Why women cheat

Over on AskMen they are discussing Why Women Cheat and naturally I have my own take on it.

For a start, harsh as this may sound to men, it takes a LOT for a woman to cheat. Much like how most women have more of an emotional journey about the act of sex, it’s quite a leap for most women to go from faithful to cheating and creeping. A woman needs to be really pissed off, disillusioned, and fed up before she will open up shop for another man. It’s very rarely purely about the sex, his appearance, or sexual attraction and when she cheats it’s combined with how the experience and the man make her feel about herself, which is clearly a damn sight better than her husband/boyfriend makes her feel.

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Advice: Why do bastards change into ideal partners?

Mel asks “Why is it that men can totally transform themselves into the ideal partner when they finally fall in love, or meet ‘the one’, especially, if they’ve been bastards to their previous girlfriends?

Do they really keep up their good behaviour throughout their relationship (i.e. live happily ever after scenario)?

Wouldn’t such a man fall into his old pattern of behaviour when a difficulty arises in the relationship?

What truth does the idea that ‘past behaviour is a true indicator of future behaviour’ bear on this?”

OK before I answer these questions, you need to understand what a ‘bastard’ is. This is a man who is self-centred and disrespectful to women through both actions and words. He’s inconsiderate and lives by the hard and fast rule of treat her mean and keep her keen and he’s not changing his ways anytime soon. Lying, stealing, cheating, beating, deceiving, abusing mentally or physically are just some of the things that may be part of his repertoire. He often plays mind games with women to ensure that they end up so f*cked up that they either stay with him because they’ve become stupefied, or continues to seek out further bastards when the relationship is over because they no longer have a great sense of self-worth and have become bastard junkies.

A guy isn’t a bastard if he was a decent enough guy but he broke up with you for whatever reason. It’s important to understand that a guy is not a bastard just because things didn’t work about between you.

Why do men ‘transform’ into the ideal partner?

Relationships are a result of the sum of two people and other than when you get those smarmy bastards that dupe you into believing that they’re nice guys, most women who go out with bastards choose to. Call it drama seeking, call it making a rod for your own back, but sometimes we get exactly what we’re looking for. In the same respect, when he is in bastard mode, he tends to go for women that make it easy for him to behave in this way. But yes, sometimes a leopard does change its spots and the bastard becomes The Ideal Man.

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Return On Investment in Relationships

Relationships are about give and take. I don’t expect anyone to stand there taking scores because this in itself creates a negative atmosphere for a relationship, however, in healthy relationships there is an overall healthy balance of give and take without having to kill yourselves getting that balance and there is certainly no need for lots of drama to achieve this. Sometimes you’ll need him more and he provides a rock of support and at other times, you’ll need him. Sometimes you’ll both have to struggle together and get through it, but the point is that you’re together, with the foundation of a healthy relationship and the common goal of sticking together.

Relationships that have negative foundations, almost always generate negative equity. You will end up walking away with less than you started because as long as you engage in unhealthy relationships that erode your self esteem, reduce your trust, and keep you further away from relationships, you are losing out.

Return On Investment (ROI) within relationships refers to the ratio of what you’ve gained or lost against what you invested into the relationship. This is not about financial or material gain or loss. This is about The Three E’s: Emotion, Esteem, and Energy. If you’re not generating a return on investment and at the very least breaking even, the balance of negativity is way out of whack and you are effectively throwing The Three E’s at a bad investment that is not going to generate a return.

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Upgrade etc

OK… so I said I was upgrading and bringing a whole new look and I will be over the next day or so… Muchos fannying around with finalising the template has caused the delay…You may see the blog looking different as I update the template and switch back and forth but I will let you know when it’s final.

On another note, thanks to all of those that voted for Baggage Reclaim in the 2007 Weblog Awards. I didn’t win Best UK Blog but I did come a very respectable 6th place. I’m just thrilled that a site about dating and relationships got this kind of recognition.

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Maintenance and Upgrade Time (Again…) and Vote, Vote!

Don’t forget that Baggage Reclaim is a finalist in the Best UK Blog category in the 2007 Weblog Awards! Please go there and vote, vote, vote! You only have today and tomorrow (they only let you vote once every 24 hours from each computer) !

Thanks again to all of those that nominated and have voted already!

Once again it is maintenance and upgrade time. After the site crashed due to hundreds of comments on two posts a few months ago, I had to hastily put up a new version of the blog before I popped my bambino but I have decided that it’s time for a proper change. I will try to make the process as seamless as possible and hopefully you’ll all like the new look

Thanks NML xxx

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Get Voting for Baggage Reclaim!

OK I had no idea that I’d even been nominated but Baggage Reclaim is up for Best UK Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards! Please go there and vote each day till November 8th! Jaysus I can’t believe I’m so late to this one but hopefully we can make up for lost time!

Thank you to all of those that nominated and get voting!

Thanks NML xxx

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Are we waiting for a fairy tale happy ending?

I recently wrote in my column about the author Josephine Cox, esteemed peddler of women’s fiction pondering whether her and similar authors “have unwittingly failed a whole generation of women by seducing them with false ideals of love and romance…”. The biggest topics on this blog are anything connected to emotionally unavailable men and being ‘the other woman’ and it got me thinking: Is our penchant for men that can’t access their emotions and men that like to talk a good game but fail to deliver rooted in us expecting the happy ever after?

There are four ’syndromes’ that keep women emotionally invested and flogging dead horses:

I Can Change Him Syndrome - That penchant for fixer uppers and trying to fit your square peg man into your cookie cut version ideal…

Betting On Potential Syndrome - You see something that he doesn’t see in himself or in the relationship. He may have displayed some wondrous qualities in the first few dates but he has failed to show them ever since, but you think that the beginning shows the potential for the happy ending.

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