History Main / GoodAdulteryBadAdultery

* ''Literature/MagpieMurders'': Bad adultery is Susan's considered affair with Craig (though she doesn't actually do it), and Melissa's in-story affair with [[spoiler:Leonard, who murdered her to conceal it]]; good adultery is [[spoiler: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.]]

* A male character in an equally harsh matriarchical or female-centric work where regardless of the [[DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale circumstances of]] [[AwfulWeddedLife his]] [[BastardGirlfriend relationship]], he is expected to remain absolutely faithful and submissive to his partner's desires [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin and will pay for his adultery no matter the justification.]]

* A female character in a very patriarchal setting, [[MyGirlIsNotASlut where men can do all the philandering they want, but women are expected to be chaste and faithful]]. However, she may risk falling into UnintentionallySympathetic.

* A female character in a very patriarchal setting, [[MyGirlIsNotASlut where men can do all the philandering they want, but women are expected to be chaste and faithful]].

* ‘’Series/FreshOffTheBoat’’: Next-door neighbors Marvin and Honey Ellis’s affair is seen as either, depending which side of the conflict you’re on. [[SympatheticAdulterer 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.

* ''Film/{{Frida}}'': When Frida de 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 [[NeverMyFault she's only doing it because her husband already did.]]

Adultery in fiction is very much a mixed bag. Sometimes you have [[SympatheticAdulterer good adulterers]]: those you see as "just messing up" and can be sympathised with. Sometimes you have bad adulterers: those who are genuine {{Jerkass}}es 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'.

* For the sake of the OneTruePairing. Especially obvious if the adulterer and the adulteress are both long-term characters, but the individual being cheated on is [[RomanticFalseLead only in the show at all because they are married to one of the adulterers]].

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* ‘’Series/[[FreshOffTheBoat]]’’: Next-door neighbors Marvin and Honey Ellis’s affair is seen as either, depending which side of the conflict you’re on. [[SympatheticAdulterer 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.

* “Series/[[FreshOffTheBoat]]”: Next-door neighbors Marvin and Honey Ellis’s affair is seen as either, depending which side of the conflict you’re on. [[SympatheticAdulterer 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.

* The big reveal in the free web VN ''Funeral'' is that the protagonist was disgraced after being found out as not only a serial adulterer, but a [[spoiler:SerialRapist]] when [[spoiler:his various victims from his workplace came forward #metoo style]], with devastating consequences for his business and his family, the latter of whom have never forgiven him for his actions and his lies, even after his death.

* The person gets a KarmicSTD for their infidelity.
* The cheated-on partner finds out by way of their being diagnosed with an STI they could only have contracted from their cheating spouse or significant other.

->''"Sleeping with another man's wife must be based on the husband's lack of character, not the woman's lust!"''
-->-- '''Rodrigo Borgia''', ''Series/{{Borgia}}'', "1492"

Adultery in fiction is very much a mixed bag. Sometimes you have good adulterers; sometimes you have bad adulterers. Those you see as "just messing up" and can be sympathised with, and those who are genuine {{Jerkass}}es and deserve to be caught and humiliated in front of a large crowd.

On a superficial level, in fact, the distinction between good adulterers and bad can be [[InformedWrongness entirely arbitrary]]. Most good writing, however, takes clarity and nuance into account.

Adultery, good or bad, is JustForFun/NotToBeConfusedWith [[{{Polyamory}} open relationships]] where the partners [[EthicalSlut are honest with each other and not in an abusive way]]. (Though there is such a thing as Good Polyamory vs. Bad Polyamory, so there's a gray area of overlap.)

!!Some sure-fire signs that someone is a "good" adulterer:

* Their partner is physically and/or emotionally abusive, to the point that they may well kill a partner whom they discover is cheating. [[BlackWidow Or even just for]] [[TheBluebeard the insurance money]].
* Their partner is neglectful. A spouse who is constantly working late/taking long business trips, or always going out with their friends rather than staying home with their wife/husband (or taking ''them'' out instead).
* The relationship being "ruined" is quite literally [[DeadSparks loveless]], so the adulterer is seeking emotional escape.

!!Signs that a person is a "bad" adulterer:

!! Special case

* When the non-adulterous character knows, and does not do anything or encourages the affair, the Good/Bad scale can vary wildly, depending on the reasons and the [[ValuesDissonance morality of the author]].

See also TheUnfairSex, where the distinction seems to fall across the [[DoubleStandard Gender line]] (but may also use the above to justify it).

A lot of this probably stems from the fact that adultery in RealLife 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. In fiction, however, the adulterer is often treated as either Good or Bad--there's rarely much grey in-between.

[[noreallife]]

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* In ''Manga/{{Chobits}}'', Hideki's cram school teacher is discovered having an affair with Hideki's best friend Shimbo. When Hideki realises the implications that she's cheating on her husband, he immediately starts calling Shimbo a wife-stealing pig... until it's revealed that her marriage is completely devoid of any emotion, as, shortly after they married, Ms Shimizu's husband bought a persocom and fell in love with it, completely forgetting about her. It got to the point that she couldn't get into her house anymore because he'd put the chain on the door, showing that he'd ''forgotten she was even coming home.'' Under these circumstances, it's understandable as to why she'd have an affair, and since Japan does not have a good attitude toward divorce she might not have thought she could just divorce the guy, especially if the marriage was not arranged and they married ostensibly for love. And [[ContractualPurity as a teacher she has to appear morally beyond reproach]].
* Lampshaded in ''Manga/{{Planetes}}''. Goro Hoshino is [[MarriedToTheJob all but married to ''space'']], and spends ''years'' away from Earth. His wife very pointedly mentions how he's extremely lucky to have her, because she ''should'' have gotten into an affair by now, and anyone else ''would'' have. Goro himself agrees.

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* Marvel attempted to portray Scott "ComicBook/{{Cyclops}}" Summers of ''The X-Men'' as a 'good' adulterer twice, in both cases ending up splitting the fan-base:
** When ComicBook/JeanGrey returned from the dead, Cyclops rushed to her side, abandoning his wife Madelyne Pryor-Summers and baby son Nathan. Although it seemed a fairly "safe" thing to do, since it established the OneTruePairing that had characterized the franchise since ''X-Men'' vol. 1 #1, Cyclops was one of the leading protagonists and Madelyne had only existed for about three years, the matter was handled in such a way that a large segment of X-Men fans still haven't forgiven Scott to this day. This even though editors and writers tried to fix it in a way that revealed Madelyne as Jean's clone and had her go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge as the bloodthirsty Goblyn Queen.
** Later on, after Jean and Scott had become a married couple, Creator/GrantMorrison decided to break them up and to pair up Cyclops with his pet character ComicBook/EmmaFrost. This involved Emma, acting as Scott's therapist, entering into a telepathic adulterous affair with him and basically declaring [[RetCon that everything readers had been told in the past 35 years about Scott's character and the love between him and Jean was a lie]], so that cheating on his (second) wife and hooking up with an unethical ex-villain with a superiority complex was portrayed as Emma enabling Scott to reach true maturity. Naturally, since Jean Grey is one of the more popular X-Men, a lot of the fans were not pleased -- especially as Morrison proceeded to kill her off -- and not many tears were shed when Scott broke up with Emma during the events of ''ComicBook/AvengersVsXMen''.
* "ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}" went through this with his ex wife, Shiklah. He comes home to fight her in bed with {{ComicBook/Werewolf By Night}}, whom he promptly shoots. Shiklah reminds him that they were allowed a certain number of invitations. Deadpool argues that she appears to be expanding her guest list. She disagrees, until a female monster emerge from under the covers, and runs away in fear of Deadpool. He asks about her, and Shiklah comes clean -listing the other monsters she's been with. She just shrugs him off, and tells him he knew who he was marrying. During the ending of their marriage in Til Death Do Us, Shiklah orders some of her men to chop up Deadpool, and store him away until she'd annexed New York. It turns out, all of them were sleeping with Shiklah as well. In the recap opening, they have it out. Shiklah expresses how Deadpool hasn't been a devoted husband because he's been more worried about The Avengers, and [[JealousParent caring for his "human spawnling"]]. Deadpool fires back that she cheated on him with a Wolf-Man, and Shiklah says that was just another of her needs he wasn't caring for.
* An example of the 'good' same-sex adultery: In Peter David's ''Captain Marvel'' Rick Jones's wife Marlo Chandler suddenly locked lips with telepathic superheroine Moondragon (Marlo eventually returned to her husband).
* In ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'', Garry Callahan is revealed to be a serial adulterer who repeatedly cheated on his wife with prostitutes while campaigning. Spider doesn't really treat this as much of a moral flaw and more of an avenue of attack against a monster of a politician who's also a complete bastard in many other ways. Shortly before the climax of the comic Callahan's affairs take a decidedly darker turn when it's revealed he's had everyone he's had affairs with killed to cover up his crimes. When one of them slips the net and Spider publishes her story, Callahan has his wife murdered for approval ratings. Spider responds by publishing an interview he did with her while she was still alive, where she lays out about how damaging his frequent affairs were to her.
--->'''Ms. Callahan:''' The best presidents screwed around. Hell, some of them were loved for it. I just wish he'd lie to me about it. Some indication that he cares about my feelings and doesn't want to see me hurt. (...) He lies to ''everyone'', for God's sake. Why can't he lie to me about it, just once?
* ''ComicBook/BlueIsTheWarmestColor'': Emma cheating on Sabine, who's cheating on her.

[[folder:Fan Fic]]
* In ''Franchise/SailorMoon'' fanfics that feature Usagi/Seiya and are set during Stars or after, Usagi will usually cheat on Mamoru if he's alive at any point because she's lonely and thinks he's ignoring her or because he's come back and is a complete asshole - often Mamoru is cheating on her as well. This is almost always portrayed as right and just because Mamoru is just SOOO mean and abusive.
** Mamoru cheating on Usagi is also almost universally used as a way to show what a horrible person he is, making it a case of bad adultery. If he's not sleeping with Rei, it's Setsuna, An, or whomever else the author can twist to make Usagi fall totally for Seiya, Haruka, or Demand, making it good adultery.
* In the ''[[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Avatar]]'' fan-comic ''Webcomic/HowIBecameYours'', Fire Lord Zuko gets Katara pregnant and ''physically assaults his betrothed'' (Mai) for getting upset about it. Zuko, by the way, is officially a Good Adulterer (because Katara is his [[OneTruePairing True Love]]).
* In ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' fanfiction involving the lady Assassins, several different views are given concerning infidelity. In the [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6697660/26/The-Discworld-Tarot Discworld Tarot]] episode on the Three of Cups -- which has strong associations with infidelity -- Miss Alice Band has a novel problem to face. Three regular lovers don't mind the fact that they, at most, only have a one-third share in her affections. Alice herself sees this not so much as serial monogamy as parallel monogamy. But the fourth lover is jealous as Hell and is showing it. As the fourth woman in her life is a Seamstress to whom Alice is paying $800 dollars a time for professional attention, jealousy should not factor in. But she's had a paying relationship with this Seamstress for a long time now. Alice has discovered it's not as simple as that. Her regular Seamstress is being most unprofessional and has fallen in love with her client...
** And Emmanuelle Lapoignard les Deux-Epées, her fellow Assassin, was what can only be called a [[UsefulNotes/{{France}} Quirmian]] Marriage with her husband, a Colonel in the Klatchian Foreign Legion. Apart for ten months of the year, she is free to take all the lovers she needs. It helps that in the Legion, men learn to forget. The Legion is proverbial for this. But when he gets a long leave, she is as loyal a wife to him as a man could ever want. This marital dynamic is explored in the Hogswatch seasonal story "[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5598298/1/Il-se-passait-au-nuit-du-P%C3%A8re-Porcher Il se passait au Nuit de Pere Porcher]]" (In English, by the way, only the title is in Quirmian.)
* "Fanfic/DirtySympathy" Klavier is lonely and trapped in an abusive relationship with Daryan, who hasn't killed him yet because Klavier is the lead singer in their band. So he ends up having an affair with the grounded and considerate Apollo, who helps him get rid of Daryan. Oddly, Daryan doesn't mind Klavier sleeping with female groupies but things go south when he finds out he's having a romantic and sexual affair with another man.
* The ''Series/{{Friends}}'' fic "[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2818481/1/Beautiful-Release Beautiful Release]]" sees Ross and Rachel having an affair in a timeline where Rachel never ran away from her wedding to Barry and Ross remained married to Carol without her realising her true sexuality. The relationship eventually gives them both the strength to decide to end their existing marriages, but they give it some time before they start a proper relationship to ensure they stay together for the right reasons.
* Buffy in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11181910/10/Yet-Again-Still-Even-More-Fragments A Long Walk]]'' describes Xander and Willow cheating on Cordelia and Oz (respectively) with each other as Xander cheating on Cordelia and Willow "following her heart". Though this is shown to be because of Buffy's own relationships always being with older men who prey upon her emotions, which colors her beliefs.
* In the ''Frozen'' fic ''Fanfic/TheAlphabetStory'', Elsa's girlfriend Kyra [[TheBeard starts courting and later gets engaged to a man]] in order to deflect rumors and suspicion. Elsa finds this unfair to Kyra's future-husband and breaks up with her... however Elsa's sister Anna persuades Elsa to [[BreakUpMakeUpScenario get back with Kyra]] anyway. It's implied that Ludvig knows about the affair, however it's never discussed how he feels about it.

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/AlreadyTomorrowInHongKong'' deconstructs this. The story revolves around two acquaintances deciding to spend a night together walking around Hong Kong. Both are in relationships. It's implied that Josh's relationship with his girlfriend Sam is less than stable -- since her parents don't know about him and he's introduced waiting outside her birthday party alone and bored. When a friend of Sam's catches him dancing with Ruby, it brings the two of them down to earth. While Josh tries to justify it by saying they didn't do anything physical, Ruby still calls it "emotional cheating" and points out that what they've been doing isn't fair to either spouse.
* ''Film/AmericanBeauty'' plays with this: The protagonist, a middle-aged married man, lusts after a high-school girl [[spoiler:but never fully acts out his fantasy, though they get very close]]. Later, his wife begins having an affair with another man. While the protagonist is actually indifferent to this fact (though he doesn't hesitate to rub the humiliation in her face after catching her, purely out of spite for totally unrelated reasons), his wife is shown to be a confused woman focusing on the wrong things since their marriage is mutually unfulfilling. Once [[spoiler: the teenager is revealed to have lied about her promiscuity and is actually a virgin]], the protagonist reacts by treating her warmly and with care.
* Toward the end of ''Film/AnimalHouse'', Donald "Boone" Schoenstein is disgusted when he learns that his girlfriend Katy has been cheating on him with her English professor. They eventually do make up, but Katy still has a clearer conscience because Boone had been planning to cheat on ''her'' at a time when he had only ''suspected'' that she was up to something (and he wouldn't have done it for revenge anyway, but [[ItAmusedMe just for the hell of it]]) and apparently never confessed this fact to her afterward (or if he did, it was after the events of the movie). In other words, here [[TheUnfairSex the usual double standard]] is inverted in-universe just so Boone, who's otherwise an unusually sympathetic character, can be made out to be just as much of a {{Jerkass}} as the rest of the Deltas.
* Played relatively straight in ''Film/AnotherTimeAnotherPlace'' with Janie falling into the "Good" category, since her husband, Dougal, doesn't appear to have any interest in her beyond how useful she can be as a labourer. [[spoiler:It's not very clear whether or not Dougal ever knew about the affair. He only seems mildly irritated that Janie isn't paying as much attention to him as she usually does.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Beowulf|2007}}'', Beowulf takes a young mistress to bed rather than his wife, because their marriage is effectively dead as a love affair. His wife holds no ill will against his mistress, and they share a conversation at one point. It comes across as bad adultery, but it's a symptom of the greater tragedy, not the tragedy itself.
* In ''Film/{{Braveheart}},'' the [[EvilBrit English]] have quite a few bad cheaters, with their lords raping married (and non-married) Scottish women, and [[EvilOverlord King Longshanks]]' sniveling son having an [[TransparentCloset obvious affair]] while ignoring the needs of his wife, Princess Isabella-- not to mention implication that the only way Isabella would produce an heir would be for Longshanks to do the honors himself (which would be repulsive, because Longshanks is [[DirtyOldMan elderly and near death]]). On the other hand, Isabella then has a romantic affair with the heroic Scottish rebel William Wallace, [[spoiler: which gets her pregnant, thus breeding the English out of the monarchy the way Longshanks sought to breed the Scots out of Scotland]].
* Entirely averted in the British World War II film ''Film/BriefEncounter'', where two married people meet on a train, and realize they're each other's soulmate. But they end up giving each other up to remain loyal to their own home lives, and this is portrayed as the right thing to do.
** Also averted in the cinema-verite musical ''Film/{{Once}}'' (which has a lot in common with "Brief Encounter"), where the Girl refuses to have anything other than a platonic relationship with the Guy: while she and her husband are separated, and the marriage is probably unsalvageable, she wants to give it every chance she can, for the sake of her daughter.
* ''Film/TheBridgesOfMadisonCounty''. Which, oddly enough, doesn't actually fit any of the aforementioned criteria for "good adultery". Then again, if the other man is ''Creator/ClintEastwood'', nobody's gonna blame you for not being able to measure up.
** The print comic ''ComicStrip/{{Doonesbury}}'' mocks this movie, by having JJ leave Mike for Zeke under similar circumstances... except Zeke is depicted as a buffoon and JJ a flighty fool who made a stupid, spur-of-the-moment decision without thinking.
** Although this probably has more to do with Garry Trudeau's disdain of [[AdaptationDisplacement the bestselling novel by Robert James Waller on which the film is based]]. ''Doonesbury'' had already done a stinging parody of ''Bridges of Madison County'' before it was turned into a movie.
* ''Film/BrokebackMountain'': While the infidelity is presented sympathetically, the spouses are clearly shown as victims, and the destruction of both families is shown as a painful consequence of the affair. The whole thing is presented as a grand tragedy for everyone with the spouses coming out better in the end.
* Averted in ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'' as well. Ilsa is arguably the love of Rick's life, and she seems willing to leave her husband Victor Laszlo for him if he asks. However, in the end, Rick decides that the right thing is to leave Ilsa and Laszlo -- who ''are'' actually quite HappilyMarried -- together (even if only for the sake of the war effort). In fact the censors were originally going to cut the line where Ilsa says Victor is her husband [[ValuesDissonance because it would have meant she committed adultery with Rick]] - but once they came to the scene where Ilsa explains that she thought Victor was dead, that was enough to justify it.
* ''Film/{{Chicago}}'' has this all over the board. The earliest instance is where Roxie cheats on her dull but loving husband Amos, then ''kills'' her lover in a rage, and continues to manipulate Amos to the end despite his continued loyalty. Amos is also one of the the only sympathetic characters in the whole movie, next to the wrongly-executed Hungarian woman, and this trope is lampshaded in his solo.
** In-universe, Velma discovers her husband cheating on ''her'' with her sister and kills them both. This is meant to highlight just what a CrapsackWorld they were dealing with. All the other inmates, by contrast, seem to feel justified in murdering their husbands- and are not generally considered to be very good people.
* In ''Film/ComingHome'', the wife is lonely and unsatisfied, the husband is distant (and by the end of the film, crazy) and the paraplegic Vietnam veteran with whom the wife cheats is kind and noble. (The vet is also able to help the wife reach orgasm, something she could never do with her husband.) It almost seems at one point as if the main message behind the film (apart from "War Is Bad!") is that [[HardTruthAesop "Adultery Can Be Good for You!"]] Of course, the infidelity ''does'' have negative consequences... but mostly for the husband. One gets the impression that the wife is better off for the experience.
* ''Film/{{The Count of Monte Cristo|2002}}'' has Edmond (the Count) have an affair with his true love Mercedes, who married his rival while he was unjustly imprisoned. It's revealed that she only married the other man because she was pregnant with Edmond's son (now a young man), and none of the men realize it until she admits it. In the end, Edmond, Mercedes and their son live happily ever after. The rival, on the other hand, is portrayed as bad adultery for his serial infidelity towards Mercedes - with other men's wives.
* In the 1989 film ''Cousins'', where a man's wife cheats on him with another man. Where it gets interesting is that the man who was cheated on falls in love with the cheater's wife. ''Both'' the main character's wife and her lover are shown to be...not great; ''both'' the main character and ''his'' lover are shown to be just wanting more.
** The main characters start out pretending to cheat to get back at their partners. When they genuinely fall for each other, they stop seeing one another and try and salvage their marriages. When they do wind up together, it's well earned.
* The affair between [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality Marco Venier and Veronica Franco]] in ''Film/DangerousBeauty'' is clearly presented in an almost entirely sympathetic light, and as TrueLove. Never mind that Marco's wife's only crimes seem to be that she is not a poet, has no secrets, is not sexually adventurous, and is upset that her husband carries on a very public affair with Veronica, for whom he openly declares his love.
* The main plot of ''Film/TheDescendants'' is Creator/GeorgeClooney finding out that his wife, who was recently put into a coma, had cheated on him for a long time. When he confronts her friends about the affair, the female friend tries to justify the cheating, at one point saying, "It wasn't her fault...." Clooney immediately shuts down that line of conversation, saying, "You're talking to me in cliches? It's never the woman's fault? Give me a break!" While the movie does suggest that her motives were not unsympathetic and that Clooney's character had his part to play in the breaking-down of their marriage, it's still made clear that her affair was selfish and destructive to her family, not to mention the other guy, who was more reluctant and in a much better marriage then she was.
* ''Film/DoctorZhivago'' stars a pair of lovers who are themselves married to other people. The woman's husband disappeared in a battle during the War, and she spends much of the movie trying to find him. [[spoiler:It turns out he didn't just survive the battle -- he became a high-ranking Red Army officer as a result of it.]] The man's wife...well, nothing happened to her actually. She still loves him and lives with him at the time of the affair and is even caring for their child. Because the movie is pitched to the audience as being about one of the great love stories of all time, the fact that this is technically adultery is nearly an afterthought.
* Used in ''Film/{{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.
* The nature of this trope is an important point in Creator/StanleyKubrick's ''Film/EyesWideShut''. In a discussion about the motivations of men and women cheating on one another, Bill Harford asserts that "women essentially just don't think that way." Whereupon his wife replies "If you men only knew...." and proceeds to tell him of one occasion on which she nearly cheated on him for reasons which are not in any way sympathetic. The confession haunts Harford throughout the film, inspiring some decidedly reckless actions on his part.
* Creator/TylerPerry's ''Film/TheFamilyThatPreys''. Andrea is constantly cheating on her husband with her boss William. Her husband loves her and only wants to help provide the income along with her. She berates him, humiliates him, and is portrayed completely unsympathetically as she tries to get closer to William who is a CEO and [[spoiler:would leave her at the drop of a hat.]]
* ''Film/AFishCalledWanda''; Archie is depicted sympathetically, while his wife (and daughter!) are both horrid monsters. In the end he runs off to South America with Wanda without a backward glance. Wanda, on the other hand, is depicted as a conniving, materialistic shrew, manipulating everyone until the end [[spoiler: when she was about to go alone to Rio]]. Sure, she wasn't all that ''happy'' that [[spoiler:Archie was being left behind]], but that didn't change what she was about to do.
* ''Five Minutes to Live'' portrays a man cheating on his wife as bad, but we still are meant to like him. Her loyalty, meanwhile, is unswerving, even in the face of Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash, people (okay, he plays a maniac who'd just as happily kill her as bed her, but still)! Needless to say, the movie ends with their marriage being completely patched up.
* In ''Film/FlorenceFosterJenkins'', Florence's husband St Clair sleeps in a separate apartment and keeps a girlfriend on the side. At first he appears to be a cheater escaping a loveless society marriage, but as the story progresses we learn that they have an understanding and unique circumstances due to [[spoiler:Florence being infected with syphilis from her first marriage and abstaining from sex to avoid giving the disease to St Clair]]. Adultery aside, they are shown to be actually a HappilyMarried couple who dote on each other, care for each other's feelings, and call each other by cute pet names.
* ''Film/{{Frida}}'' could have been called Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: The Movie. When Frida de 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 [[NeverMyFault she's only doing it because her husband already did.]]
* ''Film/HallPass'': The two couples experiment with an open marriage for a week. The guys go crazy trying to find partners other than their wives, ending with one of the guys chickening out and rekindling his love for his wife (who didn't cheat either). The other guy's wife, on the other hand, did, and was immediately punished by the plot when she gets into a car accident. Meanwhile, her husband doesn't get to go all the day, interrupting a fake cunnilingus session when he hears about the accident. It's pretty clear who's portrayed sympathetically.
* ''Film/InAWorld'': Played with. Characters in the film are divided over whether Michaela Watkins making out with another man for twenty minutes and coming very close to sleeping with him (in her words, she refused to "let him put the tip in") counts as cheating or how bad it is if it does. She herself feels very guilty. For some reason, her husband (Robb Corddry) makes a grand romantic gesture to welcome her back into the marriage, although he is by any reasonable standard the wronged party.
* Averted in Creator/WongKarWai's wistful ''Film/InTheMoodForLove''. The protagonists, already close in spirit, discover that their respective spouses are having an affair with each other, yet they tacitly agree not to do likewise -- although there are hints (not that there are anything ''but'' hints in this film) that they came very close.
* In the Irish film ''Film/{{Intermission}}'', a middle-aged banker named Sam leaves his wife of fourteen years, Noeleen, for the younger Deirdre (who is broken up from her own relationship to UnluckyEverydude John). Sam's rationale is that he and Deirdre "just clicked" while leaving Noeleen enraged and questioning her worth as a woman and wife. It's kind of hard to feel very sympathetic for Sam and Deirdre, as Sam did leave his wife without any warning and without even divorcing her first, while Deirdre doesn't even seem to contemplate her actions. Deirdre's [[DoesNotLikeMen jaded sister]] does frequently call them out on it though. In the end, Noeleen takes Sam back, but isn't going to be letting him forget his little transgression anytime soon, while Deirdre realizes that John really loved her and they're engaged by the end.
* ''Film/TheIntern'': [[spoiler: Matt's having an affair and, while not necessarily justified, he's portrayed rather sympathetically since he immediately regrets it and calls it off]].
%%* ''Film/IrreconcilableDifferences'': Lucy sleeping with Albert while engaged to Bink is portrayed positively, while Albert sleeping with Blake while married to Lucy is not.
* A rare male example in ''Film/ItCouldHappenToYou''. Charlie and Yvonne's relationship is the film's love story, despite the fact that it's an emotional affair at the very least and although they don't sleep together until his wife kicks him out, they are still legally married. The aforementioned wife is a nagging shrew, thus completely justifying his behavior, and ''her'' budding relationship with another man is treated as something bad, despite arguably being ''less'' than Charlie and Yvonne's. Right until the very end--Charlie and Yvonne marry and live happily ever after, while the wife marries the other guy, who steals all her money and disappears.
* The entirety of ''Film/ItsComplicated'' is one big hypocritical example of this trope.
* ''Film/JohnTuckerMustDie'' has three high school girls who find out that the titular John Tucker is going out with all of them at once. Cue them [[EscalatingWar attempting to do horrible things to him]]. A good establishment of the "don't you dare lie to me" clause -- Tucker went to a highly elaborate effort to make sure that none of his girlfriends found out about the other. As opposed to, say, simply telling him they weren't dating exclusively, and in the end the lesson he takes to heart is the one about lying; he introduces his new girlfriends to each other and makes it clear he intends to date them concurrently.
** Compare ''Film/ShesGottaHaveIt'', which features Nola dating three different men simultaneously. They're all mildly resentful of the situation, but it never explodes into an EscalatingWar, in part because Nola is honest with them from the beginning about the situation.
* The main conflict of ''Film/TheLedge'' deals with a LoveTriangle between the hero, Gavin, who is an atheist, Joe, a [[TheFundamentalist Fundamentalist Christian]] and the latter's wife, Shana. Despite the fact that at the beginning Joe and Shana are shown to be [[HappilyMarried very happy with each other]], the film attempts to portray the affair in a good light, with Gavin rationalizing and justifying his seduction of Shana by saying that "she is too good for him" and that he is her "savior" from an oppressive life. This did not sit well with audiences.
* In ''Film/LiarLiar'', amoral lawyer (Creator/JimCarrey) convinces his adulterous client (Creator/JenniferTilly) to believe that she was ''driven'' into the arms of another man, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. This is played for laughs until the end, at which point the Carrey character feels great remorse for winning the case and possibly robbing the husband -- a loving father -- of custody of his children. Though it was implied within the movie that the husband, as good a father as he is, is something of a scoundrel too, marrying a teenage girl and bringing out an airtight prenup. Carrey's character himself cheated on his wife, before their divorce, and his CharacterDevelopment.
* [[LifetimeMovieOfTheWeek Lifetime movies]] often use this theme. [[TheUnfairSex And guess who is the "good" adulterer and the "bad" adulterer]]...
* ''Film/LittleChildren'' 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.
* In ''Film/{{Loverboy}}'', Dr. Reed Palmer is a surgeon who stays late at work. His wife, Dr. Joyce Palmer assumes he's doing his nurse on an operating table and hires the protagonist Randy (working part-time as a gigolo) to both satisfy her and get back at Reed. Later, two other husbands whose wives hired Randy approach the doctor and explain the situation. He's reluctant to go after Randy, as he admits his own infidelity. One of the other husbands brushes it off and tells him his wife has no right to cheat. In the end, after the three husbands are arrested, Joyce bails Reed out and, after a SlapSlapKiss, they go home. The one who assumed that men were allowed to cheat is left in jail by his wife.
* Played straight in ''Film/MeanGirls'' only to be deconstructed. Aaron appears to be Cady's perfect match. Regina gets with him entirely to mess with her, and it's revealed that she's cheating on him anyway. When Cady and Aaron kiss, Cady uses this as a justification - but it's used as another part of showing how she's been corrupted into an AlphaBitch just like Regina. The film's overall message is that PayEvilUntoEvil is pointless, and that Cady was just as bad as Regina. Aaron walks away from the whole messed up situation and doesn't give Cady a chance until she's undergone a HeelFaceTurn.
* Although none of the female characters in ''Film/MissPettigrewLivesForADay'' are actually married, they are frequently adulterous towards their partners; however, their actions are generally presented in a negative light. Delysia is overall a sympathetic and likeable character, but it's made clear that her stringing along of three men for her own purposes is cynical, manipulative, and ultimately harmful as she's destroying her only real chance for happiness. Edythe, meanwhile, is shown as a selfishly opportunistic harpy, mostly because her affair seems to be entirely random while Delysia's are used to make her position in life more secure. One of the major themes of the movie is how tenuous successful women's positions are, and how much they rely on the men around them, so both characters can be seen as sympathetic.
* In the Creator/NicholasSparks movie ''Nights In Rodanthe'', the female protagonist's husband has cheated on her and left her for the other woman (bad). Her meeting and falling in love with another man while going away for the weekend to debate reconciling with him is "good".
* Done in ''Film/NowVoyager''. Jerry's wife (who we never meet) is claimed by other characters to be abusive and manipulative -- and their thirteen-year-old daughter ends up in therapy because of it. This justifies his affair with Charlotte, who was in a similarly abusive position with her mother. As this was the 1940s, showing adultery as sympathetic was shocking. In the end however, Charlotte and Jerry opt not to pursue a relationship for the good of his daughter Tina.
* ''Film/ARoyalNightOut'' has the future Queen Elizabeth technically cheating on her fiancee -- "he's abroad...and overseas doesn't count" -- but she at first is only making a deal with Jack to find her sister lost in London during the VE Night celebrations. They spend most of the night running around the city looking for her, but it's clear that they did fall in love somewhat -- or at least became friends. They share one parting kiss, fully aware that they're never going to see each other or [[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain speak of it again]].
* ''Same Time Next Year'' has Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn as two lovers who meet once a year at a particular resort to spend a weekend together, before going home to their spouses for the other 51 weeks. This goes on for many years. We never see or hear the other spouses, and apparently these two love each other even though they also love their spouse as well.
* In ''Scenes From a Mall'', in which the two spousal protagonists cheat on each other, the wife, who is a famous psychologist, writes a book that essentially justifies adultery by claiming that human beings were originally monogamous because they had such short lifespans in the past, but modern-day married couples live much longer and therefore are forever dissatisfied sexually. However, she [[BerserkButton handles the news of her husband's infidelity]] [[{{Hypocrite}} with a lot less tolerance than he does hers]].
* Creator/PeterSellers comedies have all sorts of takes on adultery:
** In ''The Dock Brief'' (1962) he plays a lawyer trying to defend a client who openly admits to killing his wife. The meek fellow (Richard Attenborough) ''hoped'' his boisterous wife would have an affair with a boarder whose personality better suited hers, but finds out she didn't because she respected the sanctity of marriage too much. He snapped and killed her right then and there.
** ''Waltz of the Toreadors'' (1962) has Sellers as a womanizing general married to a cruel woman who feigns illness and threatens suicide to ''try'' to keep him from pursuing other women, as revenge for his past indiscretions -- and she wasn't always faithful to him either. At the end, circumstances keep him trapped in the marriage when he makes an IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy decision regarding the mistress he truly loved, and he is about to commit suicide - then he meets the new maid...
** ''Only Two Can Play'' (1962) has Sellers' character trying and failing to consummate an affair with another (married) woman out of ennui with his current life with wife and kids. His wife chews him out over this when she finds out, but says he can do what he wants; it seems she's bothered more by his secrecy. Realizing the other woman doesn't really care for him, he returns to his wife and learns she had an affair with the other's husband during all this! They reconcile.
** One likely reason [[Franchise/ThePinkPanther Inspector Clouseau]] turned into the BreakoutCharacter in the original ''Film/ThePinkPanther1963'' was not only because his wife was cheating on him with the jewel thief he was pursuing, but because at the end she helps frame the poor [[TheFool Fool]] for their crimes... making him more sympathetic than intended. It helps that the movie clearly sets his wife as being in the wrong. Clouseau is shown to be ''extremely'' devoted to his wife and willing to indulge pretty much any of her whims, and never shows any interest towards the other gorgeous women in the movie. Sure, he's a klutz, but no one can fault his devotion as a husband.
** In ''Film/WhatsNewPussycat'' Sellers is a deranged psychiatrist whose wife, a stereotypical fat lady opera singer, accuses him of being 'a lascivious adulterer'. He angrily replies "Don't you ''dare'' call me that again until I've had a chance to look it up!" When patient Peter O'Toole asks for help to stop his womanizing ways for his impending marriage, Sellers merely suggests he get married and cheat.
** In ''I Love You Alice B. Toklas!'' (1968), Sellers becomes a [[Main/RunawayBride Runaway Groom]] twice -- the affair he has turns out to be unfulfilling -- as he tries to figure out what he really wants in life.
** In ''Film/BeingThere'', Eve Rand falls for [[SeeminglyProfoundFool Chance]] (Sellers). She's married to another man, Ben, but it's a [[MayDecemberRomance May-December relationship]] (with what author Ellen Gilchrist called the "bartered sexuality" that implies in an essay) and in fact, he's dying. But first, she loves Ben dearly and he her. Second, Ben senses and understands her longing for Chance, and in fact it makes him ''happy'' that she'll have someone to love and to love her when he's gone. With this understood, she makes several attempts to seduce Chance, and HilarityEnsues since Chance hasn't the faintest idea what's going on. At the end, however, [[spoiler:when Chance is at Ben's deathbed, he promises the old man he will take care of Eve, and tells the attending doctor that he does love her; he may not understand specifics, as is his nature, but he has grown kinda fond of her nonetheless]].
* Invoked in-universe in ''Film/TheSevenYearItch'': The protagonist, [[MrImagination whose imagination is always running wild]], [[SelfServingMemory conveniently has a "premonition"]] that his wife is cheating on him with his best friend while on vacation in Maine, [[PayEvilUntoEvil thus "justifying" his cheating on her back in New York]] (although he never actually does this).
* ''Film/{{Spanglish}}''. Creator/AdamSandler'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.
* ''Film/SunshineCleaning'' has our protagonist Rose currently in an affair with her former high school boyfriend, who is currently married with children. The one time we see his wife, she's portrayed as something of a shrew, so as to make Rose look sympathetic. Rose however still ends up calling things off when she realises he'll never leave his wife.
* Francois, the title character of ''Film/TheTallBlondManWithOneBlackShoe'', is having an affair with his best friend's wife (all three play in the same orchestra) -- he's made out to be sympathetic as he'd like to terminate it, but is too weak-willed to resist her aggressive advances. This remains the same in the American remake ''Film/TheManWithOneRedShoe''.
* ''Film/TermsOfEndearment'' follows Emma (Creator/DebraWinger) as a kooky-but-lovable girl who early on marries Flap (Creator/JeffDaniels) and gives up her career to do so. She meets Creator/JohnLithgow, and grows sympathetic to his cause-- his wife has an injury which prevents the two from having sex (although this may be an excuse on the wife's part). Meanwhile, Emma is growing emotionally distant from her husband, who became a professor while she had to stay at home to take care of their children (they met in Grad school). Emma admits to Lithgow that she's not sure whether Flap's cheating on her, but considers this a ''stronger'' justification for the affair, since she's not just doing it for revenge sex. When she does discover that Flap's cheating on her with one of his students, she flips out on him on campus and demands a divorce. Later, she does not tell him about her affair with John Lithgow [[spoiler: on her deathbed]] even though she considers it, in part because of the obvious problems it would create ethically afterwards.
* Rose in ''Film/{{Titanic 1997}}'' is a LonelyRichKid who is loveless and unfulfilled in her relationship with Cal, which was [[ArrangedMarriage organized by her mother for money]], and is therefore justified to the audience in cheating with CloserToEarth Jack. Cal is initially portrayed as clueless regarding Rose's feelings, but as the movie goes on, he loses any possible audience sympathy by turning into a violent JerkAss.
* One growing variation of this trope, appearing in recent films such as ''Film/{{Waitress}}'' and ''Before the Rains'', is a woman with an abusive husband having an affair with a man whose wife is the nicest person ever. ''Before the Rains'' has the man taking advantage of the woman, who is trapped by her society. ''Waitress'' treats the man slightly more sympathetically, but has the woman end the affair due to an attack of conscience after she meets his wife, and also after she leaves her husband.
* Used in ''Film/WalkTheLine'', when Johnny Cash is distant and generally a dick to his first wife, while openly pursuing June Carter who, by contrast, is entirely unwilling to betray her husband. But he's portrayed sympathetically, and he finally winds up with her. He *is* Johnny freaking Cash though.
** Parodied in ''Film/WalkHard'', where Cash {{Expy}} Dewey Cox is portrayed as having a comically exaggerated case of MoralMyopia when he attempts to marry an attractive musical partner without informing her that he is ''still married'' to his first wife, an unsympathetic shrew.
* ''Film/TheWholeNineYards'' has the husband, Oz, working his tail off to support his unloving, freeloading wife AND mother-in-law, while they're plotting to have him killed for life insurance. She also goads him into trying to turn another hitman, Jimmy, in for reward money showing a clear lack of concern for Oz's well being in the process. When Oz starts courting Jimmy's ex, nobody feels sorry for the wife. In fact, [[spoiler: Oz is portrayed as being such a nice guy that the wife's first hitman can't even bring herself to kill him, and Jimmy [[EvenEvilHasStandards flips out over adultery despite MURDER being his trade]]]]. In the end, [[spoiler:Jimmy relents and even gives Oz and Synthia a wedding present. Why? Because they faked his death, meaning they aren't legally married anymore, and he found himself a new {{Love Interest|s}} anyway]].
* In ''Film/TheWolverine'', the good adulterer [[spoiler:Logan, sleeps with Mariko, but he's a wounded soul and she's trapped in a loveless engagement]]. The bad adulterer[[spoiler:, 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]].
* ''Film/TheWorldUnseen'': Miriam's fling with Amina is treated sympathetically, because she's unhappy with Omar, Amina is presented as being kind and gentle with her, and her pursuit of Amina does not interfere with her ability to care for her children. On the other hand, Omar's affair with Farah is treated less sympathetically, because it is taking him away from his duties to his family.

[[folder:Literature]]
* Zig-zagged in ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'' with Dru Hightower, who was caught cheating during the engagement. On one hand, he had [[ExoticExtendedMarriage several wives-to-be]], so he couldn't have done it for the variety. Then again, it was an arranged marriage, and it is implied he wasn't asked. He did cheat with several servants, though, probably for pure lust, and could have infected his wives with an STD. Also, his sisters had to pay back his "brother's price" when his cheating was discovered. On the other hand, his wives-to-be were allegedly very ugly. The character who tells Jerin about the scandal is rather undecided on what to think of the man, but there is some SlutShaming involved. A more straightforward example is [[spoiler: Keifer Porter, who not only cheated on his beautiful, loving wives, he did it [[MoralEventHorizon with his own (social) sister]]]].
* ''Literature/TheAliceNetwork'': Partly due to ProtagonistCenteredMorality, [[spoiler: Eve and Cameron]]'s illicit liaison is treated as more or less okay because of [[spoiler: Mrs. Cameron’s insurance fraud]], but Eve’s father’s constant affairs are less forgivable.
* Kate Chopin's ''The Awakening'' has the protagonist, Edna, is married to one man, in love with another, and having sex with a third (who admittedly probably doesn't care about the other two). And she pretty much tells the second man that she won't let any man control her, implying that she pretty much intends to keep things this way. It's hard to tell how sympathetic she's supposed to be. This also pops up in some of the author's other works.
* ''Literature/AnnaKarenina'':
** The main plot is Anna's morally ambiguous adultery. Although at first the loveless marriage excuse comes up, Anna later claims to have fallen in love with her husband again, and he expresses similar feelings. This does not stop her affair with Vronsky. Whether her hedonism is good or bad is left in an incredibly gray area. While Tolstoy suggests that her society is forcing most people to be repressed and unhappy, and that Anna is too passionate a woman to put up with it, he also shows her leaving her son with his angry, oppressive father, and of course, when she ends up a social pariah, she sees no other option that committing suicide.
** There's also Stiva, Anna's brother, who is caught by his wife Dolly with a maid and whose marriage is suffering as a result. Naturally, Dolly is resentful of her husband's infidelity. However, she applauds Anna's affair with Vronsky and even lies to Stiva that she herself has cheated on him.
*** This is used in contrast with his sister, Anna. Stiva continues his affairs even after making up with his wife, and gets away with it entirely - he keeps his family, his reputation, and his social position. Anna, on the other hand, loses everything.
* Creator/JhumpaLahiri's ''Literature/InterpreterOfMaladies'' features both. In "Sexy", the protagonist, Miranda, is featured as a naive girl who realizes just how worthless she is to her partner, a married Bengali man. In "Interpreter of Maladies", on the other hand, [[spoiler: Mrs. Das is a manipulative, even childish woman who cannot accept that she feels guilt over her infidelity]].
** Her other story, ''Literature/TheNamesake'', features both varieties too. [[spoiler: Gogol has an affair with a married woman while studying for his architectural license, but breaks it off once he feels guilty about it. Later, his wife, Moushimi, has an affair with her old boyfriend, but she does it because she feels restricted after marrying an Indian man and wants to defy conventionality in any way she can.]]
* ''Literature/JaneEyre'':
** Mr Rochester had a love affair with Celine Varens, a French ballerina, and he supported her. They lived together not quite like a married couple, but it might have been close. She cheated on him and talked nastily about him to her second lover, unbeknownst to her that he was hidden in the apartment and could hear her. She was just a FrenchJerk, not worthy of his love. It cured him rather quickly.
** Bertha, the cheating husband's wife (who he was arranged to marry, and only ''thought'' he was in love with her, unaware of her insanity) is a lunatic who tries to kill him multiple times. When her husband describes her adulterous affairs, he's clearly disgusted and it sounds particularly nasty and debauched. (However, modern readers might conclude that her behaviour and her mental illness might have been connected.) He is so ashamed that he keeps her locked in the attic and never lets the public know of his wife.
* This is OlderThanPrint. In the Miller's tale in Creator/GeoffreyChaucer's ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'', a landlord's very attractive wife cheats on him with a student, the two lovers duping the husband with a patently ridiculous story in order to secure time alone with each other to carry out the affair. The whole thing is discovered when a parish clerk, thinking that the landlord is away, approaches the house to ask the wife for a kiss and gets pranked by herself and her lover. Ultimately, the lover ends up with buttocks burned by the vengeful clerk, the clerk is publicly humiliated, and the husband has a broken arm and his attempt to explain his actions makes him look like a madman. Pretty much nothing negative happens to the wife at all; her husband is depicted as both unreasonably jealous and as a gullible idiot.
* D.H. Lawrence's ''Lady Chatterley's Lover''. Lawrence himself bemoans how beastly the whole situation makes the titular character and Connie Chatterley herself look from a certain perspective, but he kept the story that way because that was how it turned out. But Clifford, the cuckold, could be interpreted as an AuthorAvatar due to how Lawrence was impotent due to having tuberculosis and his wife was cheating on him, which gives the sympathetic portrayal of Connie's cheating a more personal reason for it's presence.
* Used in Edith Wharton's ''Literature/EthanFrome,'' in which Ethan is portrayed sympathetically as being trapped in a loveless marriage to Zeena, a hypochondriac shrew, with his only chance of escape from Zeena and the confining town of Starkfield being the vibrant Mattie. In the end, though, [[spoiler:Ethan and Mattie suffer a FateWorseThanDeath after a failed suicide attempt]].
* This trope makes a surprise appearance in Daphne du Maurier's ''Literature/{{Rebecca}}'', in which [[spoiler:we find out that the titular Rebecca was, rather than the lovely and kind-hearted perfect wife her successor assumed her to be, a lying, manipulative, cruel sociopath who cheated on her husband Maxim with a series of lovers - and was not even really in love with them either. Maxim, meanwhile, is shown putting up with this until Rebecca actually ''intentionally provokes him into shooting her.'' (She does this because she has cancer and no way of treating it, and is apparently too afraid of committing actual suicide; but she also does it because this makes him a murderer: her ultimate attack on him). She is, in fact, so awful that the heroine, Maxim's second wife, is ''glad'' he shot Rebecca, and the reader's sympathies are directed toward Maxim in spite of the murder]]. We also find out that [[spoiler:Rebecca seduced Giles, Maxim's brother-in-law. Giles' wife (Maxim's sister) Beatrice either knows or strongly suspects this and avoids further visits with her brother for that reason. She and Giles still seem to get along well though, and the second wife at one point feels inferior because the two have a "good marriage."]]
* In ''Literature/OnAPaleHorse'', the [[GrimReaper Incarnation of Death]] (who is new to the position) checks his mail and finds a letter that reads: "Dear Death--Last night I caught my old goat cheating again. I want you should take him out right away so that I can get the insurance. Sincerely, Outraged Wife. PS, Make sure it hurts!" Death is repelled by this request for murder, thinking to himself, "No need to answer that one. No wonder the old goat cheated!"
* Occurs in a good 75% of John Updike's total fictional output; the adulterous male protagonists tend to be portrayed as essentially sympathetic, if deluded, in their desire for something more out of life, even when it leads to their treating their families like dirt; any female adulterer who isn't sleeping with the hero tends to be silly, desperate, bitchy, or just doing it for revenge (and some of them manage to be all four at once).
* Creator/HarryTurtledove:
** Husband and wife Leino and Pekka in the ''Darkness'' series. When sent onto separate isolated teams to work on top secret government projects, both of them end up committing adultery. While the text itself doesn't make any moral judgments in Turtledove's signature style, the respective situations definitely make the wife Pekka the more sympathetic of the two. Her affair is with someone who has also been a major character from the beginning of the series, who we have come to like for his quick wit and ability to make it out of some dire situations, plus she agonizes over her growing feelings toward him for months before they finally hook up. Leino, meanwhile, almost immediately jumps in the sack with a shrill harpy who has nothing going for her besides her looks, and they're both killed at the beginning of the final book.
** Pekka later becomes violently distraught with guilt over her infidelity for a time, and when she eventually learned of her husband's dalliance, and accepts it with a "at least he didn't die alone" outlook.
** In Turtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar'' series, focus character Sam Yeager ends up having sex with the married Barbara Larsen in a "we're going to die, so why not?" moment. When the moment wears off, both parties are angry and ashamed that they let it happen, but Barbara remains faithful to her husband. This isn't really portrayed as good or bad, just something that happened that wouldn't have under normal circumstances, and the two try to mend their friendship afterwards. But when they find out Barbara's pregnant and are told (wrongly) that her husband is dead, she and Sam get married. When the husband ''does'' return, this is only the latest step in a HumiliationConga that leads to him going [[AxCrazy off the deep end]] and eventually being gunned down by the military. Much later in life, when Yeager tells the whole story to his son Johnathan, he confides that he believed Barbara would never have stayed with him if not for the pregnancy. At the same time, Barbara's husband ends up having a one-night stand with a restaurant owner, thinking nothing of it. She also ends up giving him the clap.
*** It's more GladToBeAliveSex (they'd just survived a Race airstrike), and her regret isn’t mainly because they didn't use protection in the excitement. She admits that she has finally accepted that her husband is dead and starts to regularly sleeping with Sam, but insists on using condoms. They eventually marry, and their wedding night is when Barbara decides to dispense with a condom, which is when she gets pregnant.
* John Fowles' ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'', where the male lead Charles' difficulty in choosing between the nice but shallow and socially confined Tina and the bold, exciting Sarah is treated sympathetically. And without actively demonizing Tina to boot.
* Played with in Graham Greene's ''The Complaisant Lover''. We're led to believe Mary's having an affair to escape the confines of marriage to dull, buffoonish Victor. When he finds out about the relationship, he shows himself to be a decent, sensitive man- and Mary and her lover look worse and worse by comparison.
* Used in ''Literature/TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNightTime''. [[spoiler:Christopher's mother cheats on Christopher's father, and blames it on the stress of raising their autistic child.]] Her sympathy, overall, is hard to gauge.
* Used in ''Literature/TheHorseWhisperer'' in which Annie commits adultery because she's fallen in love with Tom Booker. The two of them are portrayed as nothing but sympathetic, despite the fact that Annie's deeply distressed daughter Grace is involved. Annie's husband is a nice guy and devoted family man. Tom [[spoiler:dies in order to save Grace's life in what could be construed as an act of RedemptionEqualsDeath]].
* In Creator/MichaelCrichton's ''Literature/{{Next}}'', a female scientist is clued into her husbands affair by her sapient parrot (who probably did it [[DeadpanSnarker on purpose]]) and flips out on him over it. A page or two later, ''[[HypocriticalHumor she's in the arms of her lover]]'', who she's been seeing for over a year. Uh... huh.
* In Creator/AynRand's ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'', Lillian Rearden discovers that her husband Hank is having an affair, and since she thinks it's some casual fling with some floozy, she doesn't think twice of it as she believes it demeans both her husband and his lover, so she admits that she will neither divorce him nor tell him to break it off. But when she discovers whom he's having the affair with: [[spoiler:Dagny Taggart]], and that it's a mutually rewarding relationship, she becomes horribly upset and tries to demand he stop it. She eventually has a thoroughly repulsive one-night stand with James Taggart solely for the purpose of demeaning Hank. She's not happy when she reveals her infidelity to him and realizes that he doesn't give a damn.
* The Naked Husband by Mark D'Arbanville spends a whole book exploring this trope. He and his wife had developed distance without realising it during their marriage, and his attempts to decrease it are generally met with rejection by his wife. His affair with a woman he met at work is shown to be extremely passionate, and it is obvious they are soulmates. However, the damage the affair causes to their respective spouses and families is shown rather vividly.
* Used in ''Literature/TheGirlWithTheDragonTattoo'' by Stieg Larsson. Features the good cheating as in everybody in the relationship knows about the relationship with a character named Erika Berger. Blomkvist, the protagonist, and Erika were in a relationship when they were younger. When Erika got married to her husband, she tells him after some time has passed that while she ''loves'' him, she ''desires'' Blomkvist. Her husband is pretty much totally okay with her continuing her sexual relationship with Blomkvist, leaving them with an open marriage. On his end, Blomkvist still flirts and has sex with all kinds of women. (Granted, at least part of it might be because he spends a substantial amount of time away from Erika in the first novel. In the third, he starts a relationship while he's working in close quarters with Erika, and she seemingly begins to accept that he might soon have a real partner.)
* In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/NightWatchSeries'', Anton is prophesied by Geser that he and Svetlana will have a powerful Other child. Both are attracted to each other but are apprehensive about the prophecy. During a Night Watch retreat, Anton catches her after she has a threesome with Ignat (an incubus) and another woman. The next morning, she realizes he knows but is mad that he doesn't seem to care. Anton actually tries to justify her actions, which causes her to blow up into a tirade on the stupid prophecy and the fact that she hasn't had sex in years (presumably, since her husband left her). This, of course, raises the question of why she would choose to have sex with another man and ''another woman'' rather than her boyfriend, for whom she has feelings. This is especially jarring because Ignat previously tries to seduce her (it's his specialty) but fails miserably. This incident is never mentioned again, and they end up getting married and having a powerful Other daughter.
** Svetlana was trying to get a rise out of Anton, maybe get him jealous. When he never showed up, she was too excited to stop. She didn't realize that Anton couldn't sense the affair through the walls, as Tigercub had all the walls in her cabin shielded against magic.
* In ''Literature/{{Cujo}}'', Donna has an affair out of a desire to escape feeling old and bored. While her husband is obviously less than thrilled, they manage to work past it [[spoiler:mostly because she narrowly avoids being killed by a rabid dog and their son ''is'' killed indirectly]]. Donna's lover, meanwhile, trashes her house when she breaks things off with him and manages to convince himself that he was ''heroic'' in doing so.
* In ''Literature/{{Chosen}}'', Zoey spends her time balancing her human boyfriend Heath, her vampire boyfriend Erik, and [[{{squick}} the twenty five-year-old teacher]] Loren Blake. WordOfGod is that it's not a good thing that Zoey hid her relationship with Blake from everyone (Erik does know about her being with Heath and is not happy about it).
* Discussed in ''Literature/HowNotToWriteANovel''. Among other things, they mention that having the protagonist cheat on their significant other ''first'' is a very good way to make the protagonist UnintentionallyUnsympathetic.
* [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-Zagged]] in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''.
** On the "good" hand, Eddard Stark is [[SwitchingPOV a protagonist]] and he and his wife Catelyn were "on a break" in the sense that he was away at war for more than a year; Catelyn acknowledges that [[AllMenArePerverts he has needs]] and doesn't begrudge him finding comfort in some other arms. On the "bad" hand, Catelyn is [[SwitchingPOV also a protagonist]] and fears she might be Ned's SecondLove, feeling that perhaps Ned loves another woman more, as Ned returns home from the war with his illegitimate infant son, [[HeroicBastard Jon Snow]] ([[SwitchingPOV ALSO a protagonist]]), whom Ned fathered out of wedlock. Ned insists on raising Jon alongside his and Catelyn's trueborn children as one of his sons and Catelyn feels she is living in the shadow of Ned's first love (who she believes is Jon's mother), as she concludes Ned must have loved Jon's mother deeply upon observing Ned's fierce protectiveness of Jon. Catelyn comes off as TheResenter and their situation is not made better when the one time she asks Ned about Jon's mother, Ned shuts her down. [[spoiler: And then there are the repeated hints and fan theories that Ned is really Jon's ''uncle'', with Jon being the biological son of Ned's sister Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. It is theorized that Ned passed Jon off as his own illegitimate child, raising and loving him as one of his children, to protect Jon from Robert Baratheon's fatal wrath and possibly to protect the child from what would be, at best, a life as a political pawn, surrounded by intrigue or constant risk of assassination (which Robert, who had Rhaegar's other children killed, would likely want to do to Jon if he found out Jon's true parentage).]]
** Zig-Zagged again in the marriage of King Robert and Cersei. Any royal adultery is Bad Adultery and when the king does it, it results in scandal and illegitimate children that can threaten the stability of the realm. When the queen does it, it's treason. However, Robert and Cersei's marriage is miserable and it's hard to blame either of them for seeking solace elsewhere. Then again, Robert is depicted as fickle and careless with his romantic affections, willing to beget bastard-born children and make promises to their mothers, only to forget most of them in the morning (with the exceptions of Mya Stone and Edric Storm). Cersei at least loves and is committed to her lover... but [[spoiler: her lover is her ''twin brother'' Jaime, which makes it bad adultery again -- ''except'' that their relationship is actually pretty sympathetic, aside from the whole incestuous thing]].
** In yet another odd case of Zigzagging, Cersei cheating on her regular affair partner [[spoiler: Jaime]] with [[spoiler: Lancel and Osmond Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all we know]] is treated less sympathetically than cheating on her husband with [[spoiler: Jaime]] in the first place.
* Used by Ridley Pearson as a reason Sgt Boldt has to be circumspect in his murder investigation since his wife was involved with the victim when they were having a rough time.
* In ''Literature/ItCantHappenHere'', Doremus and Lorinda have had a ongoing affair behind Emma's back. The affair is depicted as positive, since the two are intellectual equals who are passionately in love, whereas Doremus and Emma are anything but.
* ''Literature/MadameBovary'': Emma Bovary has it rough. Her husband adores her, but he's a stupid and naive guy who doesn't come even close to her intelligence and imagination, and cannot give her the fashionable life she craves, and he doesn't understand her at all. It's hard to judge Emma for looking for affection elsewhere. She has two lovers in the course of the novel, but it's hardly good for her. Neither loves or cares for her as much as she cares for them, and both ultimately back off when things get serious. Maintaining these relationships also forces Emma to borrow money from a LoanShark, which leads to her ruining her life and the life of her family.
* In the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series, Hamish Alexander is married to the disabled Emily Alexander, who is practically seen as a saint by the population of Manticore. He visits prostitutes to satisfy his needs, and both his wife and society at large consider this to be perfectly acceptable. However, when he later falls in love with Honor, the rumors that they're having an affair (in truth, this is slander on the Government's part that turns out to be [[AccidentalTruth accurate]]) are horribly scandalous. [[spoiler: Emily, upon realizing that they're actually in love, responds first by getting angry, then dealing with the facts on the ground and accepting their affair, and later taking a hint from Honor's Grayson society and setting up an ExoticExtendedMarriage.]]
* [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagging]] this trope is what ''Literature/TheScarletLetter'' is all about. At the end of the day, the adultery itself is not treated sympathetically, but the characters who perpetrate it are, and the sexual repression of the society they live in comes in for as much scrutiny as their transgression itself.
* Creator/NicholasSparks will pair this with ProtagonistCenteredMorality.
** In his novel ''Nights in Rodanthe'', the lead character takes a vacation to dwell on the state of her marriage--her husband wants to reconcile following his affair. This is "bad", but when ''she'' begins a relationship with a man she meets while on her trip, it's not just "good", it's the novel's topical love story.
** Similarly, in ''The Best Of Me'', one of the reunited lovers is cheating on her husband, but this is okay as the marriage is all but dead.
** Even Allie from ''Film/TheNotebook'' is cheating on her fiance when she reconciles with Noah, even though her fiance is a wonderful man who even ''she'' admits that she loves dearly.
** In ''The Choice'', the heroine cheats on her fiance with the hero even though there's nothing wrong with him or the relationship.
* In ''Literature/RallyRoundTheFlagBoys'', HenpeckedHusband Harry Bannerman is a sympathetic adulterer, though he turns out to be not terribly confident or competent at adultery. Angela keeps the affair going only because she wants to break up his marriage and have him for herself.
* In ''Literature/TheDeadZone'', protagonist Johnny's old girlfriend looks him up after he awakens from a years-long coma and eventually comes to visit him. They belatedly consummate their relationship while her baby boy by her husband (whom she met and married during Johnny's coma) naps in the other room. The whole thing is played as a tragic but sympathetic exploration of what might have been.
* In Creator/IanDouglas's ''Literature/TheHeritageTrilogy'', Dr. David Alexander keeps having extramarital affairs with his female colleagues. On the other hand, it's stated that social mores have changed to the point where marriage isn't treated as something monolithic. In fact, there are many different kinds of marriages, such as whole groups of people being married to one another. Even walking around naked isn't that much of a taboo anymore, as long as it's in the company of close friends. Still, there are many holdouts from the more strict religions, who cling to the old marital traditions. Unfortunately for Alexander, his wife is one of them. He doesn't want to stay married to her and has brought up divorce multiple times, but she manages to change topics every time, refusing to even contemplate it due to her very religious upbringing. In her mind, marriage is eternal. He would rather part on good terms, knowing that his disgust with his wife's membership in an {{Ancient Astronaut|s}} cult is likely to grow into outright hatred. In turn, his wife knows he's cheating on her (his own fault for using an [[ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish easily-guessable password]]) and even figures that, if she shows proof in court, she'd get half of their assets (she's get the same if he simply left her). She doesn't partly because of her believes in marriage and partly because David is her source of knowledge about the alien artifacts on Mars and Luna, which her cultist friends use to justify their beliefs.
* ''Literature/TheForsyteSaga'':
** Young Jolyon had an affair with her daughter's governess and ran away with her, and he can't get married to her until his first wife (Frances) is killed off in a horse riding accident. Mostly leaning to Good Adultery, since Jolyon is the hero of the story. Apaptions of the story have also generally portrayed Frances as a snobbish shrew, [[SexIsEvil who refused to have sex with her husband]]. But unfortunately, Jolyon will never become that happy with his second wife Heléne either, because she develops some kind of mental illness, to the point that she shows a pathological jealousy even towards her daughter Holly.
** Irene has an affair with Philip Bosinney. This is her only way to escape her awful marriage, and she is mostly described as a good woman otherwise. But the story also shows how this affects her husband Soames and Bosinney's fiancée June (who used to be Irene's best friend, no less). To be fair though, Soames acts in a clearly abusive manner towards Irene (he even ''rapes'' her instead of just letting her go). So it can be hard to feel any sympathy for him after all. And as for June, she decides to forgive Irene after some time has passed.
** Monty's infidelity to Winifred is never seen as sympathetic though, because he turns out to be a {{Jerkass}}. And it's made clear that Winifred is a much better wife to him than what he deserves.
* In ''Literature/{{Below}}'', it's an OpenSecret that Harry Card is having a long-term affair with [[TheDragon Finch's]] wife Maddie, and is the real father of Finch's son. Because Finch and Harry are still inseparable friends, everyone in the village believes Finch is the only one out of the loop and they're afraid to tell him. [[spoiler:Finch ''does'' know, and so does his son. He and Maddie allowed Harry to step in when Maddie couldn't conceive a child despite her family's fertility. While Finch's demeanor whenever he steps away for them is hardly ''happy'', his bond with Harry is undiminished.]]
* In the Creator/DanielleSteel'' novel ''The Wedding'', the heroine comes home from a business trip to find her boyfriend cheating on her. She's outraged and kicks him out, overlooking the fact that she spent her trip having a fling with another man. While his behavior is regarded as despicable, hers is seen as finding true love and she and the other man marry at the end of the book.
* This is pondered by Nick Dunne in ''Literature/GoneGirl.'' [[spoiler:When the book starts, he's been having an affair with one of his college students for over a year, which puts him squarely in the "bad adulterer" category, particularly since it comes after he persuaded the urbane Amy to move from New York to his midwestern hometown, where she is miserable. His horror at TheReveal that Amy is a hardened sociopath and ConsummateLiar who's been manipulating him and everyone around them for years is commingled with relief that it might retroactively make him a SympatheticAdulterer, even though he had no knowledge of any of this at the time.]]
-->[[spoiler: I was not as big an asshole as I'd thought. An asshole, yes, but not on a grandiose scale. The cheating, that had been preemptive, a subconscious reaction to five years yoked to a madwoman: Of course I'd find myself attracted to an uncomplicated, good-natured hometown girl. It's like when people with iron deficiencies crave red meat.]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* Played with in ''Series/ThirtyRock'', while Jack's wife Avery is being held in North Korea, he kisses and comes very close to cheating on her with his mother-in-law, who is [[MayDecemberRomance closer to his age]] and with whom he shares an intense mutual attraction. Meanwhile, Avery falls in love with and has an emotional affair with a fellow prisoner. After Avery returns home she and Jack struggle to hold their marriage together, but they eventually admit that they don't love each other anymore and were just staying married out of stubbornness, and amicably agree to divorce and evenly split custody of their daughter.
** Jack's [[spoiler:step-]]father was a serial philanderer who would frequently disappear for years on end and have strings of affairs. When Jack learns that his mother's new boyfriend at her retirement community is also married, he assumes that history is repeating itself and gives the guy the CallingTheOldManOut speech he had always wanted to give his dad. However, his mom shuts him down and reveals that she knows he's married and orders him to stay out of her personal life. The two of them are not depicted as either good or bad for this, it's just depicted as something that has happened and which Jack needs to accept.
** It is also revealed that Jack's [[spoiler:biological father]] was [[spoiler:a college student his mother had an affair with]]. Again, the show makes no moral judgement on way or another.
** For over a decade prior to the start of the series, Jack was technically married, although he and his wife had been separated for years. His wife had no problems with him dating a successive string of bimbos, but attacked Liz in a jealous rage when she claimed Jack had proposed to her, since Liz could satisfy Jack emotionally as well as physically. They eventually finalise their divorce a few episodes later, despite them still having feelings for each other.
* ''Series/BetweenTheLines'' features an example of the protagonist committing bad adultery. Tony's womanising is frequently portrayed as a character flaw that [[spoiler: costs him his marriage quite early on]].
* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' gives this a cruel twist. Leonard starts dating Raj's sister Priya, and they continue a long distance relationship when she returns to India. The distance (physical and emotional) between them starts to erode the relationship, but Leonard is dedicated to making it work. However, at the comic book store he meets a beautiful female comic book artist and she is clearly attracted to him. They get as far as kissing before Leonard realises what he's doing is wrong and breaks it off. He then calls Priya to confess and ask forgiveness, only to find that she had already cheated on him with her ex-boyfriend.
* ''Series/{{Blackpool}}'' features both. Ripley's affairs are casual sex, while Natalie's is about love. [[spoiler:Ripley eventually tells her to go be with the man she loves. But who can compete with [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]]?]]
* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':
** The second episode has a particularly good example: [[spoiler: the killer (who murdered her friend after discovering her boyfriend had slept with her) is treated as a victim, and Kate muses on the unfairness of the guy getting away without punishment... Despite her knowing from the outset that he was married, and later on, it turns out that the death was accidental. She didn't ''mean'' to kill her friend and both young woman appear to be just out of high school or college; so the man (who was several years older than them at least) was sleazily taking advantage of them and their naiveté by stringing them along for sex.]]
** Another episode revealed that Castle's first wife Meredith, who is also the mother of his daughter, had an affair with a director and abandoned him and Alexis to move to Los Angeles to start an acting career. Castle seems to hold no particular ill-will against her, to the extent that he's willing to hook up with her again whenever she's in town.
** After Castle and Beckett become a couple, Meredith shows up to see her ex's new girl. At the end, Beckett asks her why the marriage ended. Meredith admits that, after many years together, she finally realized that she knew next to nothing about Castle, while he knew her inside and out. This prompts Beckett to re-evaluate her relationship with him.
* ''Series/DarkDesire'': Alma tries to defend herself cheating this way. When she thought Leonardo was cheating, she implies it was okay for her to as well. Esteban doesn't buy this at all though.
%%* In the Russian series ''Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great'', [[UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat Catherine]] remains faithful to her husband for over 7 years, despite him never touching her once (it's later revealed that he has an affliction that affects his libido, but even after it's cured, he still prefers to go after palace girls). Eventually, his aunt Empress Elizabeth gets tired of waiting for an heir and threatens to annul Peter and Catherine's marriage, if they don't produce a child. She's shocked to learn that Catherine is still a virgin, which is confirmed by the royal physician. Eventually, Elizabeth very strongly hints to Catherine that she really doesn't care if Peter is the biological father of the child and then does the same to Peter's chamberlain Sergei Saltykov. Catherine and Saltykov sleep several times, but then Elizabeth forces Peter to spend several nights with his wife in order to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that Catherine's future child is a true Romanov (then again, Saltykov also has Romanov blood), while sending Saltykov away. Catherine later ends up having a number of other dalliances, such as with a Polish prince named Stanisław August Poniatowski (producing her daughter Anna) and an officer named Grigory Orlov (producing her second son Alexei). On the other hand, Peter, after his surgery, starts sleeping around with palace girls, ignoring his wife. He eventually falls for Elizaveta Vorontsova and even considers divorcing Catherine in order to marry Elizaveta.
* Used somewhat lightheartedly in Season II of ''Series/{{Entourage}}''. Unsure weather or not his girlfriend Kristin (of whom the rest of the boys don't approve) is cheating on him, Eric gets drunk and sleeps with a Perfect 10 model. He's guilt ridden for much of the remainder of the episode... until Kristin confesses to him that she HAD been cheating on him (Ironically she justified it by doubting that E had been staying faithful in Vince's company). Eric then gleefully tells Kristin about the affair as he leaves.
* ''Series/{{ER}}'''s Jeannie Boulet gets the "good" part of this along with SympatheticAdulterer 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.
* An episode of ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'' deals with a husband and wife who had been trying for many times to have a baby and failing. The wife becomes increasingly obsessed with trying to get pregnant and having a baby and the husband becomes frustrated with her inability to talk or think of nothing else. Then the husband runs into an old friend and sleeps with her. Only to realize that what he did was wrong and afterwards genuinely loved his wife more.
* ''Series/{{Frasier}}'':
** Played with. Frasier suspects that his father Martin had an affair whilst still married to his (now deceased) mother, and is shaken when Martin admits it. This affects his relationship with his father, Frasier being unable to forgive this betrayal, until he learns that Martin lied; it was actually Frasier's mother who had the affair. Martin blamed himself for it, and encouraged Frasier not to let it affect his feelings towards his mother, something which Frasier had little problem with. It should be noted that his brother Niles, however, had little trouble accepting it even when it seemed that Martin was the guilty party, reasoning that the two obviously managed to overcome it and have a happy marriage from that point on.
** Frasier himself is a victim of adultery, his wife Lilith having had an affair in ''Series/{{Cheers}}'' -- he even comments on learning the truth that the shared experience of being cuckolds has given Frasier and Martin a rare something that they have in common. Lilith, for her part, is not well treated by the other characters, although her adultery is [[DefrostingIceQueen just one of the reasons]] why Frasier's family doesn't like her.
** Niles and [[TheUnseen Maris]] also encounter this trope. In Niles' case, he is heavily attracted to Daphne throughout the series despite being married, but is portrayed sympathetically, while Maris' affair with their marriage counselor is depicted as selfish and the reason for Niles to initiate divorce proceedings. However, it's presented as obviously a lot more complicated than this; Niles ultimately never acted on his feelings for Daphne while he was married (although he was sorely tempted at times) and is willing to acknowledge that the Daphne situation could have nevertheless had a deleterious effect on his marriage whether he acted on them or not, while Maris' adultery is clearly shown as being the back-breaking straw on top of a large pile of selfish, unreasonable and unfair behaviour towards Niles.
*** {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in one episode when Daphne finds out one of Niles' patients has fallen in love with Niles (through clinical transference). She panics and investigates the patient despite Niles warning her not to, since it could seriously jeopardize his practice if it was discovered her confidential medical notes were compromised. Daphne tells Niles that she was driven by fear that Niles was cheating. When Niles tries to tell her he would never have a mistress, Daphne notes that he was in love with her while he was married to ''two'' other women. She was "the other woman", so how could she know that Niles wouldn't have another "other woman" in his life. Niles tells her that while he was with Maris and Mel, he fantasized about Daphne. While with Daphne, [[OneTrueLove he fantasizes about Daphne]], which is how he knows he won't cheat on her.
* Used on ''Series/{{Friends}}'', where Ross sleeps with another woman not only because Rachel says that they should [[strike:put their relationship on hold]] take a break, but because he believes that she is sleeping with Mark. The episode after they split for real shows that while they don't necessarily agree with Ross, the other characters understand where he is coming from. Also used with Rachel herself. While she at first seemed to have the same mindset as the others, she ended up going the rest of the series run without admitting fault. Considering how "We were on a break" was one of the show's {{Running Gag}}s, it wasn't as though she didn't have the opportunity to rethink her position.
** This show also tended to blur the line between good and bad adultery. While Ross' reasons for cheating 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.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': While Stannis feels guilty of having had sex with Melisandre, Selyse is ecstatic because she has given him only stillborns — she doesn't even count Shireen — while Melisandre gave him a son.
* ''Series/TheGoodWife'' opens with Alicia Florrick suffering the backlash, following the imprisonment of her husband Peter for corruption during his time as a DA. The corruption involved him having an affair with several interns (not at the same time). Despite the affairs, Alicia does not divorce him but starts her legal career at Stern, Lockhart & Gardner thanks to her being an acquaintance of Will Gardner, one of the name partners. After some time, Peter manages to appeal the charges and get them dropped, and their relationship appears to be improving, until Alicia finds out that her best friend Kalinda slept with Peter many years ago. She kicks Peter out and starts an affair with Will. However, after some time, she ends the affair and gets back with Peter. Her relationship with Will sours even more after she leads several associates to leave the firm to start their own. Then [[spoiler:Will is accidentally killed by a client of his]], and Alicia suddenly realizes that she's done with Peter, claiming that she has never truly forgiven him for the original affairs. When Peter points out that they meant nothing to him, Alicia counters that her affair ''did'' mean something. They agree to stay officially married for their respective careers but have totally separate private lives, except where their children are concerned and for any public appearances. Alicia then toys with the idea of starting a relationship with a former ADA Finn Polmar, while Peter starts a romantic affair with a woman on his staff, only to break it off when the affair comes to light. Alicia eventually starts another affair with Jason, a private investigator, who work for her part-time. When Peter finds him at Alicia's apartment, he seems ready to punch him, but Jason ends up leaving and telling Alicia he's uncomfortable with this arrangement. She tries to play it off as a casual sex-only relationship (she even sleeps with Peter once or twice, while claiming it's nothing more than casual sex and claims it's even better when love isn't a factor), but it's clear she likes Jason as more than that. The GrandFinale has Alicia struggle with trying to decide between the men in her life, even having mental conversations with Will, telling him that he's her OneTruePairing. [[spoiler:The episode leaves it open whether she stays with Peter or leaves with Jason]].
** There are even several scares that make Alicia think that Peter has had more affairs than she knows about. Such as a prostitute whom Peter sends to Alicia's firm to try her rape case, who turns out to not know Peter at all. Or another woman on Peter's staff, who is pregnant by a man called Peter, except it turns out to be a different Peter.
** The GrandFinale also suggests that Diane's husband may have cheated on her, although we never find out the truth. She ends up slapping Alicia for bringing it up in court, although it's not made clear if that was for bringing the affair to light or for straining her marriage by ruining her husband's reputation.
*** The [[Series/TheGoodFight spin-off]] does confirm that he cheated on Diane, and their marriage is on the rocks for a while, but they eventually reconcile (especially when he admits he didn't vote for Trump, which would be a big no-no to her).
* ''Goodnight Sweetheart''. Gary Sparrow, the {{time travel}}ing hero, was in a relationship (and later marriage) with two different women in two different time periods (the 1940s and the 1990s). While the series treated the affair itself as wrong, Gary personally was always portrayed very sympathetically as a man impossibly caught between two women he loved and as feeling very guilty for doing so.
* ''Series/GreysAnatomy'':
** As is [[GreyAndGrayMorality appropriate to its name]], the show plays the sympathy of adultery off of both ends. The first season cliffhanger involves Meredith abruptly discovering that her boyfriend Derek (better known as [[FanNickname Doctor McDreamy]]) is actually married when his wife Addison flies in. The second season opener works under the assumption that he's done something horrible by getting involved with Meredith- until the very end, when a patient asks Addison how she can stand to be in the same room as Meredith when she slept with her husband. Addison is incredulous, and tells the patient that she cheated on Derek first and that was why he came to this hospital in the first place- to get away from her. She then sternly tells the patient that she owes Meredith an apology. As the season progresses, we also see that she holds Derek no ill will for the affair, and is perfectly willing to accept a divorce if he wants to continue seeing Meredith.
** There's also the whole [[spoiler:George]] and [[spoiler:Izzie]] situation. From the beginning, [[spoiler:George]] is portrayed as having the hots for Meredith... but this quickly ends after they have a terrible one-night stand (during which she bursts into tears), completely putting him off her. He then starts going out with [[spoiler:Callie Torres]], but this ends when she [[spoiler:sleeps with Mark]]. Then [[spoiler:George's father dies]], and the two end up having a quickie wedding in Vegas. Almost immediately, he realizes it was a huge mistake and ends up in a drunken one-night stand with [[spoiler:Izzie]], which turns out to be his OneTruePairing. A few episodes later, he tells his wife, and she ends up forgiving him because of the vows... only for him to force her to end the marriage. Even then, the two have trouble starting off due to, apparently, no chemistry between them. A few seasons later, [[spoiler:George dies, and Izzie gets cancer]]. Ouch. Izzie then ends up with Alex and actually marries him, before [[spoiler:leaving him without a word, after misunderstanding the Chief's comment about him and assuming he betrayed her. After she comes back, Alex calls her out on not giving him, her husband, the benefit of the doubt. She admits to having overreacted. Later, she comes back, and her cancer is in remission. But, by that point, Alex realizes that he deserves better and asks her to leave]].
** In later seasons, the Meredith-Derek marriage is starting to crack, with Derek wanting to follow his career to Washington, D.C., to work for the President and Meredith insisting on staying in Seattle. Derek ends up staying, but, eventually, Meredith admits that she can't deal with the guilt that Derek keeps trying to saddle her with (i.e. sacrificing his career for her) and angrily tells him to accept the offer and go. He does, but they reconcile over the phone and agree to try to make their long-distance relationship work. As it turns out, it doesn't work too well, as Meredith realizes that she's perfectly fine on her own (even raising 2 kids). One day she calls Derek, only to have a woman pick up the phone. The next day, Derek flies into Seattle to explain. Meredith assumes that the woman on the phone is the new "Meredith", as Derek has done this before. In fact, the woman does try to come on to Derek, only for him to realize that he still wants his marriage to work. [[spoiler:[[DroppedABridgeOnHim Then he gets hit by a truck]]]].
** Arizona cheats on Callie with Lauren. This has repercussions much later. For one, even after getting back together, Callie eventually reveals she has never quite forgiven Arizona for the affair. Also, Callie's mistreatment of Lauren after the affair leads to her complaining about sexual harassment and much stricter hospital policy about relationships. Eventually, Arizona and Callie go to couple's counseling, and the shrink suggests they take some time apart. However, instead of helping them reconcile, the separation convinces Callie that she's much happier by herself, and they end up divorcing.
** There is also Alex's on-and-off affair with a married woman, whom he names Ava (she had temporary amnesia at the time). After discovering that she's married, Alex isn't sure he wants the affair to continue, but then she remembers that she was trying to escape a loveless marriage at the time. She seems to go back to her husband, but comes back to Alex some time later. Eventually, though, [[spoiler:he discovers that she is mentally ill and has no choice but to commit her]]. Later, [[spoiler:he starts a relationship with Jo, only for the relationship to hit a rock after she rejects his marriage proposal. She then reveals the truth to another doctor - she's already married and is hiding from her abusive ex-husband, even changing her name. Alex ends up beating up the doctor badly, having assumed Jo to be sleeping with him (she wasn't) and is then put on trial for assault]].
* ''Series/{{House}}'' after he and his now-married ex-flame, Stacy, sleep together. Wilson tells her off for toying with House's feelings (of which she believes he has none) and Cuddy refuses to tell her that it would be fine for her to leave her husband.
* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'' has Eric Green, the protagonist's brother and aide to his Mayor-father, and all round swell guy. He's quickly shown to be cheating on his wife with the local Bar owner. Yet he is not portrayed as a soulless monster and when confronted points out how his marriage is basically winding down, and how he has genuine feelings for his new lady. [[spoiler: Even when his wife becomes pregnant, and then later suffers from an acute case of DeathByChildbirth, he is still shown as a good man who just made a bit of a cockup of the whole situation.]]
* ''Series/JonathanCreek'':
** The episode "Angel Hair" features an adulterous husband who, adultery aside, is depicted as an otherwise decent man who feels genuinely stifled in a marriage that, from his point of view, is lacking in passion. He's still treated as something of a hapless fool, though, especially considering that the wife he's cheating on is a beautiful pop singer who, whilst she's not quite the passionate sex goddess that the media depicts her as, is nonetheless a loving, caring woman who clearly thinks the world of him.
** In another episode, "House of Monkeys", a woman has an affair with her father-in-law. However, both she ''and'' her husband are portrayed as utter twits, and their story ends with their mother/mother-in-law shouting at them: "if only you would just take your marriage by the scruff of its neck and ''make it work!''"
** The pilot episode contains both kinds. The victim's affair is considered unsympathetic when it's with an oversexed French model. However it's later portrayed very sympathetically when it's revealed he was never having an affair with the model at all, but with his unglamorous housekeeper with a crazily jealous husband.
* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' has an unusually nuanced portrayal of this trope. When Elliot is separated from his wife, Kathy, he has an extramarital encounter but still mentally considers it cheating. After they've reconciled, one scene has Elliot's wife bringing up the question of whether they'd slept with anyone else while separated. Elliot admits that he had done so, but refuses to ask Kathy the same question, as he wants to put their marital troubles behind them.
* A season 4 episode of ''Series/TheListener'' involved [[spoiler:a woman whose husband had left her for another woman]] tracking and murdering the male clients of an adultery website. On the one hand, the male adulterers involved, including the murder victims, and the woman running the website got some pretty heavy scorn from the IIB team investigating the crime. On the other hand, there was no attempt to romanticize the killer [[spoiler:despite being an adultery victim]], partly because [[spoiler: she was only killing guys who looked exactly like her ex-husband and turned out to be mentally unbalanced for unrelated reasons]]. On the other hand, the team's tech guy seemed to have a lot of fun setting up a fake site profile for his boss, and the boss, who seemed curious about the hits he was getting from women who wanted to commit adultery with him, decided against looking at the responses, joking that since he was single there would be no fun involved in checking out potential adultery partners...
* ''Series/{{MASH}}'' had different cases:
** Trapper John constantly has shallow affairs and never seems to feel guilty in any way about it. It's implied he did this even outside the war, too. Sometimes, though, he shows some signs he still loves his wife.
** Frank Burns has an ongoing affair with Margaret Houlihan. Several episodes revolve around him trying to keep this from his wife, who he apparently stays with for financial reasons. It's also implied that he messed around with his secretary back home.
** Henry Blake is clearly having affairs with various nurses around the 4077th. One episode has an incredible DoubleStandard as he learns his wife had an affair with an orthodontist. He freaks right the hell out without considering it's just desserts.
** Margaret's husband apparently was cheating on her with a number of different women - you can even pick up on it in the first episode he's mentioned in. Margaret shows Colonel Potter a picture of him:
-->'''Potter''': Who's the girl he's with?
-->'''Margaret''': I think she's his cousin.
-->'''Potter''': Huh. Close family.
** Hunnicutt and Potter's son-in-law felt intensely guilty for the act, and wanted to make things right. In both examples, the message was "You made a mistake; don't let it harm your wife; she doesn't need to know, but go back to her and love her like you never loved her before." All the more poignant with Hunnicut because it was TheCasanova ''Hawkeye'' who stepped in to save his friend's marriage.
** A matter of contention for fans of the show was the differing treatment of the affairs Trapper and Henry had compared with Frank's. Trapper's affairs were never justified in the slightest, which made him less sympathetic, but Henry seemed to be in a single long-term affair with one nurse - which he ended (apparently offscreen, the nurse simply vanished from the cast) upon getting a taste of his own medicine, via a guilty letter from his wife that clearly caused him distress. Frank's affair was treated as him being too much of a greedy coward to divorce his wife for Margaret, for whom he clearly felt ''something,'' as he had a mental breakdown upon her getting married.
* {{Deconstructed|Trope}} rather strangely in ''Series/{{Merlin 2008}}''. Being a family show, the adultery between Guinevere and Lancelot takes place before her marriage to Arthur, consists of only a kiss in the dark, and happens whilst both Guinevere ''and'' Lancelot are [[KissingUnderTheInfluence under a spell]]. Oddly enough, this is still referred to as "adultery". The consequences are dire, as Arthur ends up banishing Gwen from Camelot. Even worse, nobody ''ever finds out'' that Gwen was under an enchantment at the time, and the season ends with Arthur taking her back because he still loves her - not only forgiving her for something she didn't even do, but offering no kind of apology for banishing her from her home on pain of death.
* On ''Series/MyNameIsEarl'', Joy's adultery is mentioned in the introduction to the first episode, where she gives birth to a child that is ''[[ChocolateBaby clearly]]'' [[ChocolateBaby not Earl's]], which is followed shortly by her divorcing him to be with her longtime lover Darnell while Earl is too doped up on morphine to understand that he's just signed divorce papers. A later episode explores the backstory behind the aforementioned ChocolateBaby: Joy had tricked Earl into marrying her while she was pregnant with an unknown man's baby (Dodge), but then Dodge began to cry all the time, which put a strain on their marriage. They sought the best "marriage counseling" they could afford: watching ''[[TalkShow Montel Williams]]'' on daytime television. Montel was counseling another couple on the show, and advised them to take some time out for themselves, taking turns watching the baby. Joy rushed off to the Crab Shack, and ordered herself several margaritas...and fell into the arms of her longtime crush, Darnell. Soon enough, she became pregnant, and realized that there was a chance that the baby wasn't her husband's. Earl, meanwhile, had no idea that anything was amiss, and was excited to be having a kid that was biologically his...only to find out in the delivery room that that wasn't the case. He angrily gathered up his things, and attempted to move back in with his parents, but his father convinced him to put aside his anger and hurt and stay with Joy and the kids, if only for their sakes. Earl resists, but eventually learns what it's like to care about someone when his dad [[ItMakesSenseInContext throws his old pet gerbils out the window]]. He considers it the only decent thing he'd ever done before starting The List.
** In another episode, Earl goes to make up for driving a neighbor of theirs away back in TheEighties, only to find out that the reason the guy left had nothing to do with Earl's tormenting him, but rather out of shame due to a brief affair with Earl's mother. Their spouses were away at work and self-defense classes (and at least Kay and Carl's marriage was...not so great), and they got drunk on wine coolers and one thing led to another. (In the garage!) She felt guilty about it, and quickly broke it off, never mentioning it until Earl brought it up. The neighbor, meanwhile, left because he was ashamed, and because Kay didn't want to continue the relationship or leave Carl for him. This causes her husband Carl to leave her (and try to start a "revenge affair," with hilarious results), but after crying some ManlyTears with Earl over it, he finds it in his heart to forgive her. Mrs. Hickey lampshades this trope when Joy finds out and comes by to gloat about it.
--> '''Kay''': "I may have had one moment of weakness, but you! You've made cheating a lifestyle!"
** Earl himself was on the opposite side of the problem years earlier, as he was having an affair with Sweet Johnny's live-in girlfriend. There was no ChocolateBaby, but Earl had to come clean because of the list. The problem is, Sweet Johnny has [[EasyAmnesia Anterograde Amnesia]], and is stuck in a GroundhogDayLoop, so he assumes he's still with her (in reality, she couldn't deal with his amnesia anymore and walked out on him), and that his girlfriend's infidelity had just happened. Earl tries telling him about the affair repeatedly, only causing him pain anew every day, which leads to SJ attempting suicide. Eventually, Earl decides it's better that Sweet Johnny doesn't learn about the affair because of his condition.
** In an earlier episode, Earl takes a job at [[BurgerFool a burger place]], as a substitute for one of the employees whose honeymoon money he stole. Mr. Patrick, the BadBoss is [[WhiteCollarCrime embezzling funds from the restaurant]], and also cheating on his wife. When Earl punches him in the face, his wife and his mistress both come to the hospital and find out about one another. When Mrs. Patrick is giving her soon-to-be-ex-husband a DefenestrateAndBerate routine, she finds the money he stole (which he was spending on his girlfriend), and reported him to the police. (Presumably, TheMistress leaves him as well.) He winds up in {{Prison}}, and apparently [[KarmicRape becomes his cellmate's prison bitch]]. Meanwhile, Mrs. Patrick acquires her ex-husband's business in the divorce settlement, and promotes the employee that Earl was subbing for to manager, and gives everyone there raises and health insurance.
* Played with in an episode of ''Series/NewTricks'' -- the team are investigating the death of a wife who, having given up a potential musical career upon getting married, was feeling stifled in her marriage to her down-to-Earth, seemingly incompatible husband and ended up having an affair with a male gigolo; Sandra, who was the original investigating officer, feels a bond with the woman and suspects the husband of murdering her; the audience is initially encouraged to sympathise with her, and to suspect the husband. At the end, it's revealed that he didn't do it, but in fact knew that she was cheating on him, but was happy to let it continue because he knew that she didn't love him any more, but he still loved her and [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy just wanted her to be happy]]. Seeing the man break down upon revealing this, the wife doesn't appear quite as sympathetic as she previously had, and her actions appear more selfish and cruel.
* Shows up in the very first episode of ''Series/NightCourt''. The first case that Harry Stone hears is the case of a wife who took a shot at her husband when she caught him with a prostitute. Harry takes the time to talk to the couple, where they reveal the only reason the husband went to the prostitute was because he had felt neglected, and the wife reveals she fired the gun straight up in the air, because she loved her husband too much to actually hurt him. Harry gets them to reconcile, and lets the prostitute off with a light fine, as she turns out to be a HookerWithAHeartOfGold.
* ''Series/NipTuck'' screws around with the concept of Good Adultery, Bad Adultery so much that's it's pretty impossible to find any sort of consistent standard. To wit-
** Matt's girlfriend cheats on him with another cheerleader. This is treated as extremely bad. It is treated less bad however when he starts dating ''her'' girlfriend who has decided she isn't really a lesbian anyway (they met because Matt's lesbian girlfriend convinced him to join them in a threesome, as part of an abortive effort to salvage her relationship with the not-really-a-lesbian cheerleader).
** There's a nuanced portrayal of Sean's affair with a patient, which Sean appears to have initiated on the suspicion that his wife was having an affair with a hunky student. She wasn't. What really screws things up, though, is that their staff psychologist Grace suspects the affair exists and confides her suspicions to Christian. He promptly takes this information to Sean, who is furious at her for discussing suspicions about his personal life and nearly fires her- before she reveals that Christian had sex with her and that unless they have a professional reason to fire her she can file an unlawful termination lawsuit. Christian is either [[SelectiveObliviousness oblivious]] to the fact that Grace was telling him this because he's Sean's best friend, not because she's a gossip, or he's a JerkAss who was trying to use this as an excuse to get rid of her.
** It's treated as bad that Christian had sex with Sean's wife-to-be Julia right before she married Sean. However, Sean being royally pissed off when he finds about this betrayal is treated as an overreaction. Granted, all this happened over fifteen years ago. On the other hand [[spoiler:the fact that Matt isn't really his son is a pretty big bombshell to drop on a guy when he's been under the assumption that his wife only had one sexual partner]]. If this sounds contradictory with the entry below it's because the "betrayal" dynamic shifts entirely depending on whether Christian or Julia is doing the betraying.
** For some reason it's ''worse'' that Julia cheated than it is that Christian did it with her, even though the latter is Sean's best friend and business partner. Christian is EasilyForgiven after a few episodes, but Sean isn't quite as nice to Julia. He verbally abuses and harasses her at every opportunity, invites his new porn star girlfriend to Matt's school functions, and tells Julia's mother to go screw herself when she tells Christian and Sean that Julia's about to head into an emotional breakdown and she needs an intervention.[[spoiler: A few episodes later, she does]].
** Explainable in that Christian is a case-study for promiscuity, selfishness and all around bad behavior and Sean is used to forgiving him for it and having low expectations, where as Julia is presented as 'madonna' until the truth comes out. Even Christian 'loves her from afar'(until he doesn't).
** In the third season Julia actually starts going out with the hunky student as a result of everything that happened above. This is the only particularly straightforward use of the trope's conventions.
** As you might be able to guess, it's hard to tell whether they're trying to subvert the trope's conventions or just doing a really bad job of using it straight.
* ''Series/NoahsArc'': Wade cheating on Dre with Noah is "good adultery" that supports the One True Pairing, while just about any other form of adultery seen is of the "bad" variety.
* ''Series/OnceUponATime'' also features a sort of mixed take on the whole trope between ''RealLife'' Mary Margret Blachard and David Nolan. While it's most likely meant to be the Good Adultery since the two are really Literature/SnowWhite and Prince Charming, there are elements of Bad Adultery as Mary Margaret is shamed by David's wife Kathryn and the whole affair is played as a rather horrible thing. While both were dishonest about it, David was the one who failed to tell his wife the truth when he promised that he would, which made Mary Margaret out as the bad guy for destroying a recently reunited couple (who had promised to work on their marriage in 3 different episodes no less). They end up together, despite dragging the whole thing through hell and high water the whole first season, but only because [[spoiler: everyone gets their fairy tale memories back and remembers that they're supposed to be together.]]
** Regina and [[spoiler:Robin]] in The Snow Queen and Smashing the mirror is good adultery at best, morally ambiguous at worst. she does tell him it cant happen ever again, but shes obviously happy that it happened the first time aside from the guilt o sleeping with a married man. [[spoiler:later it all comes down as its revealed that marian was dead all along at it was actually zelena pulling a bed trick on robin]].
* The PlotIncitingInfidelity that kicks off the pilot episode of ''Series/TheOrville'' is presented as an example of "bad adultery", as TheHero Ed Mercer is clearly devastated to find his wife Kelly in bed with [[BoldlyComing a blue alien]], and the ensuing divorce nearly derails his entire life. The twist, however, comes several episodes later when it turns out that [[spoiler:said blue alien produces {{pheromones}} that cause irresistible attraction, meaning that Kelly may have been KissingUnderTheInfluence; whether or not she was is left ambiguous]].
* In the ''Series/{{Masterpiece}}'' MiniSeries ''Reckless'', a woman enters into an affair with a younger man in response to discovering her husband's infidelity. His affair is "bad", while theirs is the [[SympatheticAdulterer central love story!]]
* In ''Series/{{Rome}}'' most of the characters experience adultery for various reasons: [[spoiler: Lucius Vorenus's wife Niobe begins an affair with her brother-in-law while thinking her long-absent husband (he's been campaigning with Caesar for eight years)is dead. Still, the guy's wife is her sister, and very much alive. Caesar]] has numerous powerful mistresses, notably [[spoiler:Cleopatra and Servilia. Titus Pullo]] also cheats on his wife with a slave. [[spoiler:Mark Antony also has ongoing affairs with Cleopatra and Atia,]] despite [[spoiler: being married to the latter's daughter.]] Worth noting that most of these are arranged marriages.
* Used in ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' where Carrie cheats on Aidan with Big, who happened to be married at the time. Aidan is not once portrayed as doing anything to "make her cheat", Carrie more than acknowledges that the affair was hurting everybody all around, and Big (of all people) is shown the one to be "wanting more out of life" due to his dissatisfaction with married life. "Everything we own is beige," he notes in lament. When Carrie admits the affair to her friends, she's actually ''hoping'' they'll tell her what an awful person she is. Aidan breaks up with her when she tells him, and though they later get back together, the second break up (due to differing ideas about getting married) isn't portrayed as anyone's fault.* In ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' a long time was spent having Angela engaged to Andy, but sleeping with Dwight, the one that she really loved at the time, though had left for Andy because Andy was "less of a risk." This example sits on both sides of the trope because Dwight and Andy are both shown to be sympathetic in that scenario, which ends with her losing both of them as viable romantic options.
** Later, she marries a politician, who turns out to be an in the closet homosexual, and cheats on her with Oscar. It's hard not to see it as Angela's just desserts, and she ends up cheating on him with Dwight again [[spoiler: leading to her son's conception]]. Eventually her husband comes out of the closet and divorces Angela, leading to a HumiliationConga that ends with Angela becoming more sympathetic [[spoiler: and finally marrying Dwight in the finale.]]
** Michael begins dating a woman for a few episodes before he discovers that she is married. At first he's confused, but being Michael, he quickly thinks its awesome and exciting and romantic, assuming that it's Good Adultery (because he's obviously a protagonist, so her husband must be a bad person that he's rescuing her from). Most of the employees are disgusted when they find out, Andy in particular, due to his experience with Angela. He forces Michael to go meet the husband, who turns out to be a really nice, friendly, upstanding guy. Michael fights the revelation, but eventually accepts that he is part of Bad Adultery and breaks it off.
* An interesting example occurred in the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "A Simple Investigation"; [[spoiler:Odo ends up falling for a married woman, but this is only revealed at the end of the episode, as she was investigating a telepathic crime syndicate and had thus had her memory altered so that she could infiltrate them without tipping anyone off, with the result that she didn't ''know'' she was married when she slept with Odo and admitted after her memory was restored that she had genuinely cared for him during their time together]].
* The SoapOpera ''Series/SunsetBeach'' kicks off with the heroine Meg pulling a RunawayBride after finding her fiance in bed with her maid of honor. This is "bad". The fact that she herself has been having an online relationship with another man is "good", as they're intended to be the show's SuperCouple.
* One episode of ''Series/SurgicalSpirit'' has Neil Copeland having an affair with a nurse nobody likes. Copeland is portrayed as a man who made a genuine mistake -- his marriage and children keep haunting him, but on the other hand, he genuinely likes the nurse. He eventually admits that he started the affair thinking that it would be fun, and he had no idea that he'd end up feeling so guilty. By the end of the episode, he realises that he has to end the affair and does so... by proxy, though. As for the nurse, most of the dislike for her didn't come from the fact that she was dating a married man, but rather because she [[FelonyMisdemeanor kept insisting on using a completely different system of organisation that nobody else used, thus slowing procedures significantly]], and she quits after realising [[StrawmanHasAPoint how toxic the workplace is.]]
* In ''Series/TalesFromTheCrypt'', a housewife becomes bored because her scientist husband is too busy with his work to pay attention to her. Inspired by a soap opera, she strikes up a relationship with a repair man. [[spoiler:Her husband catches them making out on the sofa, just as he was on his way to tell his wife that he was finished with his job and would be able to spend more time with her. He does not take this revelation well, and uses his latest research - a new anesthetic - to knock both of them out for a week and surgically switch their heads to each other's bodies.]] In this case, the husband was shown as being more sympathetic, although with a good bit of SanitySlippage and DisproportionateRetribution.
* In ''Series/TrueDetective'', Hart has a very bad tendency to cheat on his wife with much younger girls. He justifies this by claiming it's to let him work out the stresses from detective work without carrying them home, but the two affairs he has all but completely ruin his marriage. Rust is also of the opinion that it's an incredibly stupid thing to do, since Hart seems to also have a knack for choosing girls who are not entirely stable. Hart's first girlfriend is viewed by him as cheating on him when she starts dating another man, however she insists that she and Hart aren't in an exclusive relationship (she knows he's married) and she wants to look for a partner who she can eventually have as a husband. [[spoiler:After discovering that Hart is having his second affair, his wife cheats on him with Rust. This is portrayed somewhat sympathetically (she'd been faithful up until then and was clearly driven to despair by learning her husband was cheating) and somewhat unsympathetically (she explicitly only had sex with Rust because she knew it would anger Hart most when he was told, heavily pressured Rust into doing it, and insisted later the the entire thing was her idea and that Rust was "a good man"). Her affair also ended up being the one to end their marriage.]]
* Unusual "bad adultery" from a protagonist on ''Series/VeronicaMars''. Veronica's father Keith begins an affair with a married woman (Keith himself is married to an alcoholic wife who fled, stealing $50,000 from him). Veronica is crushed when she discovers this and confronts her father. She calls Keith out on his hypocrisy when all of Keith's excuses are exactly what every guy they've caught in their Private Eye business says. He breaks it off.
* ''Series/WhyWomenKill'': All over the place.
** Rob is cheating on Beth Ann with a waitress at the local diner. Whether the waitress realizes he's married is unclear. A major turn is Beth Ann discovering April was not the first as Rob has in fact been cheating on her throughout their entire marriage. She gets this info from his secretary...who he was also sleeping with. This is portrayed unsympathetically and his wife Beth Ann at least somewhat sympathetically for arranging his murder in revenge.
** Karl cheated on Simone with at least one man. Later, Simone begins an affair with a (''much'') younger man. Both are portrayed sympathetically (him as he's in the closet, plus contracted AIDS, her since she's been neglected). Neither blames the other-they stay good friends.
** Taylor and Eli's case is a bit more complicated, since they have an open marriage. However, they have some rules in place to make sure one spouse doesn't prioritize their hookup over the marriage -- and it's all but stated that that is exactly what winds up happening. Both are portrayed sympathetically and the two stay together.
* ''Series/WillAndGrace''. When Will's father has an affair, he actually admits it being his own fault, though still decided that he wouldn't tell his wife. When it gets discovered that ''both'' of his parents are having affairs, they actually take an equal share in the blame [[spoiler:and end up separating]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* Music/JonathanCoulton's song "Betty and Me" is about a man whose wife is cheating on him with a doctor under the excuse of making DesignerBabies. The only thing that makes the song funny instead of disturbing is that the man's wife isn't even ''trying'' to hide her affair; the husband is just that oblivious. That being said, it's hilarious and is meant to be so.
-->Betty's been spending lots of time out late with Dr. Martin/\\
She says that they're working on the baby every night!/\\
And Dr. Martin sends her presents like new underwear and a bottle of wine/\\
I guess I'll keep writing checks until the day that baby is mine!
* [[Music/RebaMcEntire Reba]] hits all sides of the scale:
** She sings "Little Rock... think I'm gonna have to slip you off" because the marriage fires have dwindled. And also her cover of "Ring On Her Finger, Time On Her Hands".
** She also sings the haunting song "One Promise Too Late" about meeting her soul mate, but being too noble to drop her husband, who's been nothing less than good to her. "I'm not sorry that I met you... I can't have you, but I never will forget you. Where were you when I could have loved you? Where were you when I gave my heart away?" And also partially in "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter", where she turns down the married man with the ring on his finger.
** And then there's "Whoever's In New England", where she knows that her man is cheating on her, but is willing to wait out the affair. (In the music video, [[spoiler: he comes back at the end]].)
* Music/GarthBrooks' "The Thunder Rolls" has the wife of the philanderer kill her husband -- or at least preparing to at the end ("Tonight will be the last night/She'll wonder where he's been!"), after waiting up late, fretful and worried for his life as he returns from a rendezvous.
** "Papa Loved Mama" has the wife sleep around with various men on the town while her husband (a truck driver) is on the road because she can't stand being alone all the time. Husband comes home unexpectedly with a dozen roses and a bottle of wine looking to surprise her, finds out she's not there, and kills the wife by running his truck through the hotel she was cheating on him in. This song is one that puts both partners involved in a sympathetic light.
** Another of Garth's singles features an "other woman" that isn't even an animal, much less a woman: "Rodeo". ("Well, it ain't no woman, flesh and blood/It's that damned old rodeo")
* Madvillain's "Fancy Clown", where Viktor Vaughn expresses the pain and frustration of being cheated on by your woman, especially when you know (and ''hate'') the guy she did it with. How does he do this? By calling her, and telling her that it's over, oh, and he's been sleeping around behind her back, too, with several women including her own mother. He doesn't seem to grasp the hypocrisy at all, and it seemed like so straightforward at first, too; The opening features a mournful singer telling the story of how "I hear you in the background whenever I phone, telling your brother to say you're gone... You've been dipping around the town with some fancy clown." What makes it better is that she's cheating on him with MF DOOM A.K.A, Daniel Dumile A.K.A.... Viktor Vaughn. An AlternativeCharacterInterpretation is that his assertion than he had sex with several other women during the relationship is a lie concocted in a pathetic attempt to hurt his (ex-) girlfriend.
* Played with in the Music/{{Eagles}} song "Lyin' Eyes"; the adulterous GoldDigger protagonist of the song is portrayed in a surprisingly sympathetic fashion, as a lonely woman trapped in a loveless marriage to an old man. The song still notes, however, that she did bring it on herself by marrying the guy solely for his money, and that her way of dealing isn't exactly laudable; she's betraying her husband and stringing along her boyfriend by promising that she'll leave her husband for him without any intention of doing so.
* "Long Black Veil" originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell, later covered by Johnny Cash and the Dave Matthews Band among others. The song tells the story of a man wrongly accused of murder but refuses to provide an alibi that would exonerate him because it would mean revealing the truth that he was screwing his "best friend's wife" at the time. The protagonist ultimately takes the secret to his grave after being convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.
** Nearly the exact same plot is used in Gary Moore's "Over The Hills And Far Away", later covered by Nightwish. Instead of a murder it is a robbery, and the man spends ten years in prison instead of being executed.
* In Music/PinkFloyd's ''Music/TheWall'', Pink (a rockstar) invites groupies to his room but eventually starts to ignore them. He calls home to find that his wife has been cheating on him; a mental apparition of her tells Pink he "should have talked to [her] more often." This one is hard because Pink is portrayed simultaneously in both a sympathetic and a demonizing light.
* The guy in Music/SteelyDan's "Dirty Work" clearly understands the ambiguity of this sort of thing in reality. He's the guy having an affair with a married (or otherwise taken) woman while her man is "out of town": she's clearly looking for something she can't find with her husband (or whatever), but the man himself realizes exactly how despicable the whole situation is... and still does it anyway, for reasons he can't quite explain.
* Then there's Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)". The protagonist in the song is tired of his wife and looks for a new lover in the personal columns of the newspaper. He sees an ad he likes and responds to it, asking the woman to meet him at his favorite bar. When he sees her walk through the door, he recognizes her... to be his wife. They had both been looking for a new love and when they found out the "new person" was their spouse, they apparently decided to renew their life together. Happy ending.
** The traditional song "Lamorna" has the same plot, except that the would-be lovers meet in person (the husband doesn't recognize the wife because she's wearing a veil, and she keeps up the charade for a bit before revealing her identity).
* "Ruby (Don't Take Your Love To Town)" by Music/KennyRogers is about a heartbreakingly sad example of this. A vet comes back from Vietnam, paralysed from the waist down. his wife nurses him as best she could, but goes out in the evenings for those things her husband is unable to give her. There is a suspicion that she and her lover want to be rid of an encumbrance. The narrator reflects on what ''he'd'' do if he were able....
* K.T. Oslin's "Hold Me" tells of a husband and wife who confess their marital infidelities to each other. There isn't any blame or finger pointing in the song. The couple then end up in a [[GRatedSex passionate embrace]].
* “Part-Time Lover” by Music/StevieWonder describes but does not justify a man’s adultery, but then at the end of the song’s it’s revealed [[LaserGuidedKarma his wife is also having an affair]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/ForBetterOrForWorse'' uses the trope, giving us Anthony constantly pursuing his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth... while married to Therese. While Anthony is clearly ''meant to be the one we sympathize with'', it didn't work too well for many readers.
** An earlier example has Elizabeth at the other end, being cheated on by her long-term boyfriend at college. 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, most people argue that it was no wonder he did so given how Elizabeth 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.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* ''Theatre/TheBridgesOfMadisonCounty'' is based around an adulterous affair between the married Francesca and traveling photographer Robert. It is played for drama, as both parties know the moral quandary, but is portrayed as the most fulfilling four days of either of their lonely lives.
* ''Theatre/MidlifeTheCrisisMusical'' has a few cases of adultery in its songs. It's all men cheating on women and are depicted as unsympathetic, of course, by the women in question in "He Got What He Deserves". The case in "I Quit", as recounted by the man, is slightly more ambiguous depending on the actor's portrayal as it's in the context of realizing that you aren't where you want to be in life and making a break from a harmful present situation.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* Used in the old Sierra game ''VideoGame/ConquestsOfCamelot'' in which the player has to retrieve a veil from a prostitute on behalf of a husband so that he can prove to his wife that he didn't cheat on her. ''He gets away with it.'' This creates some MoralDissonance considering the storyline is based on Lancelot and Guinevere's illicit love affair cursing the land, causing Arthur to go out in search of the Holy Grail in the first place.
* One of the characters in ''VideoGame/DiscworldNoir'' is an old lover of Lewton's who broke off the relationship unexpectedly and rapidly vanished. During the game she returns, and reveals that the reason for the sudden heartbreaking was that she'd actually been married the whole time, but up until she disappeared, she thought she'd never see her husband again; once she discovered this assessment to be false, she decided fidelity was the best option. The game doesn't really pass judgement one way or the other over the morality of the actual relationship between her and Lewton, but Lewton himself holds one hell of a grudge over how fast she left. At the end of the game, he forgives her and sends her back to her husband. And yes, the whole thing is unashamedly inspired by Casablanca.
* In ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'', Keldorn's wife is unfaithful because Keldorn is MarriedToTheJob and the period between each time she sees him is measured in months, if not years. If you confront the man she's seeing he's [[BrutalHonesty remarkably blasé]] about the whole affair, as he knows Keldorn's wife actually loves Keldorn and was only unfaithful because she was lonely and because Keldorn's daughters needed a father figure in Keldorn's absence (he also all but states he's impotent or at least infertile, meaning it's more an emotional thing than anything). If you convince Keldorn to reconcile with his family and retire, the other man immediately backs off and the affair is resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Alternatively, [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential you can bring the matter up to the courts, which will get the man hung, Keldorn's wife imprisoned, and Keldorn's daughters hating him forever]] to keep him in the party.
* In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'' there are side missions called "beat-up missions". The player must locate cheating husbands and boyfriends and beat them senseless. Ezio himself is TheCasanova and proud of it, but the closest he gets to instigating an affair is seducing Caterina Sforza, who is a widow who never loved her husband to begin with (to the point of ordering his death) and in ''Brotherhood'', it's revealed that she was only leading him on in order to secure the Assassins' protection. Ezio himself never goes after a married woman and is pretty clear about his long-term intentions towards women.
* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'', 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 household[[note]]she was his wife's favorite maid[[/note]]. His wife Lady Cigyun is good, as she takes TheWisePrince 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.;
* In the original ''Videogame/{{Fable}}'', there is a book called "The Trigammist" [[https://fable.fandom.com/wiki/The_Trigamist with the following tale]]:
-->''This cheap and racy novel tells the story of a no good scoundrel Geroneous Wilkout, a young man who marries three women in three different towns and pays the ultimate price. Having posed as a Hero from the Guild in order to win the three ladies' hearts, Geroneous finds juggling three households a difficult but rewarding lifestyle, until one day his deceit catches up with him. After a mix-up in his busy schedule in the more intimate of his matrimonial duties, the three wives discover their husbands secret and devise a terrible punishment: a visit from the Mythical Castrating Mountain Monkey.''
** Ironically you can do this yourself and get one wife per town (giving you five wives), but you never suffer repercussions for this except having to constantly juggle the happiness of all five wives constantly.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* This is whole point to the HGame ''Secret Wives Club.'' It is portrayed mostly sympathetically for the protagonist and the women involved, though both sides do acknowledge the implications of their actions and lampshade how unsympathetic it looks to another point of view.
* Adultery is one of the main themes of ''VisualNovel/InYourArmsTonight'', which begins with the protagonist's discovery that her husband of three months 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 her husband 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. Her husband's infidelity, on the other hand, is never presented sympathetically: it is a purely physical relationship, and in one route he goes so far as to [[KickTheDog tell the protagonist that he is cheating on her because she does not have enough sex appeal]].
* The big reveal in the free web VN ''Funeral'' is that the protagonist was disgraced after being found out as not only a serial adulterer, but a [[spoiler:SerialRapist]] when [[spoiler:his various victims from his workplace came forward #metoo style]], with devastating consequences for his business and his family, the latter of whom have never forgiven him for his actions and his lies, even after his death.
[[/folder]]

* Done in an early ''[[Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick Order of the Stick]]'' story arc - while Durkon and Hilgya (of the [[EvilCounterpart Linear Guild]]) are off alone together, Hilgya [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0083.html tells the story of how she came to live in the human lands]]: she was forced into a marriage with an "oppressive" husband ("Would you like a foot massage, sweetie?"), so she fled after unsuccessfully trying to poison her husband ("Cursed dwarven save bonus against poisons!"). Subverted in that Durkon chastises her for it - even though [[UnreliableVoiceover her story didn't relate her husband's actual words]].
-->'''Durkon''': [[HonorBeforeReason And bein' a dwarf is about doin' yer duty, even if it makes ye miserable]]. [[MiseryBuildsCharacter ESPECIALLY if it makes ye miserable]]!
* In supplementary material for ''Webcomic/AndShineHeavenNow'', [[WordOfGod Erin]] hinted that Arthur Hellsing was the result of an affair between Abraham van Hellsing and Mina (Murray) Harker. If true, they'll probably get a pass on the whole 'adultery' thing because...well, if Arthur doesn't exist, then neither does Integra.
* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] in ''Webcomic/QueenOfWands''--from the reader's perspective it first seems like [[CasanovaWannabe Brad]] was cheating on [[GenkiGirl Angela]] with [[TheDitz Wannabe Wiccan Girl]], which naturally hurt Angela. However, it's later revealed that their relationship was {{polyamor|y}}ous--Angela was just hurt to realize that WWG was "the 'real' girlfriend" instead of her.
* The most notable example in ''Webcomic/BetterDays'' was towards the end when 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 he angrily rant to a friend about how he'd been wasting it all on the other woman.
** Jay Naylor seems fond of this trope. An earlier storyline had Fisk's mother, Sheila, having an affair with her neighbor. While the affair was shown as sympathetic (the neighbor was emotionally abused by his shrewish wife), the end did show negative effects, as the wife divorces her husband when she finds out and takes their son away. Because the son was one of Fisk's friends, this also leads to Fisk giving his mother the cold shoulder until Lucy yells at him for it.
** When Lucy is 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 because one of her friends points out that she'd be throwing away a good, loving relationship for a fling.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' plays around with this concept a lot in regards to the LoveTriangle between Dale Gribble, his wife Nancy, and John Redcorn. Nancy cheated on Dale for years, and their son Joseph [[ChocolateBaby is obviously Redcorn's]]. Initially it's PlayedForLaughs; Dale is a conspiracy nut who believes every whopper in the book, and yet he misses the obvious deception going on right in front of his face[[note]]It helps that for a while, he [[MistakenForGay thinks John Redcorn is gay]][[/note]]. Nancy is initially portrayed as the "bad guy" for cheating on her nutty but devoted husband (whom she says she loves in a "leave the lights on" kind of way, and she only sleeps with him on his birthday), while Redcorn acts quietly resentful of Dale. The season 4 episode "Nancy's Boys" marks the end of the affair when Dale's honest devotion to Nancy and friendship towards Redcorn cause them to feel guilt over betraying his very hard-to-earn trust and part ways amicably.
** The affair gets played around with in a lot of other ways over the course of the series. Everyone ''except'' Dale knows about it, but they have the discretion not to say anything, for which John Redcorn is immensely grateful. However, in one episode Hank has an erotic dream about Nancy, and Redcorn's reaction is to flip out as if Hank had actually slept with her, and then go tell Dale (who likewise flips out). Another episode has a beautiful female exterminator come onto Dale, and Nancy realizes she has no right to be upset, even viewing Dale's inevitable affair as LaserGuidedKarma for her own infidelity (except that Dale is ultimately loyal and rebuffs the other woman). Finally, in yet another episode, Redcorn quietly laments how Nancy left him for "that" (Dale), and Hank indignantly points out she didn't leave him, she was with Dale long before Redcorn entered the picture, a point which he rightly concedes.
** The trope also comes up as regards Bill's ex-wife, Lenore. In the past, she cheated on Bill and eventually divorced him, but Bill is portrayed as a victim who tried to be a good husband, while Lenore is portrayed as a cruel, manipulative bitch, who is largely responsible for Bill's life being as pathetic as it is. When Lenore finally puts in an appearance, she only shows up to destroy Bill's newfound happiness with former Texas governor Anne Richardson, who convinces Bill to finally tell her off.
%%* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
%%** The wear and tear of raising eight children erodes Apu and Manjula's marriage to the point where Manjula won't let her husband so much as touch her. A desperate Apu is courted by a fetching Squishee delivery girl, and after the ensuing affair, Manjula pressures Apu to go to ridiculous lengths (as in, ''eating a light bulb'') to restore the same cold, lifeless relationship that drove him to another woman in the first place. The fact that the two of them were an ArrangedMarriage is implied to have been a factor.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'':
** At least when it came to Loretta and Cleveland. Loretta had an affair, and though it was PlayedForLaughs, it was fairly even-handed as she had a reason (she felt Cleveland lacked any passion), but wasn't seen as very much in the right, especially when we see her again in a later episode. Even later, Loretta shows remorse for leaving Cleveland... then accuses ''Quagmire'' of ruining the marriage.
** Also the time Lois cheated on Peter with UsefulNotes/BillClinton. Peter is clearly portrayed as the victim. Of course, Peter ''then'' goes and cheats on Lois... with Bill Clinton, since Clinton is just that persuasive (Peter: "Boy, you are good. You are REALLY good."), and neither Peter nor Lois would have done it under normal circumstances. This is also the same episode where Peter was given a pass to sleep with Lois's mother to even things out, but couldn't go through with it because he does genuinely love Lois.
** In the season eight episode "Go Stewie Go" Lois cheats on Peter after she gets tired of his constant insults towards her advancing age. She then seduces Meg's new (normal) boyfriend. While making out with him on the couch, Meg catches the two going at it. Eventually, Lois tells Peter about her affair. Cut to Peter telling her why he was making such a big deal about her age (because he himself was insecure about his weight). Lois then makes up with Peter. Their next door neighbor Bonnie's former cheating nature is also revealed.
** "Foreign Affairs" has Bonnie go to France with Lois with the express intent of having an affair, saying that the passion has gone out of their marriage. Lois is aghast, saying that Joe is a wonderful man and cheating on him will hurt everyone involved. Bonnie remains adamant about the affair up until the end of the episode, where Lois uses outright deception[[note]]making it look like Joe made himself walk [[{{Determinator}} by sheer force of will]][[/note]] to convince Bonnie to stay faithful.
** "Internal Affairs" has Bonnie's DoubleStandard nature revealed when, after weeks of cold indifference from her, Joe cheats on her with a young female police officer and she screeches like a harpy upon finding out. Despite the fact that she has cheated on him at least once before and attempted to cheat on him in "Foreign Affairs."
** In the episode where Stewie seems to have finally killed Lois, it cuts to a year later, and Peter has been going out on dates with some women. One of those dates was apparently sex with Bonnie, with Joe's approval.
* Played with on ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'', in which both Clay and Bloberta are unfaithful, but neither is show at all sympathetically, because they're shown to be at the root of their own unhappiness. Had the series continued Bloberta might have become more sympathetic as she found a man that treated her with kindness in Officer Papermouth, but thanks to the series being canceled this falls under WhatCouldHaveBeen.
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'':
** In one episode, Stan finds out his wife had tons of boyfriends before meeting him, so Francine gives him a temporary divorce to have as much sex as he wants with whomever he wants. She changes her mind, of course, and begs him to come back after seeing him on a date. He refuses, citing their original deal. He then comes back to her, and she is overjoyed that he didn't go through with the "affair". Stan cheerfully replies that he actually married the other woman and had lots of sex before divorcing her (apparently, in one day), shocking Francine.
** Another episode has nearly all women in town revealed to be members of the Ladybugs, a club for women who cheat on their husbands. They do this as a status symbol and for shopping perks (i.e. no good reason). Francine accidentally becomes a member after the women catch her in a NotWhatItLooksLike situation with another man. Apparently, all the husbands are clueless, while their wives believe that being a slut is a good thing.
*** The same episode also reveals that Linda Memari is either lesbian or bisexual, as she is clearly attracted to Francine. Her husband Bob isn't particularly fond of her sleeping with women (especially since [[GirlOnGirlIsHot she doesn't allow him to watch]]), and it's hinted that their marriage is pretty sexless.
* ''WesternAnimation/LegendOfKorra'':
** Tenzin began dating his wife Pema while still in a relationship with Lin Beifong. The show makes no moral judgement one way or another, but Tenzin clearly isn't proud of himself and Lin's feelings are still hurt years later.
** The Mako/Asami/Korra love triangle throughout seasons 1 and 2 began by depicting Korra as being in the right for pursuing Mako while he was dating Asami, but quickly deconstructed it, as all three ended up hurt and with friendships severely damaged. Asami specifically calls Mako out at one point for hiding the kiss with Korra from her, Mako gets close to Asami again once he and Korra ultimately break up, and he's awkward around both girls for a good while afterwards.
[[/folder]]

----

* Shows up in the very first episode of ''Series/NightCourt''. The first case that Harry Stone hears is the case of a wife who took a shot at her husband when she caught him with a prostitute. Harry takes the time to talk to the couple, where they reveal the only reason the husband went to the prostitute was because he had felt neglected, and the wife reveals she fired the gun straight up in the air, because she loved her husband too much to actually hurt him. Harry gets them to reconcile, and lets the prostitute off with a light fine, as she turns out to be a HookerWithAHeartOfGold.* ''Series/NipTuck'' screws around with the concept of Good Adultery, Bad Adultery so much that's it's pretty impossible to find any sort of consistent standard. To wit-

** When Jean Grey returned from the dead, Cyclops rushed to her side, abandoning his wife Madelyne Pryor-Summers and baby son Nathan. Although it seemed a fairly "safe" thing to do, since it established the OneTruePairing that had characterized the franchise since ''X-Men'' vol. 1 #1, Cyclops was one of the leading protagonists and Madelyne had only existed for about three years, the matter was handled in such a way that a large segment of X-Men fans still haven't forgiven Scott to this day. This even though editors and writers tried to fix it in a way that revealed Madelyne as Jean's clone and had her go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge as the bloodthirsty Goblyn Queen.
** Later on, after Jean and Scott had become a married couple, Creator/GrantMorrison decided to break them up and to pair up Cyclops with his pet character Emma Frost. This involved Emma, acting as Scott's therapist, entering into a telepathic adulterous affair with him and basically declaring [[RetCon that everything readers had been told in the past 35 years about Scott's character and the love between him and Jean was a lie]], so that cheating on his (second) wife and hooking up with an unethical ex-villain with a superiority complex was portrayed as Emma enabling Scott to reach true maturity. Naturally, since Jean Grey is one of the more popular X-Men, a lot of the fans were not pleased -- especially as Morrison proceeded to kill her off -- and not many tears were shed when Scott broke up with Emma during the events of ''Avengers vs. X-Men''.

* ''Film/BrokebackMountain'': While the infidelity is presented sympathetically, the spouses are clearly shown as victims, and the destruction of both families is shown as a painful consequence of the affair. The whole thing is presented as a grand tragedy for everyone with the spouses coming out better in the end.

* Rose in ''Film/{{Titanic 1997}}'' is a LonelyRichKid who is loveless and unfulfilled in her relationship with Cal, which was [[ArrangedMarriage organized by her mother for money]], and is therefore justified to the audience in cheating with CloserToEarth Jack. Cal is initially portrayed as clueless regarding Rose's feelings, but as the movie goes on, he loses any possible audience sympathy by turning into a violent JerkAss.

* In ''Film/ComingHome'', the wife is lonely and unsatisfied, the husband is distant (and by the end of the film, crazy) and the paraplegic Vietnam veteran with whom the wife cheats is kind and noble. (The vet is also able to help the wife reach orgasm, something she could never do with her husband.) It almost seems at one point as if the main message behind the film (apart from "War Is Bad!") is that [[HardTruthAesop "Adultery Can Be Good for You!"]] Of course, the infidelity ''does'' have negative consequences... but mostly for the husband. One gets the impression that the wife is better off for the experience.

* ''Film/DoctorZhivago'' stars a pair of lovers who are themselves married to other people. The woman's husband disappeared in a battle during the War, and she spends much of the movie trying to find him. [[spoiler:It turns out he didn't just survive the battle -- he became a high-ranking Red Army officer as a result of it.]] The man's wife...well, nothing happened to her actually. She still loves him and lives with him at the time of the affair and is even caring for their child. Because the movie is pitched to the audience as being about one of the great love stories of all time, the fact that this is technically adultery is nearly an afterthought.

* ''Film/InAWorld'': Played with. Characters in the film are divided over whether Michaela Watkins making out with another man for twenty minutes and coming very close to sleeping with him (in her words, she refused to "let him put the tip in") counts as cheating or how bad it is if it does. She herself feels very guilty. For some reason, her husband (Robb Corddry) makes a grand romantic gesture to welcome her back into the marriage, although he is by any reasonable standard the wronged party.
* In ''Film/LiarLiar'', amoral lawyer (Creator/JimCarrey) convinces his adulterous client (Creator/JenniferTilly) to believe that she was ''driven'' into the arms of another man, in spite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. This is played for laughs until the end, at which point the Carrey character feels great remorse for winning the case and possibly robbing the husband -- a loving father -- of custody of his children. Though it was implied within the movie that the husband, as good a father as he is, is something of a scoundrel too, marrying a teenage girl and bringing out an airtight prenup. Carrey's character himself cheated on his wife, before their divorce, and his CharacterDevelopment.

* ''Film/{{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.
* ''Same Time Next Year'' has Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn as two lovers who meet once a year at a particular resort to spend a weekend together, before going home to their spouses for the other 51 weeks. This goes on for many years. We never see or hear the other spouses, and apparently these two love each other even though they also love their spouse as well.
* ''Film/SunshineCleaning'' has our protagonist Rose currently in an affair with her former high school boyfriend, who is currently married with children. The one time we see his wife, she's portrayed as something of a shrew, so as to make Rose look sympathetic. Rose however still ends up calling things off when she realises he'll never leave his wife.
* ''Film/TermsOfEndearment'' follows Emma (Debra Winger) as a kooky-but-lovable girl who early on marries Flap (Jeff Daniels) and gives up her career to do so. She meets John Lithgow, and grows sympathetic to his cause-- his wife has an injury which prevents the two from having sex (although this may be an excuse on the wife's part). Meanwhile, Emma is growing emotionally distant from her husband, who became a professor while she had to stay at home to take care of their children (they met in Grad school). Emma admits to Lithgow that she's not sure whether Flap's cheating on her, but considers this a ''stronger'' justification for the affair, since she's not just doing it for revenge sex. When she does discover that Flap's cheating on her with one of his students, she flips out on him on campus and demands a divorce. Later, she does not tell him about her affair with John Lithgow [[spoiler: on her deathbed]] even though she considers it, in part because of the obvious problems it would create ethically afterwards.
* Entirely averted in the British World War II film ''Film/BriefEncounter'', where two married people meet on a train, and realize they're each other's soulmate. But they end up giving each other up to remain loyal to their own home lives, and this is portrayed as the right thing to do.
** Also averted in the cinema-verite musical ''Film/{{Once}}'' (which has a lot in common with "Brief Encounter"), where the Girl refuses to have anything other than a platonic relationship with the Guy: while she and her husband are separated, and the marriage is probably unsalvageable, she wants to give it every chance she can, for the sake of her daughter.

* Averted in ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'' as well. Ilsa is arguably the love of Rick's life, and she seems willing to leave her husband Victor Laszlo for him if he asks. However, in the end, Rick decides that the right thing is to leave Ilsa and Laszlo -- who ''are'' actually quite HappilyMarried -- together (even if only for the sake of the war effort). In fact the censors were originally going to cut the line where Ilsa says Victor is her husband [[ValuesDissonance because it would have meant she committed adultery with Rick]] - but once they came to the scene where Ilsa explains that she thought Victor was dead, that was enough to justify it.
* Used in ''Film/{{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.
* ''Film/AFishCalledWanda''; Archie is depicted sympathetically, while his wife (and daughter!) are both horrid monsters. In the end he runs off to South America with Wanda without a backward glance. Wanda, on the other hand, is depicted as a conniving, materialistic shrew, manipulating everyone until the end [[spoiler: when she was about to go alone to Rio]]. Sure, she wasn't all that ''happy'' that [[spoiler:Archie was being left behind]], but that didn't change what she was about to do.
* Creator/PeterSellers comedies have all sorts of takes on adultery:
** In ''The Dock Brief'' (1962) he plays a lawyer trying to defend a client who openly admits to killing his wife. The meek fellow (Richard Attenborough) ''hoped'' his boisterous wife would have an affair with a boarder whose personality better suited hers, but finds out she didn't because she respected the sanctity of marriage too much. He snapped and killed her right then and there.
** ''Waltz of the Toreadors'' (1962) has Sellers as a womanizing general married to a cruel woman who feigns illness and threatens suicide to ''try'' to keep him from pursuing other women, as revenge for his past indiscretions -- and she wasn't always faithful to him either. At the end, circumstances keep him trapped in the marriage when he makes an IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy decision regarding the mistress he truly loved, and he is about to commit suicide - then he meets the new maid...
** ''Only Two Can Play'' (1962) has Sellers' character trying and failing to consummate an affair with another (married) woman out of ennui with his current life with wife and kids. His wife chews him out over this when she finds out, but says he can do what he wants; it seems she's bothered more by his secrecy. Realizing the other woman doesn't really care for him, he returns to his wife and learns she had an affair with the other's husband during all this! They reconcile.
** One likely reason [[Franchise/ThePinkPanther Inspector Clouseau]] turned into the BreakoutCharacter in the original ''Film/ThePinkPanther1963'' was not only because his wife was cheating on him with the jewel thief he was pursuing, but because at the end she helps frame the poor [[TheFool Fool]] for their crimes... making him more sympathetic than intended. It helps that the movie clearly sets his wife as being in the wrong. Clouseau is shown to be ''extremely'' devoted to his wife and willing to indulge pretty much any of her whims, and never shows any interest towards the other gorgeous women in the movie. Sure, he's a klutz, but no one can fault his devotion as a husband.
** In ''Film/WhatsNewPussycat'' Sellers is a deranged psychiatrist whose wife, a stereotypical fat lady opera singer, accuses him of being 'a lascivious adulterer'. He angrily replies "Don't you ''dare'' call me that again until I've had a chance to look it up!" When patient Peter O'Toole asks for help to stop his womanizing ways for his impending marriage, Sellers merely suggests he get married and cheat.
** In ''I Love You Alice B. Toklas!'' (1968), Sellers becomes a [[Main/RunawayBride Runaway Groom]] twice -- the affair he has turns out to be unfulfilling -- as he tries to figure out what he really wants in life.
** In ''Film/BeingThere'', Eve Rand falls for [[SeeminglyProfoundFool Chance]] (Sellers). She's married to another man, Ben, but it's a [[MayDecemberRomance May-December relationship]] (with what author Ellen Gilchrist called the "bartered sexuality" that implies in an essay) and in fact, he's dying. But first, she loves Ben dearly and he her. Second, Ben senses and understands her longing for Chance, and in fact it makes him ''happy'' that she'll have someone to love and to love her when he's gone. With this understood, she makes several attempts to seduce Chance, and HilarityEnsues since Chance hasn't the faintest idea what's going on. At the end, however, [[spoiler:when Chance is at Ben's deathbed, he promises the old man he will take care of Eve, and tells the attending doctor that he does love her; he may not understand specifics, as is his nature, but he has grown kinda fond of her nonetheless.]]
* One growing variation of this trope, appearing in recent films such as ''Film/{{Waitress}}'' and ''Before the Rains'', is a woman with an abusive husband having an affair with a man whose wife is the nicest person ever. ''Before the Rains'' has the man taking advantage of the woman, who is trapped by her society. ''Waitress'' treats the man slightly more sympathetically, but has the woman end the affair due to an attack of conscience after she meets his wife, and also after she leaves her husband.

* ''Film/TheWholeNineYards'' has the husband, Oz, working his tail off to support his unloving, freeloading wife AND mother-in-law, while they're plotting to have him killed for life insurance. She also goads him into trying to turn another hitman, Jimmy, in for reward money showing a clear lack of concern for Oz's well being in the process. When Oz starts courting Jimmy's ex, nobody feels sorry for the wife. In fact, [[spoiler: Oz is portrayed as being such a nice guy that the wife's first hitman can't even bring herself to kill him, and Jimmy [[EvenEvilHasStandards flips out over adultery despite MURDER being his trade]].]]
** In the end, [[spoiler:Jimmy relents and even gives Oz and Synthia a wedding present. Why? Because they faked his death, meaning they aren't legally married anymore, and he found himself a new LoveInterest anyway]].
* In ''Film/TheWolverine'', the good adulterer [[spoiler:Logan, sleeps with Mariko, but he's a wounded soul and she's trapped in a loveless engagement]]. The bad adulterer[[spoiler:, 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]].

* The nature of this trope is an important point in Creator/StanleyKubrick's ''Film/EyesWideShut''. In a discussion about the motivations of men and women cheating on one another, Bill Harford asserts that "women essentially just don't think that way." Whereupon his wife replies "If you men only knew...." and proceeds to tell him of one occasion on which she nearly cheated on him for reasons which are not in any way sympathetic. The confession haunts Harford throughout the film, inspiring some decidedly reckless actions on his part.
* Done in ''Film/NowVoyager''. Jerry's wife (who we never meet) is claimed by other characters to be abusive and manipulative -- and their thirteen-year-old daughter ends up in therapy because of it. This justifies his affair with Charlotte, who was in a similarly abusive position with her mother. As this was the 1940s, showing adultery as sympathetic was shocking. In the end however, Charlotte and Jerry opt not to pursue a relationship for the good of his daughter Tina.

* In the Irish film ''Film/{{Intermission}}'', a middle-aged banker named Sam leaves his wife of fourteen years, Noeleen, for the younger Deirdre (who is broken up from her own relationship to UnluckyEverydude John). Sam's rationale is that he and Deirdre "just clicked" while leaving Noeleen enraged and questioning her worth as a woman and wife. It's kind of hard to feel very sympathetic for Sam and Deirdre, as Sam did leave his wife without any warning and without even divorcing her first, while Deirdre doesn't even seem to contemplate her actions. Deirdre's [[DoesNotLikeMen jaded sister]] does frequently call them out on it though. In the end, Noeleen takes Sam back, but isn't going to be letting him forget his little transgression anytime soon, while Deirdre realizes that John really loved her and they're engaged by the end.

* Tyler Perry's ''Film/TheFamilyThatPreys''. Andrea is constantly cheating on her husband with her boss William. Her husband loves her and only wants to help provide the income along with her. She berates him, humiliates him, and is portrayed completely unsympathetically as she tries to get closer to William who is a CEO and [[spoiler:would leave her at the drop of a hat.]]
* Used in ''Film/WalkTheLine'', when Johnny Cash is distant and generally a dick to his first wife, while openly pursuing June Carter who, by contrast, is entirely unwilling to betray her husband. But he's portrayed sypathetically, and he finally winds up with her. He *is* Johnny freaking Cash though.
** Parodied in ''Film/WalkHard'', where Cash {{Expy}} Dewey Cox is portrayed as having a comically exaggerated case of MoralMyopia when he attempts to marry an attractive musical partner without informing her that he is ''still married'' to his first wife, an unsympathetic shrew.
* ''Film/{{Frida}}'' could have been called GoodAdulteryBadAdultery: The Movie. When Frida de 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 [[NeverMyFault she's only doing it because her husband already did.]]
* The entire film of ''It's Complicated'' is one big hypocritical example of this trope.
* Francois, the title character of ''Film/TheTallBlondManWithOneBlackShoe'', is having an affair with his best friend's wife (all three play in the same orchestra) -- he's made out to be sympathetic as he'd like to terminate it, but is too weak-willed to resist her aggressive advances. This remains the same in the American remake ''Film/TheManWithOneRedShoe''.
* [[LifetimeMovieOfTheWeek Lifetime movies]] often use this theme. [[TheUnfairSex And guess who is the "good" adulterer and the "bad" adulterer]]...
* The main plot of ''Film/TheDescendants'' is George Clooney finding out that his wife, who was recently put into a coma, had cheated on him for a long time. When he confronts her friends about the affair, the female friend tries to justify the cheating, at one point saying, "It wasn't her fault...." Clooney immediately shuts down that line of conversation, saying, "You're talking to me in cliches? It's never the woman's fault? Give me a break!" While the movie does suggest that her motives were not unsympathetic and that Clooney's character had his part to play in the breaking-down of their marriage, it's still made clear that her affair was selfish and destructive to her family, not to mention the other guy, who was more reluctant and in a much better marriage then she was.
* ''Film/{{The Count of Monte Cristo|2002}}'' has Edmond (the Count) have an affair with his true love Mercedes, who married his rival while he was unjustly imprisoned. It's revealed that she only married the other man because she was pregnant with Edmond's son (now a young man), and none of the men realize it until she admits it. In the end, Edmond, Mercedes and their son live happily ever after. The rival, on the other hand, is portrayed as bad adultery for his serial infidelity towards Mercedes - with other men's wives.
* The affair between [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality Marco Venier and Veronica Franco]] in ''Film/DangerousBeauty'' is clearly presented in an almost entirely sympathetic light, and as TrueLove. Never mind that Marco's wife's only crimes seem to be that she is not a poet, has no secrets, is not sexually adventurous, and is upset that her husband carries on a very public affair with Veronica, for whom he openly declares his love.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Beowulf|2007}}'', Beowulf takes a young mistress to bed rather than his wife, because their marriage is effectively dead as a love affair. His wife holds no ill will against his mistress, and they share a conversation at one point. It comes across as bad adultery, but it's a symptom of the greater tragedy, not the tragedy itself.
* The main conflict of ''Film/TheLedge'' deals with a LoveTriangle between the hero, Gavin, who is an atheist, Joe, a [[TheFundamentalist Fundamentalist Christian]] and the latter's wife, Shana. Despite the fact that at the beginning Joe and Shana are shown to be [[HappilyMarried very happy with each other]], the film attempts to portray the affair in a good light, with Gavin rationalizing and justifying his seduction of Shana by saying that "she is too good for him" and that he is her "savior" from an oppressive life. This did not sit well with audiences.
* In ''Film/{{Loverboy}}'', Dr. Reed Palmer is a surgeon who stays late at work. His wife, Dr. Joyce Palmer assumes he's doing his nurse on an operating table and hires the protagonist Randy (working part-time as a gigolo) to both satisfy her and get back at Reed. Later, two other husbands whose wives hired Randy approach the doctor and explain the situation. He's reluctant to go after Randy, as he admits his own infidelity. One of the other husbands brushes it off and tells him his wife has no right to cheat. In the end, after the three husbands are arrested, Joyce bails Reed out and, after a SlapSlapKiss, they go home. The one who assumed that men were allowed to cheat is left in jail by his wife.
* Invoked in-universe in ''Film/TheSevenYearItch'': The protagonist, [[MrImagination whose imagination is always running wild]], [[SelfServingMemory conveniently has a "premonition"]] that his wife is cheating on him with his best friend while on vacation in Maine, [[PayEvilUntoEvil thus "justifying" his cheating on her back in New York]] (although he never actually does this).
* In ''Scenes From a Mall'', in which the two spousal protagonists cheat on each other, the wife, who is a famous psychologist, writes a book that essentially justifies adultery by claiming that human beings were originally monogamous because they had such short lifespans in the past, but modern-day married couples live much longer and therefore are forever dissatisfied sexually. However, she [[BerserkButton handles the news of her husband's infidelity]] [[{{Hypocrite}} with a lot less tolerance than he does hers]].
* Toward the end of ''Film/AnimalHouse'', Donald "Boone" Schoenstein is disgusted when he learns that his girlfriend Katy has been cheating on him with her English professor. They eventually do make up, but Katy still has a clearer conscience because Boone had been planning to cheat on ''her'' at a time when he had only ''suspected'' that she was up to something (and he wouldn't have done it for revenge anyway, but [[ItAmusedMe just for the hell of it]]) and apparently never confessed this fact to her afterward (or if he did, it was after the events of the movie). In other words, here [[TheUnfairSex the usual double standard]] is inverted in-universe just so Boone, who's otherwise an unusually sympathetic character, can be made out to be just as much of a {{Jerkass}} as the rest of the Deltas.

* In ''Film/FlorenceFosterJenkins'', Florence's husband St Clair sleeps in a separate apartment and keeps a girlfriend on the side. At first he appears to be a cheater escaping a loveless society marriage, but as the story progresses we learn that they have an understanding and unique circumstances due to [[spoiler:Florence being infected with syphilis from her first marriage and abstaining from sex to avoid giving the disease to St Clair]]. Adultery aside, they are shown to be actually a HappilyMarried couple who dote on each other, care for each other's feelings, and call each other by cute pet names.
* ''Film/TheIntern'': [[spoiler: Matt's having an affair and, while not necessarily justified, he's portrayed rather sympathetically since he immediately regrets it and calls it off]].
%%* ''Film/IrreconcilableDifferences'': Lucy sleeping with Albert while engaged to Bink is portrayed positively, while Albert sleeping with Blake while married to Lucy is not.
* ''Film/HallPass'': The two couples experiment with an open marriage for a week. The guys go crazy trying to find partners other than their wives, ending with one of the guys chickening out and rekindling his love for his wife (who didn't cheat either). The other guy's wife, on the other hand, did, and was immediately punished by the plot when she gets into a car accident. Meanwhile, her husband doesn't get to go all the day, interrupting a fake cunnilingus session when he hears about the accident. It's pretty clear who's portrayed sympathetically.
* A rare male example in ''Film/ItCouldHappenToYou''. Charlie and Yvonne's relationship is the film's love story, despite the fact that it's an emotional affair at the very least and although they don't sleep together until his wife kicks him out, they are still legally married. The aforementioned wife is a nagging shrew, thus completely justifying his behavior, and ''her'' budding relationship with another man is treated as something bad, despite arguably being ''less'' than Charlie and Yvonne's. Right until the very end--Charlie and Yvonne marry and live happily ever after, while the wife marries the other guy, who steals all her money and disappears.
* In the Creator/NicholasSparks movie ''Nights In Rodanthe'', the female protagonist's husband has cheated on her and left her for the other woman (bad). Her meeting and falling in love with another man while going away for the weekend to debate reconciling with him is "good".

* Zig-zagged in ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'' with Dru Hightower, who was caught cheating during the engagement. On one hand, he had [[ExoticExtendedMarriage several wives-to-be]], so he couldn't have done it for the variety. Then again, it was an arranged marriage, and it is implied he wasn't asked. He did cheat with several servants, though, probably for pure lust, and could have infected his wives with an STD. Also, his sisters had to pay back his "brother's price" when his cheating was discovered. On the other hand, his wives-to-be were allegedly very ugly. The character who tells Jerin about the scandal is rather undecided on what to think of the man, but there is some SlutShaming involved.
** A more straightforward example is [[spoiler: Keifer Porter, who not only cheated on his beautiful, loving wives, he did it [[MoralEventHorizon with his own (social) sister.]] ]]

** Her other story, ''Literature/TheNamesake'', features both varieties too. [[spoiler: Gogol has an affair with a married woman while studying for his architectural license, but breaks it off once he feels guilty about it. Later, his wife, Moushimi, has an affair with her old boyfriend, but she does it because she feels restricted after marrying an Indian man and wants to defy conventionality in any way she can]].

* This is OlderThanPrint. In the Miller's tale in Geoff Chaucer's ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'', a landlord's very attractive wife cheats on him with a student, the two lovers duping the husband with a patently ridiculous story in order to secure time alone with each other to carry out the affair. The whole thing is discovered when a parish clerk, thinking that the landlord is away, approaches the house to ask the wife for a kiss and gets pranked by herself and her lover. Ultimately, the lover ends up with buttocks burned by the vengeful clerk, the clerk is publicly humiliated, and the husband has a broken arm and his attempt to explain his actions makes him look like a madman. Pretty much nothing negative happens to the wife at all; her husband is depicted as both unreasonably jealous and as a gullible idiot.

* Used in Edith Wharton's ''Literature/EthanFrome,'' in which Ethan is portrayed sympathetically as being trapped in a loveless marriage to Zeena, a hypochondriac shrew, with his only chance of escape from Zeena and the confining town of Starkfield being the vibrant Mattie. In the end, though, [[spoiler:Ethan and Mattie suffer a FateWorseThanDeath after a failed suicide attempt.]]

* Harry Turtledove:

*** It's more GladToBeAlive sex (they'd just survived a Race airstrike), and her regret isn’t mainly because they didn't use protection in the excitement. She admits that she has finally accepted that her husband is dead and starts to regularly sleeping with Sam, but insists on using condoms. They eventually marry, and their wedding night is when Barbara decides to dispense with a condom, which is when she gets pregnant.

* In Michael Crichton's ''Next'', a female scientist is clued into her husbands affair by her sapient parrot (who probably did it [[DeadpanSnarker on purpose]]) and flips out on him over it. A page or two later, ''[[HypocriticalHumor she's in the arms of her lover]]'', who she's been seeing for over a year. Uh... huh.

* ZigZagged in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''.

** ZigZagged again in the marriage of King Robert and Cersei. Any royal adultery is Bad Adultery and when the king does it, it results in scandal and illegitimate children that can threaten the stability of the realm. When the queen does it, it's treason. However, Robert and Cersei's marriage is miserable and it's hard to blame either of them for seeking solace elsewhere. Then again, Robert is depicted as fickle and careless with his romantic affections, willing to beget bastard-born children and make promises to their mothers, only to forget most of them in the morning (with the exceptions of Mya Stone and Edric Storm). Cersei at least loves and is committed to her lover... but [[spoiler: her lover is her ''twin brother'' Jaime, which makes it bad adultery again -- ''except'' that their relationship is actually pretty sympathetic, aside from the whole incestuous thing.]]

* [[ZigZaggedTrope Zig-zagging]] this trope is what ''Literature/TheScarletLetter'' is all about. At the end of the day, the adultery itself is not treated sympathetically, but the characters who perpetrate it are, and the sexual repression of the society they live in comes in for as much scrutiny as their transgression itself.

** Young Jolyon had an affair with her daughter's governess and ran away with her, and he can't get married to her until his first wife (Frances) is killed off in a horse riding accident. Mostly leaning to Good Adultery, since Jolyon is the hero of the story. Apaptions of the story have also generally portrayed Frances as a snobbish shrew, [[SexIsEvil who refused to have sex with her husband]]. But unfortunately, Jolyon will never become that happy with his second wife Heléne either, because she develope some kind of mental illness, to the point that she shows a pathological jealousy even towards her daughter Holly.

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': While Stannis feels guilty of having had sex with Melisandre, Selyse is ecstatic because she has given him only stillborns — she doesn't even count Shireen — while Melisandre gave him a son.
* ''Series/JonathanCreek'':
** The episode "Angel Hair" features an adulterous husband who, adultery aside, is depicted as an otherwise decent man who feels genuinely stifled in a marriage that, from his point of view, is lacking in passion. He's still treated as something of a hapless fool, though, especially considering that the wife he's cheating on is a beautiful pop singer who, whilst she's not quite the passionate sex goddess that the media depicts her as, is nonetheless a loving, caring woman who clearly thinks the world of him.
** In another episode, "House of Monkeys", a woman has an affair with her father-in-law. However, both she ''and'' her husband are portrayed as utter twits, and their story ends with their mother/mother-in-law shouting at them: "if only you would just take your marriage by the scruff of its neck and ''make it work!''"
** The pilot episode contains both kinds. The victim's affair is considered unsympathetic when it's with an oversexed French model. However it's later portrayed very sympathetically when it's revealed he was never having an affair with the model at all, but with his unglamorous housekeeper with a crazily jealous husband.

* ''Series/{{MASH}}'' had different cases:
** Trapper John constantly has shallow affairs and never seems to feel guilty in any way about it. It's implied he did this even outside the war, too. Sometimes, though, he shows some signs he still loves his wife.
** Frank Burns has an ongoing affair with Margaret Houlihan. Several episodes revolve around him trying to keep this from his wife, who he apparently stays with for financial reasons. It's also implied that he messed around with his secretary back home.
** Henry Blake is clearly having affairs with various nurses around the 4077th. One episode has an incredible DoubleStandard as he learns his wife had an affair with an orthodontist. He freaks right the hell out without considering it's just desserts.
** Margaret's husband apparently was cheating on her with a number of different women - you can even pick up on it in the first episode he's mentioned in. Margaret shows Colonel Potter a picture of him:
-->'''Potter''': Who's the girl he's with?
-->'''Margaret''': I think she's his cousin.
-->'''Potter''': Huh. Close family.
** Hunnicutt and Potter's son-in-law felt intensely guilty for the act, and wanted to make things right. In both examples, the message was "You made a mistake; don't let it harm your wife; she doesn't need to know, but go back to her and love her like you never loved her before." All the more poignant with Hunnicut because it was TheCasanova ''Hawkeye'' who stepped in to save his friend's marriage.
** A matter of contention for fans of the show was the differing treatment of the affairs Trapper and Henry had compared with Frank's. Trapper's affairs were never justified in the slightest, which made him less sympathetic, but Henry seemed to be in a single long-term affair with one nurse - which he ended (apparently offscreen, the nurse simply vanished from the cast) upon getting a taste of his own medicine, via a guilty letter from his wife that clearly caused him distress. Frank's affair was treated as him being too much of a greedy coward to divorce his wife for Margaret, for whom he clearly felt ''something,'' as he had a mental breakdown upon her getting married.
* ''Series/OnceUponATime'' also features a sort of mixed take on the whole trope between ''RealLife'' Mary Margret Blachard and David Nolan. While it's most likely meant to be the Good Adultery since the two are really Literature/SnowWhite and Prince Charming, there are elements of Bad Adultery as Mary Margaret is shamed by David's wife Kathryn and the whole affair is played as a rather horrible thing. While both were dishonest about it, David was the one who failed to tell his wife the truth when he promised that he would, which made Mary Margaret out as the bad guy for destroying a recently reunited couple (who had promised to work on their marriage in 3 different episodes no less). They end up together, despite dragging the whole thing through hell and high water the whole first season, but only because [[spoiler: everyone gets their fairy tale memories back and remembers that they're supposed to be together.]]
* ''Goodnight Sweetheart''. Gary Sparrow, the {{time travel}}ing hero, was in a relationship (and later marriage) with two different women in two different time periods (the 1940s and the 1990s). While the series treated the affair itself as wrong, Gary personally was always portrayed very sympathetically as a man impossibly caught between two women he loved and as feeling very guilty for doing so.

* An interesting example occurred in the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "A Simple Investigation"; [[spoiler:Odo ends up falling for a married woman, but this is only revealed at the end of the episode, as she was investigating a telepathic crime syndicate and had thus had her memory altered so that she could infiltrate them without tipping anyone off, with the result that she didn't ''know'' she was married when she slept with Odo and admitted after her memory was restored that she had genuinely cared for him during their time together]].

* ''Series/WillAndGrace''. When Will's father has an affair, he actually admits it being his own fault, though still decided that he wouldn't tell his wife. When it gets discovered that ''both'' of his parents are having affairs, they actually take an equal share in the blame [[spoiler:and end up separating.]]
* In ''Series/{{Rome}}'' most of the characters experience adultery for various reasons: [[spoiler: Lucius Vorenus's wife Niobe begins an affair with her brother-in-law while thinking her long-absent husband (he's been campaigning with Caesar for eight years)is dead. Still, the guy's wife is her sister, and very much alive. Caesar]] has numerous powerful mistresses, notably [[spoiler:Cleopatra and Servilia. Titus Pullo]] also cheats on his wife with a slave. [[spoiler:Mark Antony also has ongoing affairs with Cleopatra and Atia,]] despite [[spoiler: being married to the latter's daughter.]] Worth noting that most of these are arranged marriages.
* ''Series/{{House}}'' after he and his now-married ex-flame, Stacy, sleep together. Wilson tells her off for toying with House's feelings (of which she believes he has none) and Cuddy refuses to tell her that it would be fine for her to leave her husband.

* Used in ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' where Carrie cheats on Aidan with Big, who happened to be married at the time. Aidan is not once portrayed as doing anything to "make her cheat", Carrie more than acknowledges that the affair was hurting everybody all around, and Big (of all people) is shown the one to be "wanting more out of life" due to his dissatisfaction with married life. "Everything we own is beige," he notes in lament. When Carrie admits the affair to her friends, she's actually ''hoping'' they'll tell her what an awful person she is. Aidan breaks up with her when she tells him, and though they later get back together, the second break up (due to differing ideas about getting married) isn't portrayed as anyone's fault.

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':
** The second episode has a particularly good example: [[spoiler: the killer (who murdered her friend after discovering her boyfriend had slept with her) is treated as a victim, and Kate muses on the unfairness of the guy getting away without punishment... Despite her knowing from the outset that he was married, and later on, it turns out that the death was accidental. She didn't ''mean'' to kill her friend and both young woman appear to be just out of high school or college; so the man (who was several years older than them at least) was sleazily taking advantage of them and their naiveté by stringing them along for sex.]]
** Another episode revealed that Castle's first wife Meredith, who is also the mother of his daughter, had an affair with a director and abandoned him and Alexis to move to Los Angeles to start an acting career. Castle seems to hold no particular ill-will against her, to the extent that he's willing to hook up with her again whenever she's in town.
** After Castle and Beckett become a couple, Meredith shows up to see her ex's new girl. At the end, Beckett asks her why the marriage ended. Meredith admits that, after many years together, she finally realized that she knew next to nothing about Castle, while he knew her inside and out. This prompts Beckett to re-evaluate her relationship with him.
* ''Series/{{Frasier}}'':
** Played with. Frasier suspects that his father Martin had an affair whilst still married to his (now deceased) mother, and is shaken when Martin admits it. This affects his relationship with his father, Frasier being unable to forgive this betrayal, until he learns that Martin lied; it was actually Frasier's mother who had the affair. Martin blamed himself for it, and encouraged Frasier not to let it affect his feelings towards his mother, something which Frasier had little problem with. It should be noted that his brother Niles, however, had little trouble accepting it even when it seemed that Martin was the guilty party, reasoning that the two obviously managed to overcome it and have a happy marriage from that point on.
** Frasier himself is a victim of adultery, his wife Lilith having had an affair in ''Series/{{Cheers}}'' -- he even comments on learning the truth that the shared experience of being cuckolds has given Frasier and Martin a rare something that they have in common. Lilith, for her part, is not well treated by the other characters, although her adultery is [[DefrostingIceQueen just one of the reasons]] why Frasier's family doesn't like her.
** Niles and [[TheUnseen Maris]] also encounter this trope. In Niles' case, he is heavily attracted to Daphne throughout the series despite being married, but is portrayed sympathetically, while Maris' affair with their marriage counselor is depicted as selfish and the reason for Niles to initiate divorce proceedings. However, it's presented as obviously a lot more complicated than this; Niles ultimately never acted on his feelings for Daphne while he was married (although he was sorely tempted at times) and is willing to acknowledge that the Daphne situation could have nevertheless had a deleterious effect on his marriage whether he acted on them or not, while Maris' adultery is clearly shown as being the back-breaking straw on top of a large pile of selfish, unreasonable and unfair behaviour towards Niles.
*** {{Deconstructed}} in one episode when Daphne finds out one of Niles' patients has fallen in love with Niles (through clinical transference). She panics and investigates the patient despite Niles warning her not to, since it could seriously jeopardize his practice if it was discovered her confidential medical notes were compromised. Daphne tells Niles that she was driven by fear that Niles was cheating. When Niles tries to tell her he would never have a mistress, Daphne notes that he was in love with her while he was married to ''two'' other women. She was "the other woman", so how could she know that Niles wouldn't have another "other woman" in his life. Niles tells her that while he was with Maris and Mel, he fantasized about Daphne. While with Daphne, [[OneTrueLove he fantasizes about Daphne]], which is how he knows he won't cheat on her.
* ''Series/GreysAnatomy'':
** As is [[GrayAndGreyMorality appropriate to its name]], the show plays the sympathy of adultery off of both ends. The first season cliffhanger involves Meredith abruptly discovering that her boyfriend Derek (better known as [[FanNickname Doctor McDreamy]]) is actually married when his wife Addison flies in. The second season opener works under the assumption that he's done something horrible by getting involved with Meredith- until the very end, when a patient asks Addison how she can stand to be in the same room as Meredith when she slept with her husband. Addison is incredulous, and tells the patient that she cheated on Derek first and that was why he came to this hospital in the first place- to get away from her. She then sternly tells the patient that she owes Meredith an apology. As the season progresses, we also see that she holds Derek no ill will for the affair, and is perfectly willing to accept a divorce if he wants to continue seeing Meredith.
** There's also the whole [[spoiler:George]] and [[spoiler:Izzie]] situation. From the beginning, [[spoiler:George]] is portrayed as having the hots for Meredith... but this quickly ends after they have a terrible one-night stand (during which she bursts into tears), completely putting him off her. He then starts going out with [[spoiler:Callie Torres]], but this ends when she [[spoiler:sleeps with Mark]]. Then [[spoiler:George's father dies]], and the two end up having a quickie wedding in Vegas. Almost immediately, he realizes it was a huge mistake and ends up in a drunken one-night stand with [[spoiler:Izzie]], which turns out to be his OneTruePairing. A few episodes later, he tells his wife, and she ends up forgiving him because of the vows... only for him to force her to end the marriage. Even then, the two have trouble starting off due to, apparently, no chemistry between them. A few seasons later, [[spoiler:George dies, and Izzie gets cancer]]. Ouch. Izzie then ends up with Alex and actually marries him, before [[spoiler:leaving him without a word, after misunderstanding the Chief's comment about him and assuming he betrayed her. After she comes back, Alex calls her out on not giving him, her husband, the benefit of the doubt. She admits to having overreacted. Later, she comes back, and her cancer is in remission. But, by that point, Alex realizes that he deserves better and asks her to leave]].
** In later seasons, the Meredith-Derek marriage is starting to crack, with Derek wanting to follow his career to Washington, D.C., to work for the President and Meredith insisting on staying in Seattle. Derek ends up staying, but, eventually, Meredith admits that she can't deal with the guilt that Derek keeps trying to saddle her with (i.e. sacrificing his career for her) and angrily tells him to accept the offer and go. He does, but they reconcile over the phone and agree to try to make their long-distance relationship work. As it turns out, it doesn't work too well, as Meredith realizes that she's perfectly fine on her own (even raising 2 kids). One day she calls Derek, only to have a woman pick up the phone. The next day, Derek flies into Seattle to explain. Meredith assumes that the woman on the phone is the new "Meredith", as Derek has done this before. In fact, the woman does try to come on to Derek, only for him to realize that he still wants his marriage to work. [[spoiler:[[DroppedABridgeOnHim Then he gets hit by a truck]]]].
** Arizona cheats on Callie with Lauren. This has repercussions much later. For one, even after getting back together, Callie eventually reveals she has never quite forgiven Arizona for the affair. Also, Callie's mistreatment of Lauren after the affair leads to her complaining about sexual harassment and much stricter hospital policy about relationships. Eventually, Arizona and Callie go to couple's counseling, and the shrink suggests they take some time apart. However, instead of helping them reconcile, the separation convinces Callie that she's much happier by herself, and they end up divorcing.
** There is also Alex's on-and-off affair with a married woman, whom he names Ava (she had temporary amnesia at the time). After discovering that she's married, Alex isn't sure he wants the affair to continue, but then she remembers that she was trying to escape a loveless marriage at the time. She seems to go back to her husband, but comes back to Alex some time later. Eventually, though, [[spoiler:he discovers that she is mentally ill and has no choice but to commit her]]. Later, [[spoiler:he starts a relationship with Jo, only for the relationship to hit a rock after she rejects his marriage proposal. She then reveals the truth to another doctor - she's already married and is hiding from her abusive ex-husband, even changing her name. Alex ends up beating up the doctor badly, having assumed Jo to be sleeping with him (she wasn't) and is then put on trial for assault]].
* ''Series/NipTuck'' screws around with the concept of Good Adultery, Bad Adultery so much that's it's pretty impossible to find any sort of consistent standard. To wit-
** Matt's girlfriend cheats on him with another cheerleader. This is treated as extremely bad. It is treated less bad however when he starts dating ''her'' girlfriend who has decided she isn't really a lesbian anyway (they met because Matt's lesbian girlfriend convinced him to join them in a threesome, as part of an abortive effort to salvage her relationship with the not-really-a-lesbian cheerleader).
** There's a nuanced portrayal of Sean's affair with a patient, which Sean appears to have initiated on the suspicion that his wife was having an affair with a hunky student. She wasn't. What really screws things up, though, is that their staff psychologist Grace suspects the affair exists and confides her suspicions to Christian. He promptly takes this information to Sean, who is furious at her for discussing suspicions about his personal life and nearly fires her- before she reveals that Christian had sex with her and that unless they have a professional reason to fire her she can file an unlawful termination lawsuit. Christian is either [[SelectiveObliviousness oblivious]] to the fact that Grace was telling him this because he's Sean's best friend, not because she's a gossip, or he's a JerkAss who was trying to use this as an excuse to get rid of her.
** It's treated as bad that Christian had sex with Sean's wife-to-be Julia right before she married Sean. However, Sean being royally pissed off when he finds about this betrayal is treated as an overreaction. Granted, all this happened over fifteen years ago. On the other hand [[spoiler:the fact that Matt isn't really his son is a pretty big bombshell to drop on a guy when he's been under the assumption that his wife only had one sexual partner]]. If this sounds contradictory with the entry below it's because the "betrayal" dynamic shifts entirely depending on whether Christian or Julia is doing the betraying.
** For some reason it's ''worse'' that Julia cheated than it is that Christian did it with her, even though the latter is Sean's best friend and business partner. Christian is EasilyForgiven after a few episodes, but Sean isn't quite as nice to Julia. He verbally abuses and harasses her at every opportunity, invites his new porn star girlfriend to Matt's school functions, and tells Julia's mother to go screw herself when she tells Christian and Sean that Julia's about to head into an emotional breakdown and she needs an intervention.[[spoiler: A few episodes later, she does]].
** Explainable in that Christian is a case-study for promiscuity, selfishness and all around bad behavior and Sean is used to forgiving him for it and having low expectations, where as Julia is presented as 'madonna' until the truth comes out. Even Christian 'loves her from afar'(until he doesn't).
** In the third season Julia actually starts going out with the hunky student as a result of everything that happened above. This is the only particularly straightforward use of the trope's conventions.
** As you might be able to guess, it's hard to tell whether they're trying to subvert the trope's conventions or just doing a really bad job of using it straight.
* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' has an unusually nuanced portrayal of this trope. When Elliot is separated from his wife, Kathy, he has an extramarital encounter but still mentally considers it cheating. After they've reconciled, one scene has Elliot's wife bringing up the question of whether they'd slept with anyone else while separated. Elliot admits that he had done so, but refuses to ask Kathy the same question, as he wants to put their marital troubles behind them.
* An episode of ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'' deals with a husband and wife who had been trying for many times to have a baby and failing. The wife becomes increasingly obsessed with trying to get pregnant and having a baby and the husband becomes frustrated with her inability to talk or think of nothing else. Then the husband runs into an old friend and sleeps with her. Only to realize that what he did was wrong and afterwards genuinely loved his wife more.
* In ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' a long time was spent having Angela engaged to Andy, but sleeping with Dwight, the one that she really loved at the time, though had left for Andy because Andy was "less of a risk." This example sits on both sides of the trope because Dwight and Andy are both shown to be sympathetic in that scenario, which ends with her losing both of them as viable romantic options.

* {{Deconstructed}} rather strangely in ''Series/{{Merlin 2008}}''. Being a family show, the adultery between Guinevere and Lancelot takes place before her marriage to Arthur, consists of only a kiss in the dark, and happens whilst both Guinevere ''and'' Lancelot are [[KissingUnderTheInfluence under a spell]]. Oddly enough, this is still referred to as "adultery". The consequences are dire, as Arthur ends up banishing Gwen from Camelot. Even worse, nobody ''ever finds out'' that Gwen was under an enchantment at the time, and the season ends with Arthur taking her back because he still loves her - not only forgiving her for something she didn't even do, but offering no kind of apology for banishing her from her home on pain of death.
* ''Series/BetweenTheLines'' features an example of the protagonist committing bad adultery. Tony's womanising is frequently portrayed as a character flaw that [[spoiler: costs him his marriage quite early on]].

* A season 4 episode of ''Series/TheListener'' involved [[spoiler:a woman whose husband had left her for another woman]] tracking and murdering the male clients of an adultery website. On the one hand, the male adulterers involved, including the murder victims, and the woman running the website got some pretty heavy scorn from the IIB team investigating the crime. On the other hand, there was no attempt to romanticize the killer [[spoiler:despite being an adultery victim]], partly because [[spoiler: she was only killing guys who looked exactly like her ex-husband and turned out to be mentally unbalanced for unrelated reasons]]. On the other hand, the team's tech guy seemed to have a lot of fun setting up a fake site profile for his boss, and the boss, who seemed curious about the hits he was getting from women who wanted to commit adultery with him, decided against looking at the responses, joking that since he was single there would be no fun involved in checking out potential adultery partners...
* In the series ''Series/TrueDetective'', Hart has a very bad tendency to cheat on his wife with much younger girls. He justifies this by claiming it's to let him work out the stresses from detective work without carrying them home, but the two affairs he has all but completely ruin his marriage. Rust is also of the opinion that it's an incredibly stupid thing to do, since Hart seems to also have a knack for choosing girls who are not entirely stable. Hart's first girlfriend is viewed by him as cheating on him when she starts dating another man, however she insists that she and Hart aren't in an exclusive relationship (she knows he's married) and she wants to look for a partner who she can eventually have as a husband. [[spoiler:After discovering that Hart is having his second affair, his wife cheats on him with Rust. This is portrayed somewhat sympathetically (she'd been faithful up until then and was clearly driven to despair by learning her husband was cheating) and somewhat unsympathetically (she explicitly only had sex with Rust because she knew it would anger Hart most when he was told, heavily pressured Rust into doing it, and insisted later the the entire thing was her idea and that Rust was "a good man"). Her affair also ended up being the one to end their marriage.]]
* One episode of ''Series/SurgicalSpirit'' has Neil Copeland having an affair with a nurse nobody likes. Copeland is portrayed as a man who made a genuine mistake -- his marriage and children keep haunting him, but on the other hand, he genuinely likes the nurse. He eventually admits that he started the affair thinking that it would be fun, and he had no idea that he'd end up feeling so guilty. By the end of the episode, he realises that he has to end the affair and does so... by proxy, though. As for the nurse, most of the dislike for her didn't come from the fact that she was dating a married man, but rather because she [[FelonyMisdemeanor kept insisting on using a completely different system of organisation that nobody else used, thus slowing procedures significantly]], and she quits after realising [[StrawmanHasAPoint how toxic the workplace is.]]
* ''Series/TheGoodWife'' opens with Alicia Florrick suffering the backlash, following the imprisonment of her husband Peter for corruption during his time as a DA. The corruption involved him having an affair with several interns (not at the same time). Despite the affairs, Alicia does not divorce him but starts her legal career at Stern, Lockhart & Gardner thanks to her being an acquaintance of Will Gardner, one of the name partners. After some time, Peter manages to appeal the charges and get them dropped, and their relationship appears to be improving, until Alicia finds out that her best friend Kalinda slept with Peter many years ago. She kicks Peter out and starts an affair with Will. However, after some time, she ends the affair and gets back with Peter. Her relationship with Will sours even more after she leads several associates to leave the firm to start their own. Then [[spoiler:Will is accidentally killed by a client of his]], and Alicia suddenly realizes that she's done with Peter, claiming that she has never truly forgiven him for the original affairs. When Peter points out that they meant nothing to him, Alicia counters that her affair ''did'' mean something. They agree to stay officially married for their respective careers but have totally separate private lives, except where their children are concerned and for any public appearances. Alicia then toys with the idea of starting a relationship with a former ADA Finn Polmar, while Peter starts a romantic affair with a woman on his staff, only to break it off when the affair comes to light. Alicia eventually starts another affair with Jason, a private investigator, who work for her part-time. When Peter finds him at Alicia's apartment, he seems ready to punch him, but Jason ends up leaving and telling Alicia he's uncomfortable with this arrangement. She tries to play it off as a casual sex-only relationship (she even sleeps with Peter once or twice, while claiming it's nothing more than casual sex and claims it's even better when love isn't a factor), but it's clear she likes Jason as more than that. The GrandFinale has Alicia struggle with trying to decide between the men in her life, even having mental conversations with Will, telling him that he's her OneTruePairing. [[spoiler:The episode leaves it open whether she stays with Peter or leaves with Jason]].
** There are even several scares that make Alicia think that Peter has had more affairs than she knows about. Such as a prostitute whom Peter sends to Alicia's firm to try her rape case, who turns out to not know Peter at all. Or another woman on Peter's staff, who is pregnant by a man called Peter, except it turns out to be a different Peter.
** The GrandFinale also suggests that Diane's husband may have cheated on her, although we never find out the truth. She ends up slapping Alicia for bringing it up in court, although it's not made clear if that was for bringing the affair to light or for straining her marriage by ruining her husband's reputation.
*** The [[Series/TheGoodFight spin-off]] does confirm that he cheated on Diane, and their marriage is on the rocks for a while, but they eventually reconcile (especially when he admits he didn't vote for Trump, which would be a big no-no to her).
* On ''Series/MyNameIsEarl'', Joy's adultery is mentioned in the introduction to the first episode, where she gives birth to a child that is ''[[ChocolateBaby clearly]]'' [[ChocolateBaby not Earl's]], which is followed shortly by her divorcing him to be with her longtime lover Darnell while Earl is too doped up on morphine to understand that he's just signed divorce papers. A later episode explores the backstory behind the aforementioned ChocolateBaby: Joy had tricked Earl into marrying her while she was pregnant with an unknown man's baby (Dodge), but then Dodge began to cry all the time, which put a strain on their marriage. They sought the best "marriage counseling" they could afford: watching ''[[TalkShow Montel Williams]]'' on daytime television. Montel was counseling another couple on the show, and advised them to take some time out for themselves, taking turns watching the baby. Joy rushed off to the Crab Shack, and ordered herself several margaritas...and fell into the arms of her longtime crush, Darnell. Soon enough, she became pregnant, and realized that there was a chance that the baby wasn't her husband's. Earl, meanwhile, had no idea that anything was amiss, and was excited to be having a kid that was biologically his...only to find out in the delivery room that that wasn't the case. He angrily gathered up his things, and attempted to move back in with his parents, but his father convinced him to put aside his anger and hurt and stay with Joy and the kids, if only for their sakes. Earl resists, but eventually learns what it's like to care about someone when his dad [[ItMakesSenseInContext throws his old pet gerbils out the window]]. He considers it the only decent thing he'd ever done before starting The List.
** In another episode, Earl goes to make up for driving a neighbor of theirs away back in TheEighties, only to find out that the reason the guy left had nothing to do with Earl's tormenting him, but rather out of shame due to a brief affair with Earl's mother. Their spouses were away at work and self-defense classes (and at least Kay and Carl's marriage was...not so great), and they got drunk on wine coolers and one thing led to another. (In the garage!) She felt guilty about it, and quickly broke it off, never mentioning it until Earl brought it up. The neighbor, meanwhile, left because he was ashamed, and because Kay didn't want to continue the relationship or leave Carl for him. This causes her husband Carl to leave her (and try to start a "revenge affair," with hilarious results), but after crying some ManlyTears with Earl over it, he finds it in his heart to forgive her. Mrs. Hickey lampshades this trope when Joy finds out and comes by to gloat about it.
--> '''Kay''': "I may have had one moment of weakness, but you! You've made cheating a lifestyle!"
** Earl himself was on the opposite side of the problem years earlier, as he was having an affair with Sweet Johnny's live-in girlfriend. There was no ChocolateBaby, but Earl had to come clean because of the list. The problem is, Sweet Johnny has [[EasyAmnesia Anterograde Amnesia]], and is stuck in a GroundhogDayLoop, so he assumes he's still with her (in reality, she couldn't deal with his amnesia anymore and walked out on him), and that his girlfriend's infidelity had just happened. Earl tries telling him about the affair repeatedly, only causing him pain anew every day, which leads to SJ attempting suicide. Eventually, Earl decides it's better that Sweet Johnny doesn't learn about the affair because of his condition.
** In an earlier episode, Earl takes a job at [[BurgerFool a burger place]], as a substitute for one of the employees whose honeymoon money he stole. Mr. Patrick, the BadBoss is [[WhiteCollarCrime embezzling funds from the restaurant]], and also cheating on his wife. When Earl punches him in the face, his wife and his mistress both come to the hospital and find out about one another. When Mrs. Patrick is giving her soon-to-be-ex-husband a DefenestrateAndBerate routine, she finds the money he stole (which he was spending on his girlfriend), and reported him to the police. (Presumably, TheMistress leaves him as well.) He winds up in {{Prison}}, and apparently [[KarmicRape becomes his cellmate's prison bitch]]. Meanwhile, Mrs. Patrick acquires her ex-husband's business in the divorce settlement, and promotes the employee that Earl was subbing for to manager, and gives everyone there raises and health insurance.
* Shows up in the very first episode of ''Series/NightCourt''. The first case that Harry Stone hears is the case of a wife who took a shot at her husband when she caught him with a prostitute. Harry takes the time to talk to the couple, where they reveal the only reason the husband went to the prostitute was because he had felt neglected, and the wife reveals she fired the gun straight up in the air, because she loved her husband too much to actually hurt him. Harry gets them to reconcile, and lets the prostitute off with a light fine, as she turns out to be a HookerWithAHeartOfGold.
%%* In the Russian series ''Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great'', [[UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat Catherine]] remains faithful to her husband for over 7 years, despite him never touching her once (it's later revealed that he has an affliction that affects his libido, but even after it's cured, he still prefers to go after palace girls). Eventually, his aunt Empress Elizabeth gets tired of waiting for an heir and threatens to annul Peter and Catherine's marriage, if they don't produce a child. She's shocked to learn that Catherine is still a virgin, which is confirmed by the royal physician. Eventually, Elizabeth very strongly hints to Catherine that she really doesn't care if Peter is the biological father of the child and then does the same to Peter's chamberlain Sergei Saltykov. Catherine and Saltykov sleep several times, but then Elizabeth forces Peter to spend several nights with his wife in order to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that Catherine's future child is a true Romanov (then again, Saltykov also has Romanov blood), while sending Saltykov away. Catherine later ends up having a number of other dalliances, such as with a Polish prince named Stanisław August Poniatowski (producing her daughter Anna) and an officer named Grigory Orlov (producing her second son Alexei). On the other hand, Peter, after his surgery, starts sleeping around with palace girls, ignoring his wife. He eventually falls for Elizaveta Vorontsova and even considers divorcing Catherine in order to marry Elizaveta.
* The SoapOpera ''Series/SunsetBeach'' kicks off with the heroine Meg pulling a RunawayBride after finding her fiance in bed with her maid of honor. This is "bad". The fact that she herself has been having an online relationship with another man is "good", as they're intended to be the show's SuperCouple.
* ''Series/{{ER}}'''s Jeannie Boulet gets the "good" part of this along with SympatheticAdulterer 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.
* In the ''Series/{{Masterpiece}}'' MiniSeries ''Reckless'', a woman enters into an affair with a younger man in response to discovering her husband's infidelity. His affair is "bad", while theirs is the [[SympatheticAdulterer central love story!]]
* The PlotIncitingInfidelity that kicks off the pilot episode of ''Series/TheOrville'' is presented as an example of "bad adultery", as TheHero Ed Mercer is clearly devastated to find his wife Kelly in bed with [[BoldlyComing a blue alien]], and the ensuing divorce nearly derails his entire life. The twist, however, comes several episodes later when it turns out that [[spoiler:said blue alien produces {{pheromones}} that cause irresistible attraction, meaning that Kelly may have been KissingUnderTheInfluence; whether or not she was is left ambiguous]].
* ''Series/DarkDesire'': Alma tries to defend herself cheating this way. When she thought Leonardo was cheating, she implies it was okay for her to as well. Esteban doesn't buy this at all though.

--->Betty's been spending lots of time out late with Dr. Martin/
--->She says that they're working on the baby every night!/
--->And Dr. Martin sends her presents like new underwear and a bottle of wine/
--->I guess I'll keep writing checks until the day that baby is mine!

* Madvillain's "Fancy Clown", where Viktor Vaughn expresses the pain and frustration of being cheated on by your woman, especially when you know (and ''hate'') the guy she did it with. How does he do this? By calling her, and telling her that it's over, oh, and he's been sleeping around behind her back, too, with several women including her own mother. He doesn't seem to grasp the hypocrisy at all, and it seemed like so straightforward at first, too; The opening features a mournful singer telling the story of how "I hear you in the background whenever I phone, telling your brother to say you're gone... You've been dipping around the town with some fancy clown." What makes it better is that she's cheating on him with MF DOOM A.K.A, Daniel Dumile A.K.A.... Viktor Vaughn.
** An AlternateCharacterInterpretation is that his assertion than he had sex with several other women during the relationship is a lie concocted in a pathetic attempt to hurt his (ex-) girlfriend.

* K.T. Oslin's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7gZHU_awjQ "Hold Me"]] tells of a husband and wife who confess their marital infidelities to each other. There isn't any blame or finger pointing in the song. The couple then end up in a [[GRatedSex passionate embrace]].

* In ''VideoGame/BaldursGate2'', Keldorn's wife is unfaithful because Keldorn is MarriedToTheJob and the period between each time she sees him is measured in months, if not years. If you confront the man she's seeing he's [[BrutalHonesty remarkably blasé]] about the whole affair, as he knows Keldorn's wife actually loves Keldorn and was only unfaithful because she was lonely and because Keldorn's daughters needed a father figure in Keldorn's absence (he also all but states he's impotent or at least infertile, meaning it's more an emotional thing than anything). If you convince Keldorn to reconcile with his family and retire, the other man immediately backs off and the affair is resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Alternatively, [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential you can bring the matter up to the courts, which will get the man hung, Keldorn's wife imprisoned, and Keldorn's daughters hating him forever]] to keep him in the party.

* In ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemJugdral 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 household[[note]]she was his wife's favorite maid[[/note]]. His wife Lady Cigyun is good, as she takes TheWisePrince 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.;

* PlayedWith in ''Webcomic/QueenOfWands''--from the reader's perspective it first seems like [[CasanovaWannabe Brad]] was cheating on [[GenkiGirl Angela]] with [[TheDitz Wannabe Wiccan Girl]], which naturally hurt Angela. However, it's later revealed that their relationship was [[{{Polyamory}} polyamorous]]--Angela was just hurt to realize that WWG was "the 'real' girlfriend" instead of her.

* In ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', at least when it came to Loretta and Cleveland. Loretta had an affair, and though it was PlayedForLaughs, it was fairly even-handed as she had a reason (she felt Cleveland lacked any passion), but wasn't seen as very much in the right, especially when we see her again in a later episode. Even later, Loretta shows remorse for leaving Cleveland... then accuses ''Quagmire'' of ruining the marriage.
** Also from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', the time Lois cheated on Peter with Bill Clinton. Peter is clearly portrayed as the victim. Of course, Peter ''then'' goes and cheats on Lois... with Bill Clinton, since Clinton is just that persuasive (Peter: "Boy, you are good. You are REALLY good."), and neither Peter nor Lois would have done it under normal circumstances. This is also the same episode where Peter was given a pass to sleep with Lois's mother to even things out, but couldn't go through with it because he does genuinely love Lois.

[[YourCheatingHeart Adultery in fiction]] is very much a mixed bag. Sometimes you have good adulterers; sometimes you have bad adulterers. Those you see as "just messing up" and can be sympathised with, and those who are genuine {{Jerkass}}es and deserve to be caught and humiliated in front of a large crowd.

* This is pondered by Nick Dunne in ''Literature/GoneGirl.'' [[spoiler:When the book starts, he's been having an affair with one of his college students for over a year, which puts him squarely in the "bad adulterer" category, particularly since it comes after he persuaded the urbane Amy to move from New York to his midwestern hometown, where she is miserable. His horror at TheReveal that Amy is a hardened sociopath and ConsummateLiar who's been manipulating him for years is commingled with relief that it might retroactively make him a good adulterer, even though he had no knowledge of any of this at the time.]]
-->[[spoiler: I was not as big an asshole as I’d thought. An asshole, yes, but not on a grandiose scale. The cheating, that had been preemptive, a subconscious reaction to five years yoked to a madwoman: Of course I’d find myself attracted to an uncomplicated, good-natured hometown girl. It’s like when people with iron deficiencies crave red meat.]]

* This is pondered by Nick Dunne in ''Literature/GoneGirl.'' [[spoiler:When the book starts, he's been having an affair with one of his college students for over a year, which puts him squarely in the "bad adulterer" category, particularly since it comes after he persuaded the urbane Amy to move out of New York and into his midwestern hometown, where she is miserable. His horror at TheReveal that Amy is a hardened sociopath and ConsummateLiar who's been manipulating him for years is commingled with relief that it might retroactively make him a good adulterer, even though he had no knowledge of any of this at the time.]]