“Should I cheat?”
Everybody in a committed relationship has probably asked themselves at one time or another, “Should I cheat?”
There are even businesses that promote cheating. There are cottage industries that promote the free expression of one’s sexual passions via liaisons with private sexual partners.
It all sounds so simple! Should I cheat or not? It can seem to be merely a personal decision.
However, the reality is quite different. When the philanderer is caught cheating, their partner and family are devastated, and often friends as well.
Cheating in relationships is not a victimless crime!
When clients have problems in their marriage and there is the thought to commit adultery, I tell them to get a divorce rather than turn to infidelity. I tell my clients, better yet, do your best to fix your broken relationship. Now I want to tell YOU why you should not cheat!
Infidelity destroys trust, security, confidence, and optimism — replacing these character traits and feelings with fear, anger, suspicion, and revenge.
Cheating and betraying your partner will likely lead to the destruction of your marriage, family, and life.
From a moral point of view, you will likely be plagued by guilt, remorse, and shame.
“Should I cheat?” NO is the clear and only answer.
7 Reasons Why You Should Not Cheat
When a partner discovers he or she has been betrayed, they will experience intense anxiety, worry, and sadness.
A cheater being discovered by his or her partner creates a relationship tsunami that destroys everything in its path.
Knowledge of the cheating will leave the betrayed partner devastated and bewildered. Recovery may take the betrayed partner years. And even once that happens, they often never regain the innocence and trust they once had.
For many betrayed people, sadly depression, anxiety, and anger become the new norm.
Should you cheat, your devastated partner will simultaneously explode and implode!
Your betrayed partner’s personality may transition into something that is entirely at odds with the way you knew him or her before they discovered your cheating.
No matter how many times you apologize, exhibit remorse, or attend therapy sessions, putting the pieces of your shattered relationship back together is at best extremely difficult, and at worst impossible.
Should you cheat and your partner find out, all hell will break loose.
Typically your betrayed partner will argue and fight with you, then cry and withdraw. This emotional volatility will occur in quick cycles that will continue for many months.
Sexual activity may come to a standstill, or it may reach a heightened necessity that will leave you bewildered. Should you cheat, it is unpredictable what will happen to your romantic life with your partner.
Regardless of what your relationship was like before your cheating became known, after having been exposed, your relationship will become infinitely worse.
If you have children, your relationship with them will also be negatively impacted.
Often, children reject the philanderer and refuse to talk to him or her or in some extreme situations, even want them out of the house.
For many cheaters, being rejected by their children comes as a complete surprise. One of the delusions of infidelity is that it is a victimless crime — which it is not.
If you cheat, your betrayed partner may want to take revenge upon you.
This can take many forms, including divorcing you, ruining your business, taking your money, telling everybody about your flawed character, shaming, and embarrassing you before others.
If you cheat, your betrayed partner may want to punish you. This means, for many individuals, no love, no sex, no care, no help, and no future good times together.
Another direction your betrayed partner may take is to cheat on you to level the playing field — to get even and teach you what it feels like to be betrayed.
If you cheat, having carried on secretly with a person outside of your legitimate relationship, and having covered your bad behavior with a great deal of lying, you will no longer be trusted or believed by your partner.
If you cheat, after you have been discovered, and should you decide to reconcile with your partner, they will likely never completely trust you, and will forever be questioning everything you do. This may drive you insane!
However, it is your fault — you are the one that cheated.
Can you blame them for forever being suspicious of whatever you do?
By cheating, you have forfeited the right to be believed — even when you are telling the truth!
And consider this: Even if your marriage or committed relationship falls apart and you take up with your paramour and make it into a committed relationship, your new relationship will also be infused with mistrust.
Since you cheated on your first partner, now your new partner thinks, “Perhaps you are going to cheat on me as well.”
Ironically, even your paramour won’t trust you!
You may be treated like a relationship pariah for the rest of your life.
Should you cheat and get caught, everyone who ever heard about your cheating will always think about you differently.
Your reputation will never be the same. You are now branded as a ‘cheater,’ and that will never change.
Most people will never say anything to you about your affair. However, their thoughts about you will always include the undeniable fact that you, so to speak, ‘stabbed your partner in the back’ and that you are not to be trusted.
If you cheated, the decision to do so was yours and yours alone.
At the very beginning of your affair, you had a choice to engage or disengage with this person outside of your legitimate relationship.
Before an affair begins, you are in control.
However, once your cheating is discovered, you are no longer in control.
Your partner will now determine your fate.
Should you divorce, you will lose money, dignity, self-determination, and a peaceful life, and you will have to deal with lawyers. Worst of all, in some cases, you will lose partial or complete access to your children.
The way divorce negatively impacts a family with children cannot be overstated.
Divorce injures family members regardless of their age or position in the family.
Infidelity is not a victimless crime.
Should you cheat, you and your partner are the obvious victims, the injured parties.
As well, your children are also injured. So too your parents, your partner’s parents, siblings, other family members, and friends.
Family and friends are hurt. They have invested in you and wish you well. It is painful for them to watch you and other loved ones in a free-fall.
Family members and friends watch you and your partner struggle with either rebuilding your relationship or ending it.
As they wait for a final decision, they suffer from stress, uncertainty, and fear, knowing that the people they love and care about are being injured and that their future may even become worse.
Regarding your children, they will feel as if their life has collapsed. Depending on their ages and how much they know will determine how far they fall and whether or not they will be able to get back up.
If you and your partner separate, the affair will impact your children for the rest of their lives.
As well, there may be some very horrible consequences that will be imposed upon innocent bystanders. For example, grandparents may no longer have access to their beloved grandchildren.
Depending on the work you do, people may be negatively impacted there as well. For example, a person having an affair with a business partner or a business associate can cause a loss of many friendly relationships with others in the business as well as the loss of monetary opportunities.
Infidelity is not a victimless crime. More people than you could imagine will be harmed should you cheat.
Think before you act on an impulse to cheat
The next time you are tempted to cheat, consider all the above before entering the path of infidelity.
Like any addiction, infidelity can become habit-forming. Once this happens, it may be almost impossible to exit.
There is a saying, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Know that this is not true!
The truth: Rarely does the cheating “Stay in Vegas” — typically, the cheating is discovered. The only question is, ‘When will you be discovered and exposed?’
Many deceptive infidelity websites like Ashley Madison falsely proclaim that cheating helps a marriage! This is a lie — infidelity, whether exposed or not, will destroy your marriage. Just ask anyone who has been down the road of adultery, and they will confirm this fact — cheating destroys relationships.
Selfishly, the many people who are promoting cheating are happy to mislead and take advantage of you. As long as they get their money, they are happy. They don’t care if you commit adultery, self-destruct, and injure everyone in your family!
Don’t allow yourself to be their fool!
Don’t let office temptation, friends temptation, neighborhood temptation, or extended family temptation to cheat on your partner get the better of you.
Infidelity can be ignited almost anywhere and in any situation. The relationship fire caused by infidelity can be very difficult to put out and for many people, impossible.
Regardless of its origins, cheating is like a cluster bomb. Once it explodes — the cheating is discovered — it kills, maims, and injures many people.
If you really cannot stand your partner, then get a divorce!
Getting divorced is far less painful than ruining your marriage or committed relationship, being branded with the scar of having been a cheater, and everyone knowing that this is the reason your family ‘fell apart.’
As well, ending a relationship properly with a formal divorce is the moral and ethical thing to do. Your partner may not like your decision, but at least it is a respectful and honest way to proceed.
However, before you call it quits, I suggest you find a caring and competent relationship professional to help you build a healthy, loving, and peaceful marriage or committed relationship.
With the right help, most relationship problems can be solved.
Almost everyone who is caught cheating regrets having done so
All of the individuals involved in an adultery crisis would jump at the opportunity to turn the clock back to before the cheating occurred and completely avoid this relationship crisis they are currently enduring.
There is nothing worse than a self-inflicted wound that could have been prevented — cheating is just such an injury!
If you are currently cheating, stop. Each day that you continue creates more risk and injury.
If you have cheated in the past, prove that experience has taught you something and never do it again.
If you have never cheated, good for you. Still, take sensible precautions to make sure you are never in a risky situation that could lead to the intentional or unintentional future betrayal of your partner and family.
Cheating has many victims, including the perpetrator.
In the moment of a fling of passion, life seems perfect.
However, as gravity never abates, so too, the weight of reality will eventually come crashing down upon the cheater. When this happens, everyone will suffer for a very long time.
In many ways, cheating is not that much different than injecting heroin: A momentary high and then the inevitable crash that leaves the depleted addict groveling in the gutter.
The best way to prevent having an affair is to avoid getting involved with a person outside your legitimate relationship.
Here is how to prevent cheating in relationships
Avoid the following activities with anyone other than your wife/girlfriend or husband/boyfriend:
- Sharing personal feelings
- Deliberate touching
- Giving gifts or money
- Going on private dates
- Private meals together
- Personal meetings while out of town
- Personal phone calls
- Text, emails, or online chats of a personal nature, etc.
- Doing favors for each other
- Secluding yourselves in a private place
Cheating in relationships is a decision
A word to the wise: Never become a cheating wife or a cheating husband. The damage to your marriage or committed relationship and the damage to your reputation can be permanent.
For some individuals, willpower alone is sufficient to resist naturally occurring impulses to step outside the bounds of fidelity — the commitment of exclusivity you made with your partner when you chose to be a couple.
Thinking that only weak or bad people stray is foolish. Infidelity is far more complex than that. There are many reasons why a person becomes a cheating wife, a cheating husband, or a cheating partner.
The reasons people cheat are complex. There is no single explanation or theory that can fully explain it. The best we can say is that philanderers are human, and humans sometimes act against their own best interests.
Rather than focusing on why a person would betray his or her partner, it is better to focus on how cheating can be prevented so innocent lives are not destroyed.
To this end, this article is dedicated.
Wishing you and your partner the very best,
Abe
The following are comments from individuals who read the above, 10 Safeguards to Prevent Infidelity:
Professional infidelity help
Often the assistance of a relationship professional who specializes in infidelity is required to help you survive infidelity.
Below are sources where you can find qualified therapists. Professionals to help you survive infidelity:
