I hear a lot of stories about people cheating on their spouses, and I’ve always wanted to know why people cheat.
Why do you think people cheat?
As many reasons as there are cheaters.
Mainstream social conventions and more natural animal instincts are not fully aligned.
Some people believe that social conventions do not apply to them, that following convention is for losers, and that as winners they are allowed to do whatever they can get away with.
And others lack the self-control (or “lose” it through substance use) to control themselves when presented with opportunities. Often, they’re also hindered by things like a lack of respect for their partner, which makes it easier for them to ignore that niggling feeling in the back of their mind and listen to the screaming one in their pants.
Others genuinely feel like they have a better connection (non/sexually) with the person with whom they’re cheating, but for a number of reasons don’t want to end their relationship with their current partner.
Some people marry perfectly normal people who become control freaks who want to take over every aspect of your life, control all finances, make poor financial decisions without your knowledge, have poor eating habits, don’t enjoy the same recreational activities, are selfish, and boring, and lazy, and smoke.
Then you meet someone who isn’t, and is also attractive, and who becomes increasingly more friendly through email chats. Next thing you know you’re having wild monkey sex in your car in an abandoned parking lot somewhere.
:dubious:
Or something like that?
I think women mostly cheat because they are unhappy with their relationships. I think men mostly cheat because they want to fuck someone else.
Couldn’t have said it better. Just because you agree to some vows and promise to love each other for all eternity, doesn’t mean you magically lose all desire for everyone else, forever. I don’t know shit about shit, but I DO know that you can’t completely control the mental illness commonly known as “love.”
We live in a world where breaking up with a SO or divorcing a spouse is fraught with emotional, legal, and practical difficulties. This forces some people to stay with a mate longer than they otherwise would like to. And when something more appealing comes along, some of those people can’t say “no,” or don’t really want to.
I once saw a picture online of a scantily clad, insanely hot model with a caption that read something like: “Just remember: somewhere out there is a guy who’s tired of her bullshit.” It’s a slightly misogynistic way of saying that you can fall out of love with anyone.
I also think a lot of it has to do with a mistaken notion of how good they’ll be at keeping it a secret. I suspect the average person cheating fancies him/herself to be a super-stealth, 007-like master of deception (perhaps Petreaus thought the whole CIA thing was rubbing off on him) who will never get caught. Of course, that’s not even close to being true.
Because doing something you are not supposed to can be very exciting.
For men, because they can. It your evolutionary job to impregnate as many women as possible. In modern societies, you don’t want the actual children outside of marriage but the instinct is still there. Combine that with the fact that most wives become quite unattractive after you marry them if not in physicality but also in attitude when they grow older and can’t fulfill most men’s sexual wants (a main one is variety) and it makes perfect sense.
A better question is how wives have manged to arrange social and religious norms so that all men don’t cheat.
Well, I’m glad to read that you included the words “mostly.” Otherwise, your comment would be a pretty broad generalization.
Sometimes partners are not sexually compatible. If one of them has a high sex drive and the other doesn’t, it makes for a high level of frustration, which can lead to infidelity.
Damn this oppressive Matriarchal society! This is 2012 y’all!
But seriously, that’s pretty ignorant. Firstly, it ignores that women cheat. Secondly, it ignores the fact that loyalty is also a male evolutionary trait that competes with seed spreading.
That made me chuckle. 
I agree with you but I can only speak to the man’s perspective. I do know that if you are on a business trip and meet several beautiful women in a bar, you want to go for the one with a wedding ring on her finger because that has the best chance of success plus the lowest downside. She has something to lose and lots of pent up frustration. You can just have a good night and never hear from her again.
I cheated on my first wife, sex was great, house was clean she held a job and was great with the kids etc, I just never felt loved. I always felt guilty until after we divorced and I saw how she acted around someone she loved, it confirmed my suspicion. I didn’t feel guilty about it anymore.
I think it’s pretty obvious why people cheat.
Nobody asks why people date. It’s just assumed everyone understands the rewards of finding another person you’re attracted to and forming a relationship with them, even if it’s only a sexual one.
And the thing is those rewards don’t vanish just because you get married. Seducing a good-looking person (or being seduced by one) is just as much fun as it always was.
The difference is that seduction now comes at a much higher cost. Getting involved in this relationship now means betraying the person you’ve supposedly committed yourself to. But some people when faced with the positive reward just put that negative cost out of their mind.
Because their needs were not being fulfilled in their relationship but they didn’t feel like talking could resolve the problem.
Or they met someone hotter/with a bigger dick/more money and wanted to hit it.
Yep.