Have you ever felt the urge to cheat on your partner? It’s like an uninvited voice in your mind saying, “what would happen if you slept with Chad?” or “Chuck looks great tonight; I want to eat him alive.”
You may even feel embarrassed for having these thoughts. But you don’t have to. They’re not evil; they’re here to help you.
What if these thoughts told you something important?
Every emotion has a purpose (even the weird ones). Your urge to cheat is no exception. All you have to do is listen. And what this annoying voice says can either make or break your relationship.
So listen carefully:
1. Your human needs are in danger.
Relationships exist to fulfill your needs.
Before you call me selfish, think about it. Here’s a list of needs your relationship fulfills:
- Socialization.
- Sexual needs.
- Feeling of safety.
- Feeling of being loved.
It’s no wonder you want a relationship so badly. When it’s done correctly, it checks multiple boxes at the same time. But when it’s done poorly, it leaves you with a gap. You have a relationship that should make you feel good, but it doesn’t.
That’s why you think of cheating.
Maybe your relationship simply doesn’t fulfill your needs. Maybe it makes you feel loved but doesn’t satisfy you sexually.
It doesn’t mean cheating is the right answer. But if you feel the urge to cheat, check how you fulfill these needs.
2. You don’t understand love.
What comes to your mind when you think of love? Let me guess: candlelight dinner, serenades, and amazing sex. Well, I have bad news for you.
Real-life love is not romantic at all.
When it’s done right, love is kind of boring. You get home from work, discuss what you’ll have for dinner, and maybe watch a movie together. You fall into a routine that’s nothing like what you see in the movies.
You feel the urge to cheat because you had the wrong expectations.
When you believe love is only about grand romantic gestures, you’ll feel frustrated with the routine that a calm love gives you. You’ll look for a way to fix your relationship when there’s nothing wrong in the first place.
You just had the wrong idea of what love means.
3. Your partner fails you in the most basic need.
Humans have one need that is as basic as food, but nobody knows it. You need to feel important.
In the classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie explains how humans need to feel recognized for their efforts and how this need ultimately motivates everything you do (even philanthropy).
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
What happens when your relationship doesn’t make you feel important?
When your partner fails you in this basic need, it’s no wonder you’ll want to cheat. Cheating would make you feel important in two ways. First, it gives validation because two people are in love with you. Second, it makes your partner jealous (which means they care).
Cheating makes you feel like a king.
If you constantly think of cheating, look at how your partner treats you. Do they compliment you? Do they take the time to plan nice things for you? Do they say they love you?
4. You don’t want to follow the rules.
Relationships follow one clear pattern: find one partner, marry them, stay monogamous, and have children. It has worked like this for decades, if not centuries.
Yet, nobody questions whether these rules make you happy.
Your urge to cheat might tell you that you simply don’t want to follow these rules. You want to create a different relationship, one that fulfills your needs.
You’re not the problem. You just want something different.
You see new types of relationships happening: couples who live in different apartments, open relationships, and long-distance relationships. It’s unusual to break the rules, but it can set you free.
It’s your job to create the rules of your relationship.
What you can do about it.
Now you know what your urge to cheat is telling you. What now?
I don’t have a step-by-step guide that tells you how to control your thoughts. But there are a couple of practical things you can do to make that uninvited voice shut up:
- Don’t judge yourself. You don’t control your thoughts. So don’t feel embarrassed. Instead of judging, accept them and listen to what they say.
- Do the hard work. Your urge to cheat is there for a reason, and it might not be obvious. You need to do the hard work the understand what’s behind it. What are your needs and expectations for your relationship?
- Don’t talk to your partner yet. You may think, “I want an honest relationship, so I have to tell them.” But this is not about honesty. Your partner can’t help you because they don’t control your feelings. You will only stress your relationship and not solve the problem.
- Decide what you want. When the urge to cheat is too strong, you have an important decision to make: either stay in the relationship or leave.
Your urge to cheat is not comfortable. But you can still make the best of it when you take a deep dive into yourself.
The bottom line.
Your urge to cheat doesn’t happen randomly. Every feeling has a purpose, and this is trying to tell you there’s something wrong in your relationship. That’s why there’s only one way to make that annoying voice in your head shut up for good.
You need to listen to it.
Cheating will never fix your problems (it will only make it worse). But you can’t fix your problems if you don’t know what’s wrong.
So before you take any action, take a deep dive into yourself and figure out what truly bothers you. That’s how you listen to the urge to cheat and fix your problems for good.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Azamat Zhanisov on Unsplash
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