Why do men cheat?

I had a sleepover at my place. You know how it is: cute girls, pillow fights, dancing, chocolates, soft toys & gossip. Well, my friends were having a conversation about how they think all men cheat. Despite the fact that one of them was single & the others in monogamous relationships, they were quite adamant, that no matter what, if you are with a guy, he is going to fall into the arms of another woman- sooner or later.

At one point they realized that this conversation is going too far, so they turned to each other saying “I mean, I don’t think MY man cheats.” One of them hesitated while saying, “I trust him, but do not trust him blindly. After all, he is A MAN!”

I took a long sip of my coffee, put down the mug, and with a resigned sigh said, “Can we please change the topic?” Although I succeeded, but at the same time I realized how cliché I sounded.

Waking up the next morning made me think about the topic that I requested to change last night. It is human nature or may be only my nature to over analyze things. I like keeping everything under my microscope before tom tomming about it.

Why do people cheat? {Since, I firmly believe that cheating has nothing to do with the gender. It’s not a guy thing!}I read somewhere, “Monogamy is a majesty worth fighting for.” If that is true, then why do people in love or in a relationship feels the need of fighting against it? Don’t get me wrong, because I know keeping up with someone in a true relationship is not as easy as burning a charcoal. Keeping those flames & spark of the relationship alive is a really tough job. Trust me!!!

However, the reasons for infidelity are too vast to represent properly.

“Hey silly, when will you stop being an early bird?” This statement of my friend brought me back to reality. I shared my thoughts with her. “Off course not ALL guys cheat” my friend said. “There is always an exception to the rule!” But as she said that, I realized the mind set of our society about men & how she truly believed that the majority of guys would cheat, in fact under the right circumstances, be unfaithful.

I decided to write something about it. I decided to explore this topic a bit and when I mention exploring; I mean asking the LION, why does he hunt? ;-) Below is the response that I loved the most. Although the response was just a few lines but as a good writer I pulled in a few thoughts of mine and tadaaaaaaaa...............!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I have tried my best to put this in the most beautiful manner for you guys. All my experiences related to this topic from the lives of people around me or may be mine, are served hot below. Infidelity or adultery has so many reasons intertwined to its depth. This post is especially for my female readers, and mind you; it came from A MAN B-)

“I was 25 when I got married, and I did not expect to be happy in my marriage. Now, 6 years later, my wife and I are one of the happiest couples I know of. A lot of this has to do with witnessing friends commit adultery. Although the outward details of my life are bound to differ from every other life, my emotional life is probably not so unusual. I am ordinary in most ways. I am ordinary in my fears and ordinary in my lusts. Although I could have made other decisions, my decisions, too, are ordinary.

I believed I wouldn't have a happy marriage because I didn't want to get married. I wanted to be a free bird. Seeing all my married friends and relatives dragging their relationships from so long, makes you feel “what the hell?” The divorce rates are rising, the breakup and link ups happening at a rocket’s speed, live in relationships, then moving out of the house to move in with someone else and people literally turning into this selfish big giants that it automatically feels you are back into the stone age- the early men’s age, where you can touch each other’s body but not PHONES.

One result of growing up in an environment like this is you lose hope; you don’t think good things will happen to you. I proposed to my wife because I thought she wanted me to. I was going away for business, and she said she wanted a ring. Several months later, she told me that I had misinterpreted her, that when she had asked me to buy her a ring, she had meant only that the city I was visiting was famous for garnet jewelry and she would've liked to have some. This part of my story is just a variation of the cliché of a man proposing because he has been given an ultimatum or maybe he just thinks “it has to happen with someone one day, why not her?”

When you have a marriage that begins this way and you have a personality like mine, there are bound to be problems. Often, in the early years of my marriage, I felt indifferent toward my wife. I once told her, “I sometimes think I don’t love you.” We were sitting at our glass-topped dinner table. My wife looked at me over the rim of her eyeglasses. After a moment, she said, “I know you do.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I see how you light up when I come into a room.” Until she told me this, I hadn’t known I smiled when I saw her.

Around this time, the first of my friends confessed his adultery. We were standing in the back of a darkened hall, watching someone give a speech. Tom* had a glass of wine in his hand, and he had come from another reception and appeared pretty buzzed. As we chatted, Tom offhandedly mentioned that he was seeing a woman on the side. She was younger than he was and engaged. I asked him where exactly they had sex. He said she worked in the hotel business and so had access to rooms.

For several weeks afterward, whenever Tom and I met, we would talk about this woman. I began building a fantasy of her in which she looked like a movie star. I googled her to try to find a picture. Imagining this woman, I started to find my own wife less attractive. My wife has very light hair on her legs. She usually shaves her legs to just above her knees. Suddenly, I started being annoyed that she didn't shave all the way up her thighs.

It was a while before I saw Tom’s wife, Lauren, after he disclosed his affair to me. Lauren has pale skin that she makes even whiter with makeup. It gives her a Kabuki appearance. Lauren, Tom, my wife, Christine, and I sat in a booth at a restaurant, and all through the meal Lauren was unpleasant. Among other things, she scolded Tom for going to the bathroom too many times. Usually I find Lauren annoying. That night, though, every time I looked at her, I felt sad. She was wearing a shawl, and this made her appear shrunken. She did not know that her husband was cheating, yet to me she looked like someone who was ill and suffering. 

When my wife and I left and were walking down a sidewalk, I put my arm around her. It is hard after you have known someone for a while to see her afresh. Sometimes when I have done something that hurts my wife so much she cries, I can suddenly see her with new eyes, suddenly see her without preconceptions. That night, having seen Lauren being harmed, I was able to look at Christine as if she were a stranger. I could see her as someone who could be hurt, someone wanting to be happy. I lifted my wife’s hand to my lips and kissed it. “I love you,” I said.

The image of Lauren in the booth that night, wrapped in a shawl, her face ashen, has become a touchstone. I think of her, and a rush of protective love for my wife floods into me. What happened that night was not just that the door into adultery got heavier, but that I began to understand how much I loved my wife.

One of the things women don’t realize is that most men live in a culture of adultery. We see it all around us. We have friends who have cheated on their wives or girlfriends. We have been on business trips where we went to strip clubs and our colleagues went into the back for something naughty. We don’t tell our partners, of course. A lot of men still operate with the idea that what gets revealed among men stays among men. 

Part of this is based on brotherhood ideas of not snitching. Part of it, however, is based on a more cynical motive: If we were to tell our partners, they would begin watching us more closely, and as most of us men keep in mind the possibility that one day we too will have an affair, to tell our partners would be to diminish this chance.

You might believe that your husband or your father or your boyfriend doesn't think this way. Researchers say that one of the strongest predictors of men who cheat and men who don’t is opportunity. This suggests that most men at least toy with committing adultery. Even if a man is committed to remaining faithful, he is affected by the adultery he sees around him. In his head, adultery becomes a secret passage out of the marriage. Promiscuity takes on the allure of adventure, of a life not lived.

                    When we are fighting with our wives or girlfriends, the prospect of adultery can come to us. When there are sexual problems, the fact that we know men who are having lots of sex outside their relationships makes these problems bother us more. The knowledge of other people’s unfaithfulness is one reason fights with our spouses can sometimes spiral out of control. As we fight, we become unhappy, and we think about the options that we are not exercising. So we blame our partners not just for what we are fighting about but also for our choice to not cheat.

Although my love for my wife had become more real to me, as had my recognition that I didn't want to be without her, I still felt not just envy when I heard of friends’ affairs but like a wimp for not making passes.

                     My friend Will, who had a teenage sweetheart, had been with his girlfriend for 10 years when we got to know each other. Will’s girlfriend is a complete package of good looks, intelligence, maturity and emotions. She had met his family and they both live together as a couple. Because Will was so bored with his same routine life and his monogamous relationship, he went out with few girls, and when he would tell me about his secret life, it sounded glamorous. He made it a routine! The many women he slept with, the world that can open up when a woman tells you her story—all this appeared part of a richer life than the one I was leading. But then Will’s girlfriend learned of his affairs and threw him out.

Suddenly, he went from living in a large, beautiful apartment to living in 1 room with bedbugs and ending up making his own food and doing his own laundry. Most of Will’s money vanished. The first time I met him after he was forced to leave home; I took him to a grocery store to buy him food. He said that he couldn't sleep, not because of the bedbugs but because he missed that warm hug and sunshine smile of his girlfriend. He said that his girlfriend had told his parents what he had done. 

My friend’s misery was my great good fortune. I talked to him every day, and I heard his problems, heard how lonely he now got on Friday and Saturday nights. While I still envied Will for his many sexual partners, I could see that there were real consequences to cheating.

          But what made me realize most poignantly that promiscuity is not some grand adventure came from seeing friends enter the world of exciting sex. My experience has been that the infidelity comes as a way of opportunity to try something new about which no one will ever know. Men get older and their lives get busy and disposable income is greater. Its appeal is that by sleeping with different women, men can delude themselves into thinking they are as charismatic as James Bond.

There is a problem with most of the people around and it is not just men. Being romantically or sexually involved with someone, when you are already in a relationship somehow separates lust from all the other illusions that mostly clothes it—if only I were with this person, I’d be different; the problem is my partner and not me. When sad or worried, I still periodically find myself thinking that if I were with someone else, my life would be better. This lie can come in a sly way. I see a young woman walking down the sidewalk and then I think about being young and then I fantasize about being with the young woman, and then I’m suddenly a young man. I confuse the fantasy of being young with being with this woman.

But I am getting better at catching myself. I can see my mind moving into delusions, and I am able to reel it back. Also, I find that the years of being married have made me happier. Sometimes when I’m waiting for my wife in a restaurant and I mistake a woman for her, I get excited and realize I’m smiling….................”

P.s. Respect and love the one you have… before it’s too late… ;-)