Let’s Talk About the Real Reason People Cheat on People They Love

Someone somewhere is cheating at this very moment in some corner of the world.

June over there is dreaming of riding that guy who slipped into her Instagram DM’s last week. She’s doing the whole scrolling thing, gawking at his abs while her husband is lost in his game on tv.

Tim is desperately trying to recover from the messy heartbreak after his girlfriend Sally took off with Dick, the plumber.

Side note: If Tim asked me why he can’t seem to get past it (of course, I know he won’t, men won’t talk about emotions)

I’d touch his shoulder and assure him that he’s not unusual to be so fixated on it since men take longer to recover from heartbreak than women.

But I digress.

The point? Infidelity is a nasty cough that keeps sipping through the fabric of our relationships, no matter how religiously we take our vitamins.

We ladies can keep our bodies tight and pay bills like our men. (I see you feminists over there nodding your heads.)

Those of us who are Wonder Woman’s twin sisters can keep a clean house, force the tots to bathe, and have dinner steaming by six-thirty and guess what? The nasty cough would still get us.

The men can work hard, step up in domestic chores, go for nine therapy sessions, read the Cosmopolitan to better understand their ladies, and still? The cough would get them.

So you can imagine why I had to sit upright when I stumbled on a video featuring Esther Perel. The headline:

This is how you stop your partner from cheating.

My curiosity was ignited. My baby hairs stood.

You see, my opinion is that you can’t stop anyone from eating the forbidden fruit. They’ve got to want to.

Perhaps my pessimistic attitude made it feel as if the video didn’t deliver on its promise.

At least not entirely.

But, before I clicked away, I caught a glimpse of something I didn’t expect.

It was a trail of breadcrumbs leading all the way to the reason behind people’s infidelity.

But to understand this, it’s worth mentioning the various ways people cheat because it illuminates all the subtle ways people do it without realizing it.

Besides, if we have to uproot this humongous tree of infidelity, doesn’t it make sense to uproot it from the roots?

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Why Cheating Isn’t As Straightforward as You Think.

You know all those movies where lovers are caught right in the middle of the act? The one where the girl sits upright and covers her teats?

Or the one where the lover munching on the forbidden fruit is stashed in the closet when the spouse walks in?

Well… that is how much effort and risk you needed to put in if you really couldn’t help yourself from cheating.

I’d wager it explains why it wasn’t as rampant as it is in the digital age.

Now? It’s open sesame.

The opportunities, situations, situationships, and available partners are at every corner. And get this, you don’t even have to leave the house.

You read it right. You don’t have to leave the house to engage in infidelity.

According to Psychotherapist Esther Perel, if you’re engaging in a secret that violates an agreement between you and your spouse, you, sweetie pie, are cheating.

Anyone who sneaks around dating apps, pokes their nose (and God-knows-what-else) at porn sites or chatrooms, reconnects with old flames on Facebook, or flirts on WhatsApp stands to fall into a certain degree of emotional involvement.

If we were to call it for what it is, it would be cheating/infidelity.

Gasp. I know.

According to Esther, the sexual aura elicited in these engagements is more important than the emotional involvement.

She describes sexual aura this way:

Sexual aura means you don’t have to have sex. You only need to have the erotic energy that comes with the aliveness of the fantasy of an affair. The kiss that you only imagine giving can be just as powerful as hours of love-making.

This would explain why people start to glow, smile, and develop a spring in their step when dating someone online, just as they do when dating their next-door neighbor.

Photo by Dainis Graveris on Unsplash

It all comes down to the aliveness you feel.

So if aliveness is what people feel when having an affair, the lack of it in a marriage drives them to stray.

But aliveness is a big broad term. Here’s what a person experiencing it would feel like:

They would feel seen and understood. For example, a wife will feel confident that her significant other is interested in her point of view on issues.

They would feel needed. For example, a husband would know that his role in the relationship is significant, and he is considered as such.

They would feel validated. She would be free to express her emotions because he knows they will not be dismissed but rather taken into account.
They would feel important to the other spouse. He wouldn’t feel like a stranger in his own house. He’d be kept abreast with everything, big and small, because he matters to her.
Both partners would feel desired. Sexually and emotionally. A husband wouldn’t need to beg for sex. The wife wouldn’t use it as a weapon or feel obligated to do it.
They would feel valued. The mister wouldn’t sign a deal or make a significant decision before his partner was fully on board.
They would feel cherished. She wouldn’t have to ask for help with the house because he knows she needs it.

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Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all — Elizabeth Gilbert.

Now to the Real Reason Lovers Cheat:

If you look at all these factors, you’ll notice that they circle around one big emotion:

Desire.

Desire brings about the feeling of aliveness. We feel alive when we’re wanted, seen, valued, and important.

So when our partners don’t feel desired by us, they meander around the social scenes, seeking this.

But before you bash me in the head, let me clarify; You’re not always to blame when your lover decides to poke their nose in places they shouldn’t.

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At times infidelity is personal.

It reminds me of Charlotte, a married woman I met on a flight once. She was flying to meet her lover.

She’d had a couple of drinks and was spilling all the beans, and I wasn’t going to let this juicy story go to waste. I leaned in and absorbed all of it.

I love it when women indulge each other in their dirty little secrets. Say a prayer for me tonight.
Anyway, Charlotte had been faithful for seventeen years and never looked at another dude sexually. (Okay, maybe she did, but she didn’t as much as shake his hand.)

But something had shifted recently.

My fingers itched for an explanation for this puzzle. So I asked the question.

Her words:

Not at all. Nothing is missing in my marriage. I love my hubby. Leaving him isn’t something I’ve ever dreamt of. He’s a catch. Our is quite the love story.

But look, I’m at the sunset of my forties, and a different wind is blowing my way. Hard as I try, I can’t shake off this lingering desire to discover a new version of myself. Like, this can’t be it.

I feel like I’ve got pieces of me that have been lying hidden and dormant for so long. That’s why I’m here. I’m on a journey to figure out what these are before it’s too late. I guess you can say I’m hot on the heels of some self-exploration.

This. In so many ways, the core message in this is DESIRE.

Desire to discover her new self.

When you put this story side by side with what Esther Perel says, it makes sense. People are driven outside their marriage beds by the powerful emotion of DESIRE.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. Robert Frost

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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