According to The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, men and women react differently to flirting and sexual temptations. While women usually back away from flirting opportunities and focus on their relationships more as a result, men tend to find flirting engaging and harmless.
They consider it acceptable as long as it stays within their self-conceived boundaries. Every man, of course, has a different understanding of right and wrong, but generally speaking, men tend to enjoy talking to the opposite gender.
They love it because it stimulates their mind with happy hormones and makes them believe that opposite gender friendships are necessary for their contentedness.
Although there’s nothing wrong with having female friends, the truth is that there’s a lot wrong with requiring people of the opposite gender in your life to be happy. And that’s because guys who believe they need female friends for the sake of having female friends oftentimes flirt with them and inadvertently develop feelings for them.
That’s when they also start to neglect their partners’ needs and happiness and fall out of love with them.
The reason men cheat, therefore, oftentimes has nothing to do with whether men are happy in a relationship. Sure, they’re more prone to cheating if they’re in an abusive, toxic, unhealthy, and emotionally unfulfilling relationship, but cheating is inexcusable regardless of whether a person is unhappy and emotionally unfulfilled.
The incentive for flirting and cheating when a person is happy in a relationship stems from:
- poor self-esteem
- poor personal and relationship values
- underdeveloped thinking patterns
- lack of empathy, willpower, and commitment
- impulsiveness and a lack of self-control
- upbringing and issues in the family
Unhappiness, stress, physical pain, and depression can be a burden on any relationship, but a mature person who’s learned to deal with unpleasant emotions won’t cheat because of them.
He’ll know that it’s morally wrong to cheat, so he’ll distance himself from people who threaten his relationship and eliminate all relationship-damaging thoughts and doubts.
So if you want to know, “Does a happy man cheat”, the answer is yes and no. A man can cheat if he’s happy, but only if he meets someone else whom he develops feelings for, and as a result, becomes unhappy in his current relationship due to poor personal values, willpower, self-control, and a lack of commitment.
Does a happy man cheat?
The reason why happy men cheat is that they can’t distinguish friendship and kindness from romantic/sexual attraction. They think that if a girl was interested in them that she would be direct with them (just like they would), so they ignore all warning signs and continue to talk to the girl and get close to her.
They do this because they admire the girl’s attention and fail to realize that flirting and texting can cause emotional dependence.
It can make them visualize having an intimate relationship with a new person and cause them to start losing sight of their partner. This is why men that flirt slowly become certain that the new person is right for them and that their partner is not.
All they need to leave their partner at that point is an argument, a disagreement, or an opportunity to cheat
It’s not that men can’t resist the urge to flirt and cheat because they often do. But many men never learn to control their emotional cravings and don’t care that they enjoy communicating and flirting with other women.
Such men fit in the impulsive category and are not ready to be in a committed relationship with another woman. Not until they understand how texting and flirting with women outside of the relationship affects their relationship.
So to answer the question does a happy man cheat, a happy man cheats but not out of the blue. He usually cheats when he gets emotionally close to someone who makes him feel the emotions of attraction that he hasn’t felt with his partner in a long time.
Reasons men cheat
Keep in mind that if a guy wants to cheat, there’s nothing you can do to stop him from doing so. Not even if you warn him about the dangers of flirting and beg him to stay loyal to you.
Sadly, some men just can’t be persuaded against talking to other women because they consider persuading demanding and controlling and perceive it to be against their free will.
They think that telling them to stop chatting with other women is stopping them from living their life the way they deserve to live it.
Obviously, such men don’t see anything wrong with talking to exes and women who have feelings for them because they have a “me mentality.”
They think that everything revolves around them, so instead of trying to understand that their partner is hurting, they think that their partner doesn’t trust them enough.
That’s why they ofentimes get angry and tell their partners to respect their free will.
This is a common issue with closed-minded men as they worry so much about their partner’s “improper” behavior to even consider for a minute that their understanding of privacy and free will may be wrong.
The truth about privacy in a relationship though is that there is no privacy. The only privacy you’re entitled to is the privacy in the bathroom. If you think you need your own space and special rights to talk to people, you’re not in a relationship to invest in your partner.
You’re in it just for yourself.
There are many reasons why men cheat when they’re happy, but the most common reason seems to be that they ignorantly talk, chat, and meet up with friends and colleagues and gradually develop feelings for them.
I suppose this is why so many men have affairs at work. They spend so much time with a woman in the same workplace that they become extremely comfortable around her. And when they become comfortable, someone starts to flirt and the other likes it and reciprocates.
Anyway, here’s why a happy man cheats.
Other reasons men cheat is that they:
- fall into a routine and get bored in a relationship (stop watering the relationship, expressing gratitude, and making plans)
- lack intimacy, feel emotionally unfulfilled, or think that they deserve more love and respect from someone else
- lose remaining respect for their partner
- want to feel the way they did when they first started to date
- aren’t over their ex
Who is responsible for cheating?
If your ex cheated on you and left you and you think that you’re responsible for the end of your relationship, let me assure you that you’re not responsible for your ex’s actions.
The only person responsible for cheating is the cheater who’d made a conscious decision to neglect his morals and refused to resist his temptations.
This is true even if some of his deep-rooted issues aren’t his fault – if he inherited them from his parents.
While it’s true that some issues can be caused or made worse by bad parenting, it’s also true that a person who’s acquired bad traits from their parents is responsible for identifying and fixing them.
He can do that by himself or with the help of a professional. He just needs to become aware of them.
Perhaps self-awareness, emotional maturity, relationship skills, and overall self-improvement is something kids should be taught at school. It would certainly help them have healthier relationships when they grow up.
So even though we shouldn’t blame parents for making their adult children cheat, it’s safe to say that parents often have a lot to do with their kids’ cheating.
Instead of guiding their kids and teaching them how to behave, they sometimes unknowingly transfer their flaws onto them and force their kids to solve their inherited issues later in life.
Here are a few things parents are often responsible for:
Unhealthy attachment styles: Studies show that people with avoidant attachment styles are more likely to cheat because they tend to run away from commitments.
Cheating in family and traumatic experiences: Exposure to infidelity at a young age often affects a child’s perception of a healthy relationship and causes a child to develop inadequate moral values.
Mental illnesses: Some mental illnesses, such as narcissism could also cause intimacy issues and unhealthy/insufficient commitment.
Insecurity: Low self-esteem and insecurity in a relationship can also be a big issue for many couples. And that’s because people who lack confidence in their abilities oftentimes feel tempted to flirt and cheat to feel good about themselves.
High ego: People with high egos believe that they’re above others and that they deserve to be loved unconditionally. Because of their beliefs, they don’t necessarily worry that cheating will affect their partner. Instead, they often think that their partner deserves to get cheated on.
Fear of commitment: This fear is often caused by a dysfunctional relationship with the parents in early childhood and affects men later in life.
Figuring out why a happy man cheated
If you blame yourself and analyze your lackings instead of your partner’s, chances are that you’ll never find the reasons why a happy man cheated on you. You’ll probably just drive yourself crazy with all the self-degrading questions and get even more hurt.
To find the reasons why a person cheated on you, you’ll have to look at your partner’s internal lackings. You’ll have to figure out why he looked for happiness elsewhere when he seemed happy with you.
A great way to do that is to start by acknowledging that you didn’t encourage your partner to cheat. He was the one who didn’t value the relationship and his commitment to you, so ultimately, even if you weren’t the best girlfriend or wife in the world, he was still the one who chose not to communicate his concerns.
And that’s because he didn’t want to discuss his life with you and was happily talking to another woman and confiding in her behind your back.
So don’t think that your partner cheated on you just because you failed to give him what he needed. If that was true, he’d tell you his problems throughout the relationship and do his best to fix them.
If he couldn’t fix them because you wouldn’t listen to him, however, then he could always leave and spend some time on his own to reflect on the relationship.
Your (ex)partner basically needed to understand that he had a big problem when he talked to someone new and that person made him feel happier emotions than you.
If he understood this and ended his relationship with the woman before he cheated on you, he could have easily prevented the cheating. Not only that, but he could also have figured out why another person made him feel stronger emotions than you and focused on making his relationship stronger.
My ex cheated on me and left me for someone else even though he seemed happy with me
I’ve “only” been cheated on once in my life, but I can tell you that once is more than enough.
I remember my cheating experience as one of the worst days of my life. Not only did my ex cheat on me with his ex-girlfriend, but he also ghosted me and monkey-branched back to her.
The realization that I lost a friend and a person I thought I knew destroyed me. It ruined my self-esteem and my understanding of what a healthy relationship is.
I know that his actions shouldn’t have affected me the way they did, but I couldn’t help it at the time. I was emotionally invested in my ex and thought that he was happy with me.
Clearly, he wasn’t as happy as I’d hoped otherwise he wouldn’t have left me the way he did. He also wouldn’t have avoided me like the plague after the breakup. Not if he had any respect for me and himself.
One thing I learned from my relationship with my ex is that people may not always be honest with us and express how they feel. Sometimes, they just pretend to be happy and hide their true thoughts and feelings so that they don’t raise suspicion.
If they were to raise suspicion, they could make us question their happiness and commitment and make things much more difficult for them in the end.
That’s why they just pretend to be happy even though they’re not as happy as they’d like to be.
You are more than welcome to have your own opinion about cheaters and their incentives for cheating, but in my opinion, someone who cheats on you doesn’t love you even if he wants to stay with you afterward.
He wouldn’t have cheated if he cared about your well-being.
I hope this article answers the question, “Does a happy man cheat.” Let me know what you think about cheating by commenting below.
This article seems that has been wrote from me experience fir my cheated ex… so this emotional situation it’s similar to all of us
Love this article too…
Happy holidays Zan and Angelie
Thank You Angelie!
Great article, as i’m still stuck in thinking what i did wrong and why my partner left me quite suddenly. Now only that i’m a man and partner is woman…
Anyway You actually described exactly all but one thing which describes her actions, a one which i don’t currently recall, all else like You wrote about her. Of insecurity and low self-esteem i’m as sure as i can be without being professional, other than that i cannot say much.
Sudden “You don’t rule my life” explosion, almost immediate “I want to divorce” reaction, no rational talking taking wind on next day or ever thereafter. Leaving for another guy, maybe, i don’t know and much care, ghosting for a while until she finally needed something from me.
Some time ago i did little mistake and decently texted her to ask if she wants to open up the reasons for divorce purely from her point of view, without me asking anything, not commenting on anything, no nothing, i’m not allowed even to speak unless she directly addresses me to. And only for me to get better understanding of all the areas of life wherein i need to improve. To my surprise she agreed and asked when i would like to have a call, on which i told it’s up to her excluding working hours, it’s all up to her to decide.
Later we had two calls, in which i finally got some information out of her. Nothing useful in itself, more like bragging “it rains”, but something anyway. Almost her last words were that for her the major reason for divorce was that our honeymoon phase was too short and actually cut off for external reasons and she couldn’t get over it, it spoiled everything in her mind.
I was speechless, for amazement. I had no idea, not a single word about that ever before, right through all 9 years under the same roof. And that was the biggest problem for her, main reason for divorce, like not something in me or in my behavior?
To be more stunned i recalled that time, roughly our first 2 years together. In chronological order below:
– I was unemployed and slightly stressed for that first 6 months of our relationship
– My uncle, like next to my father died at the start of our relationship, suddenly and too young
– She to my place, to totally unfamiliar area and city, no job, school, friends, fully on my responsibility
– My aunts husband died, not surprise, but also major person in my life
– I found job i wanted, i kind of a created it
– Earlier mentioned aunt, like a second mom got cancer and hospitalized, me as caregiver for anything required, like paper works and bills etc.
– My boss/superior leaves for another job and i got to take his position for transition time (which never ended) and to train a new colleague to handle part of my earlier tasks
– My aunt is transferred to terminal care unit and dies after 4 months, i arrange everything, like funerals etc.
Well i though that it was rough and fast time for me and i’m lucky to survive through it without getting depressed or anything. Then i thought it was no wonder if our honeymoon phase got cut off abruptly and never quite restarted, i’m not surprised with all that that happened back then in short time. And next i thought that being just average Joe like anyone that’s quite a lot to take in in 2 years time. Plus taking responsibility, full it seems, of our honeymoon phase at the same time.
Now i got the calls, got the answers i desperately wanted and after all it seems evident that i’m responsible for our divorce because i just couldn’t handle everything required. Well i’m satisfied with those answers, that’s all i needed to know about what she thinks for a reason to our divorce 🙂