by Simon Cole
Cheaters aren’t born, they’re made. Are you making one out of your man? He may not be cheating. He might never cheat (some are better at committing than others). But that doesn’t mean he won’t resent you and look for love in other places. Here are 7 reasons you might be pushing your man to reassess his options.
1. You’re boring in bed
You don’t have to be a wild sex tigress with super flexibility who knows thousands of positions to be interesting in bed. You just need to know how to create an atmosphere of intimacy when you want to. Remember when you first met your man and all you had to do to get him hard was breathe on his neck? Not anymore. You go through the motions of sex but you don’t care. Your man might not be able to get a woman with a better body, but he can certainly find one who cares enough to make him feel noticed. She might be chubby but she’ll make him feel goooood. When was the last time you tried to make your man feel gooood?
2. You never give him that smile
You know, flirting? That thing you did when you first met? Flirting is a fun, sexy form of communication that you can do anywhere to remind your man that he’s your choice. Flirting is also an easy way of letting the women around you know that you keep your man interested and that they need not apply. However, judging by your behavior, you don’t really seem to care if they do try for him… do you?
3. You criticize him constantly
Do you have any idea how many orgasms you’ve missed out on because you bit your man’s head off as soon as he walked in the door over something as stupid as a carton of milk? Nobody likes to be criticized constantly. If you think your man is supposed to be perfect, you signed up for the wrong shift. He’s not perfect. He forgets, he’s lazy, he loses focus. Are you really interested in making him feel like you’re always judging him? If you do, he’ll run. He might not cheat, but he’ll certainly close himself off to you.
4. You’re a slob around the house
Now that you’ve been in relationship for awhile, you’ve decided it’s okay to dress like a colorblind hobo when you’re with your man. Is it really so much extra effort to put on a cute outfit instead of those ratty old sweatpants? Jeans and a cute t-shirt take the same amount of time to put on as your pyjama pants when you get out of the shower. You DO shower, don’t you? If you don’t have a perfume you really like, get one. He’ll memorize the scent and associate it with being near you and whatever that entails. There’s a lot of power in scent. Put it to your advantage or watch him end up with a woman who uses a nice-smelling bath soap.
5. You expect him to care about your relationship with your mother
He doesn’t. The best man in the world will smile, nod, and respond at appropriate points in conversation. But he doesn’t care. Bringing up your mother just makes you seem more like her and unless she’s a magnificent woman, you don’t want that (especially if she’s single).
6. You expect him to be on the same wavelength as you
He’s not. When you got mad at him for going out for drinks with his friends because he was supposed to instinctively know that you wanted to spend time together? That just made you look like an angry tramp. Communicate. Communicate clearly. Communicate in writing. Communicate multiple times if necessary in order to make sure he knows what you want. This doesn’t mean he’s stupid or doesn’t care about you. It means he’s probably a bit less organized than you and has a lot on his plate. Expecting him to know what you want without you clearly telling him will make your relationship feel like a series of mind games. Men cheat on women who play needless mind games.
7. You disrespect his friends
They were there before you and they’ll be there after you. Don’t blame him for his friends’ behavior. They belong in his world just as much as you do. Sure, he might have abandoned them a bit when you first met, but it’s back to real life now. He needs time with them just as he needs time with you if he wants to feel fulfillment in his life. He’s not going to leave his friends for you, but he might leave you for his friends. Don’t push.
Sure, there are many exceptions to any rule when it comes to relationships. You might do all the above and think your relationship is fine. But is it? We all want to be the exception. Why not make sure these 7 reasons don’t apply to your relationship and make it an exceptional one? I hope you do!
Simon
Image: Carlo Nicora
7 Reasons Why It’s Your Fault When He Cheats
If you do not get what you need out of one person- you will find it in another. Some call it cheating- some call it transition. Some are clean and clear about it– most are not.
Every time I come across this type of posts I do read with interest. Though the focus of every writer is to live happy in the relationship, representation is very attractive and liked here the same.
I use to write blogs and fond of reading too!
Thanks,
Sam
I have a problem with this article. None of these actions mean that someone should cheat or that it is the other partners fault that they were cheated on. If there is something wrong in a relationship that may lead someone to want to reassess their options they need to do so through communication not through hurtful actions. I also don’t think most people cheat because they are seriously considering the person they cheat with as a new partner.
Sorry to bust the party, the problem is monogamy. I think some of your points are valid but the biggest problem is the majority of animals (and we are animals) are not monogamous another recent study (http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/naturally-youre-not-monogamous–but-you-can-choose-to-be-20091127-jwvy.html)
shows the issue with this.
Yesterday a study was released about pornography, they couldn’t find a single male under 25 that had not viewed it. A study last year showed something like 1 in 5 UK males had used a prostiture, were these all single men? Unlikey.
Monogamy is not natural, I am not arguing we shouldn’t strive for it, simple that are fighting nature, and many of us lose.
I am sorry to say that, having gone through this, he’s right. I remember over and over again hearing Dr. Laura ask women the same thing when they say that their husband had gone outside the marriage: “Have you been ignoring him?”. I never listened, because I was too busy with my kids and my own crap until one day he just stopped trying. It was like a light being switched off — until it went out, I never noticed that it was there. I knew, I think, almost the moment that it happened. Was she prettier than me? No. Had a better body? Nope. Smarter. Nope. She was actually a FRIEND (with friends like that who needs enemies) who was being ignored by HER husband. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the slightly chubby, buck toothed woman who wears giant gaudy plastic jewelry and pops her gum constantly was working to take my husband away from me! For gosh sake — we have 9 children between us – what were they THINKING! Rather than jump on the whole thing, though, I set out to work on my own self and realized an awful lot of the problem rested on my own shoulders. Would I have preferred that he communicate with me rather than cheat on me? Hell, yes. But I also had to acknowledge that he was looking at the rest of his life with me and seeing nothing that made him feel good about it. It’s sad to admit this, but through my behavior, I put my myself and my children at risk.
I bought the book “The Love Dare”, and faithfully executed the daily challenges that were given. Each day, I learned something new about myself — the ways that I had been critical, disrespectful, unkind, selfish, and unloving. He was completely suspicious of my motives at first, and still determined to leave, but slowly, as I CHANGED, things began to improve. The final straw came when he fessed up to what had been going on (I could only say “I know what has been going on, and I still love you”) and then he miraculously decided to turn toward his family again.
I don’t think I have ever been in so much pain in my whole life. I don’t know that I will ever completely get over what happened (but I hope that I will). There probably isn’t an hour that goes by that I don’t have a flashback over the agony of those six months and the smallest thing can set it off — even the name of the town she lives in gives me the sweats, but I also have to say that through that pain and suffering came insight and knowledge that I don’t think that I would trade. I have undergone personal change through this experience that was long overdue, and I would love to encourage any woman out there reading this to think long and hard about how she is treating her husband. I would love to think that there was even one family out there who were rescued from the brink by hearing my story.
Ok, I’m going to tell you young women out there something that you probably do not want to hear, but it is the truth. You will never read this in Cosmo or Redbook…but I guarantee you its something that your grandmother’s generation of women understood…but your mother’s generation of women have been trying to ignore.
WOMEN MUST COMPETE FOR QUALITY MEN.
Now I’m not talking about the couch potato slobs or some knuckle dragging Neanderthal…but any guy who is good looking, clean, well-dressed…. and most certainly any man who is well-connected, high-paid, self-employed, or a business owner. If you are a fortunate woman who is married to such a man or is dating or engaged to such a man then listen very carefully to my strong suggestions. Ignore them at your own peril…they are actually very simple.
1. Lose weight
2. Lose just a little more weight
3. If you still do not look skinny then LOSE MORE WEIGHT! (I don’t care if it isn’t fair, lose the damn weight)
4. Learn how to be a secret whore behind closed doors
5. Dress well and look good any time you possibly can
6. If you must be casual then be sexy casual
7. KNOW THIS! – A woman can fake an orgasm, but a man CANNOT fake a hard on. If you want him to be aroused then YOU need to be able to arouse him.
8. KNOW THIS! – Every day… EVERY DAY…there are attractive women making eye contact with your quality man and smiling at him.
9. KNOW THIS! – A quality man is self-made, self-satisfied, and independent. He really only needs 4 things from a woman. Children, Satisfying sex, companionship, and appearances. Focus on accomplishing those 4 things.
10. KNOW THIS! – Regardless of what your magazines and college professors tell you, you need a quality man MORE than he needs you. (Not fair, but still true)
11. KNOW THIS! – If you are married to or want to marry a very wealthy man, then it is probably in your best long-term interest to ignore or accept the fact that he will probably enjoy himself with other women in addition to you. Don’t take it personally…it is no more important than having an extra dip of ice cream on his cone, or an extra serving of dessert. It is something he can easily do and will do. If he keeps coming home to you and still is having sex with you, then you can dismiss any other women as serious intrusions on your marriage or relationship.
12. What really matters is that you are the mother of his children. The only real reason men participate in civilization or marriage is so they can be certain of their offspring. A man does not really marry for love; he marries so he can be reasonably certain that a child is in fact his. He wants legitimate children.
“it is no more important than having an extra dip of ice cream on his cone, or an extra serving of dessert.”
I don’t agree with you on this one especially, Stev. Women are not mere sex objects and any man who says they are is doing so simply because he either has no concept of love or is continually shunned by the woman he’s currently with. He’s talking shit because he feels embarrassed that he’s not getting as much sex as the guys in his social group claim to.
As for losing weight, sure. If she’s 800lbs there’s going to be a mobility issue. Otherwise, it’s harsh to place all the blame for a failed relationship on a healthy woman whose thighs aren’t perfectly scrumptious. I dare say it’s wrong to place any of it there, actually.
Stev,
I’m with Simon on this one. Making rules based on what might seem to be the current reality will only drive us down and backward as a society.
If a guy has obvious commitment problems, he’d probably do best to stay out of committed relationships until he can get his act together.
Whoa! I try not to think ill of other people but if there was ever a candidate deserving of a sexually transmitted disease it would be Stev.
Things happen within relationships, including marriage. Those things are not always planned. As Boris points out, we are animals and we have the impulses of animals. Humans, having a larger brain and, for most, a conscience, should be prepared to fight such impulses. Although we are not always successful, a wife and mother of a man’s children, has a reasonable expectation to depend on her husband to not bring home a sexually transmitted disease. Sorry, Stev, but I’m not going to keep sleeping with a man when I don’t know where he’s been, who he has been with and whether he is free of disease. I might be able to recover from an instance of infidelity but not a life time of it. You say the duty of a wife is to produce her husband’s children. This means the wife must practice the fidelity you won’t promise her. I say the mother also owes her children the duty to stay healthy and live long for their sake. Those two duties don’t jibe.
Fav. quote on trophy wives: “In our society, women are repeatedly told ad nauseam, by those periodic packaged lies called women’s magazines, that it is their responsibility to deck themselves out in such a way that they ‘keep’ their man. A woman may be able to do this successfully in her twenties, and then have to work a little harder in her thirties and forties. Then, if she still buys all this foolishness, she really has to work in her fifties and sixties, because she is always competing with twenty-year-olds. If a wife treats fidelity in marriage as a prize to be obtained through competition, then somewhere, sometime, she is going to lose.” – Douglas Wilson, Her Hand in Marriage
Ok, I’ve been trying to resist making a comment but this whole thing is just sick and twisted. I mean, ‘make’ him cheat? Are you kidding me? You can’t MAKE anyone do anything. Cheating is a decision. It is a conscious decision that was made because the offender didn’t have the respect for him/herself, his/her partner, or the time and effort that has already been invested in the relationship to be open and honest.
Cheating happens because someone is too damn chicken to admit that things are not going the way they had hoped. They’re too damn chicken to stand up and say ‘hey, I’m not happy. I don’t want to work on it. I want to move on.’ Chronic cheaters, in my opinion, are not only chicken, they’re too self-centered to close one door before opening another one. Do yourself and the other person a favour by having the guts to say something.
I’ve had men tell me several times that the only time cheating is wrong is if they’re dumb enough to get caught. There’s women out there who are just as guilty of this same stupid mentality. What a load of crap! I could never in a million years look at myself in the mirror in the morning. If something’s wrong, it doesn’t matter whether the other person knows about it, it’s still wrong!
This thought that Stev and other like minded individuals have that women should become someone they’re not to please someone else is pure, 100% bullshit. If she wants to lose weight, she should do it for her, not you. What happens when, one day, she wakes up and realizes that she’s no longer happy pretending to be your sex slave/baby machine? You know what? It might not happen for 30 years, but it will happen. I’d be watching my food cause wow…that will drive someone off the deep end.
If it were me in her shoes, I’d lose the weight and divorce your ignorant ass. Why the heck would she allow herself to be looked at that way?
What makes men like Stev think that those ideals are true? It screams to me that he was spoiled horribly as a child and not disciplined near often enough. It tells me he’s lazy because, rather than making himself happy, he expects the world to revolve around him in order to make him happy. Sorry, the world no longer works that way. If you cant’ make yourself happy, how in the world do you expect someone else to do it?
Until these people grow up, get a set of balls, start communicating and acting like responsible adults, they’ll never ever have a happy relationship.
Send this post to Mrs. Woods and all of the nosey asses who cannot understand why……
Angie N. – you said “Ok, I’ve been trying to resist making a comment but this whole thing is just sick and twisted. I mean, ‘make’ him cheat? Are you kidding me? You can’t MAKE anyone do anything.”
Nowhere in the article or any posted comment did anyone say “make him cheat”. There are “make him feel noticed”, “make him feel goooood”.
It turns out your later response, here below, is a good example of projection, because it is you that has a communication issue. Communication is two way, you need to read to know what to respond to.
Just being able to type out your ramblings because your cats cannot reply to you is not a sign of a thinking person. Could it be you are a living example of this article being correct ? Only you and your cats know for sure.
“…that women should become someone they’re not to please someone else is pure, 100% bullshit.”
Angie Nikoleychuk, WOW! In other words, you think that a married woman should not treat her husband kindly because she would become someone she’s not? WOW!
If you are currently married to a man and you have children with him, the chances are good that he’s counting the days until the youngest is grown up and gone. At that point, he’ll be gone. Who can blame him?
Enjoy your (dozens of) cats!
There’s a huge difference between treating someone kindly and kissing their butts by changing their appearance, preferences, and everything about themselves purely to make them happy. When you’re dieting cause someone else told you to, when you’re not talking to certain people because he/she told you to, and are told to clean the house or have kids because someone told you to, that’s control. That’s not a relationship. That’s a slave and master.
A relationship should be about respect, honesty, trust, and honour…on both sides. No where did I once say that women should not treat their husbands kindly. Quite the opposite. I’m saying both sides need to treat each other with respect. They should communicate, and be honest.
If I have to diet because my husband told me to, stop talking to my friends because I’m told to, and watch him ‘be’ with other women, you can have your relationships. I’ll happily spend quiet days with my cat.
If I’m going to be with someone, it’s because they love me. The real me. I don’t need someone telling me how to have sex, what clothing size I should wear, when I should give him attention, and when I should clean the house. Not saying I’m never going to be a bag. Not saying he’ll never be a jerk. But, we love each other enough to talk through it and are adult enough to admit when we’ve made a mistake.
Not sure how you read ‘become someone they’re not’ and got ‘married woman should not treat her husband kindly’, but I’m thinking you have a few communication issues of your own.
Angie Nikoleychuk
aka the crazy cat lady
Oh, and if you’re ‘counting the days until the youngest one is grown up and gone’ you’re going to screw up the kids lives while you’re at it. Don’t be an idiot and ’stay in it for the kids’ cause all they’ll learn is how NOT to have a relationship.
Angie, you are my hero
so nice to see somebody with a brain and the ability to think for themselves commenting on this ridiculous article.
Not proud to admit it but I cheated on my husband, and that’s the reason we got divorced. When I admit to someone I cheated, I always followed it up with “Well, he (my husband) did this and didn’t do that, and he was a big asshole, and I was just unhappy and that’s why I did it!” I can tell you right now that that was complete and utter BS. Angie’s absolutely right – he didn’t MAKE me cheat. I was a big chickenshit who didn’t have the balls to tell my husband I wasn’t happy. He didn’t drive me into someone else’s arms, at worst he really was an asshole, but I made the decision to cheat instead of taking the honest way out. Anyone who claims they they were MADE to cheat is in BIG DENIAL and is too fearful to tell the truth .. that has nothing to do with their partner and everything to do with the person’s own cowardice.
I want to comment on Stev’s big long list and Sarah’s quote but don’t quite know how to phrase it at this time.
All I can say is that this article and the comments it raised (whether or or not I agree with them) are so interesting!!
Some of the urls on your site seem invalid. I think you should fix them
Makes me want to become a lesbian without the sex. As I get older I hate men more and more. Any day of the week I will take a good friend. I will never again be under the control of any individual. Freedom and dignity. Let these men find their playboy models and I will be happy to have absolutely nothing to do with them and I can participate in the higher energies of life. I will get to wear sweats, eat cookies and actually have a two-way conversation with a connection with someone who knows how to communicate. That is worth more to me then men who ask – where are my clean underwear, what is for dinner, why are the kids spoiled. Men who do exactly what makes them happy and make up lies for their actions and use intimadation to make you admit they are not lying. Again.. I hate men.
Being a now 24 year old woman who was separated in April after a grand whole 2 months of marriage due to my husband’s infidelity, I have to agree more with Angie & Donna.
My husband has tried to blame me for what he did. He’s also told many different versions of the truth. The real truth came out when the other girl herself wrote to me and told me what really went on, and he had to finally confess the other night. We were separated in April through August and it’s been nothing but lie after lie. He chose to do what he did… he blames the arguing but conveniently forgets the arguing occurred due to his first round of infidelity in the first year of our relationship and the violence.
So you cheaters can cheat and then blame the person who has been betrayed, but you had the choice and you chose to hurt another. How dare you blame us?
Angie,
You are the only commenter with any integrity on here. I agree whole-heartedly with you. Cheating is a narcissistic’s way of having their cake and eating it, too. If you want to solve a problem, communicate, talk, and if you can’t agree, end it.
All you people who make excuses for cheating are dishonest and a disgrace to yourselves and everyone else in your relationships. You can have an open relationship, provided both of you have that understanding, but cheating behind someone’s back is just plain pathetic.
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