Can someone explain the mindset of a cheater?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Weak. Selfish. Coward

+1. And cares about self-image or assets too much to be honest or initiate divorce instead.

+100

[Anonymous]

People cheat because they can. We want to figure it out and reason it out and try to rationalize it and make it make sense: they cheat, because they can. It is that simple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly for me it was far more primal. No real decision making process, I just reacted to an opportunity that unfolded. I’m the wife. Married for 5 years. Don’t really regret it. We’re all just animals.

This. I didn't regret it either. But to am earlier posters point, both of my parents cheated (but i did not know until after i told my parents about me). But ... Maybe it's their legacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For me it wasn’t the sex with another person that I find unforgivable. The lies I was told so they could have that side relationship is what hurts the most.

You say that But if they asked for an open marriage would you have said ok?

[Anonymous]

I am not fat but I assume it's like asking for the mindset of a fat person. Like I can relate to food, but not to that point. Assume it's that way for sex, some people like it, some love it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Weak. Selfish. Coward

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a wayward wife and can only speak to my experience. It was a gradual thing...I kept moving the goalposts and then justifying things in my head to make my choices okay. I would rewrite current and past history to make my actions fit my own narrative I created. Of course I knew what I was doing was wrong...but my brain did mental gymnastics in order to make everything "okay." I didn't want to divorce, and I convinced myself that I deserved something "extra". At first that extra was just talking online but then I found someone I "connected" with and again I created a narrative in my head that we were soul mates. Which led to meetings and PA. It's mind-boggling to me now the things I told myself to make my choices okay, because they were not. They were selfish and self-centered and hurtful and I regret each one.

Where were you chatting with people online?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For me it wasn’t the sex with another person that I find unforgivable. The lies I was told so they could have that side relationship is what hurts the most.

I have never understood this. Isn't the reason for the lie to facilitate the cheating? Could your spouse have said "I am going to shag Larla" and that would have been fine? Not trying to be rhetorical.

NP. Because the lie was the essence of the manipulation. My now exDH knew I was not open to non-monogamous sex. By lying and sleeping with someone else while continuing also to sleep with me, he manipulated me into a kind of sex I had explicitly told him I didn’t want. I felt violated. His lying and manipulation in order to sleep with other people while he was sleeping with me felt like a form of rape.

[Anonymous]

OP, I agree that sex outside of the relationship is no ok, if so too is no sex inside of the relationship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People cheat because they can. We want to figure it out and reason it out and try to rationalize it and make it make sense: they cheat, because they can. It is that simple.

Thanks for the insight, but lots of people have the opportunity to cheat but don't, so this doesn't really hold up. Everyone who cheats "can," but not everyone who "can" cheats.

[Anonymous]

Drunk one night stand cheating with a stranger, prostitutes or long-term emotionally connected physical affairs. They involve different mindsets in my opinion with the first likely being opportunity, lust and lapse of judgment, the second being sex drive, selfishness, sense of entitlement and moral character flaws and the last involving a mix of selfishness and something missing in their current relationship

[Anonymous]

There is no one size fits all. Some people cheat for pure physical pleasure, others because their current relationship is devoid of sex and intimacy. Usually a combination of both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People cheat because they can. We want to figure it out and reason it out and try to rationalize it and make it make sense: they cheat, because they can. It is that simple.

Thanks for the insight, but lots of people have the opportunity to cheat but don't, so this doesn't really hold up. Everyone who cheats "can," but not everyone who "can" cheats.

So true. Cheaters always want to pretend they "couldn't" stop themselves (like nobody would be able to) or they just stumbled into an opportunity. Neither is really true. It's just what they tell themselves to make themselves feel better. It's that mentality -- the ability to tell oneself a self-justifying story regardless of the actual reality of a situation -- that makes cheaters cheat.

After I found out about DH's cheating and confronted him, he was desperate to keep our relationship. He agreed to therapy and went with and without me. I went away for the summer to work and several perfect opportunities to cheat. He never would have found out.

I decided that wasn't the kind of person I wanted to be. I would have been justified in cheating since DH had. I knew our relationship likely wouldn't survive because I knew DH didn't have it in him to be the kind of person that doesn't cheat. I like sex a lot, so having an affair was very tempting because the cheating made what was formerly great frequent sex with DH feel gross. But, I'm not the kind of person who lies and hides and has a secret life. I'm also the kind of person who has some self-restraint. So, I didn't cheat. It is as simple as that. I have control over my body and emotions. I made a decision. I stuck with it.

Despite giving DH about 2 years to pull his shit together, he never did. But, I never cheated on him, despite numerous opportunities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Drunk one night stand cheating with a stranger, prostitutes or long-term emotionally connected physical affairs. They involve different mindsets in my opinion with the first likely being opportunity, lust and lapse of judgment, the second being sex drive, selfishness, sense of entitlement and moral character flaws and the last involving a mix of selfishness and something missing in their current relationship

Well, when the last one starts out when the spouse is being treated for cancer or they are consumed with caring for a parent with terminal cancer for 2 years and then death, that third person is the lowest scum in the world. Unable to see why somebody might be having emotional needs ...in 22 years of marriage.

[Anonymous]

I think its opportunism. I think a sense of entitlement - I want that, so why don't I just take it and I think there is denial about guilty feelings after but I am sure they exist. I remember my ex would get very quiet and sometimes even stop eating properly, like a depression set in. It was only in retrospect that I discovered these moods were directly after some of his intimate encounters with other women.

And for the record, we had plenty of fantastic sex. It was not that there was anything lacking at home. That's a very much "blame the victim" attitude.

It was that opportunities presented themselves to him and he took them.