Why People Cheat?

I get a few email alerts for sex columns in the Village Voice. This week the theme seems to be cheaters. Tristan Taormino wonders why so many more people cheat, rather than try out the honest open relationships of polyamory. She reports here that the one personals site specifically for the polyamorous, polymatchmaker.com, has 7,000 members. A website for married seeking married (cheaters) has over a million members.

I also get an email alert for Dan Savage's column. A woman admits to a problem with cheating. Dan asks her why she isn't upfront with new lovers, and gives a great plug for honest open relationships. He quite rightly notices her final sentence, "I just wish I could stop," and says that's something she "should definitely hash out with a shrink."

I finally started using technorati after I got some snarky attention from some sites that shall remain unnamed and unlinked here...I don't want to get their attention again. (Of course one can use technorati to find those sites that linked to mine.) I started noodling around and looked for other blogs talking about Buddhism or polyamory.


I found Polyamorously Perverse, by a guy who is refreshingly candid and articulate about his path towards (or not towards) polyamory. He is that rare man who came out to his wife as non-monogamously inclined, and proceeded to work on nurturing and repairing his marriage while convincing her how important this is to him. I've met men who've lied to me and said they're single, or that they're in an open relationship, or that they have a "don't ask don't tell" policy (wishful thinking), or have been honest with me that they are indeed looking to cheat. I have felt sad for a good many of them, because it was apparent that they felt no other way was possible. They didn't want to lose their wives, but they were incredibly unhappy in their sex life. (That is not always to be believed either.)


So it was quite refreshing to come across this thoughtful, candid, despairing man who is indeed a case in point as to why there are a million members of the cheaters site, and only 7,000 on the openly poly site. Some people just don't want to do the work it takes to nurture a relationship, whether poly or mono. No doubt I will steer cheaters there in the future.


I would say more but it's late. Thoughts on why people choose cheating when I return.