Rethinking Cheating: A Lesser-Known Reason People Cheat

Nobody wants to get cheated on. Few of us could imagine our loved ones betraying us like that, and yet the overall numbers on infidelity are unfortunately high.

Different people cheat for different reasons. According to this article in Psychology Today, some of the most common motivations for infidelity are low self-esteem, anger, a need for change, neglect, and low commitment.

Although these are indeed important factors that might make someone cheat, there’s another, rarely mentioned reason for crossing that line:

The inability to reason, manage and communicate your emotions and feelings.

Emotions influence our thoughts and often guide our actions, so when you can neither reason nor manage them you might find yourself doing things you’ll later regret.

One of them is cheating.

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Inability to Reason With Emotions

Being unable to reason with your emotions basically means that you’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment and lead you to wrong, or morally ambiguous actions.

For example, let’s say Mary notices her partner getting close to someone and she starts being jealous and feeling insecure. She confronts her partner and they assure her that they’re just being friendly.

And even though they’ve always been devoted to her and there’s no specific evidence of infidelity, she can’t help but feel betrayed. And out of anger, sadness, or a desire to get revenge, she goes on and cheats.

In other words, unable to reason with her emotions, Mary made a very bad decision based on fantasies and assumptions instead of facts. She, unfortunately, didn’t ask herself a crucial question:

“Are my emotions justified? Is it wise to act on them?”

Spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao once said:

“Feelings trigger thoughts. Some thoughts drive actions.

When you let your emotions cloud your judgment and your feelings drive your actions, irrational decisions and bad actions follow.

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Inability to Manage Emotions

In the heat of the moment, we all might find ourselves saying things we don’t mean or do something and regret it the next second.

However, there’s a difference between generally being in charge of our emotions and our emotions constantly being in charge of us.

An inability to manage one’s emotions and give an appropriate response to emotion-evoking stimuli one might face can have destructive results — cheating being one of them.

When you’re feeling angry, stressed, or overwhelmed with fear, or jealousy, it’s difficult to think clearly or make a rational decision. Not everyone is good at managing their emotions. Some people act on what they’re feeling right away. Others can keep their composure and get their negative emotions under control.

When one of the two people involved in a relationship can’t manage their emotions, they’re more susceptible to cheating, because they might use it as an unhealthy coping mechanism.

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Inability to Communicate Emotions

It might sound strange, but sometimes, the reason someone cheats stems from their inability to communicate their feelings to their partner.

In counselor Claire McRitchie’s words:

“It sounds like a cliché — but often it has its base in the truth; the person doing the cheating feels unheard, or unseen — but they are perhaps not communicating in the way they should and so of course are not understood.

Let’s imagine that for some reason you haven’t seen your partner for weeks. You’ve actually been seeing them less and less lately. Every time you tried talking to them about it, you couldn’t quite encapsulate and express your feelings.

You give them a call one day and ask them to go out on Sunday (which is their only day off) and they tell you that they’ll be seeing their friends.

“Really?” you think. “We haven’t seen each other for weeks and you tell me you’ll go out with your friends?” So you lash out at them and get into a big fight. Deeply hurt and extremely frustrated, you go out for drinks the same night with your friends, where you meet someone very handsome, whom you choose to take home…

Because you couldn’t communicate your feelings and thoughts for a while, and have, consequently been feeling unheard in your relationship, you ended up crossing that line.

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Where Does That Leave Us?

If you’ve ever been cheated on and had a taste of the devastating consequences of infidelity, as you’re reading this, you might naturally ask,

“So, what does it all mean? Should we start justifying cheating?”

My answer is no. I wouldn’t try to justify cheating as it’s something I don’t tolerate nor forgive in my romantic relationships. However, I do feel like we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions about the cheater’s personality or emotional status.

Not all cheaters are emotionally damaged, bad people, or narcissists. Sometimes, it all has to do with the way a person processes and responds to their emotions. Someone who grew up in a toxic environment and was surrounded by bad role models never learned how to reason, manage, or communicate their feelings in a healthy, appropriate way.

That’s why we should be encouraging more children and young people the importance of taking care of their mental health and improving their emotional intelligence, as well as their communication skills. Just like someone can be taught good manners, they can also be taught to approach their emotions as well their relationships in a healthy way.

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To Sum It Up…

The truth is that there are no obvious answers to cheating. Human relationships are complicated and so is cheating and the reasons behind it.

Cheaters can be both male and female. They can be confident or self-conscious. They might feel neglected or be in need of a change. They might feel unheard in their relationship, or despite feeling heard and loved, still violate their partner’s trust for some other reason.

Now, instead of rushing to label the cheater as a bad or a weak person, it’d be better to consider another lesser-known for cheating: The cheater’s inability to reason, manage and communicate their emotions.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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