Inside a cheater’s head

You may have wondered what goes on inside a cheater’s head? You may have asked yourself “What were they thinking?” Although you have asked the question, few have seriously tried understanding the mind of a cheater.

Cheating in an addicted brain

In cases where the cheater has an addictive process, the cheating is about being turned on. An addicted brain seeks a high level of stimulation in order to feel ‘normal’. Since they are so accustomed to being stimulated, they want to stay stimulated or ‘turned on’. They often do things in an extreme way in order to feel ‘normal’. They do not see what they are doing as ‘extreme’. They see what they do as a way to feel normal.

To illustrate how the addicted brain works, let us consider a thermostat. For most of us, we set it, the heating or cooling system then responds. For the addicted brain, they need more higher (or lower) temperatures to feel normal. Whereas most people have a ‘range’ of behavior they consider as ‘normal’. With the addicted brain, the range of what is considered ‘normal’ is more extreme. With their thermostat set different, their brain works harder to provide the stimulation they need. The addicted person does not evaluate the extreme temperatures, they evaluate their actions on whether or not they feel normal.

So instead of saying 95 degrees is too hot for the heater or 65 is too low for the air conditioner, they ignore the degree setting, focusing instead on whether they feel ‘alright’. They also want to get to those feelings as fast as possible.

The generational cheater

The mind of a generational cheater works different. With people that have grown up around cheating, they have grown accustomed to it. They see ‘cheating’ as acceptable behavior since it is what they are used to. The idea of being committed to someone exclusively strikes them as ‘weird’ and abnormal. For them, this is the way that relationships work. This is what is expected of men and women.

The womanizer (seductress) cheater

When a cheater has a long history of sexual activity, they often look at cheating differently. They are accustomed to sexual activity being a natural part of male-female interaction. They have often become so accustomed to flirting and seduction, it has become second nature. The smooth talking comes naturally. They are so used to their seductive ways, they assume that that is the only way they are used to dealing with the opposite sex. Members of the opposite sex are viewed as challenges rather than as people to talk to. When they are stimulated by someone, their mind immediately proceeds to assess how to seduce them