Your cheating husband might have been influenced by past events which spurned infidelity.

3 PERSONAL INFLUENCES THAT INCREASE POTENTIAL FOR INFIDELITY

Even with the intense familial factors which can directly influence a person’s potential to be unfaithful, there is still room for personal history and influences to make an impact.

Sexual Molestation and Abuse

Promiscuous behavior following sexual molestation and abuse usually are an attempt to work through the painful experience and shame of the events which occurred. For an abused individual, shame and sensations of pleasure regarding abusive sexual experiences create ambivalence. As a result, they may think sex is bad, and can leave them feeling emotionally unsatisfied during the act. Others can seek out a “bad” person to have sex with (in most cases, someone other than the “good spouse”) and involve themselves in affairs.

Adolescent Promiscuity

Promiscuous sexual behavior in adolescent years is heightened by the feelings of excitement and spontaneity, making those experiences idealized and wonderful. The simple and pleasant sensation seeking experiences in these years are what we most want to experience and long for once we’re older and life is more complicated than we’d like it to be.

Learning Disabilities

High-risk individuals with histories of developmental disability or other shortcomings, like ADHD, for example, have also shown heightened risk of infidelity. Nobody never seems to feel they are good enough and someone always seems to be yealling at them. Life’s difficulties seem to make them especially vulnerable, and therefore cause them to seek out nurturing experiences, even when they pretend they don’t care. They are especially vulnerable to affairs when there’s trouble at home and there are members of the opposite sex who seem to pay special attention to, listen to and support them

What Type of Affair is He Having? Find Out Today!

There are different forms of infidelity and cheating. Not every affair is the same, but there are several types of affairs which can be placed into different categories.

One-Night Stands

One-night stands are usually casual, unplanned hookups. Unplanned in that the people may not have known each other prior to that night, but there’s a strong potential that one or both parties had every intention to have sex with someone.

One-night stands are believed to usually involve alcohol and substance abuse. One-night stands are not an attempt to create intimacy with someone else, but are self-serving. While they can be passionate, they’re usually emotionless. It’s not uncommon for someone to experience intense remorse after a one-night stand, once realization sinks in.

Entangled Affairs

These are more long-term forms of infidelity which attempt to fill an emotional or psychological need within the person. It may last for a year or two, and sexual activity may progress later on in the relationship and not exactly at the onset. Combination emotional-sexual affairs are a type of entangled affair.

Sexual Addiction

Inappropriate early sexual exposure is at the root of sexual addiction; it eventually becomes a form of acting out. Experts state this is an outcome of sex-obsessed culture, and the behavior is the person’s method of self-medicating feelings such as shame, anxiety and depression.

Women tend to eat their feelings while men turn to sex as a form of emotional comfort. Thus, most sex addicts tend to be men. Sex is the best anti-depressant to many, at least initially. Over time, the lack of emotional fulfillment can further depress the addict, as the void they attempt to fill becomes harder to satisfy.

People who are truly sexually addicted and desire to break free will more than likely have best results with the help of a 12-step program, like Sexaholics Anonymous, or from a psychologist.

Add-on Affairs

The add-on infidelity fills a specific void in the cheater’s life. The connection is initially platonic, and can start in the workplace or while the cheater’s engaging in a social activity that his spouse has no interest in. Common leisure activities where these relationships can happen include sports, religious worship and study and even hiking or camping.

Instead of being highly passionate and seen as emotionally charged, the emotional connection observed is moreso one of friendship. It’s not uncommon for the sex in add-on affairs to be unsatisfying; usually, it’s done for the sake of satisfying the other and can be quite infrquent in occurrence. Over time, the add-on affair robs the marriage or primary relationship of emotional intimacy and connection.

Emotional Acceptance: The Most Important Aspect of Healing from His Affair

Throughout the discovery of your lover’s affair, you may fight to resist the truth. You may refuse to believe they cheated on you, deceived you and lied to you. “How could this happen?! No, it didn’t happen… not to me, I’m too good for this!” you may think.

Emotional acceptance is an important part of recovering from an affair, or any other traumatizing situation in life. When you have emotional acceptance, you give yourself the ability to stop fighting and resisting what’s happened on an emotional level. You become less emotionally reactive and accept what’s happened without the overt, painful dramatics. Emotional acceptance aligns you with reality, allowing you to see your husband’s cheating for what it is and helping you decide what to do next.

Emotional Acceptance Is Not Passivity or Tolerance of Infidelity

A striking example of example of emotional acceptance is dealing with the death of a loved one. When someone you love dies- a dear friend or beloved pet- it’s hard to accept what happened initially. You don’t want to hear that everything will be okay and you don’t want to believe this person is dead and never coming back. You’re consumed with grief and have little-to-no control over your emotional reaction when the news first hits. The pain lives within you for a long time, but decreases its affects on your daily living over time. Eventually, while you still love and miss the person, you’re now able to fully accept and embrace their passing. At this point, you’ve stopped resisting what’s happened and emotionally accepted it.

When it comes to emotionally accepting an affair, the process will be very similar. You will have to ride it out and accept that your husband did cheat on you. You will have to accept that things in your marriage were not going as expected. You will have to accept that your cheating husband did lie to you about his sexual or emotional affair, and that he did so willingly for a period of time, in an effort to conceal his extramarital trysts.

Clearly speaking, emotional acceptance does not mean what he’s done is okay. Emotional acceptance simply allows you to find peace within the storm. Emotional acceptance is not tolerance; his cheating on you doesn’t have to be right as long as you accept it happened. When you emotionally accept a situation, you’re not rewarding poor behavior and it doesn’t stop you from making his life difficult. You don’t minimize what was done when you accept his cheating; in fact, you must see it for what it is in its full glory. And emotionally accepting your husband’s cheating does not denote passivity and mean you do nothing, but allows you to move forward with confidence in yourself to make the most of this situation.

This information was adapted from Paul Coleman’s You, Him and the Other Woman: Break the Love Triangle and Reclaim Your Marriage, Your Love, and Your Life. If this information helped you, consider purchasing Coleman’s book for more insightful information.

Getting the Affair Out in the Open

If you suspect your husband is cheating, you may be dealing with a range of emotions – anger, hurt, betrayal, confusion and disappointment – just to name a few.

If, in fact, your spouse is cheating, it could his way of dealing with a problem in your marriage OR it could be that he is a greedy, selfish womanizer who doesn’t deserve a good woman like you. Whichever is the case, you should be well-prepared when you approach him with your suspicions. Here are four tips that can help you confront and deal with your cheating man.

1. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. This may be much easier said than done. But if you let your emotions get the best of you, the situation can quickly spiral out of control. You should take the time to think about your strategy. If you are 100 percent sure that he has cheated, you should remain focused on the topic at hand and not let him change the focus of the confrontation to another subject. Don’t let his excuses dismiss your accusations. Keep your calm and present him with hard facts.

2. Develop a thick skin. Your cheating spouse may try to reverse his guilt on to you. He may try to make you feel guilty about his cheating ways. Don’t let him get the best of you. Your mate may dig deep and hit you with some low blows. He may point out how your weight gain has turned him off. He may call you incompetent at cooking, cleaning and even in the bedroom. Don’t let these things hurt your feelings. He is more than likely being defensive and using reverse psychology on you. Remember to stay focused on the matter at hand.
3. Make sure you have evidence to support your accusations. The purpose of having a record of his cheating is more for your benefit, not to prove anything to him. He may try to deny that he has cheated on you. If you have concrete evidence of his infidelity, it will be difficult for him to convince you that he did not cheat. Whenever you feel like doubting yourself, reference your log of his behavior. Staying out late with no explanation, hopping straight into the shower when he comes in and any other odd behaviors.

4. Determine whether or not you want to save your marriage. This is a very difficult decision that only you can make for yourself. No relative or friend should influence your decision. This is a decision that you may have to live with for the rest of your life and you don’t want to live with regrets. There are several factors that can help you determine whether or not your marriage is worth saving. Things can help you determine whether or not you want to stay married to your cheating spouse are: the current status of your relationship, your spouse’s personality, your willingness to forgive your cheating spouse. If you want to save your marriage after confronting your cheating husband, the best thing that you can do is to seek the advice of a marriage counselor. You will need help restoring the trust that was violated in your marriage.

This article was contributed by Anne Nichols at MarriageCounselingOnline.net, where you can find a wealth of articles offering advice in the areas of marriage and finances, maintaining a stress-free marriage after children, managing in-laws and intimacy and marriage. For more information, visit www.marriagecounselingonline.net.

Cheating Men Reveal # 1 Reason for Cheating

Neuman and Oprah discuss cheating men and sexual infidelity live.

Cheating men are assumed to have sexual affairs for strictly sexual purposes. People always assume the desire for more sex, better sex, exciting sex or just having sexual variety is all most cheating men care about. The argument that men are easily visually stimulated, and can never have enough “sex” or “women” is also a frequent justification for why men stray.  “Men are just highly sexual creatures, they can never get enough, and they always want variety,” some argue. “It’s just in their nature.”

92 % Cheating Men: “Sex Not Important!”

Despite the popularity of the explanation, this assumption couldn’t be further from the truth according to M. Gary Neuman. Neuman, author of The Truth About Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It found, through independent research, that only 8 percent of philandering husbands acted from being sexually unhappy. “This means, for 92 percent of the men cheating in the United States, it’s not about sex,” explains Neuman.

Instead, Neuman’s research, which appeared on a series of episodes on Oprah,  asserts that a whopping 48 percent of men who reported having affairs were emotionally dissatisfied. Another 32 percent cited an equal amount of sexual and emotional dissatisfaction. Overall, 59 percent of cheating men felt emotionally unhappy compared to only 29 percent who were only sexually dissatisfied. Only 12 percent of men weren’t experiencing any unhappiness, or cited reasons other than sexual or emotional dissonance.

Further substantiating their claims of emotional distress, 37 percent of cheating men reported that feeling underappreciated by their wives was a major cause of their unhappiness. Another 17 percent felt “emotionally disconnected” from their woman. These two sentiments combined account for 54 percent of the problem these men felt in regards to the emotional relationship they had with their spouse, outweighing lack of communication (11 percent), no longer sharing the same values (10 percent) and having a wife that lost her temper too often (12 percent).

Neuman remarks that issues such as emotional connection and appreciation are seen as complaints only women would have, which perpetuates “the big lie” that women are “the emotional ones, whereas men are like rocks… only needing sex to be happy.”

Cheating Men: Keep Him from Becoming One

While it’s true that men are strong, they also have egos that need to be stroked; everyone does. Most men will tell you that they don’t require you to share every mushy detail and thought you have, but they would highly appreciate it if you showed them your gratitude or nurtured them through your actions on a consistent basis. Doing things like offering your husband his favorite meal every once in a while, giving him a full body massage or a foot rub, surprising him with an afternoon devoted to his desires or simply verbalizing your appreciation for a task well done are all ways that send a message that you not only notice what he does, you acknowledge and appreciate him for it.

Taking this information, try to consider times where your partner has stepped up to the plate and handled his business, and you may not have been appreciative of his efforts. Maybe he washed the kids and put them to bed, only to be met with “Honey I’ve got a headache.” Perhaps he attempted to cook breakfast, and you laughed at his awkwardness around the kitchen. These things may not be serious to you, but you never know the affect it may have had on your partner. Make an attempt to show more gratitude in how he assists you in different things. This not only boosts the sense of connectedness between the two of you, it builds intimacy and reassures your husband that he’s good enough. Remember, for most of us – cheating men included- it’s the little things that matter. Here are three  proven strategies to prevent cheating in a relationship.