Why Men Cheat. No, for real. I have all the answers.

I cheated.

Years ago, while in a loving and committed relationship, met another woman, we hit it off and in the electricity of the moment we were damn near fucking. Were it not for the intervention of a good friend, we would've had sex that night.

Didn't matter. Fuck the Clintonisms; it was still cheating.

Let me tell you, though, that I can say without any reservation that cheating was the best mistake of my life.

It seems the entire world is obsessed with cheating right now. The reasons are simple, of course. Jesse James, Tiger Woods, any given congressman, an episode of South Park and every cover of every women's magazine--- the entire world is obsessed because women are obsessed- and scared. If some other man cheated well, then, your man's gonna cheat.

So women want answers. As a cheater, I can very easily give those answers.

But first, a story.

The reasons behind my cheating may be rendered in complex terms: my ex and I were at a crossroads, an ebb in the flow of our relationship. She was suffering from a libido-killing depression, I was feeling tied down and unattended to and into this mix came my very own Manic Pixie Dream Girl... and movie magic happened. Or some approximation.

As far as I'm concerned, the why doesn't matter-- well, not until the end, that is....

It's what happened afterwards that's important.

I woke. I looked over, seeing the pantied and snoring form of my mistake. I went home. Not mine. Hers. I crept into my ex's apartment with her spare key and I wept. I cried as if some important person, my mother, my sister, my child, had died. I grieved.

I called my mother, weeping like a widow, bargaining with her and God to somehow make this not-alright thing, alright. And then, later, much later, I sat my girlfriend down and I told her.

And then... she told me. Yeah. She'd cheated too.

It was years ago, with someone who I used to joke about her cheating on me with.

She told me she was afraid. She told me she knew, the way I was, that I would leave her the minute she told me. Leave her and hate her for it. She was absolutely, 100% right. In hindsight, I approve her actions-- they showed she knew my character better than I did.

If I remember correctly, I laughed. And in those moments, I had an epiphany that has since changed my life: people cheat. You can't control them. You can't figure out reasons, you can't guilt or bribe them and you can't even love them into not-cheating. Some people cheat and some people don't and that's the universe, in a nut shell.

Let me tell you something I believe about human nature: we are all, each and every one of us, the protagonists of our very own living novels. Humanity, being what is it (a rational-seeming being in an largely chaotic, irrational set of circumstances), tries to make sense of the world through narrative. We tell ourselves stories, about the trees, about the rivers, about the Gods and about our own motives.

Ask yourself, after all, which comes first? The emotion or the action? The feeling or the processing of what that feeling is? Do you feel anger and then realize it is anger you felt? Do you feel love first, then call that feeling love?

We're all in a story, written by ourselves, starring ourselves and let me tell you, we are very, very unreliable narrators. Whatever our actions, most people, at core, believe they are good... or at keast just. Everyone believes there's a good reason for whatever it is their character is doing. Just ask a rapist-- that bitch always deserves it, doesn't she?

This may seem like a philosophical digression (and it is), but there's a point.

Would you like to know why men cheat? It's the same reason why women cheat.

Because it felt good at the time.

We'll call it sex addiction, we'll call it a moral lapse, we'll call it a drunken escapade; we'll blame our spouses for not loving us enough or loving us too much. We'll need space, we'll need attention, we'll need whatever but in the end those are just the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of an irrational chemical instance: we fuck because it feels good. We flirt because it feels good. We cheat... because it feels good.

Got your answer? Good. Now stop freaking the fuck out. You can't control other people any more than you can control the weather.

All you can do is all you can do and the rest? The rest is just someone else's story. Live on, writing your own.

Weird Science.

According to the New York Times, it won't be long before we see Love Potion Number 9

When a female prairie vole’s brain is artificially infused with oxytocin, a hormone that produces some of the same neural rewards as nicotine and cocaine, she’ll quickly become attached to the nearest male. A related hormone, vasopressin, creates urges for bonding and nesting when it is injected in male voles (or naturally activated by sex). After Dr. Young found that male voles with a genetically limited vasopressin response were less likely to find mates, Swedish researchers reported that men with a similar genetic tendency were less likely to get married. In his Nature essay, Dr. Young speculates that human love is set off by a “biochemical chain of events” that originally evolved in ancient brain circuits involving mother-child bonding, which is stimulated in mammals by the release of oxytocin during labor, delivery and nursing.

“Some of our sexuality has evolved to stimulate that same oxytocin system to create female-male bonds,” Dr. Young said, noting that sexual foreplay and intercourse stimulate the same parts of a woman’s body that are involved in giving birth and nursing.

Interesting but, in some ways, a bit of a finding in search of a hypothesis-- perhaps we stimulate the same parts of a woman's body that are involved in giving birth and nursing because they also have an unusually large number of nerve cells? And in the case of male fascination with breasts, that isn't even even cross-cultural. Black men prefer booty and a whole shit load of white guys seem to like women who kind of look like boys (I'm just sayin').

What is more interesting, though, is the idea of a love vaccine which, on its surface, seems to be a cure... for monogamy.

For years, the argument (probably made up and advocated by guys) went that men are the biological imperative to spread the seed as far and wide as possible-- and that women are more suited to monogamy, as they have the deal with the result for 9 months. Hence, why Alpha male's fuck more-- they have better genes and need to spread them-- and why nerds win last-- because, as the losers, they will then nest and provide secure monogamy for the woman. Until she's fertile again and the kid's older and those big men with their broad shoulders come swaggering by.

I know a few women in open relationships and I know at least one who initiated things herself-- so it's not to say that women are obviously wired one way or another.

But imagine a word where we did go ahead and take the "Love Vaccine"-- imagine the psychological and sexual equality resultant. Women who can go out and have fun (as safely as possible, of course-- no one wants the baby question) and never fear for kind of emotional fallout I get to overhear at the bar at work or on the weekends. No more self-doubt, no more longing for a past lover.

Just sex. Imagine: chemical polyamory.

Or imagine the idea that, one day, you can take this alpha guy, shoot him with the love juice and erase the entire idea of the 7 year itch (which, in this generation, seems to have fallen back to 3).

We know that infatuation phases of a relationship tends to go no more than 2 and half years, tops. Imagine if you could extend it as long as you like-- a physical, chemical and emotional love to last all time.

Isn't it kind of amazing we're even asking these questions?

When was it, exactly, that people stopped thinking they could love the way those who came before us did-- for 20 or 30 years at a time? Was it just the financial ties that kept these older couples glued? Was it fear of God-- fear of divorce?

Was it coming up in a media environment of unrealistic expectations- thanks to Romantic Comedies- and a-must-have-it-all-NOW mentality?

Questions for another day. But it's interesting to know that, one day, we won't be worrying about people slipping ladies the roofie-colada but slipping (and being slipped) love potions for sex, profit and quickie marriages. Men, then, will wish for the good old days of beer goggles....