Why do men cheat their partners?

It's not all about sex. That's what it eventually leads to, but the answer is not as simple as that-committed men don't just set out to break their partners' hearts. Before you think I have switched sides, let me tell you the answers come from experts who have dealt with real life couples and have years of experience dealing with betrayal, heartbreak and what follows thereafter.

Sometimes it may end in reconciliation, sometimes in break-up, but both leave open one question: why did it happen in the first place? Instead of pondering over let's ask experts to talk about a few reasons cited by men who have cheated on their wives.

Nagging wife
Dr Anu Goel, relationship counsellor
I t's not as if men don't get the point. But if you say it too often, they are likely to ignore it just because they get irritated. Nagging just doesn't go well with men, especially if it's in raised voices and becomes a matter of habit. "Men do not like complications. They like things simple. And they love it when they are appreciated. In short, they need ego- boosters to feel like a man," says relationship counsellor Dr Anu Goel. It was this need that made Amrit Mukherjee, a corporate lawyer, drift apart from his wife, Sunita, who he was married to for about 15 years.

"The man had started small and become very successful. He wanted to enjoy the good life with his wife. But she became so involved with the child that she started neglecting him, and even became too critical of him for spending less time at home. This man was good at his job and there were pretty young women in his office who were in awe of him.

One woman who had approached him for work developed a strong bond with him and he started having an affair with her just because she used to make him feel good about himself. It went on for quite a few years.

Emotional distance
Dr Varkha Chulani, clinical psychologist
Rahul Mehra, 40, was a professional banker doing quite well both professionally and personally. He was married to his college sweetheart Mrinalini for almost 10 years. The first five years of the marriage was "pretty good" according to both of them. But thensomething changed. "It's like we were just going through the motions every day, with our set duties and commitments. I'll fix the car, she'll manage the home completely, we'll both manage our kid (a 6-year-old boy). It seemed like whenever we were talking, we were talking either about how to run the household better, or arguing about it," says Mehra.

"But the worst part was when we stopped talking completelyall of a sudden. Clinical psychologist Dr Varkha Chulani says, "Emotional distance has been one of the most cited reasons for couples who drift apart. In this case, the cheating started with one female colleague at work and then went on to another." By this time, weird hours at work and a lot of calls from one specific number atodd hours made Mrinalini suspicious. And herfears were proven right. Emotional distance eventually also leads to sexual distance. And proves fatal for relationships, observes Dr Chulani.

In this case there was a happy ending, but that's an anomaly these days.
Wife versus mother
Rachna Singh, lifestyle expert
Joint families are proving to be the causeof breaking couples rather than making them stay together. "In today's age when both men and women marry in their late 20s or early 30s, changing your way of life completely can become a point of friction pretty quickly," says Dr Rachna Singh, lifestyle expert, Artemis Hospital. "Too much expectation from women has often resulted in increasing distance between the husband and wife. The blame game starts too soon, like in the case of Pushpita Mathur, an ambitious marketing executive who was as focused on her career as her husband Sudhir, a dentist, was busy with his private practice.

"The onus of responsibilities or household work was on the wife, even if she had a killing schedule. Small arguments led to major ones in no time, and suddenly home was the last place the man wanted to come back to. "Men can deal with one angry woman at a time. Two of them may become a bit too much to handle. In this case, the man started to see his old girlfriend once again, and since she was unattached, the affair went on for some three years before his wife got to know about it."

American counsellor M. Gary Neuman surveyed 200 cheating and non-cheating husbands before coming out with the book The Truth About Cheating, last year. The most surprising revelation was that sex outside marriage was not the sole purpose - 48 percent of men rated emotional dissatisfaction as the primary reason they cheated, 66 percent reported feeling guilt during the affair.

Only 6 per cent of cheating men had physical intimacy with a woman after meeting her the very same day or night.

The peer effect
Dr Samir Parikh, psychiatrist, senior consultant, Max Hospital
Samar Singh, an advertising executive was married to Neeru, his ex colleague for two years before Neeru discovered that he was cheating on her randomly with several other women.

"First it was my friends, excolleagues who tried to tell me about Samar's infidel ways. Then I learnt it from his friends too," says Neeru. "Samar comes from a broken family. He has seen his parents treat each other terribly. He always thought cheating was a part of life, and he would get away with it." Dr Samir Parikh, psychiatrist and senior consultant, Max Hospital, says, "Several factors lead to a man straying, this is one of the most important ones. If you've seen people cheating on one another or marriages ending in divorce, then to some extent you become de-sensitised to such things," he says. Some people are also too confident of not getting caught in such situations.

And sex is not an emotional experience for men at most times unlike women - so cheating doesn't seem like that big an issue to most of them.