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It’s risky business…<\/p>\n
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Cheating. It sucks, but unfortunately, it\u2019s a topic as old as time, from extra-marital affairs portrayed in literature to illicit, on-screen hook-ups in popular culture. Need we remind you of Carrie Bradshaw hooking up with Big behind Aidan\u2019s back in season three of Sex and The City. Or Chad Michael Murray\u2019s One Tree Hill character Lucas Scott, who was an egregious cheater.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s common off-screen too. Because of how controversial cheating is, it\u2019s hard for studies to gauge how prevalent it is. According to various studies, around 20% of married men and 13% of married women report cheating on their spouses, meaning roughly one in five marriages experiences infidelity at some point.<\/p>\n
One of these people is Clara*. She cheated on her ex-boyfriend, who was five years older than her, multiple times when they were together as teenagers and managed to get away with it. \u2018It was always when I was on nights out with my friends. Many of them didn\u2019t approve of the relationship due to the age gap, so I was encouraged to cheat if I ever met anyone I liked as I was still so young, and he was quite possessive. He didn\u2019t want me to move into university halls and be surrounded by new people,\u2019 she says. \u2018It was always with boys who were closer to my age.\u2019<\/p>\n
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In a survey by Emucasino study, participants were questioned on whether they had kept their infidelity a secret. Over one in five respondents revealed they waited over a month to tell their partner. Over one in ten never ended up telling their partner what they had done, while 9 per cent kept their infidelity a secret from their partner for less than a month.<\/p>\n
In the survey, people were only asked at what point did the respondents reveal their infidelity to their partner, which doesn’t account for those who got caught in the act. The data also showed that 7.8 per cent of respondents hid their infidelity for between one and three months and 4.8 per cent hid it for over a year.<\/p>\n
Clara explains she didn\u2019t think about her ex-boyfriend at the time she was cheating, because she was \u2018young\u2019 and just \u2018living life as a young adult\u2019 but admits she \u2018would always be consumed with guilt afterwards.\u2019 She said she never told him about the cheating, and was confident he wouldn\u2019t find out because, due to the age gap in their relationship, they mixed in different circles. \u2018I did eventually tell him about one, as I wanted to split with him anyway and ended up with the person I cheated with. I mainly told him because he wouldn’t have let me go otherwise,\u2019 she adds.<\/p>\n
For the most part of the relationship, Clara decided to keep her infidelity a secret because she doesn\u2019t think \u2018passing on the guilt to someone else is helpful.\u2019 She adds \u2018I always wanted to stay with him anyway, until it got to the point where I couldn\u2019t be with him any longer due to the possessiveness and being in different stages of life. He wanted kids by the time I was starting university and that wasn\u2019t what I wanted at all.\u2019 However, there were some near misses. \u2018I once cheated all the way as had gone back to a male friends’ house after a night out and he couldn\u2019t get hold of me and knew I wasn\u2019t home,\u2019 she said. \u2028<\/p>\n
Of course, there\u2019s no denying that cheating sucks, and no one wants to be cheated on. But unlike the black and white way it\u2019s often portrayed in the movies, there\u2019s lots of reasons why people cheat. One 2021 study revealed a range of reasons, including anger, self-esteem, lack of love, low commitment, need for variety, neglect, sexual desire, and situation or circumstance.<\/p>\n
Looking back, Clara admits her ex-boyfriend \u2018probably did cheat\u2019 as well but would never admit to it. \u2018I always had my doubts,\u2019 she said. \u2018I think I cheated as I felt trapped, and all my mates would pull on nights out so I wanted to.\u2019<\/p>\n
Of course, cheating also comes in many forms. There\u2019s the obvious, physical type of cheating, that involves sexual contact with a third party. However, emotional affairs are also becoming more common (and accessible) thanks to social media. Broadly speaking, an emotional affair describes a situation in which someone in a relationship develops an important emotional connection with someone other than their partner, in a way that crosses a line without necessarily becoming physical. This could look like relying on them for advice, or leaving mildly flirty comments on their social media posts that don\u2019t outright suggest anything, but would make your partner feel uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
According to a YouGov study, around 15% of British adults reported engaging in emotional infidelity (forming an emotional connection with someone outside their relationship), while 44% of respondents considered such behaviour to be cheating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How does Clara look back now on her experiences of cheating, over ten years on? \u2018I just feel like I was young and was with someone I shouldn\u2019t have been with as he was so much older,\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n
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Photo: IMAGO\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
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How serial cheaters get away with it\u00a0It’s risky business…Cheating. It sucks, but unfortunately, it\u2019s a topic as old as time, from extra-marital affairs portrayed in literature to illicit, on-screen hook-ups in popular culture. Need we remind you of Carrie Bradshaw hooking up with Big behind Aidan\u2019s back in season three of Sex and The City. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6550"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6585,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6550\/revisions\/6585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}