You did it again, you cheated and now feel incredibly guilty and dickish toward your partner. Whether you keep it a secret or share it with your partner, it doesn't feel right and it's a wrong habit you'd like to get rid of. In this blog I discuss reasons for cheating and what you can do about it.
Causes of cheating
Because cheating can often have far-reaching consequences, such as divorce and a mentally damaged partner, it is important for society to know why people cheat now.
Research shows that there are a number of factors that cause you to cheat faster than another person, namely:
A lower level of being able to work effectively under difficult circumstances.
The study first examined the degree of purposefulness. Then, men were placed in a waiting room with an attractive woman. The men who had a partner and scored lower on being able to work effectively were more likely to flirt than those with a higher score of being able to work effectively. Also, those men with higher scores indicated that they had no desire to get to know another woman[1].
In addition, other causes such as:
- The ease of cheating.
- Travel for work (because that makes it easier).
- Low sense of religiosity (not really believing in god or a religion).
- You are between the ages of 40 and 60.
- You earn more as a woman than your husband (then you cheat faster as a woman).
- You feel like cheating is allowed and deserved.
- You no longer have a good connection with your partner.
- You think it's exciting.
- You are experiencing emotional pain due to an intense moment in your life (death of a loved one or the like).
- You feel like you can't count on your partner[2].
- You have power[3].
So there are both practical reasons and emotional reasons for cheating.
Quit cheating for practical reasons
Is it easy to cheat because of business travel? Or because it's easy for some other reason? While you do have a good relationship with your partner and nothing is wrong emotionally? Are you purely about the thrill and excitement?
Then hypnosis can also be very helpful in stopping cheating. In fact, this type of cheating can also be a symptom of an addiction, a sex addiction.
Under hypnosis, you then receive suggestions that make you feel very bad and dirty about cheating. You become nauseated the moment you perform cheating actions. Such as flirting with someone other than your partner or physically touching someone other than your partner in a romantic way.
This is often done with post-hypnotic suggestion. Initially, you visualize the desired behavior. You visualize how you ignore a simple opportunity to cheat and how you reject advances from people with whom you can cheat.
This can take the following form, for example:
"You're on a business trip and you're busy doing the things you need to do there. You are focused on work. After all the appointments and tasks you've had to perform, you go to your hotel. You eat something and are in your thoughts with your partner. The people around you do not interest you. You get through the evening by reading a good book, watching a movie, listening to music or exercising. You talk on the phone with your partner at home. If someone does make advances you ignore them and you feel good and strong."
Then you get the suggestion that will make you feel terrible about cheating after hypnosis. Terrible enough to actually not do it.
Quit cheating due to emotional reasons
Are there more emotional reasons at play that are causing you to cheat? If so, there are other ways to stop cheating.
Using mindfulness in your relationship
For example, if you have lost the feeling of connection with your partner and find him/her only unloving, you also often focus on the signs that may be a sign of unloving and fail to see the loving things well while they may still do.
A great way to strengthen the connection between you and your partner is by applying mindfulness in your relationship. You then focus on the here and now and start applying mindfulness together as well. For example, if you are cooking together you do this in a mindful way so that your attention is really with the togetherness and cooperation.
Being Consciously Grateful
Another way to improve your relationship is to be consciously grateful. By writing down every day 5 or as many as 10 things you are grateful for in your relationship that day, you shift your focus back to the loving things your partner does and says.
Processing an intense moment
Cheating is not a healthy way to cope with an intense moment. Losing a loved one or losing your job is terrible, and the consequences of cheating can only make it worse instead of less bad.
Hypnosis can also help you cope with an intense moment. For example, by pairing cues from your environment that remind you of the intense moment with positive things so that you are not tugged to think about the intense moment all the time.
In the process, hypnosis can also help with grief or other trauma processing.
Changing beliefs about cheating
No matter why you cheat, somewhere you have the unconscious belief that you are allowed to do so and that you can get away with it. By figuring out your beliefs and especially where it comes from, you can change them.
One way to get to the source of your beliefs and thereby change your beliefs almost immediately is regression. With regression, you go back to the last moment you felt it was okay to cheat and then to the first moment you felt that was ok. Then you start doing something with that first moment that makes you look at cheating differently and almost automatically makes you no longer feel like cheating.
Although this is a fairly mature topic, that first moment may still be one from your childhood. Perhaps someone close to you cheated and it looked to you like a relationship could withstand that.
Cheating to feel better
Cheating can also be a way to feel better about yourself. You notice that other people still "want" you, and all sorts of fine chemicals are released.
Hypnosis can also help you feel better about yourself. At least then you won't have to cheat anymore. One way to do this is by repeating hypnotic suggestions. Because you do this under hypnosis, you also feel this more to yourself and it becomes part of your identity more quickly.
These may include suggestions such as:
"I'm good."
"I'm nice and fun."
"I am sociable in my dealings."
"I'm a good partner."
"I am loyal."
These are just examples. Depending on your beliefs and reasons for cheating, a hypnosis expert can give you other suggestions.
Cheating due to separation anxiety
Another reason you may cheat is as a kind of test for your relationship. If he or she truly loves you, then it is unconditional and then you can cheat. This is a line of thought you may have with separation anxiety.
When you suffer from separation anxiety, you have a great fear that your partner will leave you. The most illogical thing about this fear is that you start seeing signs everywhere that confirm your fear and start testing whether your fear is logical or illogical. So you can then start acting very annoyed to see if your partner is leaving (and confirming your fear) or staying. If your partner stays and this doesn't stop your fear you may start being more and more annoying and thus eventually even cheating.
In this case, hypnosis also helps you overcome your fear. After all, where does that fear come from?
Your insecurities about yourself as a partner to multiple people. Your feelings about your chances of finding a new partner after this relationship can be cause of separation anxiety and past traumas in which you were abandoned.
Hypnosis can help you become more confident and process past traumas so you can stop cheating.
So stopping cheating can be done by focusing on the behaviors, the positives of your relationship and by identifying and changing your beliefs. Hypnosis can play a big role in this.
Want to learn more about what hypnosis feels like and how you too can bring people under hypnosis? Then come to a hypnosis playshop or enroll in one of our trainings. Ask about online options if that suits you better.
[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-01016-001
[2] Infidelity: Why Men and Women Cheat. (2018) Kenneth Paul Rosenberg
[3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611416252
