SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I know this post gets made periodically, but I did a quick search and don't see any recent ones. Looking for movie or tv show recommendations that have no infidelity, or at the very least don't glamorize or gloss over it. Please post any and all spoilers!

FWIW, the most recent shows FWS and I have watched together, none of them fit this bill.

White Lotus - season 1, it's mentioned that Mark cheated on Nicole but it's all good now because he bought her $80k bracelets to make up for it.
Season 2, Dominic is separated from his wife due to his cheating, and his son Albie makes a deal with him to put in a good word with his mother if Dominic gives money to Lucia, the prostitute that's hustling Albie, who doesn't realize that she also slept with his dad. Plus the whole Ethan/Harper/Cameron/Daphne intermingled cheating fiasco, Cameron tries to convince Ethan to cheat on his wife, maybe Harper cheats with Cameron, Daphe basically says cheating is okay because she does it, too, it's implied that her son isn't actually Cameron's and maybe Daphne and Ethan cheat, too?

The Wire - cheating throughout by Bunk & McNulty. McNulty begs and pleads to get back with his ex-wife. Moves on, seems to get his life together and is in a LTR with Beadie, moves in with her and her kids & then starts cheating on her with random women again. Oh, but it's okay, because he's supposed to be one of the "good guys," who just wants to take out the bad guys and can't stand the PD & govt corruption, right? And Kima, who's also supposed to be one of the "good guys," letting her wife go ahead with IVF so they can have a baby that she doesn't really want, and then lying on and cheating on her once the kid they talked about and planned to have together is born.

And...just started (almost finished) the first season of True Detective and
Hart has a LTA with someone he knows from work, his wife finds out, almost leaves him, he manages to convince her not to, pretends to change, and then has another affair. And when Maggie calls him out on the pics on his phone he has the audacity to try to lie to her face. Oh, and then Maggie as a revenge ONS with his partner. They divorce, and it looks like he lives miserably on his own eating microwave TV dinners while having almost no relationship with the daughters they shared.

Anyways.

Were those series still enjoyable, and can I see why so many people were talking about and recommending them? Sure. But would love for some recommendations for a tv series or movies that doen't mention any infidelity at all, but I'm just so over getting into a show and then having it trigger a memory or feeling and tainting how much I was enjoying it.

- Astrid, IIRC - French TV, PBS with subtitles (access via Prime or a $60 annual donation to your PBS station)
- Luna & Sophie - German TV (title is something like 'Potsdam Kriminal Police), PBS with subtitles
- The Amazing Attorney Wu (or something like that) - Netflix. Few WSes, but they get their comeuppance

The following are mysteries, so suspects are unfaithful, but the good guys aren't, IIRC

- The various versions of Tatort - German with subtitles, MHz Choice streaming service (i've watched Tatort Borowski/Vienna/Lindholm/Cologne - browse mhzchoice com or search on, say, 'Tattort tv' (no quotes)
- Murder in ... - French, with subtitles on MHzchoice - being murder mysteries
- Cherif - mhzchoice - Cherif seems obnoxiously patriarchal and anti-women in the 1st episode, but it quickly became one of my W's favorite shows

The Amazing Detective Di Renjie #2 & 3 - Prime, Chinese with subtitles - wonderful fantasy (that is, lots of creepy stuff going on, but it's funny)

Foreign language stuff is great for ADHD because it engages both eyes and ears. It's hard to surf the web while watching because you have to follow the subtitles.

This may not be what you’re looking for at all, but we’ve been watching Alone, a reality show about survival skills. I normally dislike reality tv, but this is more about nature and bushcraft skills. There’s a whole season called "skills challenge" where they just have to make cool stuff with limited tools. There’s virtually no interpersonal drama, and I suspect I like it partly because the last few years have exhausted me emotionally and so it feels hard to sink myself into the kind of character driven, well-written and well-acted television I used to like.

I’m really liking the old seasons of This Old House and another show called Maine Cabin Masters lately too. I also want to try that new National Geographic show called Queens, about matriarchs in the animal kingdom.

Lol. I look at this list and realize how peopled out I am. (In addition to the long term emotional exhaustion of affair recovery, I teach high school in a very demanding environment, so peace and quiet and nature are what I crave I guess).

Ugh, now I realize I have no certain suggestions, just commiseration (for ex, I LOVE Golden Girls, but Stan in general can be a trigger, there are multiple cheating storylines where the girls are wittingly or unwittingly APs or BS/BGFs, plus jokes and so on-- when I was rewatching the series, I had to skip several episodes or tolerate the one-off jokes).

I was going to say I THINK the amazing Derry Girls (which I binge-watched a few months ago) doesn't have any infidelity, and I THINK that may be technically true, but there's definitely an episode (Season 3, Episode 2, I think) that....

TRIGGER WARNING/SPOILER BELOW

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hints at the strong possibility a character is cheating (they turn out not to be, hilarity ensues). I didn't find it especially triggery or distressing-- perhaps because it's telegraphed that it's probably going to turn out to be an hilarious misunderstanding-- but it was uncomfortable.

That may be it-- and I've just confirmed it's not actual cheating and that might be enough to reduce tension in watching it-- so it depends on one's tolerance. Anyone who can think of another storyline/etc. that involves cheating in Derry Girls, please weigh in, though.

If you decide to watch, speaking of subtitles... If you are not terribly familiar with Northern Irish accents and slang, you might want to turn on subtitles/closed captions. I (American) did for a few episodes until I got comfortable understanding 95% of it, at which point I turned them off because I'm a very fast reader. I found that my finishing a line even a half-second before the actors finished speaking it interfered with their incredible comic timing.

I think one of the reasons I liked it, related to betrayal recovery, was that it takes place in the mid-late '90s, around the time I met WH, so it reminds me a little of who I was before him, too.

It sucks that we can't fully enjoy things with the same innocence. I will say the small consolation prize is that we have an even more empathetic understanding of what it's like to be betrayed... which means we can see how normalized/trivialized cheating is in popular culture and call it out and/or be compassionate to other BS/BPs about not exposing them to those triggers, etc.