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Why Do People Cheat on their Partners?

Monday, September 10, 2018 By Rachael Pace

If you are married, the thought of infidelity has probably crossed your mind at one point or another.

It may be that you’ve fantasized about the guy at the gym or your flirty secretary. Or your thoughts may consist of mutual horror between you and your spouse. Both widening your eyes at the mention of physical or emotional cheating and thinking, “I hope that never happens to us!”

No matter which one your marriage is faced with, physical and emotional cheating can be devastating to a marriage. Once that precious bond of trust has been broken it can be nearly impossible to get it back.

Do men and women have different reasons for cheating? Do couples only cheat if something is missing in their relationship or is opportunity all it takes to tear down a once happy marriage? Here are 10 common reasons why people cheat.

Boredom

One common reason why people resort to physical or emotional cheating is due to relationship boredom. It could be that the exciting, oxytocin-filled rush of being newlyweds has finally died down and now one partner is feeling uninspired romantically.

Dissatisfaction in the Marital Bed

Feeling dissatisfied in the bedroom can be a huge factor in why a partner may cheat on their spouse. This may be due to any of the following reasons:

Living in a sexless marriage
Spouses do not enjoy the same sexual kinks
Sex is vanilla or uninspired
One partner never has an orgasm
One spouse is not sensitive to the other’s needs in bed
There is no passion in the bedroom
These reasons are not surprising. Sex is a large way in which couples connect to one another.

Sex that results in orgasm between partners helps relieve stress and triggers the release of oxytocin. This promotes bonding and heightens emotional intimacy in couples.

Feeling Emotionally Unfulfilled

Couples who do not make time for an emotional connection may experience emotional cheating in their marriage.

Emotional cheating means creating an emotional bond with someone other than your marriage partner. You become excited to talk to this new person and confide personal details about your life to them. Essentially, you are in a romantic relationship without the physical intimacy.

Revenge Cheating

Do men and women have different reasons for cheating? The answer is yes and no. For example, if a woman has been hurt by her spouse, she is more likely to cheat on them out of spite or for revenge.

A study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that 43% of participants admitted that they cheated on their spouse out of anger.

This may be because their partner is no longer paying attention to them or because they themselves have been unfaithful.

The Opportunity Presented Itself

Cheating is an inherently selfish action. It is the confirmation that a few moments of pleasure with someone new is more important than a relationship that has been carefully cultivated for years.

Flattery and ego play a large part in being unfaithful. Whether it is emotional cheating or an all-out physical affair, sometimes the biggest reasons why people cheat is because they can.

Not in Love with their Partner Anymore

In a study that analyzed the cheating-behavior of 495 adults, a whopping 77% of respondents said their reason for cheating was that they no longer love their partner.

As a (now horrified) married person, you may be wondering “If they are no longer interested in their spouse, why not just leave?” The answer is that there are a lot of reasons. These include:

One spouse cannot afford to live on their own
Does not want to be alone
They have kids together and would feel guilty leaving
Wants to have the comfort of building a life with a spouse and illicit affair on the side

Whatever the reason, many people end up cheating on their spouse because they are no longer in love with them.

This lack of love makes them feel less guilty about having an affair. This is further proven by the 44% of study participants who said they cheated because they didn’t feel particularly committed to their partner any longer.

Cheating Under the Influence

In the same study listed above, 70% of participants said that alcohol played a large role in their choice to cheat.

When consuming alcohol, the levels of GABA are raised. This is a neurotransmitter in the brain that makes you feel more relaxed. Alcohol also boosts the release of dopamine. These results tend to lower a person’s inhibitions and make them do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Like cheat.

A Desire for Multiple Sexual Partners

Arrogance and the need for validation can also lead someone to cheat. The study, mentioned above, cited men as more likely to list physical reasons for cheating. This may include curiosity about physical or emotional affairs, or the pure enjoyment with the idea of having multiple sexual partners.

Situational Cheating

Sometimes it isn’t a desire to cheat that leads to infidelity, but a loss of sense of self. It could be that one spouse has developed a serious illness, has recently become an addict, or lost a loved one in death that has caused them to stray.

One interesting study on age found that those who are ages that end in a 9 were more likely to seek an affair. Basically, those approaching a milestone birthday such as 30 or 50 may begin an affair as a result of a mid life crisis.

Falling in Love with Someone New

Cheating or being cheated on doesn’t mean you are in an unhappy relationship – but it’s a sure-fire way to create one! But sometimes a spouse does not mean to cheat. It may be that they have developed a friendship with someone new and, without meaning to, begin emotional cheating.

This emotional connect may then lead to love, which could drive the married spouse to engage in infidelity.

Why do people cheat on their partners? The reason varies. Some may enjoy the thrill of being in a new sexual relationship or got caught up with emotional cheating. Whatever the reason, cheating should not be tolerated in a marriage.

Author Bio: Rachael Pace is a relationship expert with years of experience in training and helping couples. She has helped countless individuals and organizations around the world, offering effective and efficient solutions for healthy and successful relationships. She is a featured writer for Marriage.com, a reliable resource to support healthy happy marriages.

Infidelity | Relationships

Is Your Marriage Worth Saving?

Friday, August 10, 2018 By Marie Miguel

Have you ever felt that you and your spouse have been fighting almost every day about random and meaningless things? Maybe there are times that you feel like you should just give up on your relationship. You might think, ‘Why bother trying to save such a terrible relationship that is so clearly making us miserable?’ Your marriage wasn’t always this way, was it? At the beginning, it was new and exciting. Now you just want to avoid them at all costs. What should you do?

Communication is Key

If you and your partner are having any sort of relationship problems, almost any issue can be addressed with clear communication. Perhaps it used to be easy to talk to your partner earlier in your relationship, but now, you may feel like you don’t know how to bring things up anymore, let alone discuss your issues constructively. This is one of the many aspects of a relationship that marriage counseling is good for. There are many marriage counselors who specialize in different relationship issues and dynamics, so whatever your difficulty may be, there is a counselor that is right for you and your partner. Seemingly insurmountable issues like infidelity can be addressed and overcome with the right help and techniques.

Too Busy to Talk

Everyone is busy these days. How are you going to find the time to look for a therapist, much less set an appointment that both of you well be able to attend? There is a solution for that as well – consider online marriage counseling. Other than saving you valuable time, benefits include the fact that it is also a more comfortable and accessible medium for those who have trouble talking about their feelings face-to-face with someone who is external to their relationship. In fact, being able to communicate with a therapist through text, online chat, email, or even through a phone call has been extremely beneficial to those having marital problems in general. You and your spouse may find it easier to work with a counselor by talking to each other – and them – through text or online chat. Not having to be in the same room with your other half and/or your therapist can sometimes make you feel less nervous or self-conscious when discussing your relationship struggles.

Save Your Marriage and Your Money

Finances are one of the most common topics that couples argue about. Perhaps it may be a reason why you’re considering marriage counseling in the first place. A large benefit to online marriage counseling is that it is much less expensive than traditional face-to-face counseling. Since your therapist is saving money by not having to pay building rent or leasing costs, buy supplies and furniture to furnish their office, hire and retain employees to work in their office, and not paying utility bills to sustain a brick-and-mortar office, they pass those savings onto you, their clients. In fact, traditional counseling can cost you between $200 and $400 per hour while online counseling on some platforms only costs about $35 to $70 per week.

Is Our Marriage Worth It?

Is your relationship worth saving? Ultimately, only you and your partner can make that judgment for yourselves. However, the fact that you are considering marriage counseling means that you still care about your partner. You owe it to yourself and your partner to give counseling a try. With online therapy, you do not need to set an appointment and move around your whole schedule to get the help you need. You can take things at your own pace, from the comfort of your own home.

Relationships

Are Human Beings meant to be monogamous by nature or not?

Tuesday, May 29, 2018 By Alycia Gordon

Staying forever with our one and only better half is what most of us dream about. Once you find the elusive ‘one,’ you cannot imagine letting them go. Building a relationship with roots of loyalty, faith, and trust – the idea of each partner going elsewhere for sexual gratification is out of the question.

From around 5000 species of mammals including human beings, only 3 to 5 percent tend to form monogamous, lifelong relationships. Monogamy is when two people make vows to each other. They promise to stay together and never indulge in sexual contact with someone other than their primary partner while polygamy is the practice of having more than one sexual partner at the same time.

You would be surprised to know that a committed partnership between a man and a woman has not always been the universal norm. Humans carry the evolutionary imprint of polygamy. The practice of monogamy initiated only around 1000 years ago.

Types of monogamy

As for human beings, there are two types of monogamy:

Sexual monogamy: This is when a couple remains sexually active exclusively with one person.
Social monogamy: When two people live together, find resources in co-operation with each another. They raise their children together, but they have flings with other people as well.

Needless to say, this defies the moral stature that is formulated by the societies today. Families are considered as a prestigious institution of the community. Uncertainty or confusion of fatherhood is a given in cases of polygamy. This may result in deterioration of moral spectrum of children.

Are humans sexually monogamous? Not Really.

To state that human beings are wired to be monogamous would be a false statement. It is entirely unnatural for human beings to stay attracted to a single partner for the lifetime. 80 percent of the early human societies practiced polygamy. The system evolved with the passage of time, and now modern societies firmly believe this shall bring order in the communities.

Varying impulses

At this point in time, only 17 percent of human cultures are monogamous. It is stated by anthropologists that only 1 out of 6 societies implement monogamy as the rule of marriage. While some anthropologists also believe that human beings could either be polygamous or monogamous. Impulses for each vary according to the individual’s cognitive levels. At times resembling mixed dementia, the sexual urge a person feels is constantly modifying.

Stephanie Coonz, a History and Family Studies professor at Evergreen State College, provides cultural patterns as the determent of monogamy.

She says:

“We are trying to figure out how to combine long-term romantic relationships with the plethora of opportunities for other forms of sexual or romantic entanglement, and different people are making different choices.”

Coonz asserts that it is the culture which determines their inclination, neither biological construct nor genetics.

A Latest Human Development

Monogamy, as we find is a recent practice of humanity. It is a societal recreation of present times. Men and women, as per the statement of David P. Brash, seek multiple sexual partners for numerous biological reasons. It is only a social construct that shaped as a response to the need for child-rearing, financial and material security.

Monogamy – pros and cons

There are some benefits associated with the practice of monogamy as well as some disadvantages that could be detrimental to the communities. The biggest gain from monogamy is the stable brought-up of children. It could sometimes be a marriage of convenience where partners stay together for the sake of their children.

Nonetheless, monogamy brings in certain demerits too. At times, it forces a person to commit infidelity or cheat on their partner. They cannot resist the sexual urge to some people, and they find unfair means to gratify their needs. Almost 90 percent of Americans think cheating is morally wrong. However, ironically, 70 percent have just thought about cheating while 40 percent actually committed cheating on their better halves. Frustration and boredom are not uncommon in monogamous relations.

According to an NBC survey, usually at some point, most of the people would cheat on their partners:

Source

Troubles with polygamy

There are uncountable examples of how people escape a monogamous relationship due to their attraction towards someone other than their partner. This behavior is the demonstration of the innate polygamous tendencies possessed by human beings.

Polygamous attitude, on the other hand, is also followed by complications. A person may feel jealousy, fear of losing out, intense competitive vibes and various ugly emotions gather up within. Dealing with them is a next level struggle in itself.

To keep oneself secure, psychologically sound and serene; it is often recommended that a couple stays loyal. Lifelong commitments would mean there is honesty between two people. The care and love for their counter-part would keep them away from sustaining sexual pleasure elsewhere.

Last words:

In a nutshell, human beings are not exactly monogamous by nature. It is a product of social construct, but as long as it brings communal stability and satisfaction to the individuals, it should be continued in the same pattern. Polygamy and monogamy are two sexual orientations which may vary from one person to another. Each makes a choice according to their norms. Sometimes, while repelling the normative influences, they find themselves at a place that keeps them happy yet makes them lose their stature in society.

Alycia Gordan

Alycia Gordan is a freelance writer who loves to read and write articles on healthcare technology, fitness and lifestyle. She is a tech junkie and divides her time between travel and writing. You can find her on Twitter: @meetalycia

Infidelity | Relationships

Should I Forgive My Partner for Lying About Their Mental Health?

Saturday, February 24, 2018 By Alex Moore

Although engaging in a long-term romantic relationship has the potential to be a blissful and nurturing experience, it also gets tough. Navigating through the years with your significant other is hard work even when the waters are clear and calm. If the road gets bumpy, it can become quite complicated to find a middle ground between the two of you.

One problem that many couples face at least once during their run is lying. The difficult thing about coping with this particular issue is that it can occur in many forms. But perhaps the most sensitive situation is handling the fact that your partner hasn’t been honest with you about their mental health.

Should you forgive them for hiding or minimizing the severity of their disorder in front of you? There is no simple one-word answer here. Here are the factors that you need to consider before taking a decision.

How Advanced Is Their Disorder?

To determine how to proceed, you need to find out how advanced their disorder is. This is important because it provides you with a better picture of what your partner is going through. If their condition wasn’t that advanced in the past, it means that there is a high chance they could manage it on their own and didn’t want to burden you with it.

But as a mental illness progresses in severity, it gets harder to hide. For example, it might be harder for someone to hide their schizophrenia in its the active or acute stage than in other moments, because that’s when its symptoms are most active. If your significant other is struggling with this particular disorder, they might have chosen to reveal it now because it became impossible to manage.

How Long Have You Been Together?

The first important thing that you need to weigh in after discovering your partner’s covert mental health issue is the length of your relationship. If the two of you haven’t been together for long enough, then perhaps he or she had been waiting for the right time to tell you. After all, if you’d do the same if you’d suffer from a serious disorder.

Confronting someone with mental illness from the onset of a romantic relationship is disarming, thus you need to understand that most people that struggle with this prefer to wait it out.

If you’ve been together for a long time, your partner might have been afraid to open up to you about their mental disorder because you have reacted poorly to the truth in the past. Furthermore, it’s possible that they were healthy when they met you, but then their condition got triggered by to stress and other factors.

Consider the fact that they didn’t want to burden you with their issue. There are many reasons for which your partner would hide this from you. Instead of acting harshly, hear them out and make room for an honest and civil discussion.

Why Did They Hide It?

One final question that you need to ask yourself and your partner is this: why did they hide their condition from you? The reasons behind such a choice are many. As previously mentioned, it’s highly likely that they didn’t want to burden you with this information.

However, some people aren’t aware that they are ill and refuse to get help. This can lead them to act aggressively towards their partners and even resort to mental and physical abuse in to mirror their misery in the other person. Doing this to someone, regardless of your inner turmoil, is not acceptable. You are not obligated to put up with your partner if they hurt you.

However, if the intention behind their secrecy isn’t nefarious, keep in mind that forgiving your partner is healthy in a long-term relationship. On top of that, now that the truth is finally out, you have the opportunity to be the moral and emotional support that they need in order to get better.

While it’s by no means your job to save them, you can assist them in saving themselves. Prompt your partner to seek medical help if they haven’t already, and ensure that they stick to said professional’s suggestions and treatment plan. Don’t babysit them, but don’t ignore their turmoil either.

Conclusion

According to Psychology Today, forgiving your partner too soon can leave them thinking that there are no negative consequences to their actions. However, if the person you love most is struggling with mental health issues, you need to keep in mind that it’s not the right time to teach them a lesson in this way.

Find the power inside you to forgive your partner for hiding their illness and support them in getting the help they need. Unless their disorder has hurt you emotionally or physically, there is no reason to hold a grudge. Be glad that you now know the truth and stand by your loved one during this trying time for them.

Lying | Relationships

The Toxic Power Dynamics After a Breakup

Monday, December 4, 2017 By K Thompson

Your ex broke up with you. You cried, you sobbed, and you begged. But your ex still doesn’t take you back. You decide that it’s best to just leave her alone and focus on rebuilding yourself. You stop contacting her.

But unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward as you thought. You open Facebook and you see a post of your ex looking happy and having fun with her friends. You see her Instagram story with a text in picture that says she is finally feels free. You fire up twitter only to find out she had a wild party last night.

And seeing all this makes it hundred times more painful than before.

How can she be this happy when you are still barely able to get out of the bed in the morning?

This is a very common scenario after a breakup. I call this “the toxic power dynamics after a breakup”. It doesn’t happen after every breakup. But it does happen when one party in the breakup is the type of person who likes to have power in all their relationships.

One way to not let such a person affect your emotional and mental health is to understand this toxic power dynamics.

They are using social media to get to you

This weird power dynamics usually starts happening once you stop contacting your ex. When you stop begging, pleading, asking them to get back together. Until now, you have been providing a sort of comfort for them. Even though they broke up with you, they know that you are there for them. Waiting for them to change their mind.

So, in a way, even though you have broken up, they didn’t have to go through the pain of losing you. They never had to go through the grief. They never had to entertain the feeling that they might lose you forever.

On the surface, it may seem that your ex should be okay with the breakup because it was their decision.

But grief doesn’t work this way. When you lose someone you were attached to, you go through grief. It’s as simple as that. There is no way to avoid it.

You contacting your ex was making them feel like they haven’t lost you.

But when you stop contacting them, they panic and become scared of losing you forever.

The Toxic Power Dynamics comes from an Egoistical Mind

This is where it gets little bit tricky for your ex. They never expected this grief. They never thought they will feel so terrible after breaking up. Wasn’t the breakup supposed to make them feel better?

If your ex is in touch with their emotions, is self-aware; they will soon figure out that they are going through grief and they will be fine after a while.

But if your ex is the type of person who always needs to be in control, who always needs to have the upper hand in a relationship; they will do mental gymnastics to make them feel better.

She will do things to get a reaction out of you. She might do something to make you feel like you still have a chance of getting back together or she might do something to make you feel like she is already over you.

In both cases, her subconscious mind is trying to get a reaction out of you. It’s trying to get you to contact her, so she doesn’t have to go through the pain of losing you forever.

What should you do?

Ideally, you should just continue grieving and healing from the breakup. You should only contact them after you have done no contact and are sure there is still something there.

If you don’t play into this toxic power struggle, your ex will soon stop playing the mind games. They will eventually accept the grief and start healing themselves.

Relationships