Accurate statistics on how many people cheat in relationships are hard to find, but by looking at a wide range of studies approximately 46% of people in monogamous relationships have had affairs or cheated on their partners.
The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy’s national surveys indicate 15 percent of married women and 25 percent of married men have had extramarital affairs. When relationships without intercourse are included, the incidence rises by approximately 20 percent.
Accuracy in these statistics is a repeated problem due to the different sources and manners of the studies, and self-reporting of cheating being notoriously unreliable.
If you’ve been cheated on once, you may feel like everyone cheats and worry you are going to be cheated on again. That’s not always the case… but sometimes it is.
5 Signs He Will Cheat on You Again
1. You feel objectified more than you feel loved.
A repeat cheater’s feelings are buried and not easily accessible, their partner will feel like she is an object for his pleasure. It feels like sex- not making love. Pornography, make-believe, harmful words, sex toys, and a variety of methods to interfere with a true connection.
Sex is no longer about intimacy. It is a form of entertainment or validation. So, it is natural for you to not feel cherished or truly loved.
The opposite of this is feeling loved and cherished during sex. It means the man hears the woman’s feelings and wants to know the depth of her heart and soul. Love making is another form of communication and intimacy adds to the couple’s feelings of connection. If this connection has been lost, it is not a good sign of things to come.
2. You feel off-balance instead of feeling stable and safe.
When involved with a partner who cheats again, women have often described the feeling as if they were riding a bike along a pathway and were being pushed off continuously. Then they feel like they have to get back on the bike to find balance again. This feeling originates because of the lies and dual lives the men are leading.
The men are usually very good at hiding their outside activities, yet their mates feel something is not right. There are things that don’t add up and even without obvious facts to back up their feelings, with time, the women start to feel on alert and very sensitive to behaviors that do not make sense.
When a woman is in a relationship with a man who has either made a mistake or is in the middle of making a mistake, her intuition will go on alert to discover what is happening.
She may find her questions lead to the discovery of something going on and there are problems within the relationship that need to be addressed.
Most men want to deal with the problem if they are not compulsive cheaters. Being in a dual relationship is not comfortable, nor is lying comfortable for them. It is unpleasant to discover the affair, yet in many cases, the man is willing to correct the mistakes and make the relationship better.
3. You feel blamed when he should be taking responsibility.
As with an addiction, the addict blames their partner for their feelings and behaviors and does not take personal responsibility for any of the problems or misunderstandings.
An example of this is the woman may question a man about where he has been. He responds negatively as he blames the woman for being inquisitive, demanding, or controlling. All of a sudden the focus is on her.
In the case of a mistake, the man is usually uncomfortable with the lying and he confronts his mistake and takes responsibility. It can be unbalancing for his partner yet efforts are made to correct the behavior. Relationship counseling is definitely recommended to uncover what led to the problem and with work, the couple can recover. Often, the relationship becomes stronger with the work that takes place in the aftermath of the affair.
4. You suspect the lying and deceit go deeper than cheating.
If the man has developed a habit of lying and cheating, the woman will eventually discover and find evidence something is going on. The typical compulsive cheater spends a great deal of time gaslighting or ambushing the woman with defensiveness and attacks never allow her to see the depth of the problem.
Most likely, the man has been lying about even little things for a very long time. Having worked in a sexual addiction treatment program, my experience has been that the wife is shocked when she finds out the number of women and the length of time the cheating has taken place.
I had one woman discover one affair, only to learn her husband eventually reported seeing hundreds of women over the length of their 25-year marriage.
With a one-time affair, it feels painful and it takes work to recover but a therapist can help the couple make sense of how the mistake occurred. It can be beneficial to understand the dynamics and reasons why an affair takes place.
The affair becomes a way the man was dealing with an issue within the marriage. This is so different than an addiction to other partners. Confronting and dealing with misunderstandings, resentments, and problems in communication can help resolve the issue and return the relationship to a positive course.
5. You suspect the dysfunctional patterns within your home and relationship go deeper than cheating.
Compulsive cheaters often come from a family where cheating was prevalent with one or both of the parents. The family of origin role models behavior that endorses hiding the truth.
Whether it is in the realm of feelings, experiences, or taking personal responsibility, the families demonstrate a dishonest lifestyle. There may be such a demand for perfectionism or unrealistic expectations, that the person grows up feeling ashamed of his/her feelings, behaviors, and thoughts.
Compulsive cheating may come to form a very rigid or overly permissive childhood. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other addictions are commonplace in the history of the compulsive cheater. Inside is a very lonely and insecure person.
The one-time affair may have developed from a lack of physical, or emotional connection within the marriage but the history within their families of origin is usually more stable and allow for mistakes and learning. This kind of atmosphere leads to a better chance of recovery for the couple.
Affairs are painful and occur much more often than society would like to see happen. In the case of compulsive cheaters, recovery takes a daily commitment to honesty with himself and with others. The recovery process is much more involved and needs to go deeply into childhood causes.
Sexual addiction or compulsive cheating were estimated to be about 10% of the population and that number appears to be increasing, possibly through a more reliable way of reporting and studying this addiction and the related behaviors. But most people who cheat, even those who will cheat again and again are not sex addicts.
If a couple facing a one-time affair is willing to do the work, they have the opportunity to learn from the mistake and work towards a safe and rewarding future.
Janet Whitney, MA, LMFT has been a licensed psychotherapist since 1982. She is the author of the book and program entitled, Facing Your Fears and Following Your Dreams.
