Cheating: The psychology of keeping it in your pants.

Forgive the lack of updates again, believe it or not I am struggling to decide what I want to write about, as there have been a few things recently that I’ve wanted to hammer out a few paragraphs on, but I couldn’t decide between them.

In order to preserve my sanity I have decided to write about cheating, as in “Cheating on your spouse/partner” not sticking cards up your sleeve. As the other topics were a little heavy, even for me. And I had actually had a request to write about this from somebody, believe it or not (I do requests!)

So why do people cheat?

Well evolutionary psychology tend to reach for the low-hanging fruit on this one: It proposes that we’re “biologically hard-wired” (yes I hate that term) to either sow our seeds as broadly as possible for the XY’s, or to find the most fitting donor of genetic material to have perfect little babies for the XX’s.

I hate this.

I hate it so much, it makes me want to punch people in the face with a fist made out of salt and lemon juice.

I hate it because, yes, it is very likely these evolved impulses do feature into our collective decision making processes. And I hate it because, yes, it does make sense to the layman and it’s reasoning everyone can understand.

But I hate it the most because it takes something so very complex as the motivations for human behaviour and reduces it to animal impulses. It encourages side-stepping of any other thought regarding the motivations of these individuals. After all; they are a dirty cheater, right? Barely better then hormone fuelled monkeys, guided by their libido and nothing else, let’s all get together and hate them! Maybe we can set a time for it, perhaps 12 o’ clock? We could all join together in the euphoric bonding experience of moral superiority and shared vitriol at 12 ‘o clock-

Okay I just had to delete a paragraph there, kinda went on a bit on my own hate-rampage, but I am sure you get my gist. Psychologically speaking, abandoning your love, even temporarily to have sex with another is a pretty big deal for most people and requires much more careful analysis then “They’re just clever primates.”

Men and women both cheat, and despite their sex differences they do tend to have similar reasons, and those reasons are many and varied so I won’t go into them. Suffice to say they will often do it because their needs are not being met.

A clever fellow called Maslow constructed what he called “A hierarchy of needs” if you google it now you can likely find a picture shaped like a triangle with “Food, rest, etc..” at the bottom and “Morality, creativity, etc” at the top. That is to say the further down the triangle you go, to its foundation, the more urgent the need becomes. For example food is at the bottom, you’d probably not feel a need to feel moral if you were starving, indeed the reasoning behind many a theft of food is to offset starvation.

Sat bang in the middle of the triangle, below morality and self-esteem I might add, is the need for love and belonging. Maslow recognised that as humans we need to feel loved, and to love others, and also we need to feel we belong, the expression “Home is not a place it’s people” springs to mind, and essentially that’s it. Everyone need to feel like they are part of something, for the more intimate groups of course that is a spouse, a girlfriend or a family, but it also encompasses bigger things such as belonging to a religion, a belief or a political movement/identity.

So how does this relate to a cheater?

Well I’m sure you’ve probably cottoned on to it by now, but people often cheat because they lack a basic need, a need that Maslow categorized as more urgent then even morality or self-esteem. The need to feel love (including sexual intimacy). You go home to a spouse who belittles you, ignores you or who withholds affection from you then it’s likely you’ll fulfil that basic need elsewhere, even paying somebody to fake it just to feel human again. The need for self-esteem and morality will keep it in check for a time of course, but eventually that need will become so urgent that it supersedes the other desires.

Sorry… this isn’t as funny as my usual posts. Serious Jay is Serious.

Okay I will try and spice things up a bit…

Why are people insecure about their partners cheating?

To be blunt? Because you’re treating your partner like shit. And you know it. A person who loves you will put up with neglect and lack of love for a very long time as “Need to love another” can fulfil that human desire for a very long time. But ultimately they will reach a point where that won’t cut it anymore and you are back on single street.

That is not to say that everyone who gets cheated on deserves it, some people are just very weak willed and listen to their libido a little too closely, after all as I said at the beginning there are many reason to cheat, and some of them are as simple as “lolboner!” but I like to think that most people are a little more complex then that.

Ultimately a relationship between two people can only work if both parties want it to. And if one person is doing all the work, then only one person will be happy, usually the one who isn’t doing all the work.

Sadly, after an emotional relationship breakdown, there is nothing more comforting then hopping on the blame-train, riding it down to self-pittyville and arriving just in time for the 12 o’ clock hate against your ex. It’s cathartic and a good way of preserving your “esteem” part of your hierarchy of needs. But it’s a short term solution, and a little bit unfair on both of you.

So, back to our original question, why do people cheat?

Well as a psychologist I can tell you the short answer, it’s because people need to be loved.