings for Sunny are presented much more sympathetically. Admittedly, there are significant differences in how the two deal with it: Kamal seems to have thought nothing of cheating on his long-suffering and loving wife for years, turning her into a Stepford Smiler, till Kabir tells him that everyone has always known about his womanizing; he seems genuinely surprised when Neelam tells him the only reason she didn't leave him was because her family wouldn't take her back due to dishonour after she had eloped with him; and, most damningly of all, his womanizing doesn't stop him from opposing Ayesha divorcing Manav and telling her that marriages are commitments for life. Ayesha, meanwhile, has a truly obnoxious husband and mother-in-law, had originally been with Sunny before Kamal conspired to break them apart, had been considering divorce even before she met him again, and agonizes over her feelings for him even though he's a much better man.
- 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.
- Frida: When Frida Kahlo's husband Diego cheats on her, it's nearly always portrayed in an unflattering, unsympathetic light. When Frida herself cheats, it's always presented as sexy and/or romantic, along with the not-so-subtle implication that she's only doing it because her husband already did.
- Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna: Dev and Maya cheat on their respective spouses, Rhea and Rishi, with each other. They are mostly portrayed sympathetically, but the film also makes it clear that their actions deeply hurt their spouses, who are genuinely in love with them and making an effort to repair their strained marriages, while they are only interested with each other.
- Played With in The Last Letter From Your Lover. Anthony cheated on his wife in the backstory and this is seen as a negative thing by both his ex-wife, himself, and Jenny, who wonders if Anthony might also cheat on her. And while Jenny is a Sympathetic Adulterer and her affair with Anthony is the film's big romance, her husband Larry rightly points out that the courts will see her as a bad adulterer regardless.
- Little Children fits this mold as well. Sarah's husband is shown to be rather perverse, using internet pornography and fetishes to get his kicks and ignoring Sarah's emotional and sexual needs; so her cheating on him may be seen as acceptable. Brad, however, is a stay-at-home father who seems to have latent resentment over his wife's control over the money and run of the household. But Brad's wife does not commit any major indiscretions against him, with the exception of being somewhat distant to his feelings of personal inadequacies; so Brad cheating on her is somewhat less sympathetic. However, one of the central themes of the film is the fact that basically good people can do very bad things and that social mores and values often don't factor in well in real-world situations.
- A Royal Affair: Neither Christian nor Caroline are faithful to each other. Christian's numerous dalliances with prostitutes are treated less sympathetically than Caroline's affair with Struensee. At some points, Christian brings prostitutes into the palace where Caroline can see, humiliating her in front of the court. Caroline puts up with Christian's wild and sometimes cruel behavior for years with little in the way of support and companionship until she falls in love with Struensee. They also try to keep their affair discreet (though everyone figures it out eventually). Caroline passing off her daughter with Struensee as Christian's is treated as a necessary act to protect her children, and the lovers are punished extremely harshly for their affair in their end.
- Six Days, Seven Nights: Protagonists Robin and Quinn fall in love over their struggles, while stranded on a lonesome Pacific island after a plane crash, while their partners Frank and Angelica, who remained at the holiday resort, start an affair in the meantime. The former is shown in a much more sympathetic light.
- 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 vilified. Meanwhile, his affection for the 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.
- In The Wolverine, the good adulterer, Logan, sleeps with Mariko, but he's a wounded soul and she's trapped in a loveless engagement. The bad adulterer, Noburo, is just getting his jollies on and was engaged to Mariko to get money. He's also conspiring to have her killed for even more money.
Literature
- Magpie Murders: Moonflower Murders. Bad adultery is Susan's considered affair with Craig (though she doesn't actually do it), and Melissa's in-story affair with Leonard, who murdered her to conceal it; good adultery is Cecily cheating on the sociopathic Aiden, who eventually murdered her, with Stefan, and even getting pregnant by him and raising the baby with Aiden - since it meant that Roxana still had a father when Cecily was murdered and Aiden committed suicide.
- The Silerian Trilogy: Ronall constantly cheats on Elelar with random women and is an abusive drunk. Elelar also sleeps with many other men, though only to gain information for La Résistance, and she is mostly portrayed sympathetically, as she's stuck with him as her husband.
Live-Action TV
- Blackpool: Ripley's affairs are casual sex while Natalie's is about love. Ripley eventually tells her to go be with the man she loves.
- ER: Jeannie Boulet is a Sympathetic Adulterer during her affair with Peter Benton, as her husband has been cheating on her left and right for years, culminating in him contracting HIV and giving it to her.
- Fresh Off the Boat: Next-door neighbors Marvin and Honey Ellis' affair is seen as either, depending on which side of the conflict you're on. Marvin had issues with his last wife Sarah long before he started having an affair with Honey, which ultimately led to him divorcing her and marrying his mistress. Yet, most of the neighborhood wives still vilify Honey and make her a pariah in the cul-de-sac community.
- Friends: While Ross's reasons for cheating on Rachel were understandable if not condoned it was Played for Drama, a few episodes later Joey slept with a married woman just because he wanted to and that was Played for Laughs.
- Infidelity makes frequent appearances in Law & Order as a motive for murder (or as a good way to serve up a Red Herring). How sympathetic the adulterer is portrayed largely depends on whether they're the murderer.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In the episode "Choreographed", Wesley Masoner and Naomi Cheales are married lovers, but Naomi is treated much more charitably by both the story and the detectives. While Wesley was a smug serial cheater with a bit of a violent streak, Naomi only cheated with Wesley and was driven to do so because she felt suffocated by her husband Glenn's insecurities. She also reveals how she didn't like Wesley boasting to Glenn about their affair—referring to Naomi as "Jen" while doing so—and seems genuinely remorseful when Glenn finds out.
- Your Friends & Neighbors (2025): Coop and Sam are both divorced because their respective spouses, Mel and Paul, cheated on them. While Coop is understandably angry at Mel, they split pretty peacefully and she claims that her affair with Nick was the result of longtime emotional neglect from Coop. On the other hand, Paul is portrayed as an unsympathetic Fat Slob who couldn't keep it in his pants, intends to make the divorce acrimonious, and has taken up with a string of twentysomethings in place of Sam. This is lampshaded when Mel and Sam speak in episode 3, and Sam bluntly calls Mel the "Paul" in her marriage, before attempting to walk it back.
Sam: I'm not trying to say that you're like Paul. I just meant that you're the one who had the affair. [...]
Mel: Oh, my God. I'm Paul. [...] I am the one who cheated. But that was after years... years... of just trying to get Coop to pay attention to us. To me. But no matter what I tried, the chasm between us got wider and wider and, at a certain point, there was nothing I could do.
Sam: So you fucked one of his best friends.
Music
- Bon Jovi: in the music video for "Always," a pair of lovers mutually betray each other. The behavior of the man is seen as frivolous (he attempts to sleep with his partner's friend the first time they are left alone together), but the cheating of the woman is portrayed more as an emotional response and an action that she clearly regrets afterwards. Although they reconcile, the man doesn't handle his partner's infidelity very gracefully and responds by blowing up the other man's apartment, which causes the woman to end the relationship permanently.
- Harry Chapin: "I Wanna Learn a Love Song" presents a "good adultery"—the narrator is hired to teach a married woman guitar and, implicitly, sleeps with her by the end of the song, which leads to positive changes in his life. Particularly in the "good" camp because the song is a dramatization of Chapin's own meeting with and eventual marriage to his wife, Sandra.
It took another man's wife in the real world life to make this boy a man.
Myths and Legends
- Tristan and Iseult: In the early versions, the title characters were treated sympathetically (somewhat justified since they accidentally drank a Love Potion), but so was the cuckolded King Mark. Later writers, apparently displeased with this moral ambiguity, turned Mark into a Dirty Coward who rapes and murders his own niece, so now it's okay that Iseult is sleeping with his nephew.note Modern retellings sometimes go back to the nicer King Mark.
Theatre
- Diana: The Musical: Diana and Charles are mutually unfaithful in their marriage, but Diana's infidelity is portrayed as the result of years of mistreatment by Charles, who began cheating on her with his longtime mistress very early in their marriage. When their affairs come to light, the public is more sympathetic towards Diana and sees it as an indictment of the royal family.
- The Great Gatsby (2023): Lampshaded. Nick is initially uneasy at the prospect of helping Gatsby reunite with Daisy as Daisy is a married woman. However, after witnessing Tom not only gleefully cheating on her with his mistress Myrtle, but is also physically abusive towards Myrtle, Nick thinks that Daisy deserves better and (re)introduces Daisy and Gatsby. They begin a romantic affair, though Nick eventually comes to believe that Gatsby deserved better than Daisy.
- The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals contrasts Sam and Charlotte Sweetly, both of whom are cheating on each other. Sam is seen kissing and planning a date with the much younger Zoey after blowing off Charlotte's request that they spend the night together (a monthly "cuddle night" having been recommended by their marriage counsellor), while Charlotte hooks up with her coworker Ted when Sam doesn't come home until early the next morning. Unlike Sam (who even Ted describes as a "scumbag"), Charlotte is shown to be invested in trying to make things work with Sam from her very first scene, right up until she dies at the hands of an infected Sam and is later dissected by Professor Hidgens, making her the more sympathetic character by far.
Video Games
- In Dragon Age: Origins, it's possible to get married and have an affair in a couple of different combinations, with entirely different connotations from the characters involved. Zevran refuses to romance you and Alistair or Leliana at the same time, because he's "no cheat." But if you're just married for political reasons, he'll be happy to be The Mistress. Leliana expects faithfulness if romanced, but her attitude toward being The Mistress to a married Warden depends on whether she's been hardened or not. (For their part, the marriage candidates know the score and will not object to a lover.)
- In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, a highly plot-significant couple features both. Duke Victor of Velthomer is bad, as a serial adulterer and rapist who tried to throw his pregnant victim out of his householdnote . His wife Lady Cigyun is good, as she takes The Wise Prince as a lover in the aftermath of finding out about Victor's crime. Those who know the story sympathize with her for having such an awful husband.
Visual Novels
- Ambition: A Minuet in Power:
- The narrative frames Yvette pursuing any romance option other than her fiancé Armand as understandable, on the basis that Armand just plain disappeared only a few days before she was to move in with him. Armand himself shares that opinion in-universe. At the same time, the storyline in which Yvette investigates Armand's wereabouts paints the possibility that he got romantically involved with another woman in a negative light, as such a scenario would put him in the "did it first" variant of unsympathetic adulterers.
- Élisabeth, having the same marital status as her historical counterpart, is explicitly seeing Yvette behind her husband's back, but also portrayed as being in an Incompatible Orientation marriage.
- Being a ΔΙΚ plays with pretty much every criterion above, particularly when it comes to the Main Girl romances, with relationships with many of the girls involving cheating in some form; several other infidelities are also judged varyingly by the plot.
- Despite some initial flirting, Sage only asks to start a Friends with Benefits relationship with the MC after she has confirmed that Chad is cheating on her, though this can be subverted by the player if they refuse and wait to get together with her till after the two have broken up. Chad is revealed to have cheated on her with Troy, but if anything this makes him less sympathetic: he only was with Sage to benefit from her parents' influence, and was wholly indifferent to her physical needs in their relationship.
- During her first date, Josy tells the MC that she is attracted to him but that she is in a relationship. Subsequently, when he visits her during his first weekend, she tearfully confides in him about how badly the relationship is going and how lonely she feels, before asking him to stay the night with her; she even initiates sex if he does. Turns out she is in a relationship with Maya, who she has been kept apart from due to the latter's father's abuse, and most of Episode 4 involves all three of them angsting over the two having cheated on each other with him. The situation is resolved at the end of that episode after the MC reveals everything to both of them, with Josy and Maya reaffirming their relationship and potentially adding him into it to form the "Throuple".
- Isabella is married, but James has been missing for three years (in "Calm Before the Snow", she reveals that he is still being looked for, but has not been missing long enough to be considered legally dead), and she wants to escape years of loneliness when she falls for the MC - she even likens it to drowning in misery with the MC being her only oxygen. This does not stop her from angsting due to considering herself an adulteress when she engages sexually with the MC: she never takes off her wedding ring for the first two seasons (barring their date which goes disastrously, after which she puts it back on) unless the MC commits to her in "Crossroads", in which case she takes it off before the two have sex for the first time.
- Stephen and Jade both cheat on each other (Stephen with students and restaurant girls and Jade potentially with the MC), and while Stephen's cheating is considerably worse (he cheated first, and his cheating is part of his exploitation of the HOTs/restaurant), Jade's cheating is also considered bad: she essentially uses the MC as a means to vent her frustration, gets very angry if he dares to end things with her, and her near-babyfication of him (asking him to call her "mommy" and calling him "son", something she does with her real adult son) is very creepy.
- Arieth cheating on Dawe with basically every guy at B&R is Played for Laughs, mostly due to her being The Ditz, how obnoxious Dawe is, and the fact that he also cheats on her (or tries to, anyway).
- Derek sleeping with Wendy while drunk in Episode 4 is initially played for laughs (because it's Wendy), but is subsequently played for drama when it breaks his and Ashley's budding relationship apart and Ash starts dating Anthony. However, the narrative does not judge Ash for cheating on Anthony if the MC tells Derek that she forgives him during the HOTs party in Episode 7, where she immediately leaves the party after he calls her and subsequently emerges from his room the next morning.
- Tommy constantly sleeping with other women is an indication of his Jerkass behaviour; while he and Heather are in an open relationship (which she was never comfortable with), he breaks the terms of the relationship (a veto for the other partner) and sleeps with whoever he wants without caring for her feelings. The narrative is far kinder to Heather when, in Episode 9, she, fed up at Tommy taking Christine to bed, tries to seduce the MC and subsequently sleeps with Nick after he tells her about his longtime crush on her; she feels awful about it afterwards, apologizes to the MC, and tells Tommy before breaking up with him in Episode 10's ending.
- Rusty is first seen with Micha during the dorm party in Episode 8, and later dialogue implies that the two slept together afterwards, with him believing that she could be the one for him. However, when she attends the Halloween party in Episode 9, Rusty tries to make out with her again, only for her to tell him that she has a boyfriend and that them sleeping together was a mistake before she awkwardly leaves; this causes Rusty to feel so heartbroken that he spends the rest of the party on the roof Drowning His Sorrows with a bottle of vodka. However, in Episode 11, Tremolo can walk in on them making out in his room, with Rusty subsequently telling him that she is still with her boyfriend but they will continue to have a sexual relationship, which the MC can either condemn or dismiss as none of his business (notably, selecting the latter option is required for the MC to have the option to get into a relationship with Bianca, as noted below).
- Every relationship involving Bianca has cheating in some form, always presented negatively.
- Bianca's fiancé Matthew is cheating on her with her friend Olivia, as seen when the MC is roaming around the DIK house in Episode 9 and walks in on them making out in Rusty's room. If he is with Jill, he can tell her this at the end of the night, and the two subsequently tell Bianca in Episode 10, causing her to be heartbroken and breaking off their engagement.
- Any relationship between the MC and Bianca involves cheating on the part of at least one of them, with the MC being able to flirt with her while on Jill or Isabella's path (he can also do so if he is single, though in that case she is cheating on Matt while unaware of him cheating on her). It is particularly prominent if the MC is on Jill's path, where it is the most detailed (the two can begin flirting as early as Episode 9 when he gropes her ass while taking their picture) and unsympathetic: not only is Jill an absolute sweetheart who has done nothing to deserve being cheated on, but Bianca is either cheating on Matt (while unaware that he is cheating on her) or is doing to Jill what Olivia did to her.
- Adultery is one of the main themes of In Your Arms Tonight, which begins with the protagonist's discovery that her husband of three months, Koichi, is having an affair. She has the option of divorcing him immediately, but there are several routes in which she doesn't, and instead ends up getting involved with another man while she is still married. This is always portrayed sympathetically as the protagonist finding the love and support that Koichi is not providing to her, and only in one such route does she carefully refrain from physical intimacy with her love interest because she feels it would make her no better than her husband. Koichi's infidelity, on the other hand, is never presented sympathetically: it is a purely physical relationship, and in Aiba's route he goes so far as to tell the protagonist that he is cheating on her because she does not have enough sex appeal.
Web Animation
- Discussed in Overly Sarcastic Productions's video on Arthurian Legend. Red notes that most modern Arthuriana focuses on the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot Love Triangle, and that one of the men is usually vilified to fit this trope.
Webcomics
- Better Days:
- Elizabeth caught her husband screwing the head of their homeowner's association, and she responded by having an affair with Fisk before confronting her unfaithful husband and demanding a divorce. For worse, they had been attempting to have a baby at the time which made him angrily rant to a friend about how he'd been wasting it all on the other woman.
- When Lucy was in college, her roommate, Rachel, frequently cheated on her boyfriend while expecting to marry him someday. This is treated as bad adultery since the boyfriend is a sweet guy. Lucy having the boyfriend cheat on Rachel with her is good adultery because Lucy really loves him and is the protagonist. Granted she is faithful to him and they eventually get married, but a later storyline that has her debate whether or not to cheat on him with her other roommate's boyfriend partially shows her as sympathetic because she feels unsure about limiting herself to one lover. The only reason it's treated as bad is that one of her friends points out that she'd be throwing away a good, loving relationship for a fling.
- Fisk's best friend in grade school has parents in an obviously dysfunctional marriage, his father strikes up a friendship with Fisk's (widowed) mother that quickly turns into an affair that leads to divorce. The friend's mother moves away and takes her son with him, causing Fisk to hate his mom's new boyfriend; however, years later, he forgives him, though he doesn't admit how immature he was at the time.
