My dad has recently been caught having an affair with his young personal assistant. Huge scandal; mom was very angry. Now they’re in the middle of divorce proceedings. Mom moved out, the other woman moved in and I chose to stay with him because we’re super close; he’s like my best friend. Now mom’s telling me to go and live with her and go no contact with him cause he’s a bad person and by continuing having a relationship with him I’m condoning his actions and “ignoring her suffering”. My relationship with my dad hasn’t changed, I don’t see why I should end it.
No you’re not.
Cheating doesn’t automatically make a person bad, it makes a person a human being. Mist people cheat, and I’d say that most “cheating sessions” happen without the spouse knowing. It happens and usually there are underlying reasons ranging from “he just really really likes sex” to “they never have sex together” to a host of other reasons. I don’t think that the reason “he’s an asshole” is the real reason, ever.
Having said that; even if your dad cheated just and only just because he wanted to be an asshole to your mom, that still doesn’t mean that anything should have to change between you and your dad.
Your dad is your dad. Anyone trying to forcibly change that is raising a host of red flags.
I understand your mother feels hurt right now but if she isn’t able to see beyond that hurt what your best interests are then maybe she is actually the problem, not your father.
Assuming that’s supposed to be “most people”
There have been a lot of studies on this over the years, and the data is of course easy to skew because a lot of people are going to be reluctant to admit to their cheating, or people having different ideas about what constitutes “cheating” but every study I can find that seems credible, it seems to hover at more like 25% of people cheat, give or take maybe about 10%
Even when you look for people who have experienced a partner cheating on them most of the studies I can find have it at below 50%
You can get into the weeds and probably find some cases where most people in certain demographics cheat if you want to cherry-pick your data a bit.
So no, most people don’t cheat.