the idea that if your man cheats, it's your fault. You weren't fulfilling him physically, so he sought sex elsewhere.

While I've always liked to believe it's that simple, my male friends have told me otherwise. In fact, they personally have witnessed male friends and colleagues of theirs who were in perfectly happy marriages, engaging in affairs with other women. Why do they do this?

First, we must look at the reasons men cheat.

According to most studies, men cheat for physical reasons while women cheat for emotional ones. So certainly if a man is feeling unfulfilled physically, he'd be more apt to stray...but that begs the question, just what does he NEED to be fulfilled physically?

The answer to that isn't quite so simple. For some men, sex once a week would be enough. For others, once an hour every hour wouldn't be enough. For some, it's not so much the frequency of sex as the quality of it and the fact is, some men just get bored with having sex with the same woman, day after day, week after week, year after year. (To be fair, women can get bored as well, but that's a different blog.) A new person is exciting, fun...it shakes things up. Plus...
He's doing something he's not supposed to do.

We can't completely rule out the excitement and adventure some people find in sneaking around. Of course, most affairs are conducted in seedy hotel rooms and the guilt that happens afterward has to take a little of the fun out of things, but for someone with no conscience, affair sex can be addictive.

If you look at the many lists that have been gathered as "reasons men cheat," many contain the same elements. They include: The thrill of extramarital sex, fear of commitment, lack of fulfillment, revenge, midlife crisis/insecurities, emotional escape... You get the point. Lack of fulfillment is one of the reasons, but usually there's something deeper at root. Nothing can boost a man's dormant ego like an attractive woman showing a romantic interest in him. That romantic interest can lead him down a dangerous path and before he knows it, he's gone too far. And we all know once someone has cheated once, he tends to continue to cheat until one day he's caught. Even then, he may not stop.

How do I know? I've been on the other side of it. I met a man who had a girlfriend he supposedly wasn't happy with. Too late I learned that while he might not be happy with her, he was "comfortable" in the routine they'd established. I waited around, hoping he'd eventually break up with her, but one day I could wait no more. I moved on with my life and he married that woman...and they lived happily ever after. Or did they?

Would he cheat if a woman came along and was willing to help him? Maybe. At the time I knew him, they'd been together six years and he'd lost himself somewhere along the way. I gave him that attention he'd missed for so long. He didn't cheat with me but I think he would have, if I'd been willing.

Chances were, no matter what she did, it would never be enough to satisfy that.
I know it's much easier to accept that we can affair-proof our relationships. We don't want to hear that no matter what a person does, the other person could still be tempted to stray. You see, whether a person cheats or not goes much deeper than the relationship he is in. It is deep within him, at the core of who he is as a person. That is why you do your best to find a GOOD person...and hope he has the integrity to handle the bumps in the road the right way, rather than taking the sleazy way out.

What do you think? Can you affair-proof your relationship? Is it as easy as, "If he isn't getting it at home, he'll go elsewhere?"