Infidelity

Cheating

Do you ever wonder when you see a couple going about their business in the world? Wonder about their lives, their dreams, and their relationship? Are they really as happy as they seem, laughing and holding hands and moving through their lives, or is there a more deeply rooted problem, hidden from the world's eyes with their relationship? Something no one knows about. There may be several problems with any given relationship, and one of them is what will be discussed in this paper. What is it? Cheating.

Infidelity is a growing problem in today's society, and the repercussions of it usually are adverse effects on the relationship. It would probably have to be, hands down, the most devastating problem involved in a relationship, in that the hurt and pain it inflicts is much more difficult to recover from or get over. Left unchecked its enough to tear a family apart, whether the family structure is just a husband and wife, or a husband, wife, and children.

Why do some people cheat? There are probably a hundred reasons that cheaters would give you. They are 1)lonely, 2)out for revenge, 3)bored with their current partner, 4)an ex suddenly jumps back into the picture, or 5) they just give into that moment of temptation and weakness on an evening out. It is never a good thing to cheat and almost always ends up with one or both people being hurt.

In the case of Jane perhaps it's the fact that she's lonely. Her husband is rarely around, always busy on business elsewhere, and she's seeking companionship. Wanting to feel needed and loved is a powerful drive felt by humans, and at times it'll drive people to do something they'll regret later on, such as cheating on a significant other. As Leon Saul stated in his book Fidelity and Infidelity: What Makes Or Breaks A Marriage, some women "feel deprived and unloved at home and strongly desire from another what they feel the spouse does not provide". It may lead to her hanging around with other people, then another guy more and more, until they become close friends and one day it just goes too far. She never let the thought enter her mind that she'd break the pact she had with her husband. But emotions and feelings often get in the way of rational thinking, and the results can sometimes, in fact many times, be bad. Since on the whole females are more emotional than males, this excuse is more common among females than with males, though it does work both ways.

In some ways maybe this is more of a biological flaw than an actual problem Jane herself has. She still loves her husband, and would never have done anything like this if only he would be around more often but it's just the feeling of wanting love and security and protection that a man could provide. Everyone wants to feel wanted.

Or maybe Jane knows her husband is doing the same thing on his business trips. While unpacking his suitcase after getting back she catches a whiff of another woman's perfume, and in jealousy waits till he is not around and takes another man back to their house. She isn't sure if she wants to make him jealous too, maybe that way he'd repent and their marriage would be saved, but it causes her to take some sort of action. As Saul also concluded, "Jealousy, like other painful feelings, can arise as a natural reaction to sufficient external provocation; it can also be generated from within; and it can be caused by a combination of bothÐ'..." Could it be that she figures since he's experimenting and having fun she should too? The male in the relationship could also face this situation, and decide to get back at his girl in a similar way, for similar reasons. Guys are inherently very jealous creatures, and usually pretty adamant in getting back at someone who has wronged them, be it another male or a cheating spouse.

Another possible scenario is that Jack is her old boyfriend, and he coincidentally had a business trip in the town where she lives and they met up, and old feelings were rekindled. Meeting someone you once cared deeply for after a long time can lead to thinking of old times, and the resurgence of old feelings. Another possibility, though probably not very common, would be a classically conditioned response to a stimulus brought on by another person. If you are to go out with a person for an extended period of time, and are around them a lot, you start to notice little things about them, such as scent, which you don't pick up on at first. If you were to then break up, even a couple years later, if you were to be with someone who wears the same perfume or cologne as your ex did, your mind associates that smell with good times, and you start to feel a sense of remembrance and sometimes even sadness or longing. This isn't limited to smells, it could be as generic as a song you both always listened to, or a certain nickname that the person gave you that only you two understood and having someone else call you that name by coincidence. This may seem like a bit of a stretch, but it's a psychological fact that the body responds to certain stimuli it encounters.

Yet another thing that could occur, which is perhaps more common than people think, is that they've been married