"You spend your life lying through your dentures to that husband of yours. Stick a pin in the phone book and its odds on it'll land on someone you've had an affair with!"
— Tracey Stubbs, Birds of a Feather (1989), "Trust"
When it comes to adultery, some people would never dream of doing it. Others might do it once and feel horrible about it. Still others might have no qualms about cheating multiple times with multiple different people. They might do it because they get a thrill out of not getting caught, because they are a promiscuous person who won't let being in a committed relationship stop them from sleeping around, or because they arrogantly believe that they'll never get caught.
There are a number of reasons why a person might get away with cheating multiple times; maybe the cheated party is extremely naive and/or trusting of their partner. Maybe their partner is in denial about their partner's cheating, ignoring even the most blatant of evidence. Another reason could be that the cheater is either smart and/or clever enough to plan ahead so that they don't get caught.
Some variants of this trope might have the cheated party knowing perfectly well they're being cheated on but still stay with the cheater, with varying reasons as to why; perhaps the cheated party is very forgiving and is willing to trust their partner to not cheat again or simply loves them too much to break up with them. Other times, the cheated party would love to divorce their unfaithful partner but either can't or won't get a divorce for one reason or another.
There are a multitude of ways this type of character can be caught; perhaps they cheated with so many people that their partner eventually finds out. Maybe one of the cheating partners tells the cheated either out of guilt or to gloat. If none of the cheated parties knew that the cheater was taken, expect the cheater's primary lover and their unwitting cheating partners to work together to get revenge.
While most variants of this trope might only cheat on one person, there are some rarer variants that constantly getting divorced and remarried to different people because of their inability to stop cheating. In addition, it's not uncommon for adulterers who get divorced and marry their lovers to continue their cheating ways.
Sister Trope to Serial Homewrecker, which is about people who have a habit of stealing other people's partners. Such individuals may have a Wedding Ring Removal habit. Can overlap with Cheater Gets Cheated On if the cheater cheats with their affair partners as well and/or both parties have a habit of cheating on each other. Someone who's The Casanova or a Ladykiller in Love might become this if they get hitched.
Depending on the circumstances this might result in Bedroom Adultery Scene or Bed Full of Women. This person can be The Pornomancer. The outcome for this kind of character can end in either A Deadly Affair, Death by Woman Scorned, or both. Cheaters who don't bother using protection could potentially become a Bastard Begetter.
While this definitely happens in real life, like all Sex Tropes, No Real Life Examples, Please!.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- According to his backstory, Dōma from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba had a father like this. Dōma's mother got her revenge and died of suicide after this.
- Hell Girl: Namiko Todaka from Episode 6, is revealed to have brought several men to her house while her husband was away working. When the client's mother, Keiko Yasuda, accidentally finds out, Todaka sets out to harass the poor woman into keeping silent, which escalates into framing Keiko for her cheating by sending a rapist to her house and then take photos of the whole thing for blackmail. Unfortunately, it works and everyone sees Keiko as the adulteress.
- My-Otome: Downplayed; Shizuru and Natsuki are an official couple after fan response to the earlier series My-HiME. However, Shizuru is noted in-universe as flirting with anything in a skirt, mostly to rile up Natsuki, but also because she does like a pretty face. She does sleep with Tomoe Marguerite but on that occasion, it was because Tomoe was trying to pull a Scarpia Ultimatum. She'd lied and said Natsuki was a captive but would be treated well if Shizuru cooperated. Shizuru knew it was a lie, but went along with it to allow Tomoe to think she had the upper hand. It still bothered Natsuki, though, as when Shizuru failed to return in the sequel My-Otome Zwei, Natsuki becomes visibly irritated when the others suggest she's late coming home because she met a pretty girl along the way. (In Shizuru's defense, the Big Bad of Zwei had her Taken for Granite).
Fan Works
- In the Ranma ½ fanfiction Banishment actually isn't so bad
, Nodoka decides to divorce Genma after Cologne reveals photographs showing that Genma cheated on her with prostitutes while on his training trip with Ranma; to make matters worse, Genma actually tries to justify his cheating with the excuse that he's a man with needs.
- Cub: In Pups, it's mentioned that part of the reason why Lucius is so insecure about his relationship and future marriage with John is that Narcissa cheated on him constantly with multiple men throughout their marriage.
- Death of the Wrong Boy: James has cheated on Lily with more women than he can count throughout their marriage. His adulterous habits only increase after Lily is unable to have sex for health reasons following a serious miscarriage. James even joins Sirius on a trip to Thailand to sleep with prostitutes there. Lily has been aware of the cheating the whole time, but can't do anything about it due to her lack of rights in wizarding society.
- Fairy Friends: A year after their physical fight, Jermaine's mother found out that her husband had been cheating on her with many other women for almost their entire marriage.
- Pokémon Crossing: In one chapter, Don admitted to cheating on Amelia with thirty-six different women (one being a temporary employee, another being one of the current Gym Leaders, and yet another being his brother's wife), tying into his hedonism.
- Pure Light: One of the things that establishes Doucheicus as a Hate Sink is that he repeatedly cheated on his wife, Arianna, both with other dragonesses (who may or may not have consented) and with the Always Chaotic Evil darkers (who are incapable of consent) - one step up from bestiality in terms of depravity. Once Arianna gave him a son, he saw no reason to be tied down anymore and had her killed.
Films — Live-Action
- Blue Jasmine: Jasmine's husband Hal had been cheating on her for years with various women. It's such an Open Secret that Jasmine's friend rattles off Hal's past mistresses to an oblivious Jasmine like she's reading a grocery list.
- In Clue, it's implied that Mrs. White has engaged in multiple adulterous affairs. When Colonel Mustard asks her how many husbands she'd had, she replies, "Mine or other women's?"
- Sid Noggett from the Confessions of a... Series is always eager for a shag on the job, even though he has a wife and son (Rosie and Jason) waiting for him back home. Sid also has no problem letting his brother-in-law, Timmy, know about this, and uses his experience to help Timmy get laid.
- Eve's Bayou: Eve's father Louis and one of his known affair partners, Matty Moreaux, are both sleeping around with many people in their town as well as each other. Matty cheats on her husband while he's out of town teaching and Louis, a doctor, sleeps with many of his female patients he makes house calls on. When Matty's husband Lenny finds out, he confronts Louis while drunk and furiously orders Louis never to even so much as speak to his wife again or he'll kill him. Louis tauntingly says "goodnight" to Matty, and Lenny shoots him dead in front of Eve.
- In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, in the Film Within a Film that Kevin watches at the hotel, Angels With Even Filthier Souls, Johnny confronts his unnamed moll about not only "smooching" with his brother, but with everybody else — Snuffy, Al, Leo, Little Moe with the gimpy leg, Cheeks, Boney Bob and Cliff among others.
- In the film version of The Last Five Years, Jamie is seen with multiple partners during the song "Nobody Needs to Know". In the musical, it is implied that he only cheated on Cathy once.
- Liar Liar: One of Fletcher's clients is a woman who's getting a divorce because she had seven different extramarital affairs. He encourages her to portray herself as a Sympathetic Adulterer who cheated on him because he was a Workaholic who wasn't meeting her sexual needs.
- Madea: In A Madea Family Funeral, Vianne's husband Anthony has been cheating on her for years. At his funeral, more than half of the attendants are women that he slept with.
- In The Other Woman (2014), a married man cheats on his wife with several mistresses. When the wife finds out, she teams up with two of the mistresses to take revenge on him.
- In Schindler's List Oskar Schindler is a ladies' man who makes a move on literally any pretty woman in sight (except when it would involve taking advantage of her vulnerable state). He is also married; early in the film, after his long-suffering wife Emilie catches him with a mistress, Oskar shows that he is ready to treat his wife to a romantic evening out and reaffirm he loves her — but not ready to commit to her completely. Their relationship arc pre-epilogue ends on a Happily Ever Before note as Oskar promises to stop his womanizing and they reconcile. In Real Life, they still got divorced eventually but the film's epilogue still wraps it up in a Bittersweet Ending when Emilie takes part in the memorial ceremony at Oskar's grave.
- In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort cheats on his first wife Theresa with Naomi. Upon marrying the latter, he proceeds to repeatedly cheat on her as well with lots of prostitutes.
Literature
- In the urban legend "AIDS Mary", a successful businessman frequently travels out of town as part of his job, and uses the trips as the perfect excuse to cheat on his wife. On one trip, he picks up a gorgeous woman named Mary at a bar, and after a few rounds of drinks they head back to his hotel room, where she explain that her aggressive sexual tendencies are due to being raped sometime in her past. The next morning, the woman is gone, and she wrote a message on the bathroom mirror reading "welcome to the AIDS club." Sometime after returning home, he's forced to confess to his wife the real reason he can't have sex with her anymore, so she divorces him and sues him for full custody of their kids. Sometime after his wife leaves, he's fired from his job (unrelated to his affairs, though implied that his mounting personal problems are affecting his performance) so he decides to sell what little he has left, and moves to the city where Mary infected him, and frequents as many nightclubs and bars as possible with the intent to find Mary, and kill her and then himself.
- Ulises Vernet of Eccentric Neighborhoods Really Gets Around and marriage does not stop him. When first wife Carolyn asks him where he's been, he claims she can ask anything except that because monogamy is contrary to his nature. They end up divorcing. Venecia, his second wife, is more accepting of his habit of visiting prostitutes (his only way to find comfort after his mother dies) because she finds jealousy to be petty. Her only demand is that he sleep at home a number of times per week. After Venecia's death, he marries three more times.
- In Five Little Pigs, Amyas Crale was a serial womanizer despite being married to Caroline. Before his death, he was considering leaving Caroline for Elsa, his young and beautiful model. Or so it seemed. Amyas never intended to leave Caroline, and the fact that he deceived his lovers enraged Caroline more than the actual adultery. When Elsa learned she was just one of many flings to be discarded like the rest, she killed Amyas and framed Caroline.
- The Godfather: Margot Ashton, Johnny Fontane's second wife, loves to have sex with most of the production team of the movies she stars in.
Fontane: I was crazy about that bitch. The biggest star in Hollywood. She looks like an angel. And you know what she does after a picture? If the makeup man does a good job on her face, she lets him bang her. If the cameraman made her look extra good, she brings him into her dressing room and gives him a screw. Anybody. She uses her body like I use the loose change in my pocket for a tip. A whore made for the devil.
- The Kept Man of the Princess Knight: Played with; Matthew has a long-term position as the "kept man" of Arwin, the Crimson Princess Knight, and the first scene has her complaining about him asking for more money to live on while she's on a dungeon delve, assuming he's planning to spend it on other women. He denies it, but it's true: the next scene has him shacking up with a prostitute, and he pursues other women for sex throughout the series when Arwin is out with her adventuring party. That said, it's eventually revealed that their relationship isn't sexual to begin with, as he's more her live-in manservant and PTSD therapist than her boyfriend.
- In Madame Bovary, Emma takes two lovers due to feeling unsatisfied and bored in her marriage, and the reason for that is that she is painfully Wrong Genre Savvy, being a would-be romantic heroine in a brutally cynical world. She ends up unsatisfied with both her lovers, too.
- Making Money: Topsy's husband was a serial cheater. Topsy herself started as one of his mistresses before marrying him and was well aware her husband would cheat on her in turn. Keeping everything open made it more convenient to schedule everything.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: While it's almost expected for noble lords to have affairs and illegitimate children, two kings of Westeros are famous for their rampant adultery.
- Robert Baratheon was quite the charmer even before he was king, having already sired a daughter, and he is no less promiscuous married to Cersei, having an estimated 16 bastard children by the time of his death. He's known as "The Whoremonger King", and while neither he nor Cersei wanted to be together his former betrothed Lyanna admits he probably wouldn't be faithful even if they did marry. His wife Cersei is also cheating on him, but she seems to only be having an affair with her twin brother Jaime.
- Robert's wife Cersei is cheating on him with her twin brother, Jaime. When Jaime leaves to fight in the War of the Five Kings and is taken prisoner, Cersei then cheats on him with her cousin Lancel as a Poor Man's Substitute, and later sleeps with the Kettleblack brothers to gain their loyalty.
- His ancestor Aegon IV Targaryen, better known as "Aegon the Unworthy" was almost comically unfaithful and promiscuous. He was married at a young age to his pious sister-wife but slept around with (by his estimation) 900 women in his lifetime. Of the at least 15 children he had, two were actually by his wife, and unlike Robert who preferred one-night flings or brothels, he had nine active mistresses during his life. Despite his rampant infidelity he'd accuse his wife of cheating on him with their brother, likely to try and disinherit his heir Daeron, and the decision to legitimize the fruits of his infidelity on his death bed would lead directly to the Blackfyre Rebellions.
- In Sparkling Cyanide, young and beautiful Rosemary marries the older, boring, and bumbling George but constantly goes out with other men. George is ready for it, and Rosemary chose him precisely because he'll be a stable presence in her life, unlike her ever-changing lovers. However, then Rosemary starts a serious affair with Stephen, and George, to his own surprise, goes mad with jealousy.
- Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: King Roland openly cheats on his wife and has several mistresses, and several bastard children with those mistresses. It's one of the reasons he has a poor reputation among his subjects.
Live-Action TV
- Arrow: In the backstory, Oliver Queen is quite the playboy. The plot is even kicked off by him taking his girlfriend's sister on a trip! Throughout the course of the show, various women Oliver cheated on Laurel with turn up, including one who gave birth to his son. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree because his late father Robert had at least two mistresses Isabel Rochev and Kazumi Adachi.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): Sam Anders knew that Kara Thrace was a chronic cheater when he married her, but loved her enough that he was willing to put up with it. He's amused when Lee Adama thinks his digression with Kara was either her first or her only.
- Birds of a Feather (1989): Dorien has a long and extensive list of people that she has used to cheat on her husband Marcus. To be fair, Marcus isn't exactly innocent either, making a pass with Tracey in "Cheat!", having an affair with a woman called Lucinda in "Falling in Love Again", having a near-fatal heart attack whilst having sex with a woman called Chanel in "Still Waters Run Deep", and eventually being found to have a Secret Other Family with yet another woman called Geraldine in Series 7.
- Bones: In "The Doctor in the Den", the victim of the week was a serial cheater, cheating on and with several different women. He was killed because one of said women was furious about being cheated on.
- The Brittas Empire: The amount of people that Helen has used to cheat on her husband Brittas is quite extensive, with the ones that the audience gets to know the names of including "Uncle" Simon, John Rawlinson, Roger Ferguson, and a Michael mentioned in "Back from the Dead".
- CSI: NY: The victim in "Who's There?" has a backstory of cheating on his wife multiple times. After he promises to stop, she catches him flirting with someone online, realizes he's never going to change, and threatens to divorce him. When their home is invaded and the husband is severely injured, she finishes him off so she can keep all their assets.
- In Everything's Gonna Be Okay, Australian-born Darren Moss cheated on his first wife with an American woman, left her and their young son Nicholas to raise the resultant daughter Matilda, and then stuck around when his second wife gave him a second daughter, Genevieve. He remained faithful to his second wife for years, but after her death, had a string of other affairs up until his untimely death from cancer. The main thrust of the show is a now-adult Nicholas becoming the legal guardian for his teenage half-sisters, both of whom have inherited their dad's wobbly ideas of fidelity; Matilda has an arrangement with her asexual girlfriend that she's allowed to have sexual trysts with guys as long as they don't become emotional or romantic, while Genevieve tries to juggle having two boyfriends.
- In Family Law (2021), Harry Svensson has been married three times and cheated on each of his wives at least once (and in the case of his first wife Joanne, he cheated on her so many times that one of his fellow divorce lawyers actually tabulated all the property she destroyed in retaliation). This has had a clear effect on all three of his kids, as Abby has a borderline-pathological hatred of adulterers, Danny has a crippling fear of commitment, and Lucy has cheated on almost all of her girlfriends (and her wife Maggie, whom she married after having cheated on her previous partner).
- The Good Wife:
- The main plot of the series is set off when Cook County State's Attorney Peter Florrick is forced to resign amid a sex scandal involving call girls. He and his wife Alicia, the title character, start making moves to patch things up over the first two seasons, but then she finds out he also cheated on her with her current law firm's investigator Kalinda Sharma when she previously worked in the S.A.'s office, and kicks him out of her apartment. He's then (falsely) accused of sleeping with an intern during his second run for state's attorney. In season 6, he has an affair with a family friend whom he hired as house counsel for the governor's office, though by that point he and Alicia are only still married for political purposes, so the only reason she cares is because she doesn't want to have to deal with another sex scandal.
- "Invitation to the Inquest": A coroner's inquest into the fatal car crash of an Illinois Supreme Court justice reveals he'd had an affair about a year earlier. His wife Janie, Alicia's Client of the Week, is implicated in a possible Crime of Passion after it's revealed he was cheating again.
- House: A clinic patient, a self-described Big Beautiful Woman, is revealed to be this when House sees a photo array of her children, who bear marks of having different fathers despite her husband's belief that they are all his. House does keep her secret but has an "Eureka!" Moment as to why the woman doesn't want to have a large but benign tumor removed even as her husband says he doesn't mind if she has a scar but House deduces she fears it would ruin her chances with other men.
- Invoked on Impractical Jokers when Q and Murr get a store customer to take sides in a debate over whether or not Murr should tell his (imaginary) wife about his many, many affairs. The customer sides with Q and Murr loses.
- In Law & Order episode "Human Flesh Search Engine", a widow says on the witness stand that her husband had 20 affairs during their marriage.
- Almost all of the male characters from Mad Men.
- Protagonist Don Draper gets the most focus: at the beginning of the series, he is married to Betty but carrying on an affair with an artist named Midge, and later in the season also with a client named Rachel. Each subsequent season would see Don getting involved with other women; his self-destructive tendencies made sure that they were the worst possible partners: a spokesman's wife, his daughter's teacher, his own secretary, etc., in addition to picking up random women and occasionally hiring prostitutes. Betty leaves him for good at the end of the third season, and after a year of debauchery, he re-marries to his vibrant secretary Megan, who, for all of season 5, fulfills his needs to the point that he breaks his habits of adultery and even admonishes others who engage in it...until the premiere of season 6 reveals that he has begun an affair with his neighbor's wife. In season 7, Megan leaves him too, and it is clear that Don will never be happy in a relationship until he is able to look inward.
- Don's boss Roger Sterling is married to a woman named Mona, but in addition to his years-long affair with Joan Holloway (herself married for a large part of the affair), he constantly cheats on Mona and then on his second wife Jane with a variety of women, before engaging in another affair with a married woman (the mother of the above-mentioned Megan), who eventually becomes his third wife.
- At the start of the series, Pete Campbell is engaged to Trudy but sleeps with Peggy Olson on the night of his bachelor party. He continues to engage in affairs after the wedding with far less discretion than Don and Roger, choosing paramours such as a teenage girl in his driver's ed class, the neighbors' nervous au pair, and several prostitutes. His wife more or less gives him permission to mess around in the city by allowing him a bachelor pad but when he sleeps with their suburban neighbor, she makes it clear that their marriage will be one of appearances and nothing more. By the end of the series, they seem to be on their way to reconciliation.
- Minor characters are just as bad. Harry Crane seemed to be faithful in season 1 until he got drunk and slept with his secretary while watching the returns of the 1960 presidential election. He begs for forgiveness but ends up sleeping on his office couch until she takes him back...after which point he becomes as bad as anyone else. Sal Romano keeps his sexuality under wraps for a while but he cheats on his wife with a bellhop and is last seen calling her on the phone before accompanying a group of men into the woods. Lane Pryce has a happy marriage to his wife Rebecca...until she returns to London and he starts sleeping with prostitutes, ogling Joan, and even being so brazen as to introduce his elderly father to his new African-American Playboy Bunny girlfriend. Possibly the only married male characters not to engage in adultery at least once are Ken Cosgrove and Henry Francis (though even he engaged in an emotional affair with Betty when she was married to someone else), but they aren't major characters and we don't see everything they do.
- Money Heist: In the Season 2 premiere "Masked No Longer", it's revealed that during the time he was married to Raquel, Alberto cheated on her with both Raquel's sister and the teacher of Raquel and Alberto's daughter Paula. The Professor initially doesn't mind the fact Alberto had a secret relationship with Raquel's sister, but the moment he learns about Alberto's affair with Paula's teacher leads him to figure out that Alberto's adultering is a major insecurity of his. Thus, he exploits Alberto's insecurity in order to deal with the incriminating evidence pointing to him and his heist team that Alberto had gathered earlier in the episode; namely, he tells Alberto that he's an abusive asshole who's only pretending to be a normal around others and is in desperate need of mental help, enraging Alberto to the point that he dares the Professor to fight him. The Professor promptly knocks him out in a Curb-Stomp Battle, and replaces the legitimate evidence that Alberto has in hand with fake evidence during the time Alberto's unconscious. The Professor then takes it further in the next episode, "The Head of the Plan"; a while after Alberto wakes up, arrests the Professor for committing assault on authority, and brings him to a police station, the Professor asks to call Raquel and get some bathroom time so he can injure himself and frame Alberto for being a Rabid Cop on top of a former domestic abuser.
- The New Statesman: Both Alan and his wife Sarah are not exactly faithful, with Alan having numerous one-night stands and Sarah being apparently intimate with over half of the Government cabinet, to say nothing of the fact that Sarah occasionally has threesomes with others whilst talking to Alan on the phone. Not surprising considering the fact that their marriage is built solely on convenience.
- Shoresy: Jean-Jacques François Jacques-Jean, aka "JJ Frankie JJ". In the first season, Shoresy notes that he's able to lure Frankie from Quebec to play for the Bulldogs because of all the beautiful women in Sudbury. Over the course of the series he takes up with Queb actress Laurence Leboeuf, gets caught cheating on her with Lysandre Nadeau, attempts to go back to Laurence but gets dumped again when he tries to arrange a threesome with her and Lysandre. After that he takes up with Marie-Mai and proposes to her, but is later revealed that he had been cheating on her with Marjorie St-Onge. After Marie dumps him he wallows in self-pity, vagueposting about how betrayed he feels at being dumped!
- Sherlock:
- "A Study in Pink" has Sherlock and John examining the body of a woman who displays meticulously cleaned jewelry, with the exception of her wedding ring, which, despite its tarnished exterior, is clean on the inside. Sherlock deduces that it is regularly removed and as such this woman is a serial adulterer.
- Played for Laughs in "The Hounds of Baskerville". Ms. Hudson has been seeing the owner of the sandwich shop next door, but Sherlock — who is trying to quit nicotine cold turkey and consequently is in a bad mood — tells her the man has a wife in Doncaster. One scene later after meeting the Client of the Week, he and John are headed for a taxi and spy Ms. Hudson giving the man what-for. John comments on the aforementioned wife in Doncaster, and Sherlock remarks, "Wait 'til she finds out about the one in Islamabad."
- Chester Tate from Soap begins the series cheating on his wife Jessica with his secretary Claire, as well as on both of them with another woman named he nicknames "Pigeon". He implies to have been doing this constantly since they got married. Flashbacks in the final season also show that he was also in a relationship with her sister before their marriage. Once Jessica finds out, he attempts to go to a minister to get counseling for his compulsive cheating, but is seduced by the minister's daughter, and Jessica leaves him for good.
- Ted Lasso: By the end of the series, Rupert has been married three times and cheated on each of his wives with countless other women. He cheated on his first wife with his second wife. During his second marriage, he paid Leslie to cover up his numerous affairs and the subsequent divorce incited the show's plot. In season 3, he becomes the center of a workplace harassment scandal after it's revealed that he cheated on his third wife with several of his female employees.
- That '70s Show: In the first two seasons, Kelso repeatedly cheats on Jackie with Laurie and Pam Macy, causing them to break up twice. Later seasons reveal that he had "a little" action on the side as well.
- Time Gentlemen Please: In the season two finale, the Guv learns that his ex-wife (who left him for another landlord), has just left her current partner for yet another landlord.
- The Wire: both Jimmy McNulty and Bunk Moreland are habitual cheaters, which at the beginning of the series has led to Jimmy's wife separating from him, while Bunk remains Happily Married and seemingly a good father to his two sons. Later, detective Kima Greggs becomes jaded in her own relationship and gets advice from Jimmy who tells him some of the tricks he and Bunk used to cover for each other, like if the other's wife called them, they would claim the other was picking up a prisoner and had to leave his cell phone turned off. This conversation comes back in the last season when Jimmy falls off the wagon while in a new relationship, and Bunk answers a call from Beadie and starts talking about a prisoner transfer without missing a beat.
- Lady Agatha Shawcross from You Rang, M'Lord? is married to Sir Ralph but has been having an affair with Lord Meldrum since before the series began. She also tries to get Sir Ralph to hire Meldrum's footman Twelvetrees solely because she wants to have sex with him, has had an affair with Dickie Metcalfe, and was caught taking a young gentleman with a moustache on several dates.
Mythology & Religion
- Classical Mythology: In multiple myths, Zeus is mentioned as having affairs with both goddesses and mortal women (the latter resulting in the demigods that were often the heroes of mythology) despite being married to Hera, the goddess of marriage and fidelity. Hera, as you can imagine, despised these affairs, but since she could not take it out on Zeus directly, she settled for making the lives of his children through these affairs a living hell and meting out her wrath upon those he cheated with.
Theatre
- In Agrippina, Agrippina cheats on her husband with Pallas and Narcissus, though not out of affection or attraction to either — she uses them to create popular support for her son Nero. The 1985 Schwetzingen production takes it a step further and has her have an affair with Nero as well. Claudius either turns a blind eye or doesn't notice because he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer and because he cheats on Agrippina too.
- Chicago: Al Lipschitz, Mona's husband, was an artist who was on an artistic quest to find himself, finding several other women and at least one guy. Mona did not take kindly to this, and murdered him for it.
- In The Marriage of Figaro, Count Almaviva, despite being married to Rosina, has flings with servant girls (he has had an affair with Fanchette/Barbarina, and attempts to have one with Susanna). The play was deemed shocking when it was written because (gasp!) the servants don't put up with it.
- In Rigoletto, it can be easy to miss the Duke of Mantua, one of the most famous womanizers of media (who has two confirmed affairs and two attempts at one, and these are only the cases we hear about), is actually married. His wife is only mentioned once when her page comes to ask the Duke to come to her.
Video Games
- The Roottrees are Dead:
- Wild Bill Williams was rumored to have had multiple affairs on top of his previous marriages, which was why his wife divorced him.
- Roottreemania reveals that Guy Hudson was never "a fan" of being faithful to his wife, and had five mistresses in the 70s and seven illegitimate children before his and and his wife's untimely death.
Visual Novels
- Class of '09: Mr. Lorre is an especially heinous example of this trope, as he not only cheated on his wife with prostitutes, but some of said prostitutes were underaged.
- The short horror Visual Novel Funeral has it turn out that the dead protagonist not only had sex with multiple women behind his wife's back, but had coerced many of them into it, essentially combining this trope with Serial Rapist. This has devastating effects on his family when the truth of it all comes out.
Web Animation
- ATTACK on MIKA:
- "My ex invited me to her wedding and got a big shock...": Julie tries to get back with Ichi in the middle of her wedding with Satoshi after learning the former was the CEO. However, the former reveals her affairs with several men behind the latter's back. While he informed Satoshi beforehand, the latter held the wedding anyway but canned it after seeing the whole thing and instead exposed her to the guests.
- "Ran into my ex-wife at a matchmaking party…": At a matchmaking party, Sarah tries to get back with her ex-husband Atsushi after his light novel became an award-winning success. Much to the gold digger's dismay, her friends Yuki and Akari exposed her affairs with other men to him.
- "My girlfriend dumped me because I didn't have money... 3 years later, I encounter her...": Shortly after Hoshimi accidentally exposed herself as a shameless Gold Digger to her current fiancé Takashi, he eventually learns she had been cheating on him with several other rich men. Moreover, most of the lovers were already engaged to her and were unaware of each other until Takashi exposed her, causing them to sue her for marriage fraud.
- "My ex invited me to her wedding and got a big shock..."
- Etra chan saw it!:
- Hiiragi initially settled for the overweight and plain-looking Yuri under the belief that that he couldn't do any better. After Yuri loses weight and improves her appearance, when Hiiragi sees her, he thinks that he's a ladies' man and starts flirting with and cheating with other women, even going so far as to brag about it at work. He gets caught after Yuzuriha, a female coworker who rejected her, called Yuri and informed her about Hiiragi's behavior, even sending him pictures as proof.
- Akane is a promiscuous woman who has no problem sleeping with taken men; she decides to steal and get married to Akamatsu because he told her he's rich. Akamatsu's ex-wife Karin is happy to get divorced because Akamatsu was a playboy who had other women on the side, much to Akane's horror.
- Hiiragi
- Manga-Waido: The eponymous entertainment producer from "The dark side of entertainment producers…" is revealed to be married with kids. Moreover, the sleazy bastard used his connections to a model training school to have his way with hopeful mothers in exchange for getting their daughters into showbiz, which was the real reason Mai became a model as her mother Kumiko cheated on Yusuke with him. After Yusuke kicks both Kumiko and Mai before suing for alimony alongside the producer's family, the affair goes public, leading the bastard to flee from the media. As a result, Mai's social media takes a massive hit; now she and Kumiko live in a shabby apartment.
- MoniRobo:
- "She abandoned me because my business wasn't going so well but...": Atsumu's ex-girlfriend Kanemi is revealed to have squandered Oota's money not only on designer stuff but on affair trips behind his back during the three years they were married. Both men team up to bring her down upon learning the truth. Moreover, Atsumu reveals that she has to pay compensation to her lovers' wives.
- "My mom had an affair while I was in hospital…": Manami's mom is implied to moonlight as a sex worker, thereby making her this by default. Moreover, she shamelessly lorded it over her husband since he refused to divorce her because she was the only donor compatible with Manami for a liver transplant, and therefore divorcing her would mean leaving the girl to die from her liver disease.
- "My business partner married my ex-girlfriend who declined to marry me": Hayato Manabe went through with marrying Reika despite her outburst at the now-successful Makoto. However, he realizes her true colors as she wasn't only incompetent at housework and handling money, but cheated on him with several men. Hayato divorces her in six months and sues both her and her lovers for compensation.
- "My wife cheated on me with her doctor…": Mana's lover, Dr. Seiji Nakajima, is revealed to not only be a serial womanizer who targeted female patients under his care but also married with kids. Eventually, her ex-husband Kengo exposes the cheating doctor to his own wife, who promptly divorces and sues both him and Mana for the affair. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Nakajima loses his medical license for his trouble.
- "She abandoned me because my business wasn't going so well but..."
- The Most Popular Girls in School: Justin Michaelson thought nothing of Brittnay randomly making out with him and received a blowjob from Rachel in exchange for voting her Prom Queen. Additionally, according to Shay and Deandra, may have/had a fling with Mackenzie, which is confirmed with him once making out with Mackenzie right in front of Jenna Darabond, which was Jenna's Rage Breaking Point. All of this has happened while he was dating Ashley. He then begins to date Jenna Darabond but breaks up with her at the end of the third season.
- Refreshing Stories: While most of Hiroshi's episodes have the Girl of the Week cheat on him with a single lover, there are rare cases where she has more than one.
- "Wife sent me a pic of her and a dude when she was drunk": Misa went out to bars behind Hiroshi's back pretending to be single so that she could get herself a rich husband. However, the cheating wife got so smashed that she sent a picture of herself and a delinquent-looking guy to Hiroshi, who called her out for her cheating. Moreover, it's implied that she pestered guys into marrying her.
- "I don't care if he's married. I won't miss the feeling of meeting new guys": Hiroshi's wife, Terumi, cheated on him alongside her friend Misaki and sought out rich men at his friend Yodobashi's wedding. However, both women's affairs come to light on the wedding day after Hiroshi used innuendo to trick Terumi into thinking Misaki snitched out on her, resulting in both getting sued to oblivion, especially because most of their lovers were married.
- "My daughter was sending me an SOS signal through our video call without my wife noticing": Horami is revealed to not only abuse her daughter Haru but also spent the money Hiroshi gave her from his overseas work in Brazil to cheat on him with several other men.
- "Getting revenge on my wife after finding out that she was cheating on me in a public restroom": Shoko's lover, Ken Sawabe, is revealed to have been married after Hiroshi sues the lovebirds for damages. When Hiroshi exposes Sawabe's affairs with other women (among which was Bunta's own wife) in a public restroom to the latter's wife, she divorces him.
- "Caught my wife cheating on me…": When Hiroshi goes to his in-laws' house to expose Nanako's affairs, he finds out she has had a strained relationship with them because she was married twice before meeting him. It turns out both men divorced her because she couldn't stop cheating on them.
- "Wife sent me a pic of her and a dude when she was drunk"
- Revenge Films:
- "She told me that they got divorced because they had different values, but in reality...": Sarah was a Gold Digger who managed to get hitched to a kind-hearted and wealthy man, but still cheated on her husband with multiple men at clubs. Her "justification" for her cheating was that her husband was boring and she wanted more excitement in her life.
- "My husband left our sick son alone to have an affair": The OP exposed her husband's affair to both her in-laws and the mistress' own husband, who is a well-off doctor. It's then revealed that the mistress used her husband's money to cheat several times on him. Upon learning of the affairs, the man took her to court and made her pay a lot of alimony.
- "Found out my son wasn't related to me…": After OP and his brother sued the former's cheating wife and her lover after finding out their son Bob was born from an affair, it's revealed that the wife had affairs with so many men that the lover they sued wasn't even Bob's real father.
- "My sister slept with my husband…": Ali's older sister cheated on Bob with several men while married to him, which led him to divorce and send her back home. Even after bedding and remarrying Ali's husband after their parents strong-armed Ali into a divorce, it's implied the sister cheated on her new husband as well. However, her adulterous streak leads her family into financial ruin when she received lawsuits for her multiple affairs, implying some of her lovers were married. By the time she tried to get back with Bob and pay the lawsuits, he was already married to Ali.
- "My wife was cheating on me with 25 different men": As the title says, OP's wife not only cheated on him with twenty-five men, but she also saved videos of her affairs and sent e-mails to her lovers, which he saves as evidence to divorce her. Moreover, the OP reveals some of the cheating wife's lovers are married, meaning she'll have to pay the lawsuits from their wives.
- "My classmate boasts that he’s having an affair with my wife, but...": In his introductory scene, Thomas reveals he divorced his ex-wife Naomi for cheating on him with several men. This, in turn, caused him to have trust issues towards women until he married a French one, who was prettier and more loyal than Naomi.
- "Husband cheated on me and got another girl pregnant, but tried to give me the child": OP's ex-husband cheated on her on his mother's advice because he couldn't get her pregnant and she wanted grandchildren. After kicking the OP out and gaslighting her into paying them compensation for being "barren", her sister shames them for it and has them pay her compensation as due. Moreover, OP revealed that the cheating ex-husband also knocked up two of his female coworkers, which led to the bastard being hounded for compensation demands upon being exposed.
- "She told me that they got divorced because they had different values, but in reality..."
- Trouble Busters:
- "I find a hidden drawer in my husband's old desk, and my secret plan goes into motion": Alex cheated on his wife Hillary with several other women behind her back under a secret LINE account, saving recordings of his affairs on a second iPhone he reserved for affair purposes.
- "My wife was having an affair while our daughter was left at home and a burglar broke into our house": When Misato returns home on Akashi's demands after she carelessly revealed she was on an affair trip to Disneyland, he eventually finds out Misato cheated on him with multiple men. Moreover, it turns out the burglar who broke into Akashi's house was one of Misato's lovers.
- "My wife cheated on me with thirty men but tried to lie her way out of it!": As the title says, Alan's pretty yet airheaded wife Sarah cheated on him with thirty men and always lied about it whenever he confronted her. When Alan refuses to fall for her lies or catches her cheating, she cries and sics her dad on him to chew him out for not trusting her.
- "I find a hidden drawer in my husband's old desk, and my secret plan goes into motion"
Western Animation
- In The Amazing World of Gumball, the trope is parodied in “The Saint” where Gumball brings out Fabricated Blackmail to Alan and Carmen of Alan kissing many girls, by using Darwin’s face on a balloon. But Gumball only did this to anger Alan. While it did upset Carmen, Alan still wouldn’t get mad.
- American Dad! frames this trope in “Family Affair”, where it was revealed to the Smiths that Roger had been cheating on them with multiple families he’s been living with.
