What an age old question...
There is not simply one fix all answer. There is a great spectrum of reasons, in which they can all mesh together to produce a general idea of an answer. A description of the complexity of human relations. A view into the difficulties of feeling fulfilled and satisfied with yourself, and your partner. Something of great importance to myself, for my future.
Just 20 reasons why people cheat: there are MANY out there
- SEX
- Loneliness
- Power
- Invigorate youthful feelings
- Dissatisfaction with a bad marriage/relationship
- To avoid problems in the relationship, an easier way to deal with it
- Childhood pre-exposure (makes someone more likely to cheat, because their parent(s) did.)
- Satisfy an EGO/Self Esteem
- Lack of Communication, loss of intimacy
- Emotional Emptiness
- Physical (needs not being met)
- The thrill of falling in love again
- Adventure of dangerous or forbidden sex
- Selfishness
- Fear of Intimacy, or commitment
- Darwinian explanation: to spread their seeds (which, unfortunately with the human conscience, is not a totally valid explanation.)
- Desire to have more than one lover
- To maintain that feeling of invulnerability
- Revenge
- To feel loved
1. Sex:
People who cheat for just sex, do not have the maturity to be involved in a stable and monogamous relationship. These folks take the intimacy out of love making, and it becomes a mode of pleasure instead. Sex is unemotional, and automatic, just a thing to do, a way to bring satisfaction to one's sexual desires.
2. Loneliness
You would think that feelings of loneliness would be the most contrary reason for cheating in a relationship. If the spouse is constantly away from home, or is a very distant person, and the fire in the relationship is lost, then this can be a very real outcome and explanation for infidelity.
3. Power
Typically people who cheat to gain a sense of power, feel that being intimate with one person, and making commitments and compromises makes them lose power. So keeping impermanent relationships in which the cheater has all the power to end the relationship at their whim gives them a great sense of invulnerability.
4. Invigorate Youthful Feelings
This is typical of the middle aged, or older person, who has in their minds, past their prime and search for that new youthful relationship to reinvigorate youthful feelings in their life/mentality. A new relationship is indeed fresh and exciting, but the stagnate and stereotypical reminder that aging = old and unattractiveness, is a notion that really needs to dispel, because it is not true in the person who does not allow themselves to adhere to that train of thought.
5. Dissatisfaction with a bad relationship/marriage
Too often, people find refuge in the "other" instead of facing the problem at hand with their partner. It is much easier to run and escape the problem temporarily, then to attack the path less traveled and fix the problems or unmet needs in the relationships.
6. To avoid problems in the relationship
Very similar to #5, running away from their relationship problems by starting a new, is a sort of temporary world to live happily and blissfully in instead of working out the original problems at hand. This situation tends to be one that renews itself when the old affair grows stale or no longer serves the purpose. An even worse case is that no matter what, the cheater can always have the reassurance of their partner, especially if the problem is only with one person and the partner has no clue that there is something wrong.
7. Childhood pre-exposure
Children who were exposed to parent(s) who did not have functional relationships, just like rearing habits, are also more likely to follow the same relationship patterns as their parents, either mildly or totally. Children who had fathers or mothers who ran from/cheated in relationships can be more likely to handle their own in the same way when trouble rears its ugly head.
8. Satisfy an EGO
Flattering comments, the need to feel validated sexually, a way of judging your own self worth by how many relationships or love partners you have had in life. Simply put, a silly reason for cheating, because this is a totally avoidable reason in my opinion, the reason of a weak person for cheating, or in more unfortunate cases, the reason for the person with low self esteem.
9. Lack of Communication, Loss of intimacy
Following the decrease in communication between couples, comes the loss of intimacy in the relationship. The initiative for sharing feelings and the sense of urgency that accompanies caring for your significant other can diminish if the communication that facilitates these activities is cut off. Couples who no longer know, and do not try to know what they need in their relationship, can ultimately find themselves satisfying these needs for someone else.
10. Emotional Emptiness
If emotionally one partner is not getting the love and care that they need, then this can be very damaging to the relationship because then the person that is hurt is no longer willing to stay with confidence in the relationship because they are being hurt in one of the most deep and innate ways. Thus cheating faultily fixes this problems because emotional arousal is a key ingredient in a new affair.
11. Physical needs not being met
Maybe the sex has become boring, or isn't adventurous enough, and possibly this other person is doing everything right, and then some. In this case, if the cheater does not bring it to the attention to their partner first, or no effort was made to try and fix the problem, then this reason can be a very easily fixed one.
12. The thrill of falling in love again
That process can be an intoxicating occurrence, and quite possibly an addictive one. That great electrifying feeling of the first kiss, the passionate first love making session, and of course the thrilling secrecy of it all may be enough to make cheating a sort of "adrenaline junky" type sport, although it may be more appropriate to say "enamor junky".
13. Adventure of dangerous or forbidden sex.
Just like the cleptomaniac who steals helplessly, you may encounter the kind who f*ck endlessly! No, seriously though, the thrill of the new romance is enough to keep a steady pattern of cheating. Especially if it is used as a remedy to particularly uneventful periods in one's life, as a way to spice up the old routine.
14. Selfishness
This one, in my opinion, has to be the worst of them all. To want to cheat because you just can't get enough, and you have not a care in the world for how your partner may feel. What an ass the person who uses this explanation.
15. Fear of intimacy of commitment
Cheating will be a great way to recycle those first early stages of falling in love, and for the person who is not in a long term relationship, can foster the environment necessary to stave off those feelings of intimacy and the binds of commitment.
16. Darwinian explanation
For the human species to spread their seeds. While biological processes like breathing and blinking are involuntary, and even the fight or flight response that describes the adrenaline rush when one is in danger, it has not ultimately been proven that the need (not desire) to have multiple partners despite being monogamous beings is a necessity indeed, because humans have a conscience and morals and all those other societal impediments that are meant to discourage cheating in general.
17. Desire to have more than one lover
That is pretty simple no? Like the mormans.
18. To maintain the feeling of invulnerability
If the cheater has all the power to begin and end the relationship as he/she pleases, then a feeling of being untouchable accompanies the whole process of cheating.
19. Revenge
One cheated, and then the other cheats out of spite. Simply put. Could be jealousy, or an ill fitting way to teach justice... "An eye for an eye" as the old cliché goes.
20. To feel loved
Sometimes people get married for the wrong reasons, and the relationship may stay intact for religious reasons (like forbidden to get a divorce), arranged marriages, children are involved, and quite possibly that lust or infatuation were mistaken for love, and in all reality the cheater does not feel loved so they seek it in another. Or maybe the loving intimate feelings have dissipated.
I am sure there are many reasons why people cheat, but is it entirely wrong? Is cheating really all so bad and horrible as people who have lost over it describe? Maybe it really is. The fact of the matter is that it all depends individually on each independent union, in which the agreements and circumstances of the relationship, and the compromises made will determine whether or not having outside relationships are good or bad, and what reasons are valid or if there are no exceptions to the rule. That is the bottom line.
¡Ciao!
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