It's a reasonable question to ask: can a woman cheat and still be in love? Heck, can anyone cheat and still be in love? If you asked this question to a number of people on the streets, there's little doubt that many of them would answer no.
More...
However, that's not necessarily the case. While it's true that a woman may cheat on you because they aren't in love with you anymore, it's also true that cheating is not a guarantee that they don't love you. There can be many reasons for cheating, with some of them being tied to the fact that a person still loves you.
So, what does it mean when your partner cheats on you? Well, we'll cover some of the possibilities here, as well as what can be done to avoid them before they happen or rectify them after they do.
Reasons for Cheating that Indicate They No Longer Love You
As we said, there are reasons a woman may cheat on you that don't necessarily mean that she doesn't love you. However, there are a lot of reasons for the opposite side of the argument as well. Here are the reasons your partner may cheat on you, tied to the fact that they don't love you.
Romantic/Relationship Dissatisfaction
Let's be real: nobody wants to be in a relationship where they aren't happy. In most circumstances, someone will try to avoid spending time with a person that makes them unhappy and try to spend more time with someone that does make them happy. If you are the source of that unhappiness, then you may be what drives your partner into the arms of someone else.
Does She Feel Loved?
Simply put, if your partner doesn't feel loved by you, there is a higher chance that they will go find someone who does make them feel loved, which can easily evolve into a cheating scenario. If they are satisfied with their relationship with you, there's little reason to go find someone else.
This is not to say that a cheating woman is always the result of their partner not treating them well enough. Sometimes, even when both partners are interested in making a relationship work, they grow into people that just don't like each other that much.
Personalities change and evolve over time, schedules change, peoples' goals change... all of these things and more can change who you and your partner are, and could lead to a change in how you feel about one another. Sometimes, a couple falls out of love even if no one did anything wrong.
Lack of Physical Intimacy/Satisfaction
While it is not impossible to have a healthy and loving relationship without a good sex life, there's no denying that a satisfying sex life is often a major part of lasting, healthy relationships. This gets its own section because it's possible to have a relatively healthy relationship while still falling flat in this area.
Generally speaking, men are more likely to cheat for sexual satisfaction reasons, while women are more likely to cheat for emotional satisfaction reasons. However, this doesn't preclude either gender from cheating for either reason. Whether or not your partner still loves you depends on their reason for cheating, if physical intimacy is the trigger, to begin with.
Important
It's possible that your partner doesn't feel romantically neglected by you, but they just aren't getting sexual satisfaction out of the relationship.
This could lead to cheating but does not necessarily mean that your partner doesn't love you. After all, the only reason they would continue to come back to you was if they valued your relationship for other reasons.
On the other hand, physical intimacy is closely tied to romantic intimacy. If your partner isn't getting the emotional connection they need from the physically intimate moments between the two of you, then such feelings could evolve into no longer loving you. Emotional intimacy is the cornerstone of a truly loving relationship, so without it, dissonance is a given.
Basically, if they are cheating on you for physical pleasure, they can definitely still be in love with you, and the problem can be rectified if you catch our drift. But if they are cheating on you for an emotional connection, the relationship is on treacherous ground and a serious discussion about it needs to be had.
Reasons for Cheating That Don't Mean They No Longer Love You
Believe it or not, not every instance of cheating is an indicator that someone doesn't love their partner. There are times when someone cheats, but they do still truly love the person they cheated on. These are a few of the possibilities that one should consider.
Being Under the Influence of Something that Affects Judgment
This may sound like an excuse to some, but you'd be surprised how many instances of cheating happen because someone was drunk or otherwise out of their right mind, often due to some sort of substance.
Society has known for hundreds of years that one's judgment is heavily impaired in such situations, and due to that, people can make stupid decisions that don't reflect their true feelings. If someone were to cheat in such a situation, they could still love you just fine: they just weren't in their right mind and were certainly without full control of their mental abilities.
Revenge, Punishment, or Consequence
Sometimes, cheating is done intentionally to punish someone or try to hurt them. Despite how this sounds, this situation doesn't necessarily mean the woman doesn't love the man she cheated on. If she was wronged (the man cheated on her first, for instance) she may be hurt or angry and be seeking a way to make her partner feel the same way.
It may sound strange, but people who love each other do lash out at each other from time to time. It's a bit of a strange dichotomy: they care about your feelings, which is exactly why they care if you are hurt or not.
How to Know Why Your Partner Cheated and If She Still Loves You
Most men feel like they have to be psychic in order to decode how a woman feels or why she does things. They feel that simply asking is a recipe for disaster because it can only lead to a fight. Well, sometimes a fight is necessary. Other times, it may not go as bad as you think.
Think of it this way: if you ask her why she cheated on you, and it's because she doesn't love you anymore, you can go ahead and tackle that dilemma and deal with it however you have to. But if she does still love you, you can unravel the cause behind the cheating incident and work on whatever part of your relationship led to it in the first place.
When people cheat, it often means they don't want to be with their partner anymore. However, one shouldn't just assume this. Communication is the most important part of determining whether or not a relationship can still be salvaged even after someone cheats. We're not saying the conversation will be easy, but important things in life rarely are.
Speak Your Mind