Infidelity is often the great equalizer. It considers no socioeconomic status, race, political party, age, or disability. I can't tell you why infidelity has a way of causing a pain like no other. Maybe it's because you get the knife in your gut and back at the same time. Or maybe it's because you feel like you're drowning in a capful of water. I can't say exactly but talk to any woman who's ever been cheated on and she'll tell you it's like death. Death of the perfect (or not so perfect) world you've been living in. You go through all the emotions. You curse the day he was born, blame yourself, blame the mistress, and even entertain visions of murder dancing in your head. But even after you get through the shock and work through the pain you have one question burning in your head. WHY? Why did he cheat? Why do men cheat?
Why do men cheat? I think that's a rhetorical question. Being a woman who has always related to men and unfortunately had my own experiences with cheating in past relationships, I have a few notions. But I'll save my opinions and offer you words from a man who has chosen to remain anonymous. He is very candid so if this is a sensitive subject for you, leave now. But if you're ready, read on.
"I'll tell you why I cheat. I need to. Infidelity makes me remember things. The details that expand to fill my life (my upcoming performance reviews, the aches and pains of training, the recovery of my 401(k) ) and the ones that deaden it (my guilt, my smug self-satisfaction, my fake epiphanies about my progress in this life) —all of that drops away when I look down at the naked spine of an unfamiliar woman, twisting slightly in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming onto the sheets of a Hampton Inn in some nameless suburb. This is the most absolute choice I can make. I am there on my own. Against every code, rule, and set of mores I pretend to obey. Against better judgment, against every lesson of hindsight and every shard of wisdom that comes with age, I have no regrets in that moment, because I am naked, or without pants, and I have chosen to be there. I have voted by my presence, declared it, and I feel the blood moving in me again. So it's the blood. That's who I am. That's why men cheat.
People always say men cheat because they can. It's easy to cheat, that part is true. There's so little evidence left behind. The checklists are easy —you have to wash here and there, you have to enlist the sympathy of the woman you are fucking, you have to control your time and select your venue. But by and large, infidelity is remarkably easy to hide. More often than not —more often than any man will admit —there is absolutely no consequence. So yes, that freedom exists. A man can.
But men don't cheat because they can. Men cheat because they must, because they need to. This is the male struggle. Need compels us to try again. Because copulation is not in any way about fate. It is not about two individuals destined to meet on some dark night. It's about random collisions.
If you cheat, you must believe this much: that fated love is a lie, and monogamous love a deception. If you cheat, these two sentiments are your guiding light. Doesn't mean you're incapable of love, doesn't mean you don't want what love —or even marriage —can offer. It's just a paradox. You have what you believe, and it is never the lie. You train your sentiment to fit inside the lie. Your rules fit right inside that sentiment."
For the full article, click the link: http://www.esquire.com/features/reasons-why-men-cheat-0410#ixzz1DhiPqf9S
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