To get to the root of those motivations, we have stories of 10 people why they cheated on their spouse in order to uncover the real reasons behind this kind of betrayal.
Infidelity is perhaps one of the most stressful events a relationship can go through. But just how are you meant to know if the love of your life is a cheater?
Some of the happiest couples out there have been a victim of cheating – it isn’t just something that happens to ‘doomed couples’.
Studying the reason why they cheated on their spouse is fascinating (and horrifying).
Here are ten real stories – all with different reasonings for why they cheated on their significant other.
More reading:
Some Interesting Statistics on Cheating
According to Relationships Australia:
- Emotional affairs are far more common than sexual affairs.
- Affairs vary by culture and country. For example, in Italy, 59% of Italian men cheat and only 35% of Italian women do the same. Almost half of British men cheat, whilst only 1/5 of British women do the same.
- Affluent women are 8% more likely to be unfaithful than middle class wives.
- Infidelity is not a sign that the relationship will end. 64% of men and 54% of women choose to work on their relationship if their spouse was unfaithful.
You Push the Envelope – Then You Are In Too Deep
“You know how somehow every girl is interested in you when you already have a girlfriend? Well it starts like that. At first you’re not going to cheat, but you want to see if you’ve still got it. Now you know you’ve still got it and just want to dance with her a little bit.
All of a sudden you’re dancing and making out, but you’re not sleeping with her so its not cheating yet. Then one night you’re really drunk and had a fight with your girlfriend, and you end up doing the same thing and boom you’ve slept with this girl and are officially cheating. Now you keep sleeping with this one girl because: “Hey, nothing bad happened the first time, this girl is just a physical outlet for me and I still love my GF.”
Well time goes on and you’ve fallen so far over the line that you can’t even remember when you really crossed it, and this new girl wants more from you, and your GF is wondering why you suddenly have to work late but are making no more money, and you’ve got to try and find a way to break it off with the new girl, but it’s hard because you kind of like her too.
Suddenly you’ve constructed a web of lies so complicated that you’re not even sure you can unravel it, and you’re not sleeping well because if your current GF finds out the shit will hit the fan, and if your newer girl finds out, your GF will eventually find out. You get into this situation where it’s just easier to put it off, and it’s sort of like when you put off breaking up with someone but to a greater extent because the disincentives are so copious.
You push the envelope, little by little, and by the time you’ve realized you’ve crossed the line, everything is fucked up. Now you’ve got to try and break it off amicably, but it’s not that easy because you like both girls and they both like you, so you try and let it sit, but it will, more likely than not, blow up in your face.
Firstly, kissing certainly counts as cheating, but as others pointed out, what I wrote was part of the rationalization process — same goes for the flirting, dancing, etc. You can rationalize it so easily because you know you’re not a bad person.
You don’t want to admit you are a cheater much like the man who steals a coffee doesn’t want to believe he’s a thief. People deceive themselves all the time, and this is a situation where the self deception got out of control.
Secondly, I’ve seen people ask: “Why would you enter into a monogamous relationship knowing you’re going to cheat?” I didn’t intend to cheat from the start. The point is that stuff like this starts small and grows fast, and each misstep makes the next one easier.
Inevitably you’ll be faced with a tough situation, and sometimes during that situation your emotion will trump your reason, you will find yourself in a moment of weakness, and during that moment you can make a bad decision. The missteps have built up and the cycle continues.
This is not a grab for sympathy, but it is an apology — a reason for why I did what I did, and for everybody who insists they would never find themselves in this position, I hope you’re right, but be warned that things can progress very rapidly, and sometimes you just never see it coming. I never thought I’d cheat on my GF, but I did.“
He Cheated on My First
Shitty answer… But he cheated on me first, I couldn’t get over it and I wanted him to feel the same way. So I revenge cheated. I can’t entirely say I regret it nor am I proud of it. It’s something that was wrong to do, that ultimately didn’t have earn me any kid of closure or satisfaction. :I
He also didn’t seem to care much about it.
He Was a Distraction from the Pain
“My husband and I had been married for 2-3 years at the time. We just went through a miscarriage and learned that I would likely never have children as a result of PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). It was a hard time for both of us. We were grieving and our world was kinda falling apart.
We didn’t have time to grieve though, because my Father one month later tries to shoot himself and fails, struggling with his alcoholism and current divorce (was his 2nd at the time) and he was dropped off on my doorstep. His parents were gone (my grandfather had passed away a few years prior and my grandmother was in a Nusing Home with Alzheimer’s) and no one else in his family, including his adopted brothers and sisters would take him in.
Que tons of stress and pain and heartache. Husband is bitter and angry about the miscarriage and the news that his wife can likely never give him children, and is unable to express or sort out his feelings partly due to the fact that currently I myself am on the verge of a meltdown, and also because my Dad, passed out drunk on my living room floor every night is taking up all of our personal time.
We begin to avoid one another because all we do is fight. Our hurt and anger comes out in nasty words and jabs at one another. Four months go by like this. We stop having sex. He goes in auto pilot mode and goes from the bed to the computer to work and back again.
Rinse and repeat. We stop talking. He spends over 12 hours a day (more when not working) on the computer and doesn’t even eat dinner with me. He is working 15+ hours a week at McDonalds. I am doing 50+ hours a week a metal fabrication shop.
I work, I clean, I cook, I mop up the puddle nightly that is my father, and I sleep. My husband and I grow apart. I start to feel unappreciated as I take his absence in my life and in our bed as him ignoring me and/or resenting me for not being able to give him children.
I begin talking to someone through an online game that I play in my spare time to keep my sanity. The talking goes from in-game to emails and from texts to phone calls. I tell this person how lonely I am. He tells me I am worth more. Tells me that I am not less of a woman for not being able to produce children. He pays attention to me. He calls me beautiful. He asks me how my day is.
He becomes a distraction from the pain and a cure from the loneliness that my husband is inadvertently making me feel.
We have phone sex a few times. I send him photos. He sends me photos.
He talks about driving up and meeting me. It never comes to pass. Eventually I tell my Father what is going on. I am feeling guilty and lost and want some advice. He is too drunk and bitter from his divorce and cries out that all marriages are shams. He encourages me to continue cheating because all marriage is a joke and my husband is an asshole.
I have a nervous breakdown at work. Lock myself in a bathroom stall and sob on the floor crying out for my Mum. The secretary of the company gives me a ride home. They call me back the next day and ask me not to come back in, that I am no longer needed.
Jobless and broken I come clean to my husband. He is surprisingly unfazed. Says he figures I didn’t want him around anyway. I tell him that is the opposite of what I want, and actually am just so damn lonely! He says he is too but can’t deal with anything right now.
He is lost. We are both lost. He goes to work at his new job (had to get a 40+ hour a week Job after I lost mine) at a Plastics Shop. We agree that maybe he should move back in with his Mother for a while. His bags are packed. I stare at them while he is gone.
Dad tells me that I should say fuck it to my marriage because it’s all a lie, and go with him as he returns to work as a Long-Haul truck driver cross-country. Says I can be his “log book sidekick”.
He upsets me so I go to my Mum’s for the day. I suddenly have no desire to even contact my internet friend. All I can think of is the hole in my heart that will be there once my husband leaves that night. I cry on my Mum’s floor. She says if we really didn’t love one another, that it wouldn’t hurt like this.
She tells me that my husband and I are both just devastated by a baby that we never had time to grieve for and that we are both handling it in stupid, selfish ways. She advises me to go speak to my husband before it is too late. My Mum has no car. I didn’t currently drive at the time either.
I call my Dad and pleaded with him to take me to my husband’s work so I can stop this before we separate and ruin something that was never broken. He reluctantly agrees after how hysterical he finds me. For once he isn’t drunk.
I go to my Husband’s work and wait for him to come out on his smoke break. His eyes are red. He has also been crying. We both hug each other, the first contact we have had in months although sleeping in the same bed and we cry. I tell him I love him and I am sorry for cheating.
He tells me he is sorry for shutting off the entire world and me. We agree that we love one another and don’t want to lose each other to stupid ways of coping with pain. We agree to change and work on the bad parts of ourselves and how we handle things.
A month later my Dad moves out and in with his new soon to be 3rd wife. My husband and I both see separate therapists for a few months. We learn to grieve and grow together again. We fall more confidentially in love with one another than we ever were before.
I attribute my cheating to the first and obvious reason that we are all capable of being assholes. But also that we married young, (I was 19 and he was 21) and that I had terrible parents and never really had the chance to grow up before life cut into our dreams.
My Dad using me as a stable for his drinking and own issues also did not help any. Plus the fact that my husband grew up in an abusive household (mainly his Father) and he only knew how to internalize his pain, and never was taught to voice it or talk about it for fear of shame.
I blame no one but myself. But to this day we are closer than ever and are going on our 7th year of marriage. We are talking of renewing our vows on our 10th anniversary. We still have no children and don’t ever plan on it happening for us. We have grown and learned together that life is never what you think it is when you start out, and neither are people. But if you truly love someone you grow together instead of apart.”
I Couldn’t Make a Long Distance Relationship Work
“Long distance relationship. I was not the most caring or appreciative partner. Went out with friends. Very sexually aggressive girl came onto me. Went home with her.
Felt awful afterwards. Confessed to everything even though I easily could have avoided being caught. Tried to salvage the relationship but it just didn’t work.
Considering how terrible it made me feel and how much pain I caused someone else, I don’t think I’d do it again.
Why’d I do it? Basically I guess a long distance relationship gets lonely, particularly one with its own share of lingering problems. And when an opportunity presents itself it can be very hard to turn down.
I maintain a friendship with the ex now. She’s married and lives in a different state. We’ve come to terms with our relationship’s failings. The collapse of it really led me to a lot of soul searching that changed the way I approached dealing with people. She’s good people, and deserved better than the person I was at the time.”
The Sex Dried Up
“We were together for 5 years. We had been friends for several years before dating. We lived together, bought a house together and had a daughter together. Prior to our daughter we had a very active sex life.
After our daughter was born, we hardly ever had sex, even after she got the OK from the doctor to resume sexual activity. It was once, maybe twice a month, and only if she initiated. All of my advances were shut down, often met with rather extreme and aggressive responses on her part. I was frustrated and rejected. This went on for a couple years.
She cheated on me. She was having cyber sex sessions on chatroulette and Skype. She would go to bed with me, wait for me to fall asleep, and then get out of bed and take her laptop to the living room and fuck herself on cam for random internet strangers. When I found this out, I was devastated. She would rather jerk off for random dudes on the internet than fuck her boyfriend in the next room. My self esteem had never been lower.
Eventually we reconciled, went to couples counseling and all that. I was holding on because I came from a broken family and I wanted better for my daughter. She didn’t put any effort into fixing things pretty much from the start. Before long she quit counseling and stopped all the techniques and things we had learned. I should have left then, but I continued to hang on.
We acted like everything was okay, but I know I was miserable. I started to mentally check out of the relationship. I’m sure she had mentally checked out a long time ago. But I held on for my daughter’s sake. I thought it was what was best. There was no sex, no affection, no love.
I don’t know when or why I decided to do it, but one day I signed up for tinder. I consider myself a little bit above average in the looks department. I got a few matches, had some decent conversations with a few girls, although it was mostly surface and small talk. The attention felt great and my once shattered self esteem was getting a much needed boost even though it was all very innocent.
And then I matched with her. She was the exact opposite of my gf in every aspect – looks, personality, interests. She was mixed race with dark curly hair and green eyes. Her body was insane. She was gorgeous. She was funny and interesting and loved all the same things as me. She asked to meet up for coffee and I agreed.
We chatted for several hours. We had a connection. We had chemistry. We went on a few more “dates” until one day she invited me back to her place and fucked me like I’ve never been fucked before. The sex was insane. I was hooked. I would tell my gf various excuses to get out of the house and go fuck this other girl a couple times a week.
I kept at it for several months. Eventually, I found out my gf cheated on me again, this time physically with a coworker. It was rather hypocritical of me, I know, but I broke up with her for good after I found out.
As far as I know, she still doesn’t know I cheated during our period of “reconciliation.” Or at least she has never let on that she knows.
I don’t feel bad or guilty about doing it, either. It gave me a huge boost in my self esteem, and I had by far the best sex of my life. If that makes me a shitty person, then so be it.”
I Felt Trapped Financially
“I started a relationship with another man because I was angry. I nearly left my husband and actually had solid plans to move over 1000 kms away in 2015 before any affair began but my employment fell through.
I told my husband that I felt trapped financially and that I was going to have an affair instead of leaving him. He started trying to lay ‘ground rules’ for what I could and couldn’t do during my extra marital affair and I got pissed off and said ‘No, you can’t make those decisions and you can’t control this. Oh, and I’m not sneaking around’
Long story short, I started the affair in Dec last year and it’s been great, it has actually improved my marriage – believe it or not, it has been an amazing outlet for my anger and frustrations. It has taken the focus off the things that are wrong in my marriage, hasn’t fixed those problems, of course, but it has made it 1000 times easier to live with. I have found the experience to be liberating and positive. I’m grateful.
My affair partner and I have plans to end our sexual relationship in early January (after holidays) next year. He and I will always be friends.
I doubt I will ever have another affair, but I may still leave my husband in the future.”
He Refused to Believe Our Relationship was Over
“I’d fallen for someone else, that person loved me back. I tried to end my current relationship so I could be with the other person. Ex wouldn’t hear me out properly. Got very aggressive. Thank God we met in a public space with cameras. I cheated that night because he refused to accept our relationship was over until he called the next day. I reiterated I wanted it to be over, so it ended. Would never do it again. Been with the other guy for five and a half years now.”
I Didn’t Have the Backbone to End It
“It was my first relationship and I didn’t have the backbone to end it. She was far away and the girl I was really in love with confessed her feelings to me and it went from there. My girlfriend broke up with me shortly after because she wanted to travel the world, and I never told her I cheated on her. I feel bad for not telling her, but it ended l amicably and I don’t see a reason to hurt her just to ease my own guilt.”
Because She Was Too Good To Let Go
“Because I loved her and she was too good to let go. I know, that’s about the dumbest thing I could have said, but it’s true. Basically, I’m selfish and have no self control. I take what’s offered no matter the situation.
I never went out looking to cheat, but it was hand delivered to me multiple times over 2 years and with a much younger woman. I figured what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. My thought process was; take it while you can, because I’ll regret it later if I don’t. Well, I regret it alright. What I didn’t realize was that it directly impacted my behavior. I didn’t think I acted any different in our relationship during that time, but my ex did. And she gave me every opportunity to fix it. So I faked it for a bit to get the relationship back on track and then got right back at it.
My ego got in the way because, I thought she would never leave me. She left. And it was then that I felt what I’m sure she would have felt if she knew that I was cheating on her. My heart hurt so bad, I got depressed and felt lost. I still do after a year and a half. I regret it every morning i wake up. I hate myself for being so weak and shallow. I’m certain I’ll take this feeling with me to the grave. I had zero reason for cheating other than to feed my ego.
To this day I compare every woman I got out with to her, which is just another example of how stupid I was to destroy what I had.”
I’d Fallen Out of Love with Him
“He was my first boyfriend (I was a teenager). We’d been together four years and I’d fallen out of love with him, but we’d grown up together and he was my bestfriend, so the idea of losing that side of the relationship terrified me. I only cheated once, it was purely for lust, and felt awful about it afterward. So much so I’ve never, and never would, do it again. I’ve had relationships since, good and bad, and always remained faithful. It’s just not worth it.”
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