“This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth and says, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’”
-Proverbs 30:20, NIV
I am convinced some cheaters are just addicted to the sexual or romantic attention of others. They love the high of being pursued.
This is why the typical Christian advice of pursuing a cheater is so wrongheaded:
It just feeds into this addiction to sin.
Of course, the cheater will love being pursued. However, pursuing the Cheater does nothing truly to help the faithful spouse or the cheater. Cheaters are essentially getting “hits” from their spouse as well as their affair partners. Such advice feeds the destructive dysfunction.
This is not productive.
The cheater who is addicted to the sexual or romantic attention of others needs to face this directly. For their spiritual well-being, they need to take steps to turn from a life feeding this destructive addiction. They need to figure out how to fill the hole in their souls in a more productive and permanent way.
This is work the cheater must do themselves.
The deficit is not in the marriage. It is in the cheater (see 2 Cor 5:10). Until the cheater is willing to accept this reality, they will remain spiritually sick and a liability to any of their partners. The addiction will own them as they are looking to solve something that is an internal, NOT an external problem for them.
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*A version of this post ran previously.
**Science has caught up to this phenomenon. Here’s an article about “emophilia” and infidelity.
