I Can’t Stop Cheating

If you’re in a love relationship and you can’t stop cheating, the first step is to consider the idea that you have an emotional problem. Plainly put, you have an underlying problem with emotional intimacy. If you can accept that you have a love life problem, with enough self-dedication, you’ll be able to change your “Psychological Love Life.” That’s your “internal love life blueprint” that unconsciously recreates the love life you will inevitably experience. The only real way to change your love life for the better, is to identify your own unique Psychological Love Life and change it.

Now there are a couple of different kinds of cheating, and one is harder to change than the other. Type 1: The most difficult kind is cheating as an addiction or compulsion. This mean you cheat because you have to. It’s just what you do when you fall in love. You don’t even have to think about it much. It always happens when you’re in love, period. The reason this is harder to cure is because there’s something about emotional intimacy that scares you and you don’t know why. By that I mean, you’re good at putting it to the side, and not thinking about it. Or you tell yourself you just haven’t found the right person yet.

Like any other addiction, you won’t make any headway changing yourself until you can stop cheating, at least temporarily. Take a break, because you now know cheating, as a compulsive activity, is unhealthy and will ruin your love life. Chances are you’ll be alone, older, and still trying to cheat, if you don’t. When you take a break from cheating, and dedicate yourself to changing your Psychological Love Life, the temporary absence of cheating as a defensive distraction away from your emotional intimacy problem, will permit your relevant personal issues to emerge into your consciousness so you can work on them.

Once conscious, you can start to figure out what all the running away from emotional intimacy is about in your love life. You might find out that at one point or another in your life, starting at the beginning of your life, you’ve experienced some kind of unresolved hurt in love that keeps you from ever needing somebody again in such a vulnerable way. Keeping love relationships superficially intimate, focused on attraction instead of relationship, and with several people at a time, is an effective way of trying to “avoid” additional anticipated hurt.

Also, consider the possibility that you may have learned that cheating is part of a person’s love life in adulthood. Perhaps that was  taught to you by a parent or somebody else you looked up to when you were younger. This kind of learning, especially if it’s unknown to you, can strongly reinforce the compulsive need to keep this defensive habit going, no matter what.

Type 2: Then there is cheating because you are not getting what you “need” from someone you are in a love relationship with. Cheating being the easiest way not to solve the problem of emotional intimacy by burying your resentment and adding another person to your love life. Now this kind of cheating, called infidelity when you’re married, always occurs in the context of a particular, supposedly committed, love relationship. It exists because of an unresolved relationship or marital problem.

In most instances of this type of cheating, the person you are in a love relationship is loved by you, with no intention of being “laid off” by you, so to speak. Without really thinking about it, you simply feel you can’t solve your relationship problem in any other way. Of course, your relationship problem can exist in many different forms: less sex than you feel you should get or need (a common reason among male cheaters), a feeling of not being loved (a common reason among female cheaters), etc.

It’s also common for this kind of cheating to produce what I like to call unhealthy “love triangles.” Example, a committed man and two women, one being his wife. Or a committed woman and two men, one being her husband. Apart from all the emotional pain this limited love triangle will produce, it will never solve the original emotional intimacy problem that continues to exist.

Lastly, the “cure” for this type of cheating can be difficult for most Type 2 cheaters. It requires open admission of cheating to a partner, then a motivated effort to solve the emotional intimacy problem with your love partner in or out of couple therapy. By the way, the admission of cheating is important, and understandably most people try to get around it. By removing the secrecy, it puts the decision to stay or leave the relationship evenly in two people’s hands. If you tell your love partner you’ve been cheating on him or her, and sincerely want to work on your relationship with him or her, taking the risk to admit the reality, gets you started on the road to recovery. The rest depends on whether or not your partner decides to risk staying in a love relationship with someone who has already lied and is promising not to lie again.

Comments? Tell me about your love life experience…

Dr. Thomas Jordan, clinical psychologist, interpersonal psychoanalyst, author of Learn to Love: Guide to Healing Your Disappointing Love Life. Telehealth Love Life Consultations are available. They’re strictly confidential and convenient. Contact me at 212-875-0154 or drtomjordan@lovelifelearningcenter.com       for details.