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If you're not sleeping with him, someone else will.
By Ossiana Tepfenhart — Last updated on Apr 25, 2023
Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Cheating isn't ever condonable but it's often predictable — and at times, preventable. In many long-term relationships, men stray because they keep getting rejected by their significant other.
Online, this is called having a "dead bedroom," and the most common outcomes of a dead bedroom are infidelity or a full breakup.
Here's what you need to understand about what happens when you stop sleeping with your man for a long period of time.
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Here are 8 reasons why men cheat sexually:
1. There are two ways to commit sexual infidelity
The first way is by cheating with someone else. The second way is by refusing to meet your partner's sexual needs after promising you would. Infidelity in relationships all boils down to a breach of trust. In the most common form of infidelity, there's a promise of monogamy that's been broken.
In the sexless form of infidelity, you're still betraying your partner by promising to be sexually exclusive with them, then not providing sex. If you're going weeks, months, or even years without f***ing him, you're going back on your word.
2. Sex is a basic need for a lot of men
Simply put, most (but not all) men won't be happy if they aren't getting laid while they're in a relationship. When you stop f***ing your man, you keep him from getting his needs fulfilled.
3. Sex is as much about feeling desired as it is about getting off
Telling your significant other to "just use their hand" isn't going to fix things because sex isn't the same as masturbation. When you stop sleeping with a partner, you're inadvertently telling them that you no longer sexually desire them.
A large percentage of people who cheat say they did it because they no longer felt desired at home. In other words, if you want your partner to stay with you, you need to make them feel desired, and a dead bedroom will not do that.
4. Sexual rejection hurts your partner more than you think
Sure, every once in a while it's OK to say that you're not in the mood. But if the majority of his advances are rejected, he will begin to feel like he's not enough for you. He will begin to suffer emotionally because he will feel like you either don't care about him, aren't attracted to him, or resent him.
5. Just as you have a right not to have sex, he has a right to have sex with someone else or leave
Too often, partners will withhold sex as a way of punishing their significant others. Though you have every right to say "no" to sex, they also have every right to leave you for someone who will be willing to provide them the love they want. Though they can't force you to have sex, there's no real way to force someone who is unhappy to stay loyal to you, or with you at all.
6. Most guys who are in long-term dead bedrooms would rather have sex with you and talk it out
And they'd rather do that than be forced to sleep with others. In other words, if you've stopped sleeping with your man, they've probably already tried to broach the subject with you. Now isn't the time to stonewall him. If you're having issues and lost your libido, the best chance you have at keeping your partner with you, happy, and faithful is to talk things out.
7. Over time, that emotional pain will turn into resentment
And then things will get ugly. This often takes half a year to happen, but once it happens the relationship's issues will be very hard to fix. By the time they begin resenting you, they are already either contemplating leaving you or considering having an affair.
8. If you kept rejecting your man and he cheated, you don't really need to ask why
Sex is an innate need in most people, so if you want to prevent cheating in the future, either date an asexual, break up with him, or learn to work things out.
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Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, New Theory Magazine, and others.