M. Gary Neuman is a marriage counselor with more than 20 years experience and it was working with couples and seeing the suffering that comes from cheating that inspired him to write a book on the subject. It’s called ìThe Truth About Cheating and it features revelatory information that should help change the way people think about cheating men. It’s not going to make them any more sympathetic, of course, but it may help couples deal with the fallout of affairs and it may help prevent them too.

Amazingly, 92% of the men he surveyed for his book said that the primary reason for cheating wasn’t about the sex. When you consider that most people would guess it’s about the sex if you asked them why mean cheat that’s pretty astounding. What it boiled down to was that the vast majority of cheating men felt an emotional disconnection from their wife and that emotional disconnection led to feeling underappreciated. Early on in a relationship couples tend to work hard to show each other their appreciation and affection through little gestures (little gifts, doing favors without being asked, verbal expressions of love and appreciation, etc) that can disappear as the relationship gets older and it doesn’t seem as necessary to tend to it carefully. However, it’s exceptionally important to tend to the relationship from both sides and when the man feels underappreciated he looks for it outside the marriage.

The problem comes from the fact that it’s awfully easy to find that feeling of appreciation because it comes in spades in any new relationship. The very nature of a new relationship is that you’re discovering little things about each other every time you get together and you celebrate each of those things. The relationship doesn’t even have to be the stuff of legend, it just has to be new and fresh. When you’re in that new space it’s so easy to feel appreciated, to feel like someone loves you for being you, and to soak up those feelings. More than anything else men cheat because their emotional needs aren’t being met.

Men get those emotional needs met by having sex, of course, which sounds a little backwards but if you’re a man then you know that it works that way. You know that by having sex with you the woman is saying so many things (and a man can make her desire to have sex with him mean just about anything he wants).

88% of cheating men said the women they cheated with were no better looking and in no better shape than their wives, which should reinforce what’s already been said. While there’s a great deal of physical activity going on and it feels really good, the reason for cheating has a lot more to do with emotional issues than it does with physical desires. Men cheat because they feel insecure and sleeping with another woman can cure that. Men cheat because they want to feel good, they want to feel valued. The sex is just a bonus.