 We all know someone, or have been someone, who's unfortunately experienced an affair and a cheating relationship. Although it's painful to experience, and leaves many a scar for those affected, it can teach us to avoid similar situations in the future. While it's better to be a third party and see the reasoning behind both sides, if you are involved, you can still gain knowledge. Discovering the motives and red flags will teach you how to avoid cheating in your own relationships. Cheating is bad, we can all agree. But you can't judge someone by only knowing that they once cheated without knowing the situation behind it and the reasoning why. For example, picture a man and a woman who dated for a long time and got married, had two kids, and bought a house together. Slowly, the husband became an extreme alcoholic who never spent time with his wife or their children. Due to the wife's financial and cultural situation, she is unable to divorce him and still care for her children or herself. One day at the gym, she meets a nice man who she sincerely cares for and who truly loves her in return. This led to an affair. Would you put the wife at fault? Do you blame her? Yes, cheating is wrong and she should not have cheated, but as an outsider, we can learn from her mistakes and avoid this kind of fate ourselves. For example, you should not let yourself become financially dependent upon another individual. If you do, you could find that you are trapped in a toxic relationship, like the woman in our scenario discovered. There were also steps that the couple could have taken to avoid this fate. They could have addressed his alcohol problem before it got out of hand or gone to marriage counseling to discuss their relationship issues. Although cheating is wrong, we can see that there are often innocent factors at play and we can learn from witnessing other people's sides of a situation. Nonetheless, we must remember we truly are never aware of a person's situation unless we are them. You cannot immediately judge a book by its cover. But is there, deep down in our chromosomes, a biological reason behind most cheating affairs within a marriage? Biologically speaking, falling in love will offset a release of chemicals that make a body feel excited and elated. Over the course of time, those chemicals fade and that feeling of love unfortunately starts to trickle away too. When a partner meets someone fresh that they're attracted to, it rekindles those feelings, but toward the other individual. Even if this person has never cheated before and has been completely faithful over the years, this newfound rush of chemicals encourages the natural human temptation. The only difference between a cheater and a non-cheater is whether they act on this temptation or not. Some people take this influx of chemicals rushing into them as them falling head over heels for this new person and consequently falling out of love with their spouse when it's really just an infatuation that will fade just as it did the first time around. Everyone loves to fall in love. It's a thrilling adventure and it's beautiful, so cheaters sometimes view these feelings as brand new, although they're just a refresh of what they once had with their partner. This temptation can be avoided by working together as a couple to keep the flame alive, as some may say. As a couple, you should try new things and always keep impressing each other so that you never forget the love you discovered at the dawn of your relationship. Whether it's been two years of marriage or 20 years, you must keep striving for love and to keep interest engaged or things will get old, boring, and the flame will go out. In the end, it is still wrong to cheat. Although there are some who may argue that it is in our DNA, we have the ability to work things out in our relationships to avoid cheating. If your relationship is important to you and your partner, you should both take steps to keeping the flame alive and keeping the desire there throughout the years so that the topic of cheating does not ever arise.