When I was five-years-old and at a birthday party my best friend ripped off more wrapping paper than allowed in pass-the-parcel and won the prize. The memory of my molten outrage at his cheating is still vivid.
We are hard-wired to detect injustice – and that surge of outrage and pain is always so much worse when the cheater was someone you had trusted. Little wonder that cheating in a relationship brings couples to the counselling room with faces ashen with rage, pain or guilt.
Words like “betrayal”,” broken trust”, “ripped off” swirl like noxious gas and threaten to suck the oxygen out of any hopes for the future.
Who cheats?
In her analysis of numerous contemporary surveys, yourtango journalist, Michelle Taglia, suggests that those most likely to cheat are: tall men, blonde women, guys who work in IT, Twitter users and the French, – with Wednesday afternoons noted as the prime time for cheaters.
In other words you can’t actually predict much about infidelity – except it is as old as time.
On a more serious note, cheaters can be self-absorbed, narcissistic and callous individuals who sacrifice their partners to a tsunami of pain and confusion. Yet I have also worked with many clients who are good people and who are deeply shocked at finding themselves in a messy and dangerous situation they hadn’t bargained on. They are often consumed with panic, sleeplessness and guilt – and are very confused.