Relationship Advice:
Three BIG Reasons People Cheat
-- And What to Do About It

By Darrell V. Freeman, M.A. & Dr. Debra Laino

The relationship advice we have for you at this site will help you to find the love you need, and build a connection and healthy relationship with that special someone. We all have relationship problems. But we all want a healthy relationship. Cheating -- affairs, adultery, playing around, two-timing -- is a major relationship problem that can destroy a relationship. Below is some hard-hitting relationship advice that can save your relationship and change your life. But we start with the three big reasons people cheat. By two life change specialists ready to help you attract and keep the love you desire.

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See the Rest of the Why People Cheat Series

This article is part of a series of articles on love and infidelity.
My Personal Experience with Cheating
The series is explained in greater detail in our Why People Cheat guidebook to be released in April, 2011.

 

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The 1st Reason for Cheating:Internal Bleeding

Bleeding can cause cheating? What IS "bleeding" anyway?

Deep on the inside of everyone is a desire to have their emotional needs met and fulfilled. When that doesn't happen people tend to be open or it keeps open the doors that create conflict and concern. When a person is bleeding (as a figure of speech or for real) it is clear to them that their hurt or pain is being ignored, overlooked or met with intentionality. Emotional bleeding is the one thing that puts a person in the cheating lane almost faster than anything else. Why? Again because, it is that deep inside and inner churning that is or has been going un-dealt with, or unmet. Now, let's be clear about the relationship advice we are giving here: bleeding or not you are still responsible for your cheating actions.

Bleeding (aka not getting your needs met) is not only destructive to a relationship but also very painful. The cheating happens because the person's needs are not getting met and perhaps no one's needs are getting met in the relationship. When people's needs are not being met the doors to their heart become open. They are more likely perhaps upwards of seventy-five percent to unconsciously make themselves available to another person. And depending on that other person there is the recipe for disaster.

Some More Relationship Advice: The sad thing is that availability to another person can easily become availability to multiple persons. Why? Because, once Jack or Jackie comes out of the box there is no telling what:
1) Cheating dynamics
2) Cheating desires
3) Cheating expressions or
4) Cheating exercises were sitting and waiting inside of that box.

It could be past luggage, hurt, pain, problems, relationship prescriptions for destruction that led up to the point of cheating. One should never use the other person as their reason for cheating but it happens all the time. When one cheats he or she is solely responsible for their actions but in truth the partner can inspire, ignite and indirectly or directly push their partner in the cheat direction. Yet, the relationship advice we are giving on this site and in our guidebook, "Why People Cheat", no reason is a good one for the act of cheating.

When you make a marital commitment to be with one person for life, it is hard to believe (though it happens all the time) that the one you stood at the altar with would be the one that cheats on you. And for what reason? And why, you may ask yourself again and again and again.

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Get Our Complete Relationship Advice on Cheating.
Available April 2011.

If you suspect your partner is cheating, or you are caught up in an affair yourself, get the answers you need in our downloadable book and video course. It will be released in April 2011, and you can be notified as soon as it is available. Just enter your contact info below:

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The 2nd Reason for Cheating: Blaming and Blame-Shifting

In life either you: take responsibility for yourself and your actions or you can shift the blame to someone else. Blame shifting doesn't answer the basic question of why. For example here are some responses that people may use, want to use, try to use or for some reason get away with using, "I cheated because":

1. She or he doesn't love me
   

2. She or he won't give it to me when I want some
   

3. She or he ignores me
   

4. She or he doesn't give it to me like I like it
   

5. She or he wasn't around when I was horny
   

6. She or he doesn't like it as often as I do
   

7. She or he is always complaining and I don't want to hear all of that
   

8. She or he is always tired
   

9. She or he refuses to be creative and explorative and only wants to do it missionary style most of the times
   

10. She or he either has some spiritual, mental, emotional, physical or leftover baggage issues that are unresolved and I don't have time for that
    

11. She or he didn't want to go away with me (in a moment of anger) and so I went by myself and met someone and it just happened
    

12. She or he told me that they didn't care (in a moment of anger) and so, I found someone who did
    

Keep in mind, that when someone says something like I cheated because my spouse wasn't paying attention to me, here's our relationship advice about that: it is not an adequate explanation of what drove the person to do that. It may very well have been a contributing factor, but there were other dynamics going on.

That is what we are calling blaming and putting the responsibility for one's actions all on the other person. Even though the other person may have contributed in some other way, the relationship advice we give cheating spouses is: it doesn't give you a right to cheat. A reason, yes. But not a right. There is a big distinction there.

After all:

1. What did you do to provoke the situation?

2. What did you do to manipulate the situation?

3. What were you not seeing that your partner wanted you to see?

4. What were you not hearing that your partner wanted you to hear?

5. What were you ignoring?

6. What were you thinking period?

Even though many people feel as though this is really why they cheated and the fact that your spouse wasn't paying attention to you could be reasons why you WANTED to cheat. However you could have left the relationship with dignity and found yourself someone who was going to treat you the way you want to be treated.

Which brings us to another question. Do you know how you want to be treated? Here's another homework assignment: Make a list of what you NEED in your relationship. How do you want to be treated? Try for a minimum of ten Needs and ten ways you want to be treated. Remember, You are in the driver's seat-YOU and only YOU design how you want your life and your relationship to be. (You can get some expert relationship advice to help you. Relationship counseling will help as well if done by an expert.)

The 3rd Reason for Cheating: Belonging

Everyone who is in a serious or at least they think that it is a serious relationship wants to feel and know that they are loved, wanted, appreciated and that they feel some since of belonging. Why stay where you are not wanted or try to make it work when you don't feel as though you belong. People hang out with people because they feel as though they belong where they are invited and want to be.

Abraham Maslow designed a Hierarchy of Needs, which is a pyramid of everything a person needs to get to the top which is self actualization. One of those needs (the third one up after physiological needs and safety needs) is the need for belonging. This need for belonging generally includes the need to belong to a social group, the need to have some level of family and the need for sexual intimacy. The goal is to become self-actualized which is the highest level of morality. We do not see cheating fitting in to this main stay of a psychological theory.

Why go or be where there is no sense at all of a desire from anyone for you to be where you are. In a relationship it is the responsibility of both parties to compliment and to reciprocate when it comes to belonging. It goes like this; I am here with you because: "I belong to you and, you belong to me and, we belong to each other, to be together and to enjoy one another to the max. We then both reach our best potential-self actualization.

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Relationship Advice About Cheating from the Bible

Here's a graphic picture of what adultery entails:

"Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes, for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life." (Proverbs 6:25-26)

What this proverb is saying is that you can be captivated and captured by beauty, but you are making yourself a cheap piece of meat (we might say today). And your affair partner will prey upon and (the implication is) devour your very life. A grim warning about cheapening yourself and reaping consequences you did not intend.

So is this joy-killing, sex-devaluing religious strictness? Not at all. Sex is a GREAT thing in the Bible:

Proverbs 5:15, 17-19 (NRSV)
15 Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.
17 Let them be for yourself alone, and not for sharing with strangers.
18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe. May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love.

Sounds great to us! Sex in the right context can indeed give you a high. Sex within a commited marriage gives you the high without the hangover! It's a well of pleasure and joy and love that will never run dry.\

Biblical Relationship Advice to the One Cheated On:

1. You Don't Have to Trust. Jesus didn't trust untrustworthy people.

John 2:24-25 (NRSV)
24 But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people
25 and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

2. You Don't Have to Try to Get Revenge. God / life will bring it's own consequences to your cheating spouse/partner.

Proverbs 6:32 (NRSV)
32 But he who commits adultery has no sense; he who does it destroys himself.

Biblical Relationship Advice to the Cheater:

1. You Will Have to Tell the Truth. Part of the pain of cheating is the lies you told for so long. Telling the truth (not the grisly details of your sexual encounters but the scope of what you did: how long, how much, what was really going on with you.)

James 5:16 (NRSV)
16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

2. You Have to Cut All Ties with Your Affair Partner. Otherwise you're just playing with fire...again.

Proverbs 6:27 (NRSV)
27 Can fire be carried in the bosom without burning one's clothes?

3. You Have to Refocus Your Mind on the Right Things. Stop fantasizing and pining after your affair partner or the flaws of your spouse, and start focusing on the good things in life, in your relationship, and spiritually.

Philippians 4:8 (NRSV)
8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

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Some Final Relationship Advice on Cheating: We want to help you to understand the real and the raw sides of cheating. To help you to make sense out of no sense, nonsense, common sense and getting to the place of enjoying a bright future with some sense.

The truth is that some cheating has hit and hurt people so bad that they have not recovered from it. And we don’t want that to ever be you. If it has happened already, then we want to give you some bounce-back-tools so that you can move forward and get the healthy relationship you long for, because it belongs to you. You deserve it...and are divinely designed to have it.

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The articles on our site give you some great relationship advice (if we don't say so ourselves!) But for our advanced relationship advice that can truly change your life and put your relationship-building efforts into "high gear", you want to watch our 8-Lesson video master course: Relationship Makeover!

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Read the Rest of the Why People Cheat Series

This article is part of a series of articles on love and infidelity.

My Personal Experience with Cheating
The series is explained in greater detail in our Why People Cheat book to be released in April, 2011.