Cheating: it’s the threat to relationships that no one wants to think about, let alone talk about. But regardless of how unpleasant it is, the fact remains that it’s something that happens. No matter how long you’ve been in a relationship or what the status of your relationship is, there’s never a time when someone cheating on you isn’t incredibly painful. After being cheated on, the question that remains in most collegiettes’ minds is “Why?” Why would this person who I thought loved me, betray me like this?
Although there’s no real good reason to cheat, this article is here to hopefully give collegiettes at least some sort of explanation for their partners’ actions. We talked to a bunch of real live college guys to ask them why they cheated. Here’s what they had to say:
He was drunk
When people are incredibly intoxicated, they no longer make rational decisions. People lose their inhibitions and instead of thinking about future consequences, they act in the heat of the moment and only think about what they want in that very moment.
On the other hand, being drunk is an excuse that only goes so far. You have to stop and ask yourself how often he drinks and why he was drinking to the point that he lost all self-control. Did he cheat while drunk only because he didn’t have the guts to do it while sober? Was he upset about something else? Or was he really so blackout that he had no idea what was going on?
Here’s what one guy had to say:
“I was out without my girlfriend one night and blackout to the point where I had no idea what was going on,” says Jack*, a junior at North Carolina State University. “I ended up waking up in a random girl’s bed the next morning with no memory of what had happened. My friends told me that I had been talking to the girl and had suddenly disappeared with her. Anyways, I hated myself for it and had no intention of it happening, but it still had.”
You were far away
Long-distance relationships face a variety of difficulties. One of the biggest ones is that it’s impossible for the people in them to have any physical contact with each other.
Even when two people are totally secure on an emotional level, cheating in long-distance relationships is often caused by the lack of physical intimacy. You can do as much sexting and Skype sex as you want, but none of that is the same as actually being in the same room together in the flesh (literally).
“When you’re at a bar, and there’s a girl sitting right in front of you that you’re attracted to, and she’s flirting with you to the point where you know you can probably go home with her,” says Chris*, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “and your girlfriend is however many miles away, it’s sometimes really hard to remember that [your girlfriend is] even there at all.”
A lot of guys don’t think of sex the same way collegiettes do. Many of them don’t consider it to be as emotionally-charged an act as the majority of women. So, in a long-distance relationship, even when his heart is totally with you, certain other parts of his body might not be as much.
“I was in a long-distance relationship for two years and really did love my girlfriend,” says Drew*, a sophomore at George Washington University. “We would always have a great time when we visited each other, but there were a few nights when I hadn’t seen her in a really long time, that it just got too hard to resist other girls.”
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You two had pre-existing problems
Maybe you’ve been having the same fight for months or maybe you just had a really big fight that day. Whatever the situation, when your relationship is on the rocks, it can make it a lot easier for him to justify cheating to himself.
“My ex at the time claimed he was drunk enough to not remember he did it, but then let it slip he was mad at me for things I did earlier that day – like not answering his texts and putting our [Facebook] relationship status on private,” says Christine*, a sophomore at Wake Forest University.
Some men would rather take the easy way out than try to communicate and work through relationship troubles.
“My girlfriend and I had been having the same fight for a while,” says Liam*, a junior at the University of Miami. “She didn’t like that my girl friends would text me a lot. One day we had a huge blow-out about it and later that night I ended up hanging out with one of my girl friends and we hooked up.”
He wants the thrill of the chase
No matter how much they like you, there are guys out there who just don’t want to be tied down. These guys will pursue you, and then, as soon as you’re actually together in a relationship, they lose interest. In other words, they thrive on the thrill of the chase.
Check out these guys’ opinions on the chase:
“There’s a reason I’ve never had a girlfriend for longer than two months. After a while, it just starts to really bore me no matter how much I liked her in the beginning or how great she is,” says Ryan*, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“There’s something about a girl starting to like me back that just really turns me off from her,” explains Jake*, a junior at Elon University. “There are lots of girls out there that I’m interested in, so it’s hard for me to settle for just one.”
Cheating is and always will be a horrible thing for both men and women to do to their significant others. And while it doesn’t make the pain any less real, it’s helpful to at least have some insight into why guys do it.
*Names have been changed.