What is the Most Common Reason a Husband or Wife Cheats?
Now here is an excellent question and really gets to the heart of what eventually causes marriages to fall apart. But the problem with this question and the reality of divorce is cheating isn’t the cause of problems in a marriage but the result. Unfortunately for our professional marriage therapists they still view cheating as the major cause of divorce, without delving into the problems from the past that set up the foundation for the infidelity.
The basic premise in a successful marriage is you have to be happy with yourself if you are going to build a marriage with your spouse. And the caveat here is your happiness as an individual has nothing to do with how much money you make or how good looking you are, but is achieved by understanding and appreciating your internal character traits, which are nothing but systems of beliefs that reside in the unconscious. The reality is your character traits are what cause your behavior.
So what eventually leads to a spouse cheating are problems in the marriage. I call intimacy the icing on the cake, but in negative relationships this is one of the first activities to go. After all, how are you supposed to come together and open yourself up to intimacy with your partner when you are fighting in the other elements of your marriage?
I was at a marriage conference about a year ago and attended one presentation where the topic was sex. The speaker summed up sex in a marriage when she said that “no” always wins.
The other element of marriages which eventually leads to cheating is jealousy. The funny aspect of the minds of people with insecurities is the notion that if you fear something happening it eventually does. If you fear your spouse cheating on you and get jealous in situations where you believe your spouse is thinking about doing that and the subject becomes a major cause of anger, then eventually your intimacy breaks down and either you cheat or your spouse cheats.
guest post from Tim Kellis
April 10th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Great answer, Tim! You make a great point about the cheating being the result of after the fact of a deep issue that the two partners have to solve before they can make their marriage work. Another thing I have found is that when other soul mates come into the lives of even happily married couples, there is friction even though neither one of the parties intended it. That I believe is the main reason couples split. Not that there aren’t other reasons why couples have problems, but when there is cheating, it’s more than likely another person who has meant to come into their lives does so for a reason and that reason is to help one of the other towards an issue that needs addressing. The person doing the cheating doesn’t love his or her wife/husband any less, but needs to solve something within their lives before the marriage can go on. Just my silly way of looking at it, but no matter how much this might hurt the other if they found out, it’s a necessary step to address this problem the couple have whether they realize they have it or not.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I thought financial issues were accepted as the most common cause of marriage breakup these days.
Anywho…
I’d say lack of communication is the blanket cause of cheating, really. Lack of communication about unhappiness with intimacy. Lack of communication about feelings of jealousy or inadequacy. Lack of communication about feeling a connection with one’s partner.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Sometimes, if one person is cheating, the partner also wants to cheat just to take revenge. Not everytime it may turn into divorce. I guess one reason of cheating is also that you suspect your partner is not honest with you and just want to give a piece of himself/herself.