Is cheating bad? No, but I think most people would argue that it’s just plain wrong. But if we get stuck in cheating being “wrong,” we lose the opportunity to understand what drives it.

So, why in God’s name do people cheat? What is their problem? Are they just mean, cruel narcissists?

Nope.

Are they just bad people?

Wrong again.

Cheating is a normal human behavior when a person doesn’t know to do relationships (which is most people).

Cheating is what we, human beings, do when we purchase a fantasy about relationship and then expect it to feel good all the time. When the relationship gets hard, the doorway to “cheat” opens because we are suckers for avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.

Contrary to popular belief, cheating is not for losers, and cheating isn’t done by sociopaths that are out to get us.

Cheating is done by normal people who don’t know how to articulate and express their frustrations with their current relationship and are too scared to be honest about it.

Cheating is a great release for people who are not able to sit in the hot fire of their experience when the relationship gets uncomfortable.

In other words, people who cheat seek relief from pain. Understandable, pretty much everyone is carrying around a certain amount of pain.

Little do cheaters know, that like wack-a-mole, they are exchanging one set of problems for another set.

In other words, you can run from your relationship problems, but you can’t hide.

But what the person who gets cheated on? What’s going on with them?

Victims of cheating are, nine times out of ten, in my experience, people who feel bad about themselves. In other words, cheating happens most often to people who don’t value or respect themselves.

So, what to do to get cheated on? Don’t respect or value yourself.

These same people, instead of being open to this perspective, will deny this truth and claim, “I love myself completely, I don’t know what you are talking about! He/she is just a mean jerk for cheating on me.”

Not so fast folks.

If we point the finger at them, it keeps us in the victim seat. Is that where we want to stay stuck?

If we truly respect who we are, we wouldn’t be paired with a person who cheats on us. We’d have a different set of relationship challenges.

By getting cheated on, we are being asked to value ourselves.

So, if you are a cheater, instead of cheating on someone, face your relationship problems and the part of you that is addicted to the dopamine rush of instant gratification. Or, give yourself permission to be polyamorous for a while and stop pretending that you can do monogamy.

And, for the folks who got cheated on—instead of complaining about being cheated on, see and own your part—that you value yourself only to the degree that they value you. Next, see how you being cheated on is your opportunity to value yourself way more than you do.

Got a resentment about someone cheating on you? Clear it here.

~

Author: Jayson Gaddis

Editor: Katarina Tavčar

Photo: Author’s own