Are we looking for thrills? Novelty? For the feeling of being desired we no longer feel in our current relationship?
Yes we are. But only on the surface. Deep down we are seeking acceptance. We want to feel understood, WANTED. In our despair, we resort to deceit of those who haven't given us what we feel we deserve. We deserve to feel accepted indeed! Desperate to feel truly loved...
How do we go about it? We LIE...
Before lying to others we lie to ourselves that the person who knows us, oftentimes very briefly, can truly accept us. Experiencing a MOMENTARY FEELING OF BEING DESIRED makes us feel good for a while...
Most of us connect being desired with being loved. As children when we felt unwanted (rejected), we felt unloved. As young adults we explored physical attraction, sex, intimacy. We experienced the loved up feeling and surge of hormones in our brain thinking 'This is it, this must be love!'. But think about it. Think about a person - a family member or a loyal friend who truly loves you, the one who is there for you in need who truly cares for you. Do they desire your looks or you body? Do they need to sleep with you? Do you need to have sex with them to feel loved by them? No! They accept you for who you are because they know the TRUE YOU.
We are swamped every day with commercials of 'You are worth it' type, which force on us that altering our IMAGE somehow increases our chances of finding the right partner, hence love and happiness. We are attractive and we have met an attractive partner, yet we find ourselves in a desperate situation, cheating. We go on a market looking to buy love, selling just our looks like others. What do we come home with? The idea of love. We buy what we THOUGHT love is. A lie. We kid ourselves that we can find true love when we have NO idea how this feels...
To find out how love truly feels, we would have to experience it ourselves but we have sadly not. Why do you think we are we so thirsty for love? Something was missing in our upbringing and something inside us does NOT feel COMPLETE. We only ever SEARCH for something we don't have.
When we are searching for a soulmate we hope to exchange our IDEA of love for the REAL thing. We are basically exchanging an assumption for an assumption - a lie for a lie…
Those who developed a loving and caring relationship with themselves know their worth. They are no longer NEEDING to search because they have it. They are complete. Loving someone, or someone loving them, is an mere extension, a BONUS in their lives. Not a need or a condition for sustaining their happiness.
A relationship, based on exchanging lies, instead of the truth, will inevitably end up with more lies to come. Like cheating. Cheaters have low self-esteem, they feel unloved, undesired, they fear being rejected and eventually abandoned. They do not respect themselves hence cannot respect their partner, and they most definitely don’t respect those they have affairs with! Because they do not love themselves they cannot love the people they cheat on nor the those they cheat with, which is why they can do it in the first place.
We tend to seek feeling good about ourselselves on the outside the more we feel bad on the inside. Cheating is a form of an escape from oneself which can escalate into an ADDICTION. Many of us cheated, have been cheated on, or both. We asked or have been asked ‘How could you..?' Now you know...
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel