Why do men cheat? and Why do women cheat?

I always cheat at Cribbage with jenn. Sure I love her, but if she can’t count, tough.

As I dude, I want (very badly) what I can’t/don’t have. This is not just in the area of girls. This applies to money and fame as well.

Cheating serves the crucial function of letting you know that it is really, really, really over, no matter how badly you want to believe otherwise.

@queenzboulevard That still doesn’t explain why men cheat. Lots of people want what they can’t have. I’d like to be rich, but I won’t attempt to rob a bank, because I know it’s wrong.

People cheat for numerous reasons. They don’t really love someone, they love someone but they’re having problems but for some reason still don’t want to end the relationship, etc.

But… There aren’t really any excuses for it. What it boils down to is someone being weak and taking the easy way out.

A need to feel appreciated, for starters.

Because people are imperfect.

I asked my cousin this when we were still on speaking terms. He said for him, he just got bored. “Why would I want corn flakes every day for the rest of my life when I can have steak and eggs, pancakes, sausage, bagels…” quoth he. I am not at all like that, and I have never cheated in a relationship; I’m very much from the DTMFA school. Why cause complications?

I’ve since concluded that some people are very much NOT wired for monogamy, and when they try to shoehorn themselves into some arrangement that doesn’t fit, complications ensue. Some people have problems being truly intimate with others and when they feel hemmed in, they panic and cheat. It could be a lot of things.

It’s a natural human response. Human beings aren’t wired to be monogamous. The ultimate goal is to spread your DNA with the best possible partner and ensure the that the race is continued.

But mentally, people are generally looking to fulfill some fallacy in their relationship when they cheat…. or they’re drunk.

I think that people cheat because it is impossible to find all of the qualities you are looking for in one person. I believe it often has very little to do with the sex, (although the newness is certainly an added enticement) and more to do with finding qualities in this person that you do not find in the person one is with.

@DrasticDreamer For me, I wouldn’t rob a bank because it would be too difficult (although I’m not saying that it isn’t wrong because it is). Cheating is the easiest thing to accomplish, out of all those things that I don’t/can’t have.

If I think to myself “wow I want that girl right now,” it’s much more doable than “I want millions of dollars right now.” Both are wrong, one is just more common because of it’s availability. If banks were easier to rob, maybe it would be as common as cheating lol4rl!

I dunno though, for me I see something new and feel like it would be so awesome to have. I want it so much because I don’t/can’t have it. However, no one is ever truly satisfied with the material things they have.

This is all just what I’ve felt before, I’ve never actually cheated on anyone, so I suppose I have no real clue as to why dudes would cheat! But these “wanting something new because you don’t have it” feelings are inside of me, and I feel as though they would be the reason why I would cheat.

Well from what I have read and heard from people who did some research on this is that Men cheat because they do not feel appreciated or loved. They may still love their partner, but just aren’t getting the level of satisfaction they need. There are probably as many reasons to cheat as their are women, but This is a main motivation for a lot of it. Women I don’t know why they cheat as much, probably similiar reasons though.

they can’t keep their pants zipped

I have never cheated, and let me tell you it’s not about a lack of desire to. All people feel sexually attracted to others even when committed – the trick is to REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THE TEMPTING SITUATION. Before the second drink, before the second lingering look, before returning the email or accepting the innocent offer to meet for coffee.

Have I wanted to cheat in past relationships? Absolutely. Why? Because the guy or girl was hot, they made me feel hot, I knew we would have good sex, it was refreshing, and it was nice to be appreciated through a new pair of eyes.

Why didn’t I? Even when I was on the outs of a relationship, I didn’t cheat because I knew that I had more respect for myself, that even though I no longer loved my partner it wasn’t respectful to him, and that it wasn’t the real solution to my problems. Maybe because I’m a depressive realist, I can’t stand deluding myself. Face your problems like a big girl, and the rewards are that much sweeter.

I’m going to come clean and say that after 21 years of monogamy, I cheated. It was an emotional affair, but an affair just the same. Why did I do it? Nikipedia pretty much summed it up. I knew my relationship was over, or at least coming to the end, and I think I did it to prove that it was over. I had been ignored for most of the time we were married, never mistreated, just always ignored. I suppose I was also got something from that relationship that I never got from my marriage. If I had it to do all over again I would do it differently, I would have ended the relationship straight up before getting into another. But I don’t have it to do over again, all I can do is know in my head and my heart that I will never, ever let it happen again.

Mouse trembles as she presses the Answer! button,

Perhaps it has more to do with individual vs. collective thinking. Some people are better at thinking about relationships collectively and belonging, vs. thinking about themselves first. It has nothing to do with gender.

I just get mad when people use the excuse that men cheat because, well, they’re men and they can’t help it. Bullcrap. Women want (and do, we’re finally finding out) to cheat just as badly.

@nocountry2, I think you are right, women want to cheat as badly as men, and I would venture a guess that just as many women cheat as men. I also think it is hard for anyone to admit they have cheated, but harder for women. Women have been conditioned from an early age that anything other than one relationship with one guy constitutes being a slut. I’m talking about something as simple a single woman dating more than one man at a time, not even cheating in a committed relationship. So yes, I have no doubt women cheat as often as men, but they are much less likely to admit it.

Modified to add: I also feel compelled to point out that I don’t think cheating of any kind happens in a vacuum. I think that if either member of a couple cheats it is more than likely a byproduct of a troubled relationship.

Mouse is trembling again.

Why isn’t there a male equivalent of slut, I wonder? Or is there, and I’m just sheltered?

@AlfredaPrufrock , I’ve always kind of figured the male equivalent of slut is stud. That really bums me out.

@Alfreda: You can call guys sluts. I do it all the time. You can also call them players, but the connotation can be positive or negative. I generally opt for dirty skeezeball.

MEN = because med NEED sex and if they are not satisfied, they will find it somewhere else.

WOMEN = woman who are not getting attention in a relationship, will find a man who gives them that attention in OTHER ways, and give him sex in return as a thank you or as something in return so that he will continue to treat her that way.

@futurelaker88, I agree about that. Why do some guys not make the connection between treating women well, and sex, even if they’re told that the relationship would be great? I liken it to spending money on a Vespa, and not doing regular maintenance on it or parking it out front of the house unlocked.

i dont know either. i guess if you understand the answer above, you cant understand the question you just asked. :/

“The grass is always greener on the other side”
or in this case younger and hotter

@futurelaker88, it is a misstatement that women “give sex in return as a thank you or as something in return so that he will continue to treat her that way.” Women tend to equate sex with love and romance, and don’t tend to use it as a bargaining tool. I’d be willing to bet that most women who get involve in emotional affairs do not take it to a sexual level.

@AlfredaPrufrock, I have wondered that same thing a lot myself. A man cannot treat a woman as if she is his sister 98% of the time then expect her to want to jump in the sack at his beck and call. It makes no sense to me that a man might think that.

Maybe either partner gives up on improving the relationship, without realizing there are options to change how it currently works, or doesn’t, through talking it out or counselling, etc.

Then, when they’ve already made the mistake of cheating, feel even more powerless and are additionally weighed down by guilt. So, keep it to themselves until (1) They are caught or (2) They no longer want to cheat and want a more transparent life, via dumping the partner or divorcing if they are married and/or (3) Resent the fact that the SO drove them into cheating, by not providing for their needs. Thereby justifying the act. Which allows them to break off the relationship guilt-free, or continue with the cheating, guilt-free.

Or maybe they feel that they are entitled to not have to put work into the relationship because the work seems overwhelming? Or perhaps they don’t value the whole relationship, or really understand the damage their checking out does.

Or maybe they put the work into the relationship and got nothing in return. In my case, after years and years of begging and working on the relationship alone with absolutely no co-operation, I finally gave up. Maybe the partner who was cheated on was unwilling to put the work into the relationship for one reason or another. I gotta tell you, I fought and fought and fought for my marriage, it was only after dealing with the damage and pain of my spouse having been checked out for at least fifteen years that I finally made changes. The minute I made a mistake however, I became public enemy number one and all those years I tried to hold it together just flew out the window. Please don’t think I am saying that it is ok to cheat – it isn’t; but it is also impossible to make sweeping generalizations about people who are in that situation.

I’ve told this story before, and I presume I’ll tell it again. I am reluctant for I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just that only the people who have been here longer have heard it, and so there are new people who may not react as understandingly. Maybe it’s because people always think of it as “cheating,” and not, as I think of it, as trying to save myself.

Nine years ago, our son was born, and that seemed to start this ever so gradual distancing between my wife and I. When I got up the courage, I’d try to talk to her about it, but I always figured there was nothing she would do. She just didn’t want to make love that much any more.

Now when I say “make love,” I really mean it. Sex is not and can not be “just sex” for me. It is the way I experience love. Part of the problem is that I had very low self-esteem, though I didn’t know it. I figured I didn’t have any rights. I didn’t want to force her to make love. I only wanted it if she truly wanted me. I figured that if she didn’t want me, then she didn’t love me.

None of this was conscious at that point. So, for me, sex is how love is expressed. It’s where I feel safe. Where I feel like I am truly accepted (for I thought of a penis as an invader in the woman’s body, and I couldn’t imagine her likeing it, really). So, no sex = no love, although I thought it meant no sex.

It may have played a role in me going crazy. Literally. So I started doing the things that are classic symptoms of a bipolar mania. I started staying up all night; I stopped eating so much, my brain was racing and I felt like I was smarter than I had any right to be. And… and I couldn’t stop thinking about sex. I’m 52 and I was masturbating so often—like when I was a teenager.

But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t just sex. I wanted a person. I wanted all those things that people have mentioned above: appreciation; to feel like a person; to feel a connection—all those things that sex brings me.

So, I started looking, online. And I found. And I don’t know, in the course of a few months I had six such relationships going, some overlapping the others. Well, virtual love is not the same as rl love. And I had an opportunity, while away at a conference, to meet one of them.

A few months after that, in the middle of another online affair that started going disastrously wrong, I told my wife. By this time, I was also acting very erratic and getting angry at our kids, and when my wife told a psychologist friend of ours what was going on, the friend told her to get me to a doctor as soon as possible. That took some doing, but the diagnosis was pretty much instant.

So we started therapy. Couples therapy. Personal therapy. Self-help therapy.

When I first told her, she couldn’t react. Partly it was too much for her to take in, and partly it was that she was so worried about me and had to get me treated. A month later, the meds were starting to kick in, and she had her breakdown; and was so angry with me. I hope I never see anything like that again. She is a gentle, calm woman, and she was flicking me off with her middle finger out in public.

It’s a work in progress. I always loved her, and she always loved me. I’d just felt powerless. If I did anything wrong, she’d divorce me. I never felt safe. For almost eight years. Now I know she wants to hear. It’s still not easy for me to say. I try. The therapy helps. I’m starting to feel more like a person, not so much like an alien. Being online has helped me work through a lot of it.

I’m ashamed of it, but I’m more ashamed that I can’t stand up for myself, than for what I did. Maybe if I could have felt secure and appreciated, it wouldn’t have happened. I still have low self esteem. So often I think I deserve to be cut off. Cut off from her, from my kids, from my house, from my finances. When I was really depressed, I offered to disappear, leaving her all of it. I wanted to find a gutter to die in.

Personally, I think most men’s stories might be similar, if they had access to their feelings and could explicate them. I think men cheat because of some kind of pain. I think we fool ourselves when we say “it’s just sex.” I don’t believe there is such a thing as “just sex.” I think we’ve become divorced from our feelings and humanity somehow, and it usually happens because we don’t feel like any woman could really want us, so we have to take them, if we are going to even get a semblance of what we want; but we call it a conquest, like it’s a good thing, because of cognitive dissonance. We know it’s bad, but we have to make it good, or we won’t be able to look at ourselves in the mirror.

There’s lot of loneliness in the world. A lot! So many of us want to connect. Not just men. Women, too. Yet we keep on missing, our cupidic arrows going wildly astray. We get bitter and angry and complain that we don’t understand each other. And we lose compassion, and we judge, and we make it all worse. The sad thing is—I don’t see any way out for most of us. It’s just too damn hard.

I admire you for telling your story so honestly, daloon. I don’t think that anyone has a right to judge another. We can never know what another is going through even if you put it into words. We can get a sense of it, but it is not the same as experiencing it.

For myself, I don’t cheat. I just leave. A true serial monogamist.

@SuperMouse i disagree. i think they do use it as a bargaining tool…in an affair or a one night thing, or a “cheating” incident. obviously not to her partner or lover. im specifically responding to a girl who is cheating. i carefully read thought about it, and i disagree.

I was in a similar situation to Supermouse and toward the end of a very abusive relationship i cheated ..twice, I did feel terribly guilty about it both times. In retrospect and after kicking myself in the teeth for years I understand now that it was an accumulation of needing love and affection (and it was offered on a plate) and subconsciously knowing that it was a away out of a relationship. I tried so many times to get away from him and he managed to win me back. I knew that by doing this he wouldn’t take me back and i would be free. I loved the guy terribly deeply and the fact was I couldn’t leave him any other way. He was bad for me, so very bad. I’m not proud of what i did and i certainly don’t agree with cheating in the slightest. But.. the abusive bastard deserved some pain after what he put me through. i was brought up as a christian too btw but i don’t think “turn the other cheek” is quite relevant here. sorry god

@daloon, after reading your story I am more convinced than ever that the reasons men and women cheat are not really all that different.

I think there are probably men and women who are not programmed to be monogamous; they get off on cheating and for whatever reason they are not willing to stop or are incapable of stopping. But I think those men and women are in the minority.

i know i’ve said this before but it all boils down to appreciation for me. when you appreciate the person you’re with,it’s hard to cheat and when they feel appreciated, it’ll be hard for them to cheat on you too. if you appreciate someone and you really don’t want them to leave, you won’t risk losing them.

@SuperMouse ” A man cannot treat a woman as if she is his sister 98% of the time then expect her to want to jump in the sack at his beck and call. It makes no sense to me that a man might think that.” LET’S PUT THAT ONE IN THE CONSTITUTION!