Member-only story

Let’s Be Honest About Cheating

Susan Kelley
3 min readMar 12, 2021

--

Why Do Good People Cheat

Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash

1. It’s A Solution

Often, we struggle with our own personal happiness. You know that old familiar phrase, “it’s not you, it’s me?” That’s more true than you know when it comes to cheating. So many times, when someone turns to cheating, an affair can be a quick fix to personal unhappiness.

Seeking comfort, pleasure, or even control in the arms (and bed) of another person is an easy fix for our personal unhappiness. Sometimes, we stumble into an affair just because the other person was flattering, kind, attractive, just at the right moment, and it felt good.

2. It’s An Escape

Having a fling, not diving into a full-on relationship is a fantastic (although in the end damaging, of course) way to just get out of the mundane for a hot minute. Though it seems totally callous to the person being cheated on, in the moment, sometimes the cheater has difficulty seeing the long-term consequences if it appears to be a brief dalliance.

This kind of cheat is why we so often see the one-night stand differently than the long-term affair. Society sometimes teaches us to be more forgiving, more understanding of the “it didn’t mean anything; it was just a one-time thing” than of the covered-up romance. So good people who have one slip-up…

--

--

Susan Kelley
Susan Kelley

Written by Susan Kelley

Susan is a runner, a mom of 3 grown children, and an avid traveler. She writes about humans, and wrote a book about false accusations of sexual assault.

Responses (6)