Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Once a cheater, always a cheater’?
I think it’s not far from the truth.
Cheating is a conscious act — it doesn’t happen by accident, as opposed to what most cheaters claim.
It takes a lot of consciousness and selfishness for two people to meet up, exchange calls, chats, and texts, spark up emotions between them (or not), before finally deciding to be physically intimate with each other.
We dwell so much on the physical intimacy between a cheater and their affair partner, that we sometimes neglect the emotional aspects of the cheating process.
The sneaky hangouts, calls, chats, and text messages exchanged between one and one’s cheating partner make up the emotional aspect of cheating.
Asides professionalism, it’s considered cheating once someone in a relationship (or marriage) has anything they don’t want their partner to know about, about their interaction with another person.
They don’t have to meet only physically before it’ll be said that they cheated.
So, yea.
Emotional cheating is a thing, and it happens more often than we realize and admit.
While it’s true that all cheaters are different just like every other individual has their own peculiarities, there are things that cheaters have in common.
Today, we’ll be discussing the things cheaters have in common.
Enjoy the read.
8 Things Cheaters Have In Common
1. They hardly change for the better
With a cheater, it’s never going to get better.
It’s one of the things cheaters have in common.
You can’t change them except they choose to change.
It’s a lifestyle they chose for themselves.
So if there’ll ever be a change, it’ll totally be up to them to decide to change.
If the signs were there and you went ahead to get into a relationship with them, just prepare yourself for the worst because it’ll only get worse.
Well, except they decide that they’re fed up with the lifestyle, which is rare.
What it does to the innocent partner who stayed and tolerated the excesses is that it destroys them mentally, and makes them question their sense of self constantly.
They always feel like they are not enough, or they don’t deserve better.
Also, they learn to not trust other people easily anymore.
This is because the one person who is supposed to love, cherish, pamper, and protect them have constantly made a joke out of them and their relationship by cheating.
The disrespect and humiliation their cheating partner has put them through will not leave their memory in a long time.
2. No boundaries
People usually put up walls and draw lines in certain areas of their lives, especially in things that are important to them.
This is mainly to reinforce the importance of such things, and avoid ‘see finish’ on their person.
For instance, married people can put up boundaries to protect their marriages.
They can insist on not taking any external person to live with them for the first two or three years of their marriage.
This decision might be taken to give the couple space to spend more time alone together, learn more about each other, and bond better before the marriage starts to experience any external interference.
By the end of that time, the couple will be a solid team, and be able to stand together against anything that might threaten the marriage.
I doubt if cheaters have any boundaries at all.
With them, I think anything goes, which is very bad.
But it’s that way because that’s how they’ve conditioned themselves to be.
They’re only bent on following through with their impulses, no matter how beneficial or destructive it might be.
And they don’t care who else apart from them, their actions and inactions will affect.
By doing so, they end up bringing shame, ridicule, and disrespect to their partners and other loved ones.
3. The belief that their spouses will never leave them
One of the things cheaters have in common is that they believe their spouse will never leave.
They feel that their partners will keep taking in and tolerating the disrespect they dish forever.
Interestingly, they really have a weird mentality to think that the person(s) they’re hurting will keep holding on to the very thing or person that hurts them continuously.
And that’s why some of them have the nerves to continue cheating even after they’ve been caught because they believe that their partner will never leave them.
Delusional lot!
4. Dealing with them can be draining
It’s worth mentioning that cheaters have their heads up in the cloud most of the time.
I mean, while their partner and every other person is facing real life, they’re busy wrapped in a cocoon where the world revolves around them.
Now, it can be quite hard to deal with such a person because what’s real to them doesn’t even exist.
Fiction is their reality, and they’re comfortable with dwelling there while their partner deals with reality alone.
What’s the essence of having a partner when you can’t be in sync with them and ride the storms of life together?
My thoughts exactly!
Being with a cheater can be very draining.
5. They lack contentment
Another thing cheaters have in common is that nothing is ever good enough for them.
It’s clearly evident in their cheating activities.
They probably have loving partners and caring families, but that’s not enough for them.
So they choose to look outside for ‘better’.
If you observe them closely, they’re ungrateful, unfulfilled, perpetually unhappy, and bored.
One of their characteristics is to always feel like the grass is greener on the other side.
They’re not grateful for the good things of life that they have, and are unappreciative of them.
They always have problems with, and are sulking about one thing or the other at every point in their lives.
From their family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, to even their jobs.
From the outside, it appears that they’re always in the pursuit of better things.
In reality, it’s just their lack of contentment that’s pushing them around.
6. They’re chronic liars
It’s without saying that cheaters are chronic liars.
They have to lie their way through a lot of things.
Of course, they need a lot more lies to cover up the initial lies.
You cannot take their word for it.
Most times, they start to believe their own lies and it becomes their reality.
That’s how bad it can get.
Even when they’re caught in the act, they’ll never take responsibility for their actions.
No remorse.
Just regrets ONLY because they were caught.
Like, catching them is a temporary disruption of their actions.
It doesn’t mean that they’ll quit cheating.
Let it not come as a shock that they’ll still try to lie their way out of being caught redhanded.
7 It’s difficult for them to stop cheating
Like I mentioned earlier, except they see reasons why they should and decide by themselves to stop, cheaters hardly stop cheating.
Cheating is a toxic lifestyle that comes with an adrenaline rush.
So it’ll be difficult for cheaters to let go of the thrill and fun that is associated with sneaking around and risking being caught.
That’s one of the things cheaters have in common.
Even when they’re caught, they won’t want to let go of the rush of adrenaline that only cheating gives them.
It’s more like an addiction that they should be weaned off of.
8. They are selfish and self-centered
If you’ve been going with the flow till this point, you’ll understand that people who cheat are highly selfish and self-centered too.
They feel like the world revolves around them and so, things have to work out in their favor.
It’s either their way or no way at all.
They’re only after their own pleasure, happiness, satisfaction, and gain, which is why they can sacrifice the love, peace, unity, and stability that a family offers them on the altar of few minutes of pleasure.
Neither once nor twice, but countless times.
In the same vein, they can be very controlling and domineering.
Somewhere inside them lies the fear of things getting out of their control.
So, they do all they can to remain in control, and it doesn’t matter whose ass is gored.
