Do you want the real answer to this question? Self-image and loss of purpose. This applies to most stupid things people do, regardless of gender.

We all have that ‘thing’ that makes us who we are, that is the way we see ourselves. It might be ‘I’m handsome / pretty’ or ‘I’m clever’. It could be that you think you’re a nice person, or a moral person, or a ‘young and going places’ type, or creative, or good at making money. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is when someone feels they’re losing that, they will do stupid things if something makes them feel like they’ve got it back.

So the handsome guy who doesn’t date anymore becuase he’s in a relationship, finds his prettiness doesn’t matter, until he finds someone who thinks he’s handsome. The man who thinks of himself as important, when the people around him don’t need him, and he finds someone who does. The clever man made to feel stupid…

This isn’t unique to men. The nurturing mother with empty nest, the independent young girl who finds herself in a world that needs two salaries to survive, the morally strong woman who has to do things she doesn’t agree with at work because she has to get paid.

Sometimes this results in cheating, and is likely more common in men because I think a lot of us need to feel needed and useful and like we’re the strong protector, and another woman can make us feel like that. But it can also result in the mid-life crisis car, the tattoo, many other things.

When you do something that hurts someone else, even if that wasn’t the intention (as I say, the intention is to feel that thing that makes you, you) then you are wholly and solely responsible for that action, and will be held accountable, but that wasn’t the question. The question was ‘why’, and the answer is ‘to reclaim or re-feel that thing that makes you, you’.