When making promises to be faithful, most people are serious and have every intention of keeping their word. But while people generally have the best intentions when making such promises, human behavior is not always governed by the fact that vows were taken and that promises were made.
When it comes to making decisions about love and betrayal, logic and reason have a difficult time competing with our emotions for control. So from time to time, our emotions influence our behavior and lead us down paths we had no intention of traveling.
In fact, three separate emotional systems are involved in cheating - sexual desire, romantic love, and attachment. And often these distinct emotional systems pull people in different directions.
The movie, Unfaithfull does a great job of portraying how infidelity occurs. In this movie, Diane Lang's character plays a happy housewife, who cheats on her husband, because of a chance encounter with an attractive stranger. Her emotions, in particular, her sexual desire, gets the best of her resulting in decisions which even she finds appalling.
In short, most infidelity occurs, not because it is planned, but because people find themselves in situations where their emotions overwhelm them.
What types of situations influence our emotions and bring out the worst in our behavior?
- Being close or interdependent on someone other than one’s spouse
- Being around someone who is sexually interested
- Spending a lot of time one-on-one with someone else
- Not feeling close or connected to one’s spouse (e.g., feeling lonely, being upset or angry with a spouse, etc.)
- Situations that create the sense of opportunity - the feeling that one will not get caught (e.g., meeting someone in private, out of town trips, etc.).
- Situations involving alcohol or drugs
What about "will power" or "self-restraint?"
Research shows that "will power" or "self-restraint," alone, does little to change or influence our behavior.
In fact, some cultures have decided that individual "will power" and "self-restraint" can not be trusted. Some cultures have made the decision that the best way to prevent infidelity is to make sure that the situations listed above do not occur - essentially, controlling situations is the best way to control behavior.
In western cultures, however, we place greater value on individual responsibility. We do not collectively try to prevent these types of situations from occurring. Rather we allow situations to happen, but then we hold individuals accountable for their behavior and we expect people to behave appropriately.
Individuals are supposed to exercise their self-restraint and have the will power to control their emotions and their actions.
Unfortunately, for many people this does not work.
Perhaps a somewhat related example will help bring home this point.
Relying on will power or self-restraint also fails to work when dieting. The very same problem occurs - people make promises and vows they can not keep. More often than not, will power and self-restraint are not enough to control one's weight. To diet successfully, more drastic measures are often needed. Successful dieting often requires a change in lifestyle, environment, social networks, and sometimes even surgery.
Of course, there are some important differences between dieting and trying to be faithful to one's spouse. The consequences of cheating are much more severe than the consequences of failing a diet (most people admit to failing a diet, but not to cheating). In any case, people do struggle with these issues and making promises alone typically does not result in a lasting change.
Overall, infidelity, like many other human behaviors, is difficult to control. Being faithful to a spouse is more complicated than simply making promises to do so.
