Why People Cheat In Relationships - Mark Manson

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The Two Big Reasons People Cheat

There are two ways this can happen. The first way is that a person is just shallow and selfish and needs to be gratified constantly. The second reason is that the relationship is failing to provide sufficient intimacy and desire.7 Let’s unpack these two reasons separately.

Reason #1: An Oversized Need for Self-Gratification

In my eyes, the definition of maturity is the ability to defer self-gratification in favor of more important long-term goals.8

You don’t masturbate at work because that would get you fired. You don’t eat chocolate cake for breakfast every morning because that would give you a heart attack by the age of 32. You don’t mainline heroin straight into your eyeballs before picking your kids up from school because, well, Jesus, do I really have to explain that one?

Sure, these things feel nice, but you have larger and more important concerns and you’re able to defer your own gratification to meet those concerns.

This is called “maturity.” It’s called “being an adult.” It’s called “not being a fuck up.”

Cheating falls under the same umbrella here. Sure, it may feel good to rub your genitals all over that beautiful stranger’s face, but a mature person is capable of stepping back and deferring their gratification in favor of a more important life-long commitment.

Self-gratifying cheaters come in two flavors: miserable over-compensators and people in power.

The miserable over-compensators are constantly focused on their own gratification because they feel so miserable about themselves that they need to make themselves feel good to cover it up all the time. Chances are that if your cheating deadbeat of an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend is a miserable over-compensator, cheating isn’t the only destructive self-gratifying behavior they pursue. They may be a heavy drinker, a hard partier, a drug user, or a social climber.

Or they may just try to take over the world.

The people in power are just that, people in high positions of power.9 They’re Genghis Khan. Or more recently, Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They are people who don’t have anyone to say “no” to them or those who don’t face any real tangible repercussions for their actions. Or in the case of Khan, a man who just slaughtered an entire province of innocent people and wanted to spend the next week having a blood orgy with all the local virgins. Knock yourself out, champ.

But these don’t just need to be people with social power. These can be people who are given complete power over the relationship, people who are shown no repercussions for their actions by their partners. Yes, you can unwittingly enable your partner to cheat on you. Which brings us to the second reason.

Reason #2: The Lack of Real Intimacy

It’s not rocket science to say that the likelihood of infidelity in a relationship is directly proportional to how miserable the relationship is.

The problem is that many people don’t recognize the misery in their own relationships. They come from a family full of miserable relationships and/or have a long history of miserable relationships, so to them, it’s not even miserable, it’s just normal.

Then they get surprised when wifey is fucking the milkman. Everything was so good, what happened?

No, it wasn’t so good buckeroo. Let me explain why.

Look, there are two relationship patterns that usually end up with somebody cheating. Both involve poor boundaries.10 And both create an illusion that “everything is great,” when really it’s a festering pile of cow shit with big red hearts painted on it.

The first situation is when one partner feels as though they “do everything” for the other partner. They take care of them, give them everything they want, and in some cases support them. The person feels like a goddamn saint and then what happens? They get cheated on.

The reason this is actually a toxic situation is that when you do everything for your partner, when you take care of all of their problems and show them that no matter what happens you will always make it better for them, you show them that there are essentially no repercussions for their actions. They lose their job because they were masturbating at the office again and you decide to support them. Then they spend the next six months loafing around on your couch while you tirelessly send out their resume for them. What makes you think they’re going to change? What makes you think they will ever stop and question their own behavior?

If you had a dog that continuously pissed on your rug and every time you just cleaned up the rug because OMIGOD I LOVE HER, why would the dog ever stop pissing on it?

That’s what happens when these people cheat on you. You’re actually surprised when you’ve been tolerating and enabling the exact behavior that led to them cheating all along. No, it’s not your “fault,” but you sure as shit weren’t helping the matter.

Believe it or not, a healthy and loving relationship requires that people say “no” to one another on occasion. It requires that each individual stands up for themselves and their needs. Because only then can two people, as self-respecting individuals, discuss what will work and what won’t work for them in a relationship.

The other situation where cheating always ends up happening is when one partner is insanely possessive and jealous.

Let me ask you this, if you were dating somebody who regularly looked through your phone without permission, demanded to know where you were at all times, got ripshit pissed off every time you went out with your friends without him/her and screamed at you until blood vessels popped in their face if you go a single day without calling or texting, why wouldn’t you cheat?11

I mean, this person is essentially treating you like you already cheated, even though you did nothing wrong. So why not cheat? It won’t get any worse.

And that’s exactly what happens. “Well, my husband yells at me every day anyway, and now that I’m with my friends and we’ve have had a few apple-tinis, I realize I haven’t been happy with him in about a year, so yeah, why don’t I kiss this cute guy hitting on me right now? He’s actually nice to me. And I’m going to get yelled at when I go home anyway. So why not?”

And boom, the milkman strikes again.

Possessive/jealous behavior communicates extreme insecurity and a lack of self-respect. How can your partner respect you if you are incapable of tolerating any sort of discomfort in the relationship whatsoever?

True, sexy confidence comes not from fighting for self-gratification, but rather from being comfortable with deferring gratification. Which brings us to…