Are you considering an affair? Is your attention focused on someone outside of your relationship? Before you make a move, consider this - think before you cheat! Thinking about cheating on your partner is the first step to avoid opening up your relationship to emotional conflict, confusion, despair, and potential loss.

Let's take a look at why you cheat. What is going on in the relationship? Your level of satisfaction with yourself, your partner, and the relationship plays a major role in answering this question. Where are you on the satisfaction scale? Are you and your partner continuing to share a dream for the future? Are you sexually compatible? Do you still care and show a deep concern that is coming from your heart? The level of satisfaction that you derive from the relationship is important to look at in order to give you a general, and often better, perspective of how you are feeling, what your next step might be, and where you are headed.

Also, consider how you are feeling about yourself. Is your self-esteem high? What would you need to help reinforce and reinstate the good feelings you used to have about yourself? Take a look in the mirror. Is your reflection one of an honest and open person or are you ready to conceal one of the biggest lies of your lifetime? Look into your own eyes and search your soul for who you are. Searching your "self” helps to ground you and will keep you focused. Think about where you fit into the relationship equation and consider what you want for yourself and then how to get it. Would opening the relationship and cheating on your spouse or partner change you life in a more meaningful or a more destructive way? Ask yourself, what are the risks and benefits of opening this relationship to a third party? Then look at your partner and ask the same questions of your primary relationship.

Decision-making ability is sometimes left by the wayside when chemistry is high and a physical attraction is strong. What can you gain? Will this be a two-sided win-win or a three-sided lose-lose-lose proposal? A quick fix to a sexual urge is often the beginning of the affair. It feels good; it's titillating, new, exciting and different. Okay, there is something to be said about tha

t. But let's look at the flipside. Now you have a secret, a dirty little secret. Secrets are exciting on their own, but they separate us from others and ourselves. The affair becomes a private place to retreat to both in reality and in your mind. What are the downsides of cheating? Number one is GUILT. Guilt is a side effect of having an affair. Guilt takes a lot of energy and is a tremendous distraction from your primary relationship. Creating emotional conflict is another side effect of an affair. Torn between two lovers is a painful place to be. On one hand you have a long-term commitment with your partner at stake and on the other you have a new relationship that will surely divert your attention.

Take a closer look at your motives for wanting to cheat on your partner. If you don't take a good long and hard look you will be destined to living in a web of lies. What do you have to lose? For some it may be a ho-hum inconsequential relationship that has been emotionally sapping them, but for many it may be years of hard work and commitment and possibly even losing the love of your life. Consider using your brain (the one above your shoulders) and avoid a lot of the hurt that you and your partner will inevitably endure. Unless your relationship is super-evolved to include another person, think before you cheat!The love you save may be your own.

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