A few of my friends who I go out with from time to time treat cheating as normal. One who has been with a girl for almost 3 years cheats on her regularly. He works in business and travels a lot, she thinks he stays at the hotel and crashes early but actually he goes out and meets women. He's a natural, in the 3 years they have been together I would guess he has slept with ~50 women. His logic is while he loves this girl (or says he does) he would survive without her. He honestly thinks he may marry her someday but he's young and wants to have his cake, and eat it.

A second friend is very into seduction, he actually met his current girlfriend by using some techniques. The "community" has actually done wonders for his self confidence - encouraging personal growth, working out etc. It's also given him this idea that he can sleep with women and he enjoys the thrill of the chase. To paraphrase, he just gets bored every so often. Maybe once or twice a year he has an itch and he scratches it. Namely, over the holidays when the three of us are in town visiting family we meet up and go out. Both of them hook up.

We went out for a night on the town. (I have a girlfriend of a year and we don't party that much) so when I go out with these two friends we usually make a big deal of it. We get to this club and immediately they start opening sets. We're talking with a few girls and one of them starts giving me clear iois. Finally, she puts her hand on my chest - pulls me toward her and we make out. Both of my friends were cheering me on, when the girls went to the bathroom I got high fives and fuck yeahs! I felt good, I felt - like a man. I was capable of picking up attractive girls, I was desired. I told this to a girl I'm friends with and she was fucking appalled - she said she expects that sort of thing from most guys but thought I wasn't like that. Whatever that means. I definitely got caught up in the fun/thrill of the chase and from hanging around them I feel like I did nothing wrong, or - everyone does it.

This whole incident got me thinking - how fucking common is this attitude? Are my buddies really that horrible or do a lot of people look at cheating like this? I think of media - how much music, movies, and television are filled with tales of cheating and affairs. Certain statistics of cheating claim that between 8-40% of relationships will have infidelity. I can think of, off the top of my head 6 guys I know whose girlfriends cheated on them. I think of one friend who has fucked several girls in relationships, one with a fiance. I guess I'm having sort of a moral dilemma here and feeling that maybe cheating isn't so bad. Thoughts?