Reply to Can someone explain the mindset of a cheater?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have never understood the emotional and intellectual circumstances that compel someone to have sex with someone who is not their significant other. The part I particularly don't understand is that they obviously know that sex outside of their relationship is not ok. They know it would mean the death of their relationship or in the least create significant problems for the foreseeable future. They know the lying and sneaking and betrayal will crush and devastated their partner.

Then...why do they do it? If they are out of love with their significant other, why do they not just end the relationship or take steps to do it? Then they can freely go and find someone else.

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only a female would post this.[/quote]

Compartmentalizing isn’t usually something women are very adept at accomplishing. We compartmentalize a different way.  That’s probably why we have such a difficult time understanding it in our husbands.

One of the most life changing pieces of recovery for men is being forced to see his family as a complete part of his life. There’s no room for compartments in a marriage built on honesty, respect, and integrity. Luckily, once a man fully commits to recovery with time it becomes more and more difficult for him to compartmentalize his life.

During affairs, the unsuspecting spouses often don't know what is happening. Would it be the faithful spouse, loving father, angry husband, annoyed lover, frustrated boss, sneaky betrayer or a variety of other personas husbands use during affairs that came through the door? Their moods are continually shifting.  There are days that you wished he’d just stay at work so I didn’t have to guess what his mood would be. As a matter of fact, most people don't even recognize all the spouse's many different “sides” until after an affair is discovered. Only then do you realize that for years your spouse lived a life of dysfunction and deceit. [i]The way they were acting at the time had nothing to do with their family and everything to do with their guilt and shame over adulterous activities.[/i][/quote]

Men are generally more likely than women to be able to compartmentalize sex and intimate connections. For many men, sex is sex, and relationships are relationships, and the two do not necessarily overlap. Thus, a man who casually cheats may do so without feeling a significant degree of emotional connection to a mistress, while a woman who cheats could see things differently, with sex and emotional connection intermingled in ways that make compartmentalization more difficult.

Stated another way, when women cheat, there is usually an element of romance, intimacy, connection, or love. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to cheat to satisfy sexual urges, with fewer thoughts of intimacy. Of course, many men cheat because they feel love as well as sexual attraction for an outside partner, but many more don’t: For them, infidelity can be an opportunistic, primarily sexual action that, in their minds, does not affect their primary relationship. In fact, when asked, many such men will report that they’re very happy in their primary relationship, that they love their significant other, that their sex life is great, and that, despite their cheating, they have no intention of ending their primary relationship.

Women are less likely to operate that way. For most women, a sense of relational intimacy is every bit as important as the sex; often more important. As such, women tend to not cheat unless they feel either unhappiness in their primary relationship or an intimate connection with their extracurricular partner — and either could cause a woman to move on from her primary relationship.

Men typically do not need to be in love to enjoy sex. In fact, they don’t even need to be in like; they just have to be turned on. Generally, it’s more difficult to get a woman interested in sex because they want a deep voice AND big biceps AND a sense of humor AND a guy who listens AND a desire to have kids and fix up a house together AND a whole bunch of other stuff.

Men have less of a need to guard against the dangers of casual sex, so they have not developed this inner detective. They will sometimes cheat just for the sex, even when they are perfectly happy with their primary relationship. This is why a relationship damaged by a man’s infidelity might be more likely to survive after infidelity is uncovered, as opposed to when a woman has cheated. Men can and do cheat on a good relationship, and good relationships are worth saving. Meanwhile, women are more likely to cheat when their primary relationship is not going well, and that type of already-troubled connection might not be worth the pain and effort required to rebuild relationship trust, emotional intimacy, and long-term harmony.

Put another way, male sexual desire tends to be driven by physiological rather than psychological factors. This is why porn sites created for male users feature short scenarios focused on body parts and overt sexual acts and little else. Even porn literature for men tends to focus more on sexual acts than on relationships and feelings.[/quote]

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