When a partner cheats, you assume that something is going wrong in the relationship. Other reasons are the cause more often – in the video you can see the most common triggers!
When you learn that your loved one is cheating on you, a whole world collapses. And the self-doubts are not long in coming: Why am I no longer enough for him? What is he missing from me? How do I have to be so that he is loyal to me?
Why does someone become unfaithful when they are happy in their partnership?
As a rule, it is assumed that something is wrong with the relationship if someone cheats – that he misses something crucial with the partner, that love is gone or that sex is a disaster.
Therefore, a couple who still wants to save their relationship after the breach of trust often visits a therapist to find out what the unfaithful partner is missing in the relationship and what urgently needs to change so that he is faithful in the future.
If the only problem is someone cheating …
But the American sex addiction expert Robert K. Weiss writes in Psychology Today that it is often not at all about the relationship or the betrayed partner if someone plunges into an affair. In his almost three decades as a sex therapist, he had countless clients who assured him that they loved their partner and that the relationship was wonderful – even the sex. The only problem was that they cheated on their partner and could not stop. But why are they doing this?
Three reasons why people cheat in fulfilling relationships
1) Self-exploration
The most common reason for infidelity is the desire to experience and rediscover yourself. As a result, affairs are a search for a new (or lost) identity. "For these seekers, infidelity is less a symptom of a problem than an experience that enables growth, discovery, and change."
For these people, secret sex means exploring a part of their self that they have never experienced or long suppressed. They want to escape their limitations for a short time – to feel young and carefree again, to experience themselves differently and to grow with them. When such partners cheat, they are not looking for other people, but for themselves (or at least a long ignored aspect of themselves).
2) The charm of the forbidden
Some clients said that they feel like teenagers when they have an affair. It is exciting and exciting for them to break the rules: the forbidden apple tastes twice as good.
The American sex therapist Jack Morin describes this phenomenon with the following erotic equation: Attraction + obstacle = excitement. For teenagers, crossing borders is a way to experience the self and the world. The same can apply to unfaithful adults.
3) Allow suppressed feelings
Men in particular have often been taught to suppress emotions as children. They learned not only to suffocate their grief, but also their joy. For such people, an affair is less sexual than one emotional reliefthat allows forbidden feelings.