17 Reasons Why People Cheat
Good People and Affairs
From When Good People Have Affairs by Mira Kirshenbaum
Here's the real reason good people have affairs. You're in a relationship that has problems. You don't know how to fix those problems. You're frustrated and confused. You don't know what to do. So you head into an affair. When you know what kind of affair you're having, you'll better understand what you're trying to get for yourself. Stay tuned for the 17 most common kinds of affairs.
The See-If Affair
The reasoning behind this kind of affair is to see if being with a new person will solve your problems. You want to see if you can be happier or fit better with someone else. Ultimately, though, the new relationship is really all about shedding light on your first relationship. What are you trying to see if? If it's to see if you can be happier with someone else, ask yourself, Am I? If not, then you don't need the affair. If yes, it's served its purpose.
The Ejector-Seat Affair
Anytime you have an affair there's a danger that it will blow your marriage out of the water. But some people feel trap. This kind of affair is a way out of that trap. If you've been careless about getting caught and, honestly, would be relieved if your partner found you out, you're in an ejector-seat affair. Stop being in denial about how "trapped" you are and get on with it. Warning: Just because you're looking for a way out of one relationship doesn't men you should make a commitment to the person you're having the affair with.
The Heating-Up-Your-Marriage Affair
Here's the classic scenario. You have an affair. It's eh. Your partner finds out. He or she is really upset, devastated, mad, etc. But at the same time, amazingly, things get a lot hotter in bed. If this rings true, most affairs die a natural death and the marriage gets better. The heating up of marital sex is a sign that something needed shaking up.
The Distraction Affair
This is how a distraction affair works: You can't get what you need, and you don't know how to get what you need, so you get involved with someone else. Answer this: Did you feel stuck in your life but didn't know what to do about it prior to the affair? If you're in a distraction affair, you're in tremendous jeopardy. Not only do you risk ending a perfectly good relationship, but the pain and craziness of struggling and breaking up just may delay what you really need to do. That is, figure out how you want to live.
The Break-Out-Into-Selfhood Affair
This is the opposite of a distraction affair. With this affair, you're finding your way back to who you really are and what's most important to you. It's as if part of you were lost and something about the affair helps you find the missing piece. It's not the affair itself you need; let that go before it destroys you life. What you need is a way to bring back into your life some important missing part of you.
I Just-Needed-To-Indulge-Myself Affair
Thoreau said people lead lives of quiet desperation. Some of us lead lives of married desperation. You'll know if it's an indulgence affair if, yes, you feel guilty but you also feel you deserve it, and you do enjoy how good it feels. The danger here is that guilty feelings can lead people into big trouble. Don't make the affair into something it's not. Write it off as something you needed. Figure out what's making things so unrewarding in your primary relationship and do something about it.
The Let's-Kill-This-Relationship-and-See-If-It-Comes-Back-to-Life Affair
Think of it like chemotherapy: Giving poison to someone who is sick in the hopes of saving their life. Here, you're looking to give your marriage a perhaps fatal blow, and then see if the two of you can grapple with it and thaw the icy walls that have grown around the relationship. With this kind of affair, you never know how it will turn out.
The Unmet-Needs Affair
This is a dilemma. If you go outside the relationship to get an important need met (say, sex or emotional connection), that can be seen as a betrayal. But if you end a good relationship for that unmet need, it seems like an awful waste. If a major for you is that your lover meets this need, it's likely you're in this kind of affair. Get into couples therapy to work on getting your need met at home. If that isn't workable, maybe that clearly points to the value of your needs over the relationship.
The Having-Experiences-I-Missed-Out-On Affair
This time, the unmet need isn't something in the present; it's something from the past you missed out on. Women without a lot of relationship experience often have affair like this to make sure that they haven't missed out on something important. Want to be with someone much older or younger? A different ethnic group or someone who's very artistic? What's it like to be with someone who just wants to throw you down on the bed and have sex with you all the time? Alright, now you did it. It shouldn't change your life.
Recent Comments
brownskinvixen82 11:28:44 PM Oct 16 2008
Now i understand why people are afraid of committment. Trusting someone is nearly impossible! Who wants to risk getting their heart broken? Relationships could really be a beautiful thing to have. Society doesn't take marriage as seriously as they once had.
SonjiWorks 08:41:54 PM Oct 16 2008
I just found out that my husband cheated on me! I prayed to God why have things been so bad lately? My husband had been distant from me for about 5 days after he started a ridiculous argument. I tried to make peace with him - this always happened about once a month or two at the most. I said that it doesn't matter who's right or wrong as long as we communicate - yeah right! Anyway, I logged onto his email account and found pictures of this woman ( one naked ). What's worse, she was very unattractive ( lop-sided breasts). I left immediately! We were planning to start a family soon - now this! Now he's begging me to come back. This BLOWS.
MarissaPwns 04:14:17 PM Sep 30 2008
What the ****..good people cheat too?Bullshit.If a person isn't happy with just one partner, then something is seriously wrong with them. Cheating is NEVER okay. o_O
geckylover1 11:46:06 PM Sep 29 2008
People who cheat, and say they are willing to commit, than go and have an affair with another person, deserve to go to hell.If my girlfriend cheated on me, i wouldn't even be mad, at that point, i think i would kill myself.
EBestE1962 08:09:12 PM Sep 28 2008
People always thing that "cheating" is the worst thing in the world, but it is not. As the article points out there are numorous reasons why people cheat. It is not always feisable to just leave the marriage. And even if we do make a committment, life and situations change.Most people are frustrated, and counseling will not change that. Money problems, children problems, sex drives and desires changes, many more reasons that counseling will not fix. Being honest is a joke. Who wants to hear, or can take hearing," I am not attracted to you any more" This don't necessarily is because one spouse or the other let themselves go. It is a fact of life that we as humans change.There is nothing like brand new..Nothing. That new car smell, that new house smell, new clothes, even new relationships. It makes us fell good, and you can't change old into new. This has nothing to do with love. One can love a person and not want to have sex with them.Many women just can't understand that fact. Men must
Lcurtius33 12:30:23 AM Sep 07 2008
This is probably the stupidest, most untrue article I've ever read.
Sallyintucson 07:56:34 PM Aug 15 2008
Less than a year into our marriage, my now ex husband stopped talking to me. Without a clue as to just WHY I tried and tried to get him to speak to me. I even backed him into a corner and asked him to go to a marriage counceler with me - nothing. Figuring that this was just another one of his temper tantrums and he would "get over it" with time, I let it go. He never spoke to me again except to yell and threaten me with a divorce. FIFTEEN years later, I finally said "YES!". He had become controlling (I now had no friends and wasn't allowed to leave the house) and abusive (I was raped and sodenized every day for 3 years). Before filing for divorce, he insisted that we go to a marriage counceler (FINALLY!) I found out the reason he stopped speaking to me is that he heard me mubbling the name of a realitive in my sleep - my GGG Grandmother. Her's was a Galeic name, so he assumed that the name was of a man who I was having an affair with!!! Surprise. I'd had enough. Too little, too late.
JEROLDRNP 06:24:21 PM Aug 15 2008
America is made up from 100 excuses why they cheat, all of them SUCk and so do it's poeple who do it. shame on all of you, I wish you a lousy future.
JEROLDRNP 06:22:51 PM Aug 15 2008
Not ONE reason is valid for cheating , Not one, all co-outs from unhappy peoplewho just do not love themself to begin with and therefore cannot love somebody else caled there family and wife.
