Why Spouses Cheat ‘Why do spouses cheat’ is not a question that I spent much, if any, time considering before I discovered that I had been betrayed. If the question happened to randomly float through my mind, I assumed the reasons were some of those that I had heard others come up with over the years. I had heard that one of the reasons is due to ‘falling out of love’ with one’s spouse and ‘into love’ with someone else. I had also heard that it happened after the couple had grown apart, or that it was due to a lack of needs being met. Another commonly accepted reason I had heard was that spouses cheat simply because they are bad, so they selfishly choose to make decisions based only on what is best for themselves. ‘Why do spouses cheat’ may not have been a common topic in my thought life, but the subconscious agreements that I had made with other people’s conclusions as to why they cheat created a poor environment for my heart to first understand the situation that I found myself in, and then to heal after my new reality had sunk in. During the process of sorting through the question of why Wayne had betrayed me, I discovered that the easiest lies to agree with are those which have an element of truth in them. Today, I am going to try to explain how this looked for me. Why Spouses Cheat Lie #1 - Because they fall out of love with their spouse - While there may be an element of truth to this, my previous agreement with this thought became quite a roadblock for me during the early part of my journey toward healing. I remember shortly after I confronted Wayne with my discovery, he told me that he loved me. His words felt like a slap in the face. After all, how could he love me and treat me so terribly? I remember thinking that if he had somehow convinced himself that he loved me, he clearly must not understand love at all, because his actions toward me had not been loving. It took several months for me to be able to accept the truth that his love for me had nothing to do with his acting out. Please understand, I am not saying that his acting out was loving, or somehow OK. I am simply saying that his heart and mind was not in a healthy place at that point, so he did not logically think out the consequences of his actions as to how they would affect himself or anyone who he loved. Because of his compartmental thinking he lived a double life in his heart and his head. Why Spouses Cheat Lie #2 - Because they have grown apart, due to unmet needs - Agreement with this thought also became a stumbling block on my road to recovery due to the inferred blame and shame that I felt when I came up against it. I felt guilt for not being enough, or maybe even being too much for him. It wasn’t until I learned the true reason for his acting out that I was able to shove this boulder out of my way. Why Spouses Cheat Lie #3 - Because they are just inherently bad - Once again, a previous agreement that I had made with this idea set me up for greater difficulty on my healing journey. ‘Once a cheater, always a cheater’ was a phrase I had said many times in my past. The biggest problem that this particular agreement created showed up during the reconnection phase of our journey. Believing he was bad and that he could never change made him feel unsafe. Had I not seen such a significant heart-change in him, I may not have ever learned that while his actions were bad, he was not. So why do spouses cheat? Today I have giving you three of the false reasons that I had heard and agreed with. In my next post I will share what I eventually learned was the real reason my husband cheated on me. Until then I’d like to invite you to share your thoughts with me. What are some of the reasons that you have heard spouses cheat? Have you made agreements with false ideas that are making your healing journey more difficult? Have you been able to break those agreements, and instead agree with truth? Let me know, I would love to hear your story.
