Why Do Men Cheat?

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start… when you read you begin with A, B, C, when you sing, you begin with doh, reh, mii… when you cheat, it all begins with desire, the desire for adventure, to be better than you are, to achieve more, to have an advantage, to explore...

How did we discover cheating in the first instance? (and please y’all should admit it, we have all cheated at one thing or the other, at one time or the other, or to one end or another. We have all had our moments. It all started from way back in our formative years, you were always told by your raving and ranting dad or mum, of how the other kid down the road was better than you, neater, more respectful, had better grades, had a cuter smile etc.. You then moved on to learning how to mind your own business by playing with your toy car, your ears, peepee, your doll, and or whatever else you had to play with as a kid.

Even then, you were faced with having to always compare notes and strive to have your own things better than the other kids’. Fortunately or unfortunately, I grew up with girls, so I never got drawn into the size competition that always was a topic of conversation in the little boy’s room! Or, I would have, from an early age, gotten drawn into the argument on the variation in finger sizes by age, race, and weight.

The need to always have it better or be the better one as a means of achieving self fulfillment or the feeling of perhaps being fulfilled, to a large extent is responsible for why we all cheat in the first place.

All descriptors need to be used in context and have a central rallying point that can be given credit or blamed. In the military, you rally to the commander, in school, you rally to the principal, in a restaurant, you rally to the chef, in romance, we naturally rally to the female gender. Unfortunately, although everyone cheats, when it comes to cheating, we naturally rally to the MEN. 

How many of you have unconsciously thought of men each time you heard the word cheat? Even in conversation, if you are told that a woman cheated on her man, a good number of you would seek clarification - are you sure she cheated on him? And when that position is confirmed, a good number of you would still blame him for making her cheat on him. So, unfortunately, it all always has to be blamed on the men.

That said, research has shown that men are more prone to cheating in relationships than our saintly women folk. They cheat because they are happy, they cheat because they are sad they cheat to have more adventure, or even to have less. They cheat for bragging rights or to become the topic of the brag. They cheat because their women are too good, too bad, too thin, too fat, or just right. They cheat because of a need to always walk across the lawn and find out if the grass is truly greener on the other side, or if perhaps it is purple.

Men also cheat when they feel insecure, unloved, or unwanted (yes! Believe it or not, under all the six-pack or in my case, rounded one-pack, we still like attention and loads of it. We also want to feel like your world revolves around us, same as you), also, when they feel like they are not getting enough of a good thing or that they are not even getting the good thing as good as it ought to be. One little-known secret is that men cheat, sometimes out of low self-esteem. While your woman sees you as her friend, guy, and sometimes support mechanism (emotional and financial), the daughters of Eve see you as The Man... (and make you feel like your words alone -lies - can melt butter)

Then again, is it cheating if he just drifts emotionally and begins to spend more time with another woman (albeit a friend, colleague, helper, smallie, flow, prazz, fastfood, fish-steaks, or whatever name we choose to call it these days)? or is it when he gets physically involved and starts to explore other nether regions of her wiles? Really and truly, all cheating na cheating! It only takes a moment to really cross that line from friendship to affair, from peace to drama, from knowing to doing. 

All cheating na cheating o jere, irrespective of the nice and funky words we use to cloud the obvious truth.    

All Men Cheat! Either by looking, thinking, touching, hoping, comparing, prying, wishing, doing, and salivating (mentally) yes ke! Since you ladies bitch-slap us for salivating when we see" tins", we have learned how to do so mentally, and savor the experience while maintaining a completely blank expression on our faces. 

Like all organisms, men are an evolving species or more like a sub-set of our specie and a product of the society in which we live. if the society was made up of all upright girls who would insist on not being with men who are engaged or married, then men would naturally evolve to a point where drinking garri with water (and perhaps no sugar) every day of their lives, would not only give them satisfaction, they would actually look forward to drinking it daily.. besides, there wouldn’t be alternatives anyway! 


Can we then safely assume that if there were no evil-causing women/girls/females, there probably wouldn’t be cheating men…? 

At the dawn of time, as the good book tells us, that was the case, and oh yes, there was peace and harmony, and Adam chopped his garri happily and did not complain; until a new horrible menace threatened the existing balance in the universe… SIN.

Thousands and thousands of years ago, Adam and Eve lived in harmony and all was good and right. There was no evil and Eve, who by the way was forged out of one of Adam’s ribs, was the only woman on earth, which automatically made her the most beautiful creature he had ever seen (I wonder where the cute/fluffy rabbits were, or even pandas or kualas).  Suddenly the bad guy snake came into the picture and by the end of the day, an apple had been eaten, Adam and Eve suddenly noticed each other’s hairy and wobbly bits and ran for cover, and as we are made to believe, they both emerged from the experience with a new outlook to life and living. In offering him the apple to chop, Eve inadvertently paved the way for Adam (and indeed all men) to open-eye and seek a better alternative to the bone of our bones that brought us to sin, anger, and disrepute in the eyes of the Big Man. Man has been a wandering adventurer ever since. 

Now that we have dispensed with the history and have traced the roots of male cheating to its earliest origins (the origin of sin itself) and have come to agree that cheating is not the exclusive preserve of men, but as gullible apple-eaters, we are sentenced to carry the guilt and shame of the act, whether-or-not we are guilty, the soul searching should start.

At this point we may want to do some self-assessment… what cheating tendencies are unique to you?, or better yet, how many of your men have actively cheated on you and why? (did they cheat out of a mere longing to cheat, or was it due to your actions or inactions, activity or inactivity perhaps?). If you asked nicely, and not with a pot of boiling oil, a knife, a machete, or a gun in your hands, he probably will tell you why he did it, and you can both move on or learn from it.


I cannot help but think that we have so romanticized cheating itself, and how it should be dealt with and dismissed as a random act of stupidity and greed (thanks to Hollywood, Mills and Boons etc..), and have been led into believing that once you are cheated on, the next course of action is to throw a tantrum and walk away from the relationship because of bruised egos and a sense of being betrayed... (and this goes for men and women alike)


Guess what? believe it or not, generations before us cheated, hell! even our parents may have cheated on their spouses, but they were more tactful and discreet about it than we are now, so, we never knew... I am not advocating that it is okay to cheat, but if and when it happens, do you look at the bigger picture? do you identify the root cause and address it? or do you play the discarded apple and just roll on by?

As I drop my pen (er, or more like my keypad) to go and eat my colleague’s birthday cake and prepare to put on my dancing shoes to celebrate a great man and icon today, Don Yinxie, I cannot but wonder if trying to find an answer to why men cheat isn’t as elusive as finding an appropriate/universally accepted answer to the question “what do women want”?

Most men cheat because they CAN… women cheat because they WANT to, politicians cheat because they MUST, kids cheat because they SHOULDN’T.

So, my friend, why do YOU cheat?

Big Brother: The power of sex and other shenanigans

What’s your flavour? 

When it comes to matters or relating to the bedroom, there is no doubt that there is a stony embarrassed silence that ensures that there is just about enough mystery to keep the fire burning in every human heart. The bees do it. The dogs do it. The birds do it. The cows do it. The elephants do it. Snakes do it. Doves do it. And none of these do it in a room, under the cover of darkness, or hidden in any way. So, why do men (and women) have to wear such a cloak of secrecy for this natural God-given ‘thing’?

The question above is valid. What are we hiding? Why are we in such a hurry to hide it all? Why are we so ‘coded’ and so hidden? Our ‘shame’ simply perpetuates different myths and gives people different perceptions of this really natural and right act. 

I am yet unaware of any other act in the world that has received the worst sort of publicity ever. Sex has been demonized, tortured, abused, battered, criminalized, etc. through the ages. There has been no negative word that has been left upheaped on this normal God-ordained act. 

It is as old as creation itself as it apparently was created at creation. Whether described as man/woman or male/female, masculine/feminine, or any of the other direct opposite words by which various creations in history have been known. Night and day is one. Heaven and earth is another. Light and darkness have also been used. Land and sea. And ultimately, Adam and Eve. All these in the first few books of the bible! Every other religion of course has what it calls its own male/female; positive/negative.

To think that in the beginnings, Adam and Eve for instance must have been having mad sex all the time especially before their eyes ‘opened’ and then as soon as their eyes ‘opened’ God punished them with kids! And is it even remotely possible that Cain killed Abel because of a woman?

 According to the bible, A&E were the first people so there must have been few women C&A’s age so the jealousy could surely have started from Cain wanting what his younger brother had so good. Speculations. But anyway, the bible is full of such stories of sex used for good, sex for sex sake and sex used for bad. And suddenly sex was no longer good. Until such a time as it became that sex was only officially sanctioned between ‘married’ couples. And even then, it had to be done away from all eyes and talk of it must never ‘openly’ occur.

And what has that done? It has helped to turn sex into a multi-zillion currency business. Everyday, everywhere, we trade in sex and pretend that we are not doing any of that. We glorify sex and use our bodies in inappropriate ways to try and get appropriate things. The man or woman who’s involved in the actual act is not the only one ‘guilty’. You are just as guilty if you so much look at a woman ‘somehow’. Or vice versa. In which case, no human being will go to heaven. 

You are guilty if you dress really nice for ‘yourself’ ‘cos others will see your dressing as nice, desire you and then they and you are headed to hell. And the greatest sinners for who the cheerleading positions in hell would be reserved have to be all those women who cover completely including their face leaving just a window to see through because surely they are chief perpetuators of the mystery of sex and would tend to inspire more lustful thoughts in men or other women than those who place their flesh on display!

I am not saying we should all begin having sex in the open. I’m just saying that we should stop making such a big deal of sex. I think we should talk about it as openly as we discuss other topics. And I don’t mean that we should do that in a bawdy manner either. I’m advocating that we should be open about sex. Talk about it. Celebrate it. 

Recognize its pivotal position in humanity. The one instance where one holy book talked of a man born without sex has left the world sharply polarized to date. We have a powerful tool in sex; if only we could use it well. If only we could have mastered the art of adapting it for our good use over millennia rather than vilifying it and turning it into this hideous master that must be worshipped, carried out surreptitiously under the cover of darkness in the best tradition of cloak and dagger games! 

Imagine if, like most of the problems plaguing mankind, we had managed to find a workable and non-shame-filled solution to the sex problem? Wouldn’t it be dandy for instance if men and women could do away with sexual tensions between them by agreeing on upfront, as a norm, what they want from each other and at want point they want it and to what extent? 

Would it be really so bad if you could lay sex aside and deal constructively with each other? I believe that if we could convert the constantly generated and wasted sexual energy of this world into food, there would be no poverty in the world. And if we convert our sexual frustrations into energy, we would generate enough productive-use-energy to light up our planet brighter than the sun and still not fear global warming!

We are wasting away and we know it. We just don’t know what to do about it yet. Our biggest resources lie within us and we can’t even explore them or mine them to the surface and make good of them.

We will surely continue to be as we are. We will not really be any better. We will forever ‘hide’ sex and cry out in horror whenever it rears its ugly, ugly head in acts such as assault, molesting, rape, perverted behaviour, infidelity, dishonesty, death, covetousness, jealousy, back-biting, deviant behaviour, immorality, amorality and other such anomalies.

And we will all continue to be candidates for ‘hell’. Not just the ‘hell’ of fiery fire somewhere between heaven and earth, but the forever erupting and living volcanic hell that dwells in each and every one of us; the one sure hell that can truly destroy us.

Authored by Yinka Ijabiyi