There are millions of articles that talk about this touchy subject and on my last check there were 28.8 million search results on Google for ‘Why Men Cheat’ and 5.39 million search results for ‘Why Married Men Cheat’. That tells me…wait…what does that tell me? That millions of people have been victims and are either recounting their personal experiences or experiences of others? Perhaps. Well I’m not married (yet) but I do have friends who’ve shared candid experiences of infidelity (both proven and yet to be proven). Here’s what I’ve learnt so far in Nigeria:

1. Sexual appetite – Some men have a high sex drive and some men don’t. Once they go into marriage this ‘condition’ is not expected to change with the introduction of his wife aka ‘the last woman he will ever sleep with’. Extremely virile men may just demand more sex than usual from their wives (though I can’t say for certain what a ‘usual’ amount of sex is). Where the wife is not forthcoming or struggles to keep up then this may breed the temptation for the man to use his weapon of mass seduction outside the matrimonial home, thereby catapulting him into the Men are Dogs category. Some men, even with a wife that can keep up, will f&%! anything with a pulse.

2. Self fulfillment – Married men with a promiscuous an adventurous past may have reached saturation point before saying ‘I do’. But you could imagine if a man had very limited encounters with the opposite sex, with his closest being asking a girl to the prom right before getting refused. If you could stretch your imagination a bit further perhaps he did not have the privilege of a dirty stag night and to crown it all he was a virgin before marriage. Fast forward 3 weeks after the miraculous ‘I do’ from his sexually active wife, he ignores that thing between his ears and listens to that thing between his legs; he thinks he has unfinished business and embarks on a solo mission to bed as many women as he could – after all, his wife had her fair share so why couldn’t he?

3. Shallow perception – With lack of a more genteel way of putting this, some men see women as sexual objects…period. The consequence of that for those men who decide to get married anyway is that they would constantly be on the look out for any little opportunity to have extra marital affairs. The mentality of such men is ‘God gave me this not just to take a piss. I’m just gonna conquer as much p&%!y as I can before I die…or get beamed up for an ‘extra terrestrial affair’ (I’m just saying…).

4. Special circumstances – A man who’s sincerely in love with his wife is less likely to cheat when compared to a man who was forced into an arranged marriage or felt inclined to marry the woman he unintentionally impregnated. Such circumstances can lead to more pain and frustration than a middle-aged man getting circumcised. One avenue of release would be the triple ‘D’ combo – Dump, Divorce, Desert (in the absence of true love). Another would be to ‘make it stick’ and instead have side chicks.These are more or less pathetic excuses to cheat but remain true to this day.

5. Bad company – Ever heard the saying, ‘Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are? Some married men keep dodgy friends – you know, the ones who never seem to be around when the wife is in the picture but are readily available whenever she’s not. Mind you, the wife may never have seen these so-called friends (and they would prefer to keep it that way). A couple of nights out…with a lot of alcohol…and loosely clad women…then you probably wouldn’t be surprised that it’s only a matter of time before a glance leads to a phone number, a phone number leads to a hotel room, and then a hotel room leads to ‘honey, why do you have a receipt from Jolly Motel in your trouser pocket?!’

As always, this is by far no exhaustive list of reasons but I selected the top ones in my opinion. Some married men may cheat for less popular obscure reasons like blackmail, revenge, seduction, geographical proximity, or some men may say, in the not-so-wise words of Ex-President Bill Clinton, ‘just because I could.

You can also read my previous controversial post on Why some men cheat.