Being Healthy Essay, Research Paper
I don’t know what hurts
more: knowing he kissed
someone else or the fact
that he didn’t do a very
good job of covering his
tracks,” says Pam, a law
student at New York
University who learned of her boyfriend’s
indiscretion from a well-meaning friend.
When she confronted her guy,
he told her he still loved her and
it was “no big thing.” Pam isn’t
so sure about that. “I thought
we were in a committed
relationship,” she says.
Infidelity comes in many forms,
from a few stolen kisses or an
e-mail romance to a full-blown
affair. But no matter how it
happens, it hurts if you’re the
one who’s been cheated on.
When it happens to you,
chances are you’ll experience a
range of emotions from anger to
hurt to “Why me?”
Your Cheatin’ Heart
Your first question is likely to be, “Why did this
happen?”
People cheat for many reasons, some of them more
hurtful than others. They may be bored with the
relationship or they may have fallen for someone
else. Or maybe they simply can’t resist temptation.
They may even be trying to make their partner
jealous.
Gender plays a role, according to David M. Buss,
Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University
of Texas at Austin and author of “The Dangerous
Passion” (Free Press, 2000). He studied the infidelity
track records of thousands of young adults and
discovered that men tend to cheat out of the desire
for sexual variety. “They go for immediate
gratification,” says Buss, “especially if the risks are
low.” For example, if they don’t think they’re going
to get caught.
Women, on the other hand, usually stray because
they are “unhappy in the relationship and are
looking to see if they can do better on the mating
market,” he says. He believes that the feminine
impulse to shop around may be a holdover from the
cave days when the men folk were often killed off
during hunts and it paid to have a backup on deck.
The only way to find out why your partner strayed
is to ask. The answer, as well as his or her
post-cheating attitude (begging your forgiveness
vs. shrugging it off) will help you sort through your
tumbled emotions and decide whether to stand by
your philandering squeeze or shout, “Next!”