My Thoughts

Thank you for the question. This can be a really tough this to admit and to talk about. Proud of you for asking. One thing I want to be clear about is what cheating actually is.

A lot of people have a very one-dimensional idea about what cheating is. They think it’s having sex with someone that isn’t your spouse. That can absolutely be a form of cheating. And then there are people who might feel that having close feelings for someone else without ever touching them is cheating. And there are people like my wife and I who are fully allowed to have sex with other people, but if it’s done in a way that violates one another’s trust or values, that would be considered cheating. Essentially cheating is any behavior that falls outside of your relationship agreement and boundaries. If you have no clear understanding of what those boundaries are, that could very well be part of the problem.

I’m not sure what ended up happening in your relationships, but I’m just going to assume that you did something that you knew was not within the bounds of your relationship and got caught or came clean about it. I’m glad that you can own that. I don’t know the situations that you are coming from and I don’t necessarily have a moral judgment of you for the behaviors that you’re talking about here. The vibe I’m getting is that you had issues in these marriages that required attention and that the way for you to get your needs met or to cope was by cheating, which is not within your set of personal values, so you want to learn how to deal with the primary relationship issue in the future before something like this happens.

Regardless of the past, right now you are demonstrating a lot of self-awareness. You talked about two important issues here. One is the fact that there was conflict in your marriages that you had a hard time coping with. The other is the role of alcohol in the behaviors that you described. You are already well on your way to doing better about this. Simply calling out the behavior, noticing a pattern, and being honest about the need to change makes a huge difference.

Understanding why

First off, I would suggest that you have someone who can help you be accountable. Don’t keep this to yourself. It could definitely be a therapist, but it can also be a trusted friend that can give you a smack across the head and say “don’t do that!” Simply having someone there that understands the issue and is on your side about improving can make all the difference. There is also the underlying issue that you mentioned of having conflict in relationships, which has led to the cheating behavior. It’s hard to give specific advice without knowing where the conflict came from in these situations. One possible issue is the types of people that you are attracted to and the broader patterns that might lead to toxic relationships. If you are consistently finding yourself in relationships with people that mistreat you, are absent, emotionally unavailable, verbally abusive, etc. then the primary issue isn’t exactly the cheating.

Perhaps there was a point in your life where you learned that conflict should be avoided at all costs. In fact, in healthy relationships discussions and productive conflicts are an important part of success. This is a skill that requires developing skills to communicate. You may have not had the opportunity to learn how to productively communicate in a relationship, so you may need to approach the next relationships that you pursue differently. Starting from a baseline of open communication or at least prioritizing it and working toward it may help you develop in a more helpful direction. On episode 217 of the podcast, I share a bunch of tips about effective communication and active listening. That could be a helpful thing to review. There are also tons of resources online and in books that can help you understand better about how to communicate effectively. Therapy could very well be a necessity here as well. Could it be that the conflict avoidance comes from a lack of self-concept where you feel like you don’t have a right to set boundaries and then your only option is to escape? This would be something to dig into. Of course, couples therapy is also something that could be explored when you are in a committed relationship as well.

Tackling other factors – Alcohol

The alcohol part is definitely something that can help. Whether you are practicing moderation or abstaining completely, it makes sense that it could be a contributor to the behaviors from the past that you are talking about. I have nothing against alcohol in general. I drink alcohol regularly and quite enjoy it. But we do need to be real about the impact that it has. When you drink, it changes your judgment of situations. This is demonstrated in research and even if you feel like it doesn’t, an outside observer would see differently. So when you have pent up feelings or conflict that is unresolved conflicts that are simmering beneath the surface, alcohol can remove that layer of protection you have on a normal daily basis of letting those feelings drive you to behave differently. Your inhibitions can be lowered and you may act in ways that are not in line with how you would behave when fully sober.

One of the other things that may happen with alcohol is that it can impact not only the decisions you make in the moment, but also the situations that you get yourself into. In other words, when you are sober, you might make the choice to not go up to someone’s room, which would prevent you from sleeping with them, whereas when you have been drinking, you might play the game with yourself where you rationalize and say that you are only coming up for one more drink or something like that. I think at this point, being careful about alcohol is probably a good thing for these reasons.

Reflect within yourself

It may also be helpful for you to start journaling a bit. This is one of my favorite tools for self-reflection, and I would highly suggest that you actually write things down so that you have a record of them to look back on. You may want to look at the history and pattern of your relationships and see what you can glean from them. Are there temptations throughout? Are there certain conflicts or issues that tend to drive you in that direction? Is there a certain point in relationships where this becomes more of an issue? What are the similarities and differences between the partners you have been with? You might also try to take a really honest look at what purpose the cheating serves in your life. Is it sexual fulfilment? Is it because you don’t actually feel like it’s wrong and it just felt like something that was good for you? Were you looking for an escape? Did you want validation? Were these people that you have always had ignored tension with?

I know I’m asking a lot of questions here, but these could essentially be prompts for you to journal. The more awareness you build, the better of you are going to be. If any of these are hard for you to answer or you feel fear or resistance, that might also be useful information. The last thing that is helpful in the journaling sense is to detail the lessons that you want to take away from these experiences. What do you want to forgive yourself for? What do you want to remember? How do you want to do things differently in the future.

Overall, there isn’t some magic bullet to stop yourself from cheating. There are a lot of components from planning to enlisting help to looking at relationship skills, and so on. I hope this all gives you something to think about. I think that you have a really good chance of making some change for yourself here. The motivation is there and I think you are gaining a lot of awareness about your situation. I wish you the best.