Why you still stay with a cheating partner
If your love has been out and about in the pub and hasn't kept their tongue to themselves, that's not exactly good news.
Because a cheating partner: you shouldn't want. Right? Well, it turns out we're all quite forgiving when it comes to infidelity. Only 18 percent of men and 14 percent of women end a relationship after their partner has cheated. But why?
This is mainly because there are many different forms of cheating and we actually don't find many variations that bad. A drunken kiss? Come on, if you've been together for 31 years, it should be okay. It's not nice, but it doesn't mean the end of your love life. A fling with someone else? As long as the partner in question feels remorse, we often forgive this too. We rationalize the behavior. We say: it's also my fault. I've let the relationship slide too. According to experts, the best chance of success after an episode of cheating is if the cheater in this case a) has only done it once (so not a five-year affair or a complete double life) and b) genuinely regrets their actions. And even if a and b are not met, we forgive en masse. We always want to see the best in people, and thus also in our partners. It's in our nature: we are quite positive. ‘It probably won't happen again.’
About 75% of men admit to having looked outside the relationship compared to 66% of women. Hard to measure, because we naturally prefer to keep our infidelity a secret. But, what makes it even more complicated... Between 18 and 25 percent of people on Tinder are in a relationship. Deliberately looking for new lust, then. And regularly and systematically cheating. The bizarre thing is that when you ask people whether cheating would mean the end of the relationship, they unanimously say yes. But when it actually happens, they find enough reasons to stay with that person.
If you still want to continue with your loved one after a bit of infidelity, experts say you should mainly do these things. First of all: work on your own relationship. And that applies to both, not just the cheater. Communicate and give the rebuilding of trust time. And please: don't doubt yourself. Never. You are great and you actually deserve someone who is always faithful. But it happens to the best of us. It happens in the best relationships. So if you want to stay with this person, swallow it and move on with your life. Make sure you are the most fun for him or her, the prettiest, funniest, sweetest, smartest – better than any ‘revenge’ whatsoever.
Source: BBC
