Long before cheating or infidelity happens to a marriage, the seeds have been planted. Cheating on a spouse often is the accumulation of negative experiences and discontent, both within one’s relationship or marriage, and within oneself.

Many unhappy partners mentally or emotionally start to check out of their intimate relationships before their cheating behavior starts. As many extramarital relationships start slowly or innocently enough, they are the culmination of a gradual erosion of emotional or sexual commitments to one’s partner. The love or passion starts to wane in a relationship or marriage, and sometimes no one sees it. It just happens over the course of time, and major needs start to go unmet for a partner.

For a lot of guys, be mental, sexual, or emotional withdrawal from their primary relationship is the first sign of problems. Many men that I talk with stopped feeling like they are winning in their relationship or marriage. They stopped feeling loved or validated by their wife or girlfriend, and at one point decided to stop trying. Maybe they feel inferior or not good enough for their wife or girlfriend, and, for a lot of men, no matter how much effort or attention they put into their wives or their marriages, they’re constantly plagued with that sense of “not being good enough.” As long as that “not good enough” experience resides in a partner, there are sure to be marital problems that arise.

Men who fall victim to cheating, or even thinking about cheating, may not be getting some of those needs met in their relationship. Conversely, their wives and girlfriends may be saying the same thing. It may be the wives and girlfriends who stopped receiving affection, caring, love, and support from their husbands and boyfriends, and so they, in turn, stopped giving back. This ‘freeze out’ effect–where both partners have cut off basic needs from the other –  leads to inevitable relationship decline and suffering without the right tools to diagnose and fix what’s ailing the relationship.

Here are some tips to help if you’re considering cheating on your partner:

1. Ask yourself if there are any needs that are going unmet in your relationship or marriage. If yes, how do you deal with not getting your needs met – whether they be sexual, emotional, physical, or the like?
2. Ask yourself: Do I have a habit of withdrawing emotionally from my relationship? Am I thinking of cheating as a way to cope with a difficult situation in my marriage?
3. And ask yourself: What are my reasons for cheating? What do I really need from another partner?
4. One more “ask yourself”: Am I doing it for the sex? What else reasons of my doing it for?
5. Consider your values: is immediate sex or affection from another woman more important to you now then are other things in your life? This is not a good/bad question of judgment, but rather asking you to weigh your values versus your potential behaviors. We tend to see the benefits of the impulsive or short-term decisions and act on them, instead of considering our values through the lens of longer-term decisions.
6. Consider getting individual therapy: you may not want to discuss this very personal issue with your wife or girlfriend. You may not be ready to yet. Talking with a professional counselor who can be a confidential, third-party source for you, maybe an option to help you work through some of the feelings and thoughts of cheating that are keeping you stuck.
7. Try not to put yourself in situations that will attract the potential for cheating. If you’re cruising dating sites, or being overly flirtatious with coworkers, you’re emanating sexual energy in a way that’s bringing that on yourself. If you have leaky sexual energy, get help for that before that leaky sexual energy turns into behaviors that you might regret.

Many guys I talk with don’t really know what they want sexually, and don’t know how to communicate sexually with their partner. Often times, a discomfort or fear about talking about sex prevents partners from really talking and connecting during sex. Unfortunately, communication problems around sex can lead to other forms of disconnection in the general relationship or marriage. Having a healthy sexual life includes being able to communicate your sexual desires and responses in a way that your partner can understand them, and attempts to meet those needs.

Knowing what you want sexually is the first start. Many guys say they just want more sex, which is fine, and don’t require as much attention to detail as their wives or girlfriends do. For women, on the other hand, sex is more about intimacy and connection, which necessarily includes communication. The guys that are able to communicate their sexual needs clearly what their partners are the partners who find themselves having richer and more meaningful sexual lives.

Being able to take a risk and indicate with your partner about what you want sexually from them is the second step. Often times, negative messages about sex tend to fill this space and prevent us from saying what we really want. It’s important to talk with our partners about what we want sexually, but just as important to talk about our fears and inhibitions. For men, a universal theme around sex is performance. Men want to know that they’re a high sexual performer, or that they’re able to please their partner in a way that makes them feel good and happy with them. In general, men want to know that they can please their wives and make them happy in their marriages and relationships. Sex is just an extension of that. Men want to know that they can please their wives sexually, as well as feel please themselves.

When it comes to performance anxiety (see last blog post on sexual problems and performance anxiety), guys set their performance standards too high, and sometimes fail them. Being able to talk with their partners about their fears about being a good sexual partner, and checking out what their partner what it is that they expect of them as their sexual partner, are important ways to break the ice and start communicating in a deeper way.

Here are more tips on how to more effectively to  communicate sexually with your partner:

• Know what feels good, and what doesn’t feel good, and take a risk and communicating with your partner.
• Talk about fantasies with your partner that you’ve been harboring in your mind; shall be happy that you did
• Create variety in your sex life, and in your relationship in general; sometimes, boring sex life is representative of hitting a boring patch in your relationship in general.
• Tune in and listen to what she wants more. Chances are good that she has some sexual desires that could use your attention, and listening more intently to what she’s interested in will deepen your sexual connection.
• Talk about your sexual pasts together, to the extent that you’re both comfortable with. Many times, guys really don’t want to hear this from their woman, but what I’m talking about is talking about the general issues. Talk about fears growing up about sex, messages that each got about sex, how sex was discussed in the family, and start to make the topic of sex a more approachable subject for both of you. You don’t necessarily need to go into the  fine details about each other’s previous sexual endeavors.

Creating a healthy sex life is a direct function of creating better and deeper to vacation with your partner. Consider some of these tips if you’re wanting to improve your overall sexual life.