Men cheat when they don’t feel good enough. Women cheat when they are angry.
Infidelity has NOTHING to do with the partner. It is the independent decision of the person who cheats.
This issue is the most difficult one that partners are faced with understanding. It is also an error of many therapies. To blame the cuckold for the infidelity is like blaming the victim of spousal abuse or the molestation victim. There is nothing about cheating that will improve the marriage. Thus, if the marriage isn’t working, the goal would be to improve it. Nothing about cheating will make that happen.
Men who cheat are using a woman or women to feel better. A man may cheat when he feels like he is failing. His wife knows him too well. The other woman is a holiday. He loves that she adores him. She doesn’t see his imperfections yet as his wife does.
In fact, men who love their wives very much may cheat. They cheat when the marriage is going well because the intimacy scares them. The more women they have the less intimacy there is.
Women who cheat are angry at some level with their husband and/or men in their history. Due to their emotional connectedness they know that cheating is devastating for any male. It says to the man- though untrue/ that he isn’t good enough.
Some people, both male and female, can’t handle the level of intimacy that goes with sexual and emotional intimacy. Cheating is a way to dilute intimacy. The friendship exists with the partner and the sex with someone else. Or, vice-versa.
Cheating is very disorienting. It makes everyone crazy. The cheater lies to the partner and shares the secret of cheating with the partner in the crime. That sharing feels like “love”. It brings two people together in a secret fantasy and pushes the marital partner out because that partner doesn’t share the secret.
Distance is a natural phenomenon when there is a secret that we don’t share with someone.
When I am treating infidelity, and the affair is continuing, I ask the partner who is cheating to lie to the person being cheated with- and tell the truth to the person being cheated on If people are willing to do this, it switches the intimacy back to where it should be.
So “love” is a feeling and we don’t base relationships on it. We stay because we said we would and we make the rest work. We do that by telling the truth, going through the full range of emotions daily, fighting to find out what we are doing wrong, and hearing the message of what our partner is asking. The feeling we call love is a byproduct of those four activities. We create that feeling when we handle our relationships correctly. Love and cheating have nothing to do with each other.
