People were asked why they were unfaithful and the answers are eye opening and insightful
"Validation is like a drug and intimacy is the ultimate validation."
People reveal the reasons they cheated. It's insightful and eye opening.
Infidelity is devastating for relationships. When you find out a partner has been unfaithful it can feel like a bomb went off in the middle of your living room while you were just trying to drink your morning coffee. The carnage from an affair can be extensive, especially if there are children involved.
But no matter what circumstances the infidelity happened, the partner who was on the receiving end of the betrayal often wonders why? It can send some people in a spiral of shame and self blame for the actions of their partners which feel debilitating. Oftentimes, the betrayed partner never feels like they get a truthful answer from their partners but one Reddit user decided to invite partners that have strayed to explain why they cheated.
Surprisingly, many of the answers were extremely insightful seemingly showing extraordinary growth since that time in their lives. There was also a lot of remorse expressed for their previous harmful behaviors.
"When you grow up being in turn neglected and told you're not good enough, validation is like a drug, and intimacy is the ultimate validation. Sooooo much therapy to undo this," one person reveals.
"Insecurity. I was always on the look out for someone who would make me feel more desirable than the last. Once I grew up emotionally, I realised [sic] what a POS I was & the hurt it caused. Hard to live with tbh. Edit. Can I just make it clear I was not a serial adulterer… It was a youthful lack of judgement," another person writes.
"Unbridled ego, unsatisfying regular sex life, and a girl who threw herself at me. I was an idiot, I acted like an a*****e, and I will regret it the rest of my life," one commenter says before continuing. "It was a hard truth to face. It was a dark time in my life where my ego and my immaturity caused me to hurt several people I loved."
"Because I chose a cowardly and easy path. Instead of going to therapy and ending my toxic relationship, I cheated on them with someone who I had convinced myself I was in love with, and loved me. Turns out, breaking up with someone is a lot less harmful to everyone involved than cheating," someone else writes.
An interesting theme that someone who has experienced the pain of infidelity may notice is that there's no blame placed on the betrayed partner. The people that answered this prompt admit that the affair was completely within their control and most say they learned from it.
Dr. Kathy Nickerson is a licensed clinical psychologist that specializes in affair recovery, she's also the author of the book The Courage to Stay: How to Heal from an Affair and Save Your Marriage. Nickerson has teamed up with other mental health professionals to research why people have affairs and has been revealing the earliest results on her TikTok page.
One of the preliminary results falls in line with what many of the commenters were sharing on the Reddit post, a lot of people that cheat are in some sort of emotional pain.
"In our recent affairs survey, we asked over 1400 cheating partners, was an affair a painkiller," Nickerson says, revealing that 64.8% of women and 59.9% of men agreed or strongly agreed with the affair being a painkiller. When asking "did you choose the affair to cope with emotional pain," 68.2% of women and 70.2% of men answered in the affirmative.
In another video, Nickerson revealed that the saying, "once a cheater always a cheater" may actually be inaccurate based on the preliminary research results. According to the initial survey for cheating partners, 59.89% reported only having one affair.
If there's one take away from the eye opening responses in the Reddit post and the early research results from Nickerson, it's that cheating has very little to do with the person being cheated on and people don't always cheat again. You can follow along with Nickerson's research here, and if you're healing from infidelity while choosing to stay partnered, you can buy her book here.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.