I’ve seen people visibly show their disgust at people who cheat, but there’s a difference between being a cheater and cheating, never mind the fact that one is a noun and the other is a verb. Understanding the reason why attached women and men do what they want with another person that isn’t their loved one is really simple, actually. Everyone has voids, and even when a relationship is perfect–they have filled the gaps that traditionally is enough to carry a relationship–people realize the voids. Nobody wants to feel voids, so they fill it with somebody.
Let’s say that a woman doesn’t feel beautiful anymore with her husband. He doesn’t notice when she changes her hair (c’mon, guys, that’s a sure sign a woman wants something to be noticed or changed). Or say that a man wishes his girlfriend was around more often. Both the married woman and the boyfriend have needs to continue the relationship, whether it’s something as fleeting as asking, “Your hair looks good”, or having the person around more often so they can be in sight, not out of mind.
Filling the gaps with other people seems equal to cheating, but when you look at it as part of human nature, who is a cheater and who is just cheating? Is a cheater a person who needs something that her oblivious husband won’t give and she finds what she’s looking for in another man once? Or is it seen as cheating–even just flirting with another woman because she’s closer–make that person a seeker?
Or maybe it just depends on the gender? It’s societal, and not a card I want to play right now.
Looking at “cheat” as an individual word can make all the difference, forget the gender banter. To be a cheater, man or woman, means that the person was attached and went to another person for something, mostly sexual, but something nonetheless. The unfortunate circumstance of the term “cheater” is that there is no past nor present tense on the term. A person could have a one-night detour from their partner, and the term can be stuck to them for as long as they live. Cheating, however, has a tense: present-progressive. It means that a person who is cheating is currently cheating. No past tense. Instead, “cheating” can imply future cheating–let’s not forget the “progressive” part of “present-progressive”.
At the end of the day, when people say this man or that woman is a cheater, they must accept the fact that people make mistakes. Although we, as humans, try to fill the needs within every person born into this world, we can’t and I don’t think we want to. So, as long as we are human and we are imperfect, cheating will continue.
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