Quit cheating: help with hypnosis

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 infidelity can often have far-reaching consequences, such as divorce and a mentally scarred partner, it is important for society to understand why people cheat.

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?

Hypnosis can also be very effective in helping you stop cheating. After all, this type of cheating can also be a symptom of an addiction—specifically, 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 good way to strengthen the connection between you and your partner is by incorporating mindfulness into your relationship. You focus on the here and now and practice mindfulness together. For example, when you’re cooking together, you do so mindfully, ensuring that your attention is truly on being together and working as a team.

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 a difficult situation. The loss of a loved one or losing your job is terrible, and the consequences of cheating can only make things worse instead of better.

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

Whatever your reason for cheating, somewhere deep down you have the subconscious belief that you’re allowed to do this and that you can get away with it. By identifying your beliefs—and, more importantly, where they come from—you can change them.

One way to uncover the source of your beliefs—and thereby change them almost immediately—is regression. With regression, you go back to the last time you felt it was okay to cheat, and then to the very first time you felt that it was okay. You then work with that first moment in a way that changes your perspective on cheating, so that you almost automatically lose the desire to cheat.

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 gain more self-confidence 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.

Would you like to learn more about what hypnosis feels like and how you, too, can put people under hypnosis? Then come to a hypnosis workshop or sign up for one of our training programs. Ask about the 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