Have you ever been cheated on? Who is more likely to cheat, men or women? According to the General Social Survey, men are more likely to cheat than women, with 20% of men and 13 % of women reporting having sex with someone other than their partner while still married. Aside from being male, studies show that higher education, neuroticism, and low conscientiousness increase the risk of cheating.
Cheating is when a person violates the agreement with their partner whether it’s sexual and or emotional. According to Rachel Wright, the host of The Wright Conversations: A Podcast About Sex, Relationships and Mental Health, “cheating is breaking any romantic, emotional, or intellectual agreement with someone you’re committed to romantically or emotionally.”
Let’s explore the 5 Types of Cheating:
- Sexual cheating is what most people consider as cheating. You don’t need to be in love with the person you are hooking up with, it can be casual hookups, making out or phone sex. With sexual cheating there may or may not be feelings associated with it.
- Emotional cheating or nonphysical cheating. I was guilty of emotionally cheating in the past. I wasn’t aware that I was emotionally cheating on someone when it happened. When I was engaged, my fiancée was a workaholic and didn’t have time to spend with me. I started hanging out with a friend of mine that I met in college.
My fiancée knew my friend and I were going out to dinner, bars, and went shopping together, he was just happy that I had someone there to occupy my time instead of him. My friend would drive three hours just to hang out with me and we had a great time. We talked about being intimate with each other, but we never did anything because he respected the fact that I was engaged and didn’t want to break up a relationship.
There was no doubt that we had feelings for each other, and we stopped spending time when I got married. In my opinion, emotional cheating is worst than being sexually unfaithful because a person can have an emotional bond with someone. We all have platonic friends but with emotional cheating you have the desire to be intimate.
- Romantic cheating. This happens when a person explores emotional intimacy outside the relationship. This kind of cheating is dangerous because you are emotions are involved and sex deepens the relationship for both men and women.
- Intellectual cheating. I find this kind of relationship in a workplace environment wherein a man and a woman share an intellectual connection by sharing their thinking, skills and intellectual prowess. Having an intellectual connection with someone without your partner’s knowledge is a kind of cheating.
- The last one and it’s continuously rising is cyber-cheating. The rise of social media paved the way for cyber cheating or micro cheating. The flirtations happen through social media by sending intimate texts, sexy or nude pictures. While you are not physically and emotionally cheating, you are lusting after someone online. The danger of cyber cheating is you don’t know if the other person online is real. This kind of cheating will lead to dishonesty and emotional cheating if it continuous. Although the person is not engaging in physical cheating, he or she is betraying their partner’s trust by lying or hiding about their intimate online chats. The person cheating may not even realize that they’re cheating,
it may start just as an occasional innocent banter becoming more and more as they interact with each other, before you know it, they are taking time away from their partner just to chat with someone online that they think is very interesting and attractive. It is normal for people to maintain their privacy but to be secretive shows a bigger issue around trust and cheating.
Cheating, whether it’s physical, emotional, romantic, intellectual, or cyber is devastating and traumatizing to the partner. According to Jesse Kahn, LCSW, CST, director and sex therapist at The Gender & Sexuality Therapy, there are many reasons people cheat.
There is probably something missing or unaddressed issues in their relationship(s). Other times, it doesn’t have anything to do with their relationship, it is their unresolved traumas, feeling and needs that makes them cheat. When someone cheats because of unaddressed issues in a relationship, it doesn’t mean that it’s the other partner’s fault or the partner isn’t good enough, according to Kahn, do not blame yourself because it is not your fault.
Communication is the key in a relationship. Instead of seeking to fulfill what’s missing in a relationship by straying, talk to your partner to work things out, don’t betray their trust. Trust is not gained overnight but once it’s broken, you may never get it back.
No temptation is worth losing a loving and happy relationship.
