WHY DOES MY PARTNER CHEAT
WRITTEN BY JACO VAN AS
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We receive prayer requests from around the world nearly daily and many of them are about cheating partners. It is for this reason that I decided to write an article about this and hopefully it can help those who are currently in a similar situation or maybe help prevent it from happening in the lives of others.
So why do people cheat? I will be giving you a few reasons and suggest some solutions, but it will never completely prevent it from happening, as the real answer lies within each individual and the situation he/she is in and the commitment they have to solve or prevent it from happening. The information I share with you comes from my heart and from my own experience.
Prevention is better than cure
The key to a successful marriage is preventing things from happening as far as possible. This is not just about cheating, but covers every area within our marriage. It is much easier to watch what we say and do than trying to fix it afterwards. We as humans received a beautiful gift from God called CHOICE. We have the ability to make a decision before we react. If we make use of this gift from God, we will already prevent many issues within our marriage. Once we did something wrong, hurting our partners, it can still be fixed, but it takes time and hard work. Let us rather practice to think before we do, speak and act! Prevention IS better than cure.
Let me share a few Bible verses with you. Ecclesiastes 5:2: Think before you speak. Proverbs 13:16: Wise people think before they act. Proverbs 18:21: The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Ephesians 4:29: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Proverbs 15:1; A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Relationship with Jesus
The greatest and most important preventative measure we can use is our relationship with Jesus. It is VERY important that both partners in a marriage have a strong relationship with Jesus. I am not referring to couples going to Church every Sunday, I am talking about couples who have a PERSONAL relationship with Jesus and whom have put Him in charge of their marriage. If we are true followers of Christ, praise and worship together as partners and put God first and in charge of our marriage, then we have a 99% chance of a successful marriage, which includes no cheating partners.
I said 99%, because the other 1% I leave as CHOICE, yes, choice, the gift I mentioned earlier that God gave us. You see dear friend in Christ, choice is a gift, but we as humans also use this gift wrongly. Choice can also open doors for satan to come into our marriage and destroy what God has given us. It is therefore important that we THINK before we CHOOSE and ACT. It also means not to LOOK for trouble where there is none. Choose carefully what you do and say and stay away from things that could cause you to make wrong decisions.
Let me explain. First of all, 1 Pet 5 verse 8 says: Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Please read this verse again. Please read this verse AGAIN! You see my friend in Christ, we must at all cost stay away from things that can cause satan to take that 1% called CHOICE away from us. If satan gets hold of that CHOICE we have, a door opens and satan will come in and destroy, even when we are in a personal relationship with Jesus. Let us now discuss a few decisions we can make/not make, which can affect our CHOICE and either prevent or cause satan to steal our joy.
Marriage the right one
I know it is easier said than done, but it is also not that difficult. Any relationship comes with challenges, so the trick here is to make sure that you don’t judge your relationship based on small things that will not make any difference. The real problems in a relationship that can cause serious trouble when we get married will stand out clearly and those are the signs we should never ignore when making the decision to get married.
First of all, it doesn’t really matter whether we know someone for 1 year or 10 years before we get married. The same issues we have after one year will be similar to those we will have after 10. A lot of people believe that one should not get married before you have been in a long relationship and that is so not true. Staying in a relationship longer before marriage does not guarantee a successful and cheat free marriage!
I don’t really want to go into a long discussion on this topic, giving hundreds of examples, since the big issues will clearly stand out from the beginning. I will however give one example. Lady X meets hunk Y and falls in love. The challenge here from the start is that Hunk Y loves drinking and sometimes even get drunk. Lady X on the other hand have a strong personal relationship with Jesus and don’t believe in getting drunk, but because Lady X really likes Hunk Y, she goes into a relationship with him. After a while both are deeply in love and the longer they are together the greater the love becomes.
Now clearly Lady X doesn’t like the fact that Hunk Y drinks so much, but because she loves him she accepts this and continue with the relationship. The stronger the love the harder it gets to let go of Hunk Y and ends up marrying him. Now after a few years of marriage Lady X starts complaining a lot about his drinking. Hunk Y also don’t want to go to church with Lady X and both starts living their own lives. As time progress, both moves further and further apart and sooner or later one of them gets love and attention elsewhere where they see the “perfect” match they always wanted and then end up cheating.
This is only one example, there are many, such as one partner loves to go out alone drinking with friends all the time or maybe one partner is addicted to pornography, etc. All these are big issues which stands out clearly before we get married, but then gets ignored. To end this discussion, I want to say that you need to make sure that you get married for the right reasons and when there are clear signs that it will not work, THEN DON’T GET MARRIED. It is better to be alone and wait on the Mr Right that God will send you than getting married and ending up with a cheating partner.
Men’s and Ladies nights
I know that in most marriages this is a norm, but let me tell you, this is looking for trouble, no matter how strong your marriage is! Things can go wrong so quickly and most of the times when they do, we end up saying we never “looked” for it, but if we allow ourselves to spend time apart and even worse, in places married couples should not be, then our marriage is set to fail at some stage. I am not talking about a wife having coffee with a friend or a husband watching a game with his friends at a stadium, I am talking about going out to have “fun”. The Word of God says when we get married we become ONE, so why not do things together! (Mark 10:8)
Pornography
I have seen and heard of so many marriages where either one or sometimes even both partners watch pornography on a regular basis. In many marriages both partners watch pornography together as they believe it can spice up the sex life and the worst of it all, it even happens in marriages where both partners serve God.
We cannot expect our partner to never cheat if we watch pornography, either alone or together. The fact that people believe it can HELP the marriage is one big lie from satan and if you do practice this, I suggest you stop immediately. When we watch pornography, our brain takes “pictures”, as with anything else we see. These pictures go into our brain where it is processed and stored. These pictures then stimulate our hormones and comes back to us time after time to remind us of what we saw and it is then only a matter of time before we start cheating on our partner.
Then these same pictures also come up while we make love to our partner, which is nothing else than cheating as well. When we watch pornography, in the beginning, it does seem as if it helps our relationship, but we then get addicted and end up not being able to have a normal sexual relationship without it, damaging our marriage in the long run, opening ourselves up for satan to come and control us and like I said, it DOES come down to cheating!
Marriage is not 50/50
A marriage is not 50/50, it is 100/100. By this I mean that both partners must give 100% in the marriage. Forget about “meeting your partner half way”. I simply don’t believe in this as it means that one or both partners ends up not being a 100% happy and when we end up not being a 100% happy, it opens a door for satan to come and destroy. If you have challenges, work them through in such a way that BOTH partners end up being a 100% happy with the solution.
First satisfy the needs of your partner
We tend to believe that we first need to satisfy our own needs and then those of others, but today I want to suggest a different approach. In a marriage, first attend to satisfying your partners needs a 100% and then your partner does the same with you. If you do this, your needs will automatically be satisfied! You see dear friend in Christ, if we first take care of our needs we might end up never getting to satisfying the needs of our partner completely and an unhappy partner can open a door for satan to come in and destroy. A happy wife equals a happy life and the same goes for our husbands. Make sure you know what makes your partner smile, what he/she likes, what makes him/her happy and work towards fulfilling your partners needs first and the rest will follow!
Be there for your partner ALWAYS
We need to be there for our partners, always, no matter what! Always put your partner FIRST. Ladies, praise your husbands when they do good, make them feel like a man, let them be the man and never stop doing it. Men, tell your wives you love them, buy them flowers and take them out on romantic trips, make her feel like a lady and never stop doing it. Telling her you love her once a month will not do it and don’t only do these things when you did something wrong! Both husbands and wives, listen to your partner when they speak, don’t talk them down and always show sympathy. Many people say not to choose sides, but I say DO choose sides, always choose your partners side, no matter what. You can still at a later stage sit down and discuss things in detail and share your thoughts and make suggestions.
You see dear friend in Christ, when you’re not there for your partner, don’t offer your partner a shoulder, don’t put him/her first, when you don’t choose his/her side, don’t attend to his/her needs and when you don’t make your partner happy anymore, then you’re opening up a door for satan to come in and destroy! You see, when we don’t do these things, satan will make sure that someone else will and even when we are strong and in a relationship with Jesus, it can still happen as we are left with that 1% called CHOICE.
Summary
I surely hope that today you choose to use that 1% in the right way and in such a way that it will grow your relationship with your partner and not end up destroying it. Remember, prevention is better than cure, so why not rather work on the things that is important for your marriage, make the right CHOICES in life and don’t allow satan to get a hold on your marriage. Protect your marriage at all cost and don’t forget to put God in charge! If you’re in a marriage and your partner or you yourself is cheating, then end it NOW and come clean, talk with Jesus about it, ask forgiveness and start clean with your partner, this time making sure you use your 1% of CHOICE carefully.
God bless you,
Jaco van As
Managing Director
Jesus to my Rescue Ministries