‘TO MY cheating husband Paul. You deserve each other. When you get home I won’t be there. Enjoy your drive to work! Lisa’
People who cheat seek the new and exciting when their relationship has become mundane and predictable.
Ouch.
For three hours, and a total of £400, the woman we only know as Lisa outed her unfaithful husband with a short and not-so sweet message on a Sheffield Parkway billboard (see main image above).
It was a bold and very public proclamation that Paul is a cheating bastard. Kudos Lisa. Very well played.
Many of us will empathise with Lisa or indeed, see ourselves in cheating Paul. We’ve all come across or been involved in a cheating saga, playing the role of ‘the cheat’, ‘the cheated’ or the third party observer.
Just last year, Manchester was named as the UK’s cheating capital.
What exactly counts as cheating? My simple answer is being physically intimate with someone who isn’t your partner. That covers anything from a kiss right through to coitus.
Take note, football players...
Cheating is cowardly. If you don’t want to be with someone, end it. It's that simple but still 30-40% of us are unfaithful.
What is it that makes people cheat?
We blame easy temptresses, being under the influence, and the validation we get from strangers wanting to sleep with us. Or maybe we’re all just arseholes with very questionable moral compasses and gluttonous sexual appetites.
Biology could be responsible for assigning us our likelihood to cheat. Men will blame their testosterone levels for the need to fuck the hot blonde [not literally] in the bar whilst their girlfriend is at home catching up on The X Factor. Women might claim it’s because they don’t get the attention they crave from their boyfriends who are emotionally attached to FIFA on PS4. Men say it’s easier to cheat, and they’re better at hiding the evidence (buy the same fragrance for the girlfriend and the sidechick). But you should never underestimate a woman’s intuition: too many of my girlfriends have suspected their boyfriends were cheating, and were absolutely right. Checkmate.
We’re told to always seek to better ourselves. Upgrade your iPhone to the 6S, get the newest Audi A1, seek out the promotion we’ve tirelessly earned, and get our own apartments complete with Nespresso coffee makers. Be alive to the possibility of the ‘next best thing’. Is that the same of relationships? I know plenty of people who met someone when they were in their late teens/early twenties and hopped on-board the conveyer belt to domestic bliss. But it turns out by the time they’re in their mid to late twenties, they have a reverse eureka! moment and think ‘I actually want to be with someone else’. They cheat. They break up. Divide the DVDs, assign custody of the dog, and talk about whether one of you alone can afford the mortgage. They ‘settled’ too early.
Surely, it’s a case of ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’.
People who cheat seek the new and exciting when their relationship has become mundane and predictable. It could be a one-off lewd encounter, or an affair could be the start of a new relationship. But where is the trust in a new relationship in the absence of respect for the previous one? Settling down isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The one permanent thing in life is that everything is transient. A relationship might be perfect for a particular time and place. The minute that relationship feels like shallow water instead of waves crashing over you, and your eyes start to stray, end it. Only cowards cheat. It doesn’t mean because you can, you should.
Follow @MissAmeerkat on Twitter
