{"id":72,"date":"2006-09-26T14:39:18","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T02:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/2006\/09\/26\/stop-cheating\/"},"modified":"2006-09-26T16:03:59","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T04:03:59","slug":"stop-cheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/2006\/09\/26\/stop-cheating\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Him from Cheating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love receiving emails from readers.&nbsp; Everyone has their own unique story and particular question they want answered.&nbsp; Despite the variety of situations, however, I&#39;ve noticed some of the same themes recurring.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>How do I get him to propose?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>How do I get him back?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>My man is cheating. How do I save our relationship?<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Whenever I read about a woman&#39;s heartache when she has found out that her husband\/boyfriend\/partner is cheating on her but she can&#39;t give up on him or the relationship, I feel my heart go out to her.&nbsp; Being cheated on is one of the most painful, humiliating, and heartrending experiences we can have in a relationship.&nbsp; But what should we do when it happens to us?<\/p>\n<p>My gut instinct is always to go with Greg Behrendt&#39;s advice:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;He&#39;s just not that into you if he&#39;s having sex with someone else.&quot; (<em>He&#39;s Just Not That Into You <\/em>p. 73)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If you haven&#39;t got a copy of Greg&#39;s book, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHes-Just-That-Into-Understanding%2Fdp%2F068987474X%2Fsr%3D8-2%2Fqid%3D1159234120%2Fref%3Dpd%5Fbbs%5F2%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;tag=howtobeirrest-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">He&#39;s Just Not That Into You<\/a><\/em>, I highly recommend it.&nbsp; Among Greg&#39;s other pearls of wisdom are:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;100% of guys polled said they have never accidentally slept with anyone.&quot; (p. 83)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;If something is wrong in a relationship, here&#39;s a bright, mature idea: talk about it.&nbsp; Don&#39;t let any man blame you for their infidelity.&nbsp; Ever.&quot; (p. 78)&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>For Greg, it&#39;s cut and dried.&nbsp; Even if your cheating man says that it was an accident, or that he was drunk, or that it was your fault because you weren&#39;t filling his needs, take it from Greg: those are excuses.&nbsp; Dump him and move on. You deserve better.&nbsp; You deserve someone who&#39;s into you.<\/p>\n<p>Yet for many women, Greg&#39;s response doesn&#39;t seem like a good enough answer&nbsp; When it comes to relationships, it is hard to see the situation in black and white.&nbsp; We women excel in seeing shades of gray.&nbsp; We excel in understanding someone&#39;s point of view and overlooking behaviors that should be unacceptable for the sake of our love for our imperfect man. <\/p>\n<p><em>Unless<\/em> said behavior happens to someone we care about.&nbsp; I protect my female friends fiercely.&nbsp; When they get cheated on, it&#39;s out with the jerk and in with someone who cares for her as much as I do.<\/p>\n<p>I&#39;ve seen female friends cheated on and end up <em>staying with the guy <\/em>even when the girl he was sleeping with on the side became his new girlfriend, making my friend the woman he&#39;s cheating on the new girlfriend with!<\/p>\n<p>Confusing?&nbsp; Yes.&nbsp; And when children are involved, the cheating situation becomes much more complicated.&nbsp; Greg&#39;s guide is designed for people who are dating, not married.&nbsp; What happens if your man cheats on you in the course of your marriage?&nbsp; Shouldn&#39;t you try to save your marriage for your children&#39;s sake?<\/p>\n<p>Forgive me for a diversion into evolutionary biology, but according to anthropologist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAnatomy-Love-Natural-History-Marriage%2Fdp%2F0449908976%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1159235471%2Fref%3Dpd%5Fbbs%5F1%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;tag=howtobeirrest-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">Helen Fisher<\/a>, human beings are designed to be serially monogamous, with human &quot;pair-bonds&quot; lasting only four years before they naturally end.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Because four years are necessary for a man and a woman to stay together to raise a human child to the stage where it can survive without the mother being in constant attendance.&nbsp; At that point, Fisher&#39;s theory goes, the craving for sexual variety overcomes the need to stay together.<\/p>\n<p>Infidelity has been a feature of human relationships since the dawn of time.&nbsp; Keeping a marriage together for 10, 25, even 50 years may be a fight against nature, but that doesn&#39;t mean that we&#39;re biologically driven to stray.&nbsp; Culture, environment, upbringing, and so on are equally powerful forces.&nbsp; A young person raised to value being faithful will find that he or she can easily overcome impulses to cheat because of his or her strong moral stance.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, most of us find that all we can rely on when it comes to keeping a man from cheating is the folk wisdom passed down from our grandmothers.&nbsp; One timeworn theory tells us that to keep our man from straying, all we have to do is give him unlimited:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>food<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>sex<\/strong>, and<strong><br \/> <\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>praise.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Feed him, keep your sex life active and interesting, and stroke his ego with compliments, and your man will be so over the moon that he&#39;ll never look elsewhere for companionship.<\/p>\n<p>On one level, this tried-and-true folk wisdom is good &#8211; food, sex, and praise are balms for the male spirit &#8211; but on another level it feels unfair.&nbsp; It places the entire burden for a man&#39;s fidelity on the shoulders of his partner.&nbsp; Are we as women to be responsible for keeping our men from straying?&nbsp; Aren&#39;t some men more likely to stray anyway, no matter how perfect their partner?<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I&#39;ve made my decision.&nbsp; If a man cheats on me physically or emotionally (since many affairs begin well before they reach physical intimacy), the relationship is over.&nbsp; I deserve more than that.&nbsp; As much as I may care for that person, I remind myself of what I am aiming for: the kind of love that endures over a lifetime.&nbsp; We&#39;re not a good match if his eye keeps straying.<\/p>\n<p>And I hold myself to the same standards: I <em>never <\/em>use the &quot;male attention&quot; trick to spur my partner into being jealous.&nbsp; Letting my partner know that other men are interested in me in order to keep him keen is a form of manipulation.&nbsp; It comes from insecurity, not love.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, it&#39;s up to you.&nbsp; All of us have the power to interpret infidelity in a different way.&nbsp; For one person, it may be a betrayal of the relationship.&nbsp; For another person it may be an all-too-human mistake.&nbsp; For another person it may be the ultimate form of rejection.<\/p>\n<p>But be aware that you have a choice. What will you accept?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love receiving emails from readers.&nbsp; Everyone has their own unique story and particular question they want answered.&nbsp; Despite the variety of situations, however, I&#39;ve noticed some of the same themes recurring. How do I get him to propose? How do I get him back? My man is cheating. How do I save our relationship? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,28,32,29],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cheating","tag-infidelity","tag-stop-cheating","tag-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.000relationships.com\/tomen\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}