The viral clip “Doraemon Pillow - Green Flask” reveals the psychological reasons why people tend to cheat on their partners.
From the viral clip with 70 million views, “Doraemon Pillow - Green Flask,” posted by a Facebook user who caught her husband cuddling a mistress, sparking online debate, Thairath's special news team dives deeper into the causes behind cheating behavior.
According to 2024 data from World of Statistics, Thailand ranks number one worldwide with the highest infidelity rate at 56%.
An article from the Department of Mental Health titled “Why Do Men Have Mistresses?” studied 20 Thai men through open interviews, revealing three major reasons why they have mistresses or cheat on their partners.
Assoc. Prof. Chatwiboon Paijsel, Deputy Head of the Psychology Department at the Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University, explains that from a psychological perspective, infidelity arises from both personal and environmental factors.
1. Personal factors
Love can cause the brain and heart to act in opposition, often occurring at unpredictable times and with unpredictable people. Psychologically, although the brain knows that loving someone already committed violates social norms, the heart is difficult to control, leading to the condition of “knowing it's wrong but unable to resist.”
Human nature drives a desire to learn and seek new experiences to enrich and expand one's life. In relationships, after being with the same person for a long time, familiarity can prompt some to seek new people to feel excitement and novelty again.
Having a secret or clandestine love affair often comes with feelings of challenge and thrill. Psychologically, succeeding in such secrecy makes the brain feel like a winner.
2. Environmental factors
According to Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love, complete love comprises three components:
Intimacy
Passion
Commitment
Over time, if couples neglect each other, intimacy and passion may decrease, causing distance and creating a gap that makes people seek others to fill the missing parts.
If an existing relationship is strained or unhappy, and a “new person” appears at that time, immediate comparisons occur. If the newcomer offers what the current partner cannot—such as attention, excitement, or understanding—the trigger for cheating is easily ignited.
In such relationships, the third party is crucial. If the third party becomes emotionally involved and is given even small opportunities, like dining alone together, it may give hope to the third party and perpetuate the cycle of infidelity indefinitely.
In the article “The 8 Reasons Why People Cheat,” relationship psychology expert Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. Ph.D. identifies eight causes of cheating:
1. Anger: Resulting from troubled relationships, accumulated dissatisfaction, or previous infidelity, reaching a point where cheating is done as revenge or to spite the partner.
2. Loss of esteem: Feeling inferior in the relationship (e.g., partner is more successful, controlling, or belittling) leads one to seek someone new who makes them feel valued, empowered, and freer.
3. Lack of love: Changing feelings where the current partner no longer feels right or does not meet life’s needs.
4. Low commitment: Unclear relationship status, such as secret dating, can lead to infidelity.
5. Need for variety: Not due to loss of love but a desire for diversity, wanting to try new things—whether in sex or conversations with new people.
6. Neglect: Feeling "like having a partner but not truly having one" due to physical distance or emotional neglect, such as being ignored or unheard, causing loneliness and a desire to find someone to fill the void.
7. Sex desire: Mismatched sexual preferences or needs unmet by the partner often lead to physical cheating more than emotional involvement.
8. Situational factors: Occur due to lapses in judgment, lack of self-control, or temporary lowered inhibitions, such as intoxication. This type of cheating usually happens and ends quickly.