Why Men Cheat In Relationships

The burning question that resonates from the depths of women's souls. I wish there was an easy answer to this question. However it is not as simple as a one line explanation. There are many different reasons a man may cheat but they generally end up in two groups.

Inner Circle
Outer Circle

The inner circle deals with issues and problems from within the man such as background, family, life experiences, and so on.

The outer circle deals with YOU! The woman involved with the man. Let's tackle them both shall we.


Inner Circle

Let's start with the flesh! We are all born into sin. The curse of the first Adam makes this inevitable for us to avoid. So we wrestle with our flesh, and the desires of our flesh. God created sex! Yes our father is the inventor of sex. Sex is a good thing! Therefore the desire to want sex is natural and healthy! Where we go wrong is that it is used out of the intended purpose. The purpose for sex is to

• Multiply
• Worship (God)
• Bond

I won't dissect sex right now. I will save it for another post. However my intention is merely to show an understanding of the desire of sex. For men and women alike.

Most men have a healthy desire for sex! We are visual beings, and God knew what he was doing when he put together a woman. So when a man see's an attractive woman, his thoughts towards her are usually sexual in nature. Not all the time but most the time.

James 1:13-15

English Standard Version (ESV)

¹³ Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. ¹⁴ But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. ¹⁵ Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Men are tempted by the desires of the flesh as well as satan. I'm not saying that when a man cheats he can use the get out of jail card "the devil made me do it" The bible says to take every thought captive. A man's thoughts are the first step to cheating.

I'm going to take you on a brief journey into the deepest levels of the abyss of a mans mind. Level 2045xl 9. (made that up) !

This is a scenario of a man out on a date with his woman.

Scenario 1

Man enters restaurant with woman. Man and woman are seated at a nice cozy booth. Hostess informs said couple that their waitress will be with them shortly. Man has chit chat with said woman. (I like saying "said" fyi) Said couple are sitting opposite from each other. Man is facing the direction the waitress will be coming from. Man is engaged in conversation then notices from a far distance this very attractive waitress walking towards him. At this point then man disengages from the conversation and switches to auto pilot mode. For those that don't know what this is. It's when a man is not paying attention to anything your saying but smiles and nods his head every so often as to bamboozle you into thinking he is paying attention. What's really going on in his head is this...

Who is this chic coming my way? She looks nice from a distance. Let me get a better look. D#$% I can see those hips through them pants and she throwing it when she walk. Oh she got a nice rack on her too! Come closer.. oh wow she has a pretty face and nice hair. Please be our waitress please be our waitress! She stopped at our table yes! Turn around let me see if you got a booty....bingo wow that ### is fat! This girl is bad she would definitely get it! Umm I can imagine how good it is! Let me see if she shows any signs of interest. I want to know if she's attracted to me.

All this takes place in seconds unbenounced  to the woman. From the time it takes the waitress to walk past a few tables to yours. Now some men's thoughts may be a bit more subtle but you get the picture. They are attracted and scanning and checking out a woman while thinking about her in some sexual nature. (Not all but most men)

Men are visual creatures as I said earlier. If a man see's and attractive woman, she is usually seen in a sexual way. I assure you if you ever introduced your man to any of your girlfriends he has "scanned them".  He knows what they look like how tall, short, if they are pretty, their features, body type. Does she have big boobs nice bottom? And then puts them in the I would/wouldn't hit it category. I have a saying I always say "women are God's greatest creation and the devil's greatest temptation" All men of all walks of life, even great men of the bible struggle with temptation from women. With the exception of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.

So what makes a man cheat? It all boils down to self control and will. Intent he has with you. From the inner circle it goes to what type of man you have. How was he raised? What are his moral values? How does he view commitment? How serious is he about you? Does he have commitment issues? Abandonment issues? Does he have faith of some sort. Does he believe in some value code, have something, or someone to hold him accountable?

For a lot of men I'm just going to be honest. We are greedy! We want our cake and eat it to. Although very vulgar, Terrence Howard said it best in the movie The Best Man. He said "the only thing better then &*%$ is new %$#@"! As shameful as it is, this statement is law in a lot of men's minds. Notice I say a lot not all! I won't classify all men in one group. That's just not fair and wouldn't be accurate. I am however speaking on behalf of a large majority!

So what was Terrence Howard trying to say? He is saying the thrill of new sex with a new partner is better then the sex a man is used to with his woman even if sex with his woman is great! No matter how great it may be. A lot of this doesn't even have to do with the sex itself. It has to do with the new (different) woman your having this new sex with. That's what makes it better or at least makes it appear better. It also has to do with the thrill of the hunt. In our deepest primal instincts, we like to chase, catch and conquer our pray.

This is dealing again with the inner circle. Has nothing to do with the women we are with. We can have a beautiful woman who treats us like kings and see a woman who isn't even as pretty as our woman is, but in some form we are sexually attracted to her, get greedy mixed with lack of self control and or lack of respect of  our commitment to our partner and we give into our fleshly desires not to mention the will to chase, catch and conquer. Next thing you know the sinful thought we initially had, the lust of that woman in our heads is now manifested into taking actions to acquire, conquer her and subsequently cheat on our partner. Greed!

If men have a good woman by their side a lot of them wouldn't cheat IF they thought they would get caught. Men cheat because we are greedy want to satisfy our fleshy desires sleep with every pretty girl we can and keep our woman. We will attempt this because we don't think we will get caught.

Another reason men cheat is sex addiction. Although used as an excuse when caught more so then being a real problem, their is an issue with sex addiction. I myself suffered from it and I tell you it was no excuse for me. For years I thought I was just like any normal hot blooded American guy. After all men always think about sex and try to have it as much as possible right? Well it took me a while to realize that most of my boys were doing mostly talking about it and I was mostly doing it!

Sex addiction is a much more serious issue. If your man has this addiction it's going to take much more then just loving him to change it. He will need help, support, JESUS! You can get over it. God can do all things! But its a battle and he can't just stop. It's a process. If you don't have the time and patient to walk this walk with him then it's best you part ways. If you have time, emotions invested, kids, your husband etc. then obviously it's not that easy to walk away. Stand by your man and stay prayed up! I won't dive into the reasons men become addicts. I will tackle that in another post.

Another reason men cheat is to safe guard their heart. I don't believe what they say about if a man is a cheater or hurts a woman it's because he as been hurt before. Yes in some cases this is true but not the rule! I will tell you I have hurt a lot of women in my day before I was ever hurt by one. With the exception of my mother. Some people say that the reason I hurt women in the past was because I was hurt so bad by my mother. I'm not ruling that possibility out but as of now I'm going to say a big negative on that. Although in some cases it has truth.

However when I was hurt by a woman I obviously cared for...man did it SUCK! It hurt so much that I put a wall up to safe guard my heart. The wall was not of concrete but of women! The great wall of gina I called it! lol (laugh that was funny) Seriously though I decided that the best way not to be hurt by a woman again is to always have multiple partners at all times. So on any given Sunday or Monday or Tuesday for that matter I was always talking to at least 4 plus women at a time. Usually around 6. Then I had the reserves in the phone. The 4 to 6 women weren't necessarily my girlfriends, just women I saw on a regular basis. I never had too many "title girlfriends" Maybe one out the group.

Now the reserves were girls who I have met slept with and could call for sex when ever I wanted. I would call these women when ever I needed FRESH sex. Meaning whenever I got tired of sleeping with the 4-6 on  a regular basis. I would call these girls who I haven't slept with in a while. The longer it's been since I slept with a woman the fresher or newer the feel of sex is. It's the closet to sleeping with someone you haven't slept with before. Or I would do just that. Go find a new sex partner. This help feed my addiction which again I will get into in a later post.

The way this worked was I was so busy I couldn't give one particular person to much of my time. This lowering the possibilities of getting too close to any one person. Also if I found out one of my girls cheated or something, I would think about all the other girls I've been sleeping with while I was with her and it would take most if not all of the sting away. Then I would just replace her. It was safe for me. I never got hurt or at least in one sense of the word. Little did I know that behavior was so destructive and eventually led to it being almost impossible to develop real feelings for a woman. They became objects. Like cars. Me and my guys would compare them. Hey look at this new corvette I got yesterday wow look at the curves on her. Oh hey check out my new Ferrari drove her yesterday went from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds. Men talk like this or I should say boys talk like this amongst other boys. Only we don't say cars we say their names or nicknames we give them unless their name is an actual car like Porsche or Mercedes.

There are many other reasons a man can cheat. I'm just giving you the main ones based off the inner circle. Now let's talk about the outer circle.


Outer Circle

The outer circle isn't that complicated. This has solely to do with the woman the man is with in a relationship. Ladies this is for you. How you can contribute to a man cheating. Now no one can make a man cheat. We all have free will and if we do cheat we choose to do so. However we can be motivated even down right pushed to cheat in some cases.

Let's start with the easiest issue.

1.SEX

Disclaimer: Speaking of sex I am referring to a husband and a wife. Sex outside of marriage is fornication and is a sin. I don't condone sin although I am guilty myself of this sin in the past. I'm not being hypocritical I'm simply trying to help those not make the same mistakes as I did, and do better.

Now that is clear, the easiest way you can motivate your husband to cheat is to deprive him of sex! The bible even speaks on this issue.

1 Corinthians 7:5

English Standard Version (ESV)

⁵ Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

The bible is saying don't hold out on sex from your spouse unless you are fasting for a greater cause. This can lead your spouse to be tempted to run to another's arms by satan. satan is a great opportunist. He pounces on any opportunity to cause you to sin and displease God.

You ever get into a bad fight with your spouse/mate and right around that time you get a text, call, email, or run into an ex or someone you are/were fond of or attracted to? This used to happen to me all the time. It took me a while to realize that this wasn't by chance. This was the devil trying to tempt me with what he knew was my weakness. WOMEN! If there is turmoil in your house and you are withholding sex from your spouse,  I guarantee there is the devil in disguise in the form of a short skirt with loose legs that your husband is attracted to or used to have relations with.  A co worker maybe from the job. Ready to pounce so to speak on the opportunity. Sometimes it's not the devil at all. It's simply the desires of the flesh to fulfill a need that the spouse should be fulfilling but is not due to one reason or another.

Ladies no matter if you and your spouse aren't seeing eye to eye. One of the worst things you can do is deprive him of sex. Now of course I'm not talking if he already cheated on you or is beating your brains out. That is a different story!

2. EMOTIONAL ABANDONMENT

There are four main things a man needs to feel from a woman to thrive.

1. Desired
2. Respected
3. Appreciated
4. Physical Intimacy

Ladies if your lacking in making your man feel one or more of the four then your relationship is not as healthy as it should be, and could be in jeopardy of betrayal. It needs a Band-Aid.

Number four we covered. Let's talk about the other three.

Desire

Imagine how you would feel if your man's actions led you to believe that you weren't desirable anymore. Imagine the lack of attention you might receive and the self consciousness that comes along with it. The self examination. The scrutinizing and picking apart of ones self. Now imagine you start receiving the attention you were lacking in your spouse from a friend or a co worker or new strange admirer. This new source builds you up. Makes you feel desired and attractive again. You start to feel good about yourself. A feeling that  is ever so faintly familiar......get it? T.R.O.U.B.L.E

Men want to feel desired too! We like compliments. We like to feel we still got it, and that we still do it for our partner. We all to often tend to get "used" to our partner after some time has past. What went from multiple compliments daily now goes to barely a head nod of recognition on an ever so seldom date night after much effort Is put into attire and appearance. What went from a healthy sex life is now sickly and on a fixed destination to hospice. The same way you want to feel desired we do as well.

I will give you a great tip: Initiate sex!
It will do wonders for your man's moral and self esteem.


Respect

R.E.S.P.E.C.T  find out what it means to me ahhhhhh  a little respect! Love that song but so true. There are only a few things that turn me off and get my blood boiling more then a disrespectful woman! I can't stand it. It makes a man feel like your challenging his man hood. It also makes him lose respect for you! In my opinion, blatant disrespect will run a man into another woman's arms just as quick as neglecting sex would. Yelling, screaming, being talked to in a disrespectful  manner. All that sends a man searching for a kinder more gentler woman.

I'm not saying women shouldn't have voices and speak their minds and voice their opinions. It's not what you do but how you do it.

If you love your man speak to him with love and kindness. Even when upset use tact in the way you communicate your disapproval of something. I hate when women use the excuse "well you mad me mad"! As if that gives you the right to yell and scream at me and call me out my name.

One of the fruits of the spirit is self control. It is definitely hard at times but we must work on managing our tempers especially when it comes to dealing with someone we love. You ever try talking calmly to a person when they are yelling at the top of their lungs? It's hard to yell and scream at someone if they are keeping their temper and answering softly and politely.


Appreciation

Again, the same way women like to be appreciated, men like to be appreciated also.  If we are being a good man to you let us know about it. Acknowledge and praise our efforts, or when we do something nice for you. If your man always opens the door for you. Thank him every time. Positive praise results in repeat actions. If we are attentive to your needs let us know. Let us know when we are doing things right more so then when we are doing things wrong. If not we tend to feel taken for granted. Or that your never satisfied and always nagging. (Big turn off). Focus on the things we do right, and tactfully correct us with the things we do wrong. For instance if we took the garbage out two weeks ago. Don't say "you know you haven't took the garbage out in two weeks" say...remember when you took the garbage out for me love? That was so sweet of you" Why continue to open the door for someone who never acknowledges you do it or thank you for it. Why continue to be faithful if your never praised or appreciated for being a loyal man? Thank us for handling you emotionally if we do it well. I.e putting up with you when your pms'ing when you know you can be a bear during that time!

Basics....learn to love and appreciate each other. Most importantly express your love and appreciation through words and actions.


Physical Intimacy

I touched on sex earlier. This would obviously fit in this category so that's a given, but I want to talk more so about physical touch. Physical touch is not always sexual in nature and does not always lead to sex. Some people are more affectionate then others. However I believe most people do want/need physical touch.

I've seen people who have been in long relationships and they aren't even intimate anymore. I mean yea they have sex every now and then but the time leading up to that point, the time spend around each other has no physical touch. It's like their roommates. No hugging no kissing no holding hands right up to the time when they are about to do the DO!

The human touch can be so therapeutic! It can say a thousand words, as well as calm and comfort you. It can make you feel safe, cared for, adored, admired, and wanted! In public it makes a statement. I love this person and I want everyone to know it! It can at times be more intimate then sex itself. Don't forget about this gem. Keep it shining in your relationship. If it has died down rekindle the flame and you will be amazed at how significant of a difference the seemingly insignificant things make.

I hope this helps you in some form or fashion with your relationship, or gives you enlightenment on future ones.

Love each other because God is love!

God bless you all!

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