Why Do We Stray?

Last week I asked around to people I know if they had ever experienced infidelity in their life, regardless of their role. 85% of people responded with a resounding yes. So, chances are you’ve either cheated, been cheated or had to live through the unfolding of an affair by a loved one. Therefore, I hope you are able to find a way to relate to this.

My first dance with infidelity occurred as a fifth grader when my stepdad introduced my younger brother and me to his ‘’friend.” Our mom was out of town on a business trip and this friend joined us for dinner at the house. Strange, I thought, when we were told to never mention anything about this friend to our mother. All our life we had been taught to never tell a lie yet here we were, being told that we must lie to our own mom.

It was a heavy burden concealing this secret from our mom, especially because we were so young. My younger brother eventually broke his allegiance to his dad by telling our mom about this friend. He had witnessed them kissing. Indeed, he was only in like second grade but even he wasn’t ignorant enough to know that friends don’t kiss – especially in the way that they did. It wasn’t long before my mom, my brother and I were living in spare bedrooms at my Grandma’s house.

Speaking of my Grandma, she had also experienced a relationship shake up from infidelity many years earlier. My Grandpa had a secretary who was initially responsible for filing papers and yielding his calls. However, her secretarial duties dramatically increased when she became his second wife.  

Through the stories told by my Grandma and being a fly on the wall to my stepdad’s affair, I felt like I had an understanding of what infidelity was. I learned it was generational, it is enough to ruin families, relationships and it’s always the man that strays. And when they do stray, they are framed to be a douchebag and they forfeit all of their rights to privacy because they become a permanent suspect of adultery – once a cheater, always a cheater.

I had a front row seat to witness how much pain an affair brings to the person being cheated on and it was not pretty. It was extremely challenging to see my mom so hurt and broken by the infidelity in her marriage. And although my grandpa’s infidelity occurred long before I was even born, I was still able to unpack the extreme betrayal it had on my Grandma, my mom and her brother, my uncle.

I despised my stepdad for the pain and suffering his actions caused and for involving me in his affair. And while I didn’t personally feel impacted by my Grandpa’s affair, I still had negative judgment towards him for cheating on my Grandma and breaking up their household. Knowing that I never wanted to cause this amount of hurt towards a woman I love or carry the shame of being labeled as a cheater, I vowed to myself that I would become the poster boy of monogamy and I that would never cheat on any girlfriend or future wife.

And then I cheated.

Not once, not twice but multiple times with multiple people over multiple years.

What had changed with my perception of infidelity? How was I able to excuse my behavior while simultaneously lead a campaign that my Stepdad and any other cheaters were brutally at fault for their adultery and should have just ended their relationships instead of their duplicity? Why could I justify my actions but call for the absolute abolishment of all other cheaters?

Esther Perel, a psychotherapist, explains my former way of thinking perfectly. If you’re thinking of having an affair, get a divorce. If you’re unhappy enough to cheat, you’re unhappy enough to leave. And if your partner has an affair, call the lawyer immediately.

I was so staunch in this belief and yet I was also a repeat offender of adultery. How contradicting.

As we move forward with this discussion, I want to make this clear – I am not making justifications for my behaviors, instead I am trying to present explanations.

How do we define cheating?

In a conversation with one of my friends, she tells me that she loves watching porn with her boyfriend. In fact, she is intrigued by knowing what he likes to watch when they are not together, and he is alone watching the raunchy cinema. However, the prospect that he is watching a live webcam girl and telling her what to do is an absolute breach of their relationship lines. But if they were together and telling the webcam girl how to act – different story.

Another one of my friends has a husband who has a lot of friends who are girls. He doesn’t lack masculinity; he is just able to relate with girls and the gender of a friend is not a threat to his monogamous relationship or his identity. But when she notices that her husband is starting to like a lot of posts by a girl on Instagram who she doesn’t know – this is cause for concern.

My friend who lives in LA and should have a frequent flyer rewards account for his attendance to gay sex parties doesn’t think twice about attending a sex party with his partner. But one weekend, my friend is out of town in San Diego and learns that his partner attended one of these LA sex parties without him. How dare he, who does he think he is – fucking CHEATER!

Jessica has been in a monogamous relationship with her boyfriend for three years. That is until her boyfriend decided that he needed a release on a business work trip back east and he books a massage with a happy ending included. How does Jessica respond? Angry, for sure. But her first instinct is not to call out the offenses of her strayed boyfriend. Instead, she reaches out to a known nemesis of her cheating boyfriend to coordinate a time for her to hook up with him. This will really send a message, she thinks. If you hurt me, I will hurt you more – watch me.

My belief is that cheating is uniquely defined by each relationship and it is important to have a blatant understanding of what your partner views as acceptable and what they consider to be crossing the line. A ‘like’ on Instagram might mean nothing to you but at the same time cause your partner to lose sleep.

Hedonic Treadmill

The hedonic treadmill is a psychological term used to describe an individual’s constant search for something better. The theory is that regardless of how much pleasure or happiness a new thing or person brings us in the present, we will inevitably return to the former state of happiness that we knew prior to obtaining these new things.

In other words, when you buy a new car, it will likely bring you a high of happiness and excitement for the first few days, weeks or maybe month. But the newfound happiness brought on by your new purchase is not sustainable and it won’t be long before you return to your former levels of happiness.

Infidelity is an absolute symptom of someone jogging on their hedonic treadmill. When we cheat, it is because we think that what we have is not adequate enough. You can even apply it to a freshman in high school cheating on an algebra test with a notecard in their pocket. The student doesn’t think their knowledge on the topic is adequate enough to exceed on the test. Maybe they haven’t put in the work to study – so it would be much easier to just lean on the external element of a cheat sheet. Similar to a husband who hasn’t put in the work on their relationship with his wife and finds fulfillment through an affair outside of their marriage.

Society has implemented a way of thinking that we can always be better, have better or do better.   Nothing is ever enough – especially in a relationship or marriage. We are brainwashed to think that our relationships are supposed to provide us with the fulfillment of all of our needs, emotionally and sexually. So, when we only have sex twice in a month instead of twice a week – there must be something more somewhere else. When she stops making me feel happy or confident, there must be someone new somewhere that will better meet these needs.

Rationalizing the Affair

The first time I cheated was a simple kiss. Yes, I had a girlfriend but at least I wasn’t married, and I definitely didn’t have kids. So, I convinced myself that while not ideal behavior, this was an excusable offense. This was nothing comparable to my earlier examples of infidelity which destroyed families.

The second time I cheated, we kissed again but this time we took our clothes off. But I had the self-control to not have sex. I was still a man who had only had sex with one person in my life, maintaining my desire for monogamy with my girlfriend of seven years.

The next time was at a strip club. I had been to many strip clubs in the past but this time the girl got a little more physical than usual. But she was a stripper – there were no emotions and in fact, I didn’t even really want to participate in these activities with her. So, I was convinced that this was definitely not cheating.

The fourth time, however, this time was different. It was purely emotional. I had never been so attracted or intrigued by a girl. At least that is the story that I told myself.

My point in sharing all of these examples is not to boast or brag about my rendezvous. It is to show you that I was constantly justifying all of my behaviors and actions. I found every excuse under the sun for why this was okay and repeatedly gave myself the get out of jail free card.

The truth is, when I fell in love with my ex-fiancé, it was also purely emotional and based off of friendship first. I guarantee you that if you spend as much time and effort on your current relationship as you do your affair, you will see an exponential improvement and lose your desire to stray all together. Practice leaning inward instead of always seeking outward.

My Opinion on Infidelity

My opinion today on infidelity is not any different as a 28-year-old than it was as my fifth-grade self when I first learned the definition of an affair. I believe that cheating on your partner is the single, most grave display of betrayal and there are very few ways that you can damage someone’s self-esteem more than by cheating on them.

But I am more able to understand infidelity now. I do not justify it, I understand it. If you commit adultery, I think you have done something very wrong – but how often do people get things wrong in life?

It all circles back to the expectations we put on people and our relationships. We expect that our girlfriends/wives/partners are supposed to provide us with everything. They are supposed to make us feel happy, comfort us when we are sad, satisfy us when we are horny and build us up all the time to the best that we can be. Having these expectations of one single person is far too much pressure and no one will ever be able to meet, let alone exceed them – and this is when we stray to someone else who temporarily can.

If you are currently cheating or involved in an affair, quit the extramarital activities and deal with your shit head on without the noise of a new girlfriend or boyfriend. If you are thinking about dipping your toes in the water with the cute girl from the office just to see “if there is something there,” my advice is to wait until you figure out that there is absolutely nothing left in your current relationship before finding what else is out there.

But most importantly, if you have been cheated on before, please know that it rarely has anything to do with you and your worth and everything to do with your partners own insecurities and internal bullshit. As someone who cheated on someone who I loved, I can promise you that it had nothing to do with her as a partner, her beauty or her worth. She was everything and more that she could have been to me, but I was internally empty and seeking fulfillment in any form, including an affair to try and fill my voids.

You are enough and someone else’s poor actions or assaults against your emotions do not reduce your worthiness.

For the record, I will never ever cheat again. Once a cheater, I do not believe always a cheater.

-Austin