There are many potential reasons why people cheat, people cheat for varied reasons as well but to me, it could be having low self-esteem, feeling unhappy with life or a relationship, trauma, fear, and unhelpful patterns of behavior learned as a kid, or in previous relationships all these could be reasons why people cheat.
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I don't know if you have been in a situation where someone cheated you on something and it hurts so much because all your life you trusted this person with everything you have. You sacrificed a lot for that friendship to stand. Even went against your wish most times because you don't want the love to be one-sided and in the end all you get is betrayal
Will I say it has always been my fate to be cheated on by friends and Loved ones? Alright, let me start with my close friends.
There's a very close friend I had back then we did business together I engaged in that business because I wanted to elevate him out of my good heart. I was even referring him to some friends and business associates because he told me he was an expert.
I never doubted him, I trusted him so much that when he told me he got the skills my friend was looking for. I allowed him to be hired without a second thought or assessing his expertise in that industry and that was the day I made the biggest mistake of My life.
It resulted in the collapse of my friend's business, taking him back to square one. I lost a couple of friends who I also referred to him. They thought I was working with him to extort money from them all along.
I paused for a second and tried to question myself, my head racing through so many questions which I didn't find the answers to. This guy claim to be an expert meanwhile he was using the money to learn the said skills.
So all this while he's learning and testing the waters with the client's money and whenever it goes wrong he blames the client for doing something wrong on their end and because most of them knew nothing about it they agree and still pay more to sort out the issues.
Then when they continued paying and the same thing keeps happening he will ghost them during confrontations. My friend who lost his money was the worst because he was investing 80% of his income, thinking he was working with someone he trusted. Meanwhile, he was using the payments to brush up his skills.
After apologizing to my friend, I moved on though it pained me a lot because this guy never asked for forgiveness. He never felt remorseful and that hurt me so much because as a friend I never expected him to hurt my reputation that badly but then what did I learn? I learned there are no friends in the business. I kept my circle smaller and tighter afterward.
Months later he came to me and asked for forgiveness but I already moved on and cut off anything that had to do with him. I let him know that I've forgiven but we can't be close again and that's not a punishment, but rather a productive way for me to heal. This has been my ethics whenever I needed space from any of my friends who offended me.
To me, what I consider cheating in friendship or any form of relationship means being disrespectful, breaking promises, betraying, ignoring, and lying. So cheating involves any behavior that violates the trust and loyalty that is central to a relationship.