what makes the debate about whether odysseus cheated on penelope or not so dull to me is that i consider it a completely moot point and a historically meaningless question.
an ancient greek male lived by supremely different social rules than an ancient greek female, due to a massively patriarchal culture and especially the anxiety about rightful heirs. like when a baby is born you can tell for sure who the mother is (the one giving birth), but not (until SUPER recently) who the father is. that reality has historically meant that married women's movements and access to other people have been extremely restricted by their husbands and society (lest they might get impregnated by someone else) and their fidelity considered all-important, while men's sexuality has had very few restrictions at all.
the question of penelope's fidelity is a matter of a lot of anxiety in the odyssey, and ultimately she's celebrated for being one of the very few women in that epic to keep herself pure for her husband. odysseus' (or menelaus', or nestor's, or alcinous') fidelity isn't ever brought up that way because a husband's fidelity wasn't a meaningful concept in that culture. we're even present for the scene where odysseus tells penelope about his stays with calypso and circe, and penelope doesn't react negatively at all -- as if they both wouldn't expect a husband to stay celibate away from his wife... odysseus has returned and competed and fought for her; his devotion has been proven through the standards of their own culture, not ours.
and even if we all agree that patriarchy sucks i don't think it's fair to blame mythological characters for adhering to the mores of the culture that created those characters. if you want to discuss odysseus' sex life (both forced and consensual) by entirely modern criteria i can't stop you, but at least consider that those are entirely modern criteria that would be very alien to these characters and the original audience.
basically whenever i see "did odysseus cheat" discourse it's like i'm watching someone hotly debate whether odysseus should be fined for coming to troy without an internationally recognized passport. like uhh well why when that wasn't a thing yet and also when there are some very significant things that are actually happening in those parts of the story