7 Reasons Why People Look for Lovers

The reasons for getting involved in a love triangle are different in each relationship. Discover why people are unfaithful when they love each other and the reason behind the search for lovers.

According to data from a study on infidelity in married people carried out in Mexico and published by the Ramón de la Fuente Institute of Psychiatry, 70% of women and 90% of men have been unfaithful at least once in their lives. The main reasons for cheat on your partner They are sexual dissatisfaction, spending more time at work than with your partner and, in some cases, revenge.

Men usually see their virility reinforced when they commit adultery, since they are culturally instilled that the more women who pass through their bed, the more men they are. “Some studies indicate that while they do it to endorse their manhood and seek pleasure, women want affection, understanding and affection.“, indicates José de Jesús González Núñez, president of the Research Institute in Clinical and Social Psychology.

“The causes of infidelity They are logical: when one or both people stop loving each other, which is caused by a lack of affection, low self-esteem or the arrival of children or when the couple is neglected for this reason. “Sexual dysfunctions, or a compulsive addiction to sex, among other factors, are also reasons.”

Why is one unfaithful when one loves?

There are different reasons why people looking to have a lover outside the relationship. In many cases, unfaithful people have lovers to compensate for something they cannot find in their own relationship or to try to deal with their relationship problems. According to psychologists, people end up having lovers for the following reasons.

1. They have a conflict

Sometimes people in a stable relationship look for lovers or have a affair to solve those problems that they cannot deal with face to face. In this way, they want the pair of lovers to look for what they cannot solve or find within their relationship. This is how they give an outlet to their frustrations without having to address them in a more intense way.

2. They feel desperate

On many occasions people look for this extramarital relationship to deal with the desperation in them. This may be due to problems both inside and outside of your own relationship, that is, this discontent may be due to a void at work, within yourself, or in the bond within the couple. By having a lover they try to address the problem without finding too much comfort.

3. They want to save their relationship

Although it may seem that they are looking for lovers because they no longer want their partner, the reality is that on many occasions they may seek sex with their lover or have a lover to save their own ‘official’ relationship. That is, they love the person who is by their side, but they want to solve some personal or relationship problems through this third person.

4. They seek sexual satisfaction

There are many cases in which a married woman or man returns to look for your lover in order to satisfy your sexual desire. That is, what they are looking for here is simply a carnal encounter in order to deal with the sexual problems that exist within the relationship itself.

5. They seek revenge

When a problem within the relationship has not been resolved, in many cases people may seek have lovers or a lover to be able to hurt the other person or stay at peace with themselves. This happens due to communication problems or lack of expression that may exist within a relationship.

6. Low self-esteem or narcissism

Sometimes the problem when someone looking to have a affair, it’s just personal and not because of the relationship. For example, when a person has very low self-esteem or suffers from narcissism, in extreme cases they may resort to having a lover. In these cases, the person usually tries to go in search of the lover in order to deal with these personal problems. This ends up being counterproductive, as it causes more harm than good.

7. They don’t love their partner

On some occasions, people they turn to lovers because they no longer love their partner, but they have too many things that bind them together. That is, for example, they could have children, a mortgage, and even many friends in common, and out of fear of losing everything, they end up resorting to having a lover instead of ending the relationship. In these cases, the problem arises when the two before they fall in love are in such a complicated situation that it generates psychological conflicts inside and outside of their extramarital relationship.

These are some of the main reasons why someone can become turn to lovers even though he is in a relationship. If you think this is your case and you want to solve or clarify things, a good idea is to have a professional couples therapist. Your true love may be at stake.

What does it mean to have a lover?

A lover by definition is sought only to try to deal with the problems that exist. within a relationship That is to say, on many occasions, having a lover is just part of a game in which people do not look for anything further. In reality, people who end up in a secret relationship really want to be with their real partners, but they seek this extramarital relationship to deal with their personal problems.

There are few cases where the person ends up saying ‘I have fallen in love with my lover ‘, since the reason for this relationship of lovers in psychology is usually to confront the problems of the main relationship.

And what happens to the loving person in this love triangle?

According to the doctor in Clinical Psychology and Research, Inmaculada Jáuregui Balenciaga, author of the research ‘The figure of the loving person in infidelity: the other side of narcissism‘, he usually says that he is, especially at the beginning of the relationship, little aware of what he is getting into. In some cases interviewed for the study, the loving people They do not know if their conquest is single or married because they simply omit this information. It seems that eyes that do not see, a heart that does not feel.

Dr. Jáuregui concludes, after interviewing numerous lovers, which is about people in love, despite what is usually believed. Furthermore, they often act against their beliefs and values ​​because they know that they are being part of a deception, but they continue with that type of relationship because they feel reciprocated and use self-deception as a defense mechanism.

This defense mechanism becomes relevant when unanimously none of the lovers interviewed experience this triangulation as such. It is even surprising that among these couples there is talk of fidelity pacts when both of them know for a fact that there are relationships outside of that relationship, either with the official spouse in the case of the cheater or with other people in the case of the lover.

The figure of the lover-redeemer

The person who enters a love triangle like lover He tends to justify his partner’s lies because he identifies him as a ‘victim’ of a relationship that does not work, that has no future, that is suffocating and unsatisfactory. So they see themselves as the redeeming figure that while saving that person through that relationship, they save themselves.

As Jáuregui’s research points out, the loving person They are, generally, a vulnerable person who is not completely satisfied with their work life and/or their interpersonal relationships. Thus, she finds in the love triangle a lifeline to cling to to overcome her own existential crisis.

When the first stage of falling in love and mutual sexual satisfaction is overcome, we automatically find ourselves in the process of ‘making the relationship official’. This point usually brings a lot of frustration because it is very unlikely that a extramarital relationship culminates as an official relationship and/or is publicly accepted (with or without marriage involved).

Not being able to make the relationship official and go from lovers to couple It is often the reason for psychological consultation. On the one hand, there is no intention to end the relationship and the fact that it is clandestine does not seem to pose any problem, since it was born with this characteristic. What is sought in therapy is the way to manage frustration and distance. It may even be the case that psychotherapy is used to find an expert opinion that evaluates whether or not there is love or to manage the end of the relationship because the other person has decided to return to their partner.

Lovers falling in love: Why is it a problem?

We can notice a pattern of emotional dependence on the married person. This translates into the insistence on maintaining an asymmetrical relationship and the intensification of the anxious-avoidant condition. It reaches a point where the relationship becomes toxic, since it is a vicious circle of passion, discussion and reunions that does not leave there, it never becomes official to family or friends. “The loving people They surrender and give themselves as in an official love relationship, while unfaithful people seem to enroll in a more narcissistic orientation to receive what they lack to have it all.“, indicates the study.

The loving person, thus, ignores or denies the domination they are suffering because the rules are imposed by the married person without leaving room for maneuver. The lover adapts to these rules without being aware of how she is modifying her availability and her character. She becomes, therefore, a person with great notable insecurity who dedicates all of her energy to that relationship, although she is aware that she does not receive in return what she would deserve.

This type of domination is perfect because it is not physical, on the contrary, it is a whole network of mental manipulation and affective in which people fall voluntarily, thinking that they are free at all times. The extramarital relationship is, in the end, another example of narcissistic disorder: both the unfaithful person and his lover are moved by the principle of immediate pleasure and not by that of reality, which would imply empathy with the affected people.