Is it okay to cheat on your spouse or partner?

I'm moving away from the main ideas in 'Beneath the Perfect World', but still sticking to one of the big themes: morally questionable behaviour. The protagonist, Alan Bell, certainly pushes the boundaries of respectable norms and I had a difficult job vindicating him in the eyes of the reader. I've started writing the prequel and I'm wondering if I should turn him into a love cheat. How hard will it be to convince my reader, he is a good character if I make him sleep with another woman behind his partner's back.

If you look at statistics, http://www.statisticbrain.com/infidelity-statistics/ more than 50% of men and woman cheat at some stage in a relationship. Most of the time it's a cat's away scenario so they don't get caught. This suggests few people want their marriage to break up, although most marriages do not survive. Many more people would like to have an affair but don't want to risk being caught.

On the whole, we're a pretty naughty species and cheaters have a bad name. They are bitches, bastards, scumbags, arseholes. Their spouse or partner is the most wronged person in society, but for someone to cheat, surely a lot of wrongs come first.

Stereotypically, the motives for cheating differ between the sexes. The man gets labelled a player and the woman gets labelled a floosy. It's easy to demonise the cheater as a callous person who is being damn right nasty to their other half, but it's not that simple. Cheating falls into the categories of physical gratification and emotional gratification. Although I'd have more sympathy for the latter motivation, both indicate needs are not being met in the 'legitimate' relationship.

In simple layman's terms, a spouse or partner can feel wronged when cheated on because their status with another person as spouse or partner has been proclaimed. This means they have exclusive rights to that person. The marriage certificate affirms this. Once you've made the marriage vows, you're in for the duration. Divorce happens if a marriage breaks down, but if it's on the grounds of adultery, the person who cheated is to blame.

It's a chicken and egg situation. I heard recently someone say that if you are intending to cheat, you should leave your partner or spouse first. Is life really that simple? Adultery is a complicated scenario. First of all you fancy someone who isn't your partner or spouse. The lust kicks in, an emotional connection is developed, you find yourself drawn to that person. You know it's wrong but you can't help it. Why? Because the stuff going on is incredibly powerful. Before you know it, you drawn in and as much as you fight it, the urge is too hard to resist.

A friend of mine once scolded someone for sleeping with a married man. 'What about his wife; she loves him?' So does that mean if you love someone you have rights over them? She might have loved her husband, but she wasn't meeting his needs in their relationship. He might have done the one big thing that met with a furore, but what about all the little things that were going wrong in the relationship that were making him unhappy?

In the vast majority of cases, people commit adultery because they are not happy. I love you is the justification that two people should remain together, but love is a strange emotional tie. It may bind people for a couple of years and cause people who are constantly at each other's throats to stay together, but when the flame dies, it's time to get real and get out. That is also a hard step, because it's hard to disestablish the things two people have built together after a number of years. People simply put up with the crap because getting out is harder.

So instead, people cheat. And perhaps people cheat because it is the one thing that will break up the unhappy home.

If you've read 'Beneath the Perfect World' you'll know beneath it all Alan is a caring person, who's life has been messed up by circumstances. Those who want to get their claws into him can do so because of his tendency to self-abnegate and want to do right by everyone. So if I decide to make him a love cheat in the next book, don't be hard on him.