Have you ever wondered what makes cheating spouses cheat in the first place?

They certainly didn’t get married with the intention of being unfaithful to their spouse, so why did they do it?

Many so-called infidelity experts online will get you focused on finding solid PROOF that will expose your spouse or catch them in the act.

But instead of putting all your effort in finding proof of adultery, your energy could be better spent first understanding what went wrong with the two of you in the first place.

It’s fairly common for chronic cheaters to go looking for some other relationship the moment things start to become a little difficult for them.

The infidelity “program” begins during their first 10 years

Men and women are often programmed to cheat when they are raised by an immoral mother or father who considered cheating to be perfectly legitimate.

Rather than attempting to fix a problem, they look for someone else to fulfill their needs, just like their mom or dad did.

These needs could start out as emotional and transition to physical later on if problems within the relationship are never addressed.

2 things you need to know about affairs

1) Affairs begin because one spouse’s needs are not being met by the other person.

Cheating spouses are drawn to someone else who WILL (temporarily) meet those needs. The vast majority of cheating spouses fail to express what their emotional needs really are because they don’t know themselves.

2) Your spouse is cheating on you because that person had a parent, mother or father, who had an affair that led to divorce in their first ten years.

There are of course exceptions here, but look to your spouse’s childhood for things like a weak relationship with one parent or the other, abandonment, or neglect.

Because cheating is not so much the problem in a marriage, but more of a symptom of a broader set of issues, it’s important to evaluate your relationship to get to the source.

Now by all means, I’m not saying it was right for your spouse to cheat on you and that it is all your fault.

I’m saying your spouse has cheated on you because their needs were not being met.

Both men and women are susceptible to an affair, but women in particular tend to idealize love as something they just “fall into”.

Even the saying falling in love implies it’s something you have no control over.

Most unfaithful partners feel that love is nothing they can control.

If your spouse loves the idea of romance and being “in love”, firmly believes in soul mates, and thrives on unpredictable excitement, they will come to expect these things as a way of life.

The idea of soul mates exists in romance movies but rarely does life deliver the perfect mate. It can happen, but not very often because love is first something you do first, then something you feel.

Our culture leads us to believe just the opposite.

Movies, books and television glamorize the idea of two inseparable soul mates that overcome insurmountable odds but manage to stay together because of their true love.

Contrary to what most people want to believe and what our entertainment culture LEADS you to believe…

Love is something you feel ONLY after something that you do

The courtship stage of a new relationship clearly demonstrates this because you are both on your best behavior with each other. But what happens 10 years down the road? Life’s normalcy kicks in, you get back into your old routines and your programming from your childhood kicks in.

Here’s what I mean.

You will do in your marriage what you were raised to do by your father, if you’re a man, or by your mother if you’re a woman.

Worst of all, you don’t have a clue you’re doing it, especially when your spouse shouts “You’re just like your father!” or “You’re just like your mother!”, both statements are intended to be insults and you’ll take them that way too.

There is one exception to this rule and that is people who rebel against the way their parents lived when they were young.

This happens because these “buckers” were consciously aware that they didn’t like this way of living as a child and they won’t stand for it today.

Now that you understand these basics about cheating spouses, you need to see the path that all cheating spouses travel through called The 8 Steps To Divorce.

Without seeing these clearly defined 8 Steps, no spouse can see how close they are to divorce.

A spouse who is vulnerable to cheating can be turned around provided you know what you are doing and why.

But first you must locate where you and your spouse are on the 8 steps diagram.

Since neither of you have clearly seen these emotions described in a step by step format, it will be very helpful to your current situation to understand exactly what point you are at right now in your marriage.

This graphic allows you to talk about where you are now and why you’re there.

Most important, it allows you to see where the goal is – being happy together.

You can define it, you can describe it.

You can remember when the two of you were actually there.

And if you were there once, you can get there again.

Cheating is not always a marriage death sentence unless that cheating spouse cannot wake up from that destructive childhood bomb that says cheating is good, normal, right and justified.

After an affair has been discovered and the ugly emotions have been shared, you want to get down to the business of clearly and simply explaining each of your emotional needs.

Here are the basics.

Men and women’s greatest needs

Men need to know this about women. They have TWO needs.

One is financial. The other is emotional.

Most men know about the financial need, but they don’t know about the emotional needs of women. Men often believe that once they provide the financial security, they’re done.

That’s totally wrong as any woman will admit.

So women need financial security and emotional security and a man needs to know exactly what those needs are and how to deliver them.

Now women need to know this about men. Men also have two needs.

One is respect, the other is intimacy. Most women know about men’s’ need for intimacy but they have no clue about their great need for respect.

A study from the Institute for American Values found that “almost eight out of 10 couples who avoided divorce were happily married five years later.”

What this means is that if you just work to find a way to get through this affair, this obstacle in your marriage, and start meeting each other’s needs, your marriage will be much stronger than it was…even BEFORE the affair took place.

I work with individuals every day whose marriages were damaged by infidelity, but because they’ve decided that they are 100% committed to making their marriage work, even WITHOUT their spouses participation they are able to begin meeting their spouse’s needs.

Even if your spouse isn’t living with you right now, it IS possible to turn your relationship around.

I see it happen every day – even when infidelity is a major issue in their marriage.