SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

There’s been many SI members who return after many years to report that their wayward cheated again. And those stories are just heartbreaking.
So I am trying to understand why some cheat again. What are some reasons they might cheat again?

Because they can.

Because they want to.

Because they know how they were caught, so they think they will be able to hide it better.

Mine cheated again,after nearly 15 years. People here will say that cheaters who cheat again,didn't do the work. And I KNOW that isn't true. I'm not a fool. I know what work needed to be done. And he did it. Consistently. For years. He was truly remorseful. I know the difference between regret and remorse. He did the work. You know daddydom on here? Reading his posts are like listening to my husband. He did all of that. He said all of that.

Yet..here I am. Betrayed again.

I used to say if they did the work, and were truly remorseful, the chances of it happening again, are slim. Because that's what we are told here on SI. Yet,like me, we have so many members who return, with another dday. Members who also say the remorse was real,and the necessary work was done.

I now believe reconciliation is a huge gamble. If they did it once, they're likely to do it again. This site used to advertise Dr Phil's book. What does he say? The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. I find that to be realistic advice.

They CHOOSE to do so. That really sums it up. It is always because of their own choice and their own lack of whatever (coping, ability to talk, etc).

[This message edited by deena04 at 9:17 PM, Sunday, April 7th]

My XWH is a diagnosed covert narc. He cheated again after about 15 months, and is the reason we D. He did it because he is an entitled jerk who views women as object for him to use. He wasn't going to change, and that's why I didn't stay.

My H didn’t cheat again, but financial infidelity has been a fairly recent issue. It’s the same thought process, really. He said just two nights ago that he’ll never do that to himself again, which is what he said about cheating. He’s had an awakening of sorts about the way his brain works.

I have a friend whose husband cheated on her again several years after his first affair. I’m pretty sure they rugswept both times. She was distraught, but stayed with him because she says he’s "her person." I don’t understand the ability to see your partner in enormous pain after the first time and then stick the knife in them again - unless there’s an inherent lack of empathy, significant dysfunction, or a personality disorder.

I now believe reconciliation is a huge gamble. If they did it once, they're likely to do it again. This site used to advertise Dr Phil's book. What does he say? The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

I believe there are no guarantees that anyone will never cheat.
I believe there are those who are very unlikely to ever cheat.
I believe there are those that will cheat only if placed in the perfect situations.
I believe there are those who will cheat whenever given the chance.

Once a wayward has cheated they have already proven themselves to not be in group 2. The 100 million dollar question is where on the spectrum between 3 & 4 they are post cheating. The odds are they lean towards 4 then 3.

This is my opinion ion only a d I am not going to scour the net looking for data.

I do not believe that everyone exhas the capacity to cheat. Some people are just not wired that way. I also believe that once you have crossed the Rubicon of infidelity, that crossing it again is not as unfathomable as it once was. Although once a cheater is not absolute, it is statistically significant.

Yes, there are waywards who have done the work, but really, how many? And how many stories from BSs do we see returning years later to reveal that they have been betrayed again? R is risky business, with the odds stacked against you, IMHO.

For whatever reason, they are seeking that "high" again.

It is one of their coping mechanisms, dysfunctional though it may be, it isn't for some of is, at least not yet.

Coping with what? Whatever it happens to be that allows them to gravitate to that coping mechanism.

This is absolutely one of the hardest things with moving forward with my WH.

Do I think he will chase a woman to have another affair - NO
Do I think if we are in a good place in our marriage would he cheat again - NO
Do I think if we are in a rut and he is offered sex will he go there - very possible.

He is doing the work now and he is very remorseful but will all these years of him only looking out for number 1 and lying to get what he wants without confrontation just go away? This is a question I just can be positive of.

This is the second marriage where my husband has betrayed me in this way so I’m not convinced anyone is capable of being faithful 😢

One thing I do know is I am going to try to stay in this marriage as long as the changes WH has made so far continues and I don’t see him slipping back into ‘old’ ways. But I know there are no guarantees and he knows it will be over if I ever find out he has done it again.

It's a weakness within them, it is like a recovering alcoholic they can never take a sip or flirt with alcohol. They didn't hit rock bottom, didn't do the work and thought they could get away with one more.

I don’t understand the ability to see your partner in enormous pain after the first time and then stick the knife in them again

I am starting to think the problem is they know they will be forgiven AGAIN. They saw a very understanding spouse who suffered but showed them understanding and did not judge them. We are too good and frankly they don’t deserve it!

And they are TOO SELFISH AND SELF-CENTRED, they feel entitled.

[This message edited by Fantastic at 3:52 AM, Monday, April 8th]

I think there are 2 sets of reasons.

1) They haven't done much work on themselves. They get overconfident of their ability to reject opportunities. The wrong opportunity presents itself. They fuck up again.

2) They do a LOT of work and close up lots, but not all, of their vulnerability to cheating. Someone comes along that activates a vulnerability that they didn't know about. They fuck up again.

My hypothesis is that victims of abuse are susceptible to the 2nd reason, but that's just a hypothesis.

As a BS, I think the reasons don't matter much, IMO. The big question is, 'What am I going to do about this?' A new A years after supposedly healing (by a WS) puts us back into the go/stay dilemma.

The reasons for WS cheating are internally about them and how they feel about themselves. It’s also about patterns of behaviors and how they learned to cope with emotions over their lifetime.

In cheating they seek temporary external validations for internal emotional conflicts.

If a WS has not received therapy, AND DONE THEIR WORK with the support of said therapy - then the likelihood that they learned the deeper rooted issues behind their internal conflicts and learned different skills teaching them to look inward rather than temporarily validate outward, is (to me) well….zero. They'll probably fall into the same pattern of emotional coping, which in our case here on this site also includes cheating.

Simply going to therapy is, of course, not enough. The largest part of success in therapy is the individual doing their part in their recovery process. Some people, like my own former WS, go to therapy with an idea that the therapist will be the one to "heal them". A therapist is there as a teacher, guide, safe space, support, and encourager…they cannot do it for you.

All of that to say that a WS who has not dug deep, learned to take control over their own healing, received proper support in their healing, learned new coping mechanisms, and learned their why’s to their former coping mechanisms and their why’s to their self worth/what lead them to cheat, will likely fall back into performance mode and back to the same old patterns they had before to "problem solve" and "feel better". They will very likely cheat again. The performance can only last so long.

Because it feels good to them in the moment that they are doing it. Really good. Good enough, in the moment, in the false bubble they create that will inevitably pop, that they ignore the damage they have done before and do it again.

It's basically the same reason anyone does anything dysfunctional that they know they ought not do. It's the reason it's hard to stick to a diet if you struggle with weight. It's the reason people lose their license for speeding again and again. It's the reason addicts relapse. We have proclivities engrained in us that aren't good for us. And we "do the work" and try to change. It might feel like downplaying cheating by thinking of it as a difference of degrees between our ideal behavior and our real behavior, but that's the main thing that drives any type of repeat bad behavior. The visceral internal draw of the activity.

I am going to be pretty simple with this.

People who have affairs do it because they want to. People who truly recover do it because they want to.

I truly believe therapy can increase chances of success because a ws will learn new coping, patterns that do not serve them, encourage mindfulness, etc. but those are all just tools

But I believe for most who don’t cheat again it’s because they learned they don’t want to do it. They don’t want to be that person. Doesn’t matter who is or isn’t looking, they have felt the utter devastation of becoming someone they never wanted to be.

I am pretty sure if I did very little work, my choice for acting out wouldn’t have been cheating again. I would still be dysfunctional, but that would t be something I chose because I felt such deep pain surrounding it. It didn’t make anything better it made it all worse.

So the people who cheat again after going through all the things with the bs are good fakers- but to me have something missing in them. Impulse control issues, personality disorders (especially NPD) , the inability to feel empathy, etc. The work they did was all towards the relationship and not really their own work. They wanted the marriage enough to make a good show of it but aren’t all that personally effected by their cheating or the consequences of it.

Honestly, after my affair it was either suicide or get better. It was the rock bottom of my life. So either the person is shook enough over what they did or they aren’t. And there are many possible explanations of why that is.

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:36 PM, Monday, April 8th]

I don't think there is a one sized fits all answer. Obviously, because they want to. Some never did the work and either faked their way through it or rugswept. Others never had fidelity as a core value. Some did the work and for whatever reason, it didn't stick or they fell back into their bad habits and their shitty avoidant coping mechanisms resurfaced and they did the same slippery slope justification that likely led them to cheat in the first place (this time is different, I would never cross THAT line... blah-de-blah-de-blah).

There is no one reason imo. There are 8 billion of us on this planet and each of us is unique. Sure, we have similar components and we can make some generalized statements about being human but none of us is exactly as another.

The reasons to cheat again can maybe fit into some broad categories but the individual is the X factor and none of us can truly predict what happens next.

We can't know it and we can't control it.

What we can do is make the most honest observations we can at any given time. As importantly, we can hold ourselves to honesty as well. Denial is a helluva drug.

Then we proceed to make choices that serve us and build our own personal strength so we can handle whatever comes our way.

[This message edited by TheEnd at 7:19 PM, Monday, April 8th]

I cheated on my ex-W and GFs because I wanted to. If I found a woman attractive, I would go for it back in my cheating days. I never really felt guilty about it. Maybe I am a psychopath? I still don't know why 45+ years later.

I don’t understand the ability to see your partner in enormous pain after the first time and then stick the knife in them again

It's because they are NOT really thinking about you. For many of us, it's just extremely hard to understand. How could they not be thinking of us?

But, at that moment, we have become just inconvenience.