Talking To Your Teenage Son About His Cheating Ways

Every parent wants to raise their son to be a mature, responsible young man.  Men who are considerate and loyal.  For the most part, of our sons will end up that way, eventually in time.  However, in the meantime, they will make a lot of mistakes.  One of those mistakes likely involves breaking a few hearts along the way.

A large number of teenage boys “play the field” behind the backs of their devoted girlfriends.  As much as you don’t want to know or admit it, your own son may be among them.  But, what to do if and when you learn this important, yet heartbreaking piece of information?  If you discover that your son is a player per say, there are a few ways you can go about handling the situation.  A few of these ways are highlighted below for your convenience.

One approach is to just stay out of the situation completely.  Since all teenage relationships are basically learning experiences, you should allow them to learn.  There are a number of benefits to giving him the freedom to make his own mistakes.  If you believe this way of thinking, you may just want to ignore the situation.  With that said, if you suspect that your son might be jeopardizing his own health and safety or the health and safety of others by cheating, you may want to deal with the problem head-on.

Putting things into perspective for your son is another approach that you can and may want to take.  What you can do is appeal to your son’s own sense of decency.  Ask him to imagine how he would feel if someone broke his heart and trust in that same way.  As a parent, you may be surprised just how effective this approach is.  Many times, all it takes is a gentle and respectable reminder that they are not the only people in the world who have feelings and experience hurt and pain.

Discuss the consequences with your son.  The consequences of cheating may seem like common sense to us, but to a teenager who lives in the moment, these ideas are fleeting, at best.  Your son may not even have considered the idea of losing the friendship of a girl he cares about, developing a reputation that may impact and prevent future relationships, and so forth.

If you are worried about seeming over protective or appearing as the overbearing parent, you may want to take the “cool” approach to the situation.  Most teenage boys are fueled by the approval of their peers.  This means that looking “cool” to their friends is very important.  You can and should try to convince your son that he doesn’t need multiple girlfriends to fit in or just because everyone else thinks that it is cool to cheat.

By implementing a few of the above mentioned steps, you may be able to help your cheating teenage son change his ways.  However, even if you are completely unsuccessful in getting your son to stop his cheating, the important message is still fresh in his mind.  It is likely that he will, one day, meet that special someone who leaves him with the urge to stay faithful.  Until then, it is your job, as the parent, to support him as best you can even while voicing your displeasures. 

How To Catch Lover Cheating

How to reveal if your lover is cheating on you by keeping a special diary

Our minds aren’t perfect at remembering special details and specific facts – far from it. Our brains work selectively; they store and recall certain bits of information while forgetting others. For example, you might remember – for whatever reason – a phone number that has little or no importance to you, but forget the birthday of someone you really should buy a present for. On the most part, this selective/subjective memory trait creates no real problems in our day to day lives. We can look up a number if we forget it, or ask a friend of a friend for the day of the month on which someone’s birthday falls.

However, sometimes it can make things slightly trickier. One such time is when we suspect our partner may be cheating on us. Imagine you walk into the room just as your partner is putting down the phone and they seem a little on edge or tense as they turn around and see you. The incident may stick out in your mind for weeks, niggling at you, making you wonder: did it mean something, was it a sign? 

Fast forward to a different occasion, when your partner returns home from a business meeting or other engagement late and immediately jumps in the shower, even before properly saying ‘hi’ to you. You might rationalise their behaviour by thinking: “Well, they were probably tired or something. They surely just felt like refreshing themselves with a shower,” then forget all about it. 

You might be 100% right, but that’s not really the point. The strange phone incident and the unusual dash to the bathroom on returning home could both have happened because your partner is cheating on you, and conversely they both could be wholly innocent and not caused by infidelity. The point here is, remembering one incident over the other and thus giving it more weight or meaning than the other in your mind could potentially make it much more difficult to ascertain what is or isn’t going on – whether they’re trustworthy or not.

So, to combat the human tendency to selectively remember and therefore consider some incidents more than others, and therefore improve your chances of revealing the truth, you should keep an objective, non-selective record of everything that happens. Here’s how it works:

1. Use a journal or diary, not a digital method of recording events, changes in behaviour/habits/moods, etc. Noting things in your own handwriting allows each piece of information recorded to be absorbed more deeply and permanently by your mind than if you type them out quickly on a computer. Also, paper records (a diary, journal, etc.) are usually more portable than laptops, PC’s, etc., which could come in handy if/when you spot a potential sign of infidelity away from home.

2. Keep your journal as objective and neutral as humanly possible. Note the time something unusual, strange or suspicious occurs, if you’ve noticed it before, and what it consists of. For example, saying: “Today (insert date) they came home 2 hours later than usual from work, it’s happened once before and they offered no reason or explanation for their lateness” is much better and more useful in the long run than: “They came home late again! They had no reason to be late at all. It must mean something.” So, be specific, neutral, accurate and non-judgemental. A time will come when you’ll make a decision on whether or not you can trust them and it’ll be then when an emotional response will be completely warranted and understandable. Until then, record what happens like a robot – it’ll help unravel the mystery and reveal what the hell is or isn’t going on.

3. Finally, keep your journal/record hidden away somewhere where it won’t be stumbled upon by your partner. If they ARE cheating and find your diary, it could easily make them more secretive and more careful not to give out noticeable signs of their infidelity in the future – thus making your job of uncovering the truth more difficult. If they find it and are NOT cheating, they could feel insulted or hurt that you don’t fully trust them. That’s an issue that, if appropriate, can be brought up by you after you’ve completed your little ‘investigation’. For now, secretiveness is quite possibly one of your greatest allies in discovering whether or not your partner’s having an affair.

For more ways to catch a cheating spouse, go to BeatingCheating