SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Been reflecting on one of the many pain points associated with marital treason. Disrespect has been dealt with a lot (understandably so) but disregard has not and it is a real stinger. A few examples of this here on SI include:

• A betrayed husband who was told by his WW that his many expressions of love including compliments, gifts, dates, etc were disregarded/minimized by his WW as it was expected and part of his job description. Conversely, the same from her pos AP, was more highly regarded/valued.

• Another BH consistently tried to affirm his WW, give her gifts, surprise trips, flowers for no reason but her AP could give her gifts and trips on greater scale so she minimized what her faithful husband had done and maximized the efforts of her AP....and lost her husband and marriage (multiple examples).

• Another is a BW who has supported her WH faithfully for years while he built his career and all the while hes showering gifts, attention on his pos AP.

• My own XWW basically trashed my best efforts to romance her and give her expressions of love and affection but was wowed by the paltry expressions of affinity by her AP.

Its a dammed if you do, dammed if you dont situation. Whats a faithful spouse to do?

Lets talk about it.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 9:04 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

Mostly it is likely to stem from the usual suspects.

Low self worth, people pleasing etc.

Wayward partners wether in the making or in active betrayal are unhappy with what they have.
And that’s not quantitative really, they can have nothing or the world whole, and they are going to be unhappy the same, because the feeling comes from an inside void.

What they do or don’t have is only going to be used as a pretext for rationalizing their infidelity. An excuse, they aren’t really missing anything emotionally (or they would leave the partner, simply) but they are missing it all because the internal void is bottomless and can never be filled. Imagine filling a bottomless bottle from its neck: you can only clog it for a moment when you pour a lot, but is still going through the floor, and no matter who o how much it will never ever fill until the wayward decides to plug the bottom.

If you have low self worth you never stop valuing what you have, you only feel what you are and have is worthless and you keep looking forward to 5e mirage of a fantasy "something " that will surely be better and feel better. Because you have experienced moments of happiness they just didn’t last (bottomless bottle, clogged not full, then flushed when the water calms and stops stirring).

The reason why I am so unhappy must be in the kind of water I am receiving and have, it must be worthless. If I find the right water then my thirst will surely be quenched

Truth is, is water and will only ever be water no matter where it comes from. The mirage looks shiny from the distance but once you get there, is just the same old water at best, you just find the desert sand at worst (some can say deserved).

So when you are like this what happens to you?

You can sit on a golden oasis in crystalline waters and still craving something else, anything else, because you are so disconnected from the reality (afraid to face your feelings ) that you live in the fantasy of the mirage. Look there is that person (the affair partner) over there who seems like me. Got a bucketload of sewage waters and is trying to drain it from the mud they are drenched in…. I know it looks dirty and disgusting but it sure they must feel refreshing. Anything better than my dry desert.

So they’ll happily leave their oasis, join the AP in the mud and gorge down both of sewage waters feeling like they are sipping champagne (but it’s stale piss really) because they met another broken person with similar issues and they can feel not as unworthy with them.

Sure the sewage smells like sewage and the water is sewage, but as long as their are both stirring it frantically, ashamed to be seen by others , the water flogs the bottle neck and doesn’t flush down, so it finally feels like it’s filling.

They will both keep doing it, wayward keeping the oasis to wash away the piss stench and keep the appearances but they did find both finally their refreshments. At least Until they keep it clandestine at least, if it comes out and the waters calm, they do finally see the new oasis is mud and the bottle is still bottomless, no matter how much sewage water they both keep pouring. And now I can’t really ignore that this really smells like piss as easily anymore… maybe one last drink will still fill me up?

—- end of the artistic interpretation—-

A person like this can’t be a trusted and safe partner for a relationship.

Do you really want someone like that as they are without fixing their issues?

Well that’s super easy:

These people are the "easiest fuck" one can get around (if that’s someone’s goal). You just have to treat them like trash and manipulate them into falling hard for you. They will still never be a partner, more like an adoring fan that you can use and abuse at your own leisure.

You just have to become so transactional and uncaring for them that you won’t even see them as a person, just a sex doll.

Poke the low self worth, give attention, withdraw it. Do it again couple of times with intention and you now have a lap dog.

It’s called intermittent reinforcement, we do it unconsciously when we date someone we really don’t care much about. That’s why they become obsessed with you and you really can’t figure out why, it kinda of feels bad because you don’t truly care beyond casual sex, and it’s also kind of freaky so you generally want to dump this person after a while. (Because it is freaky and toxic even if you are not aware that you are doing it).

Works with everyone. Works twice as much on waywards, because it’s all chemical highs and zero or next to zero emotions and connections.

But why would you intentionally want to do something like that? Unless you are desperate for getting laid or a sociopath in the making, doing this intentionally should make you feel like crap (unless it’s for revenge, then you’re are doing something with the goal to hurt someone else, still bad though).

Not a casual thing, they are two faces of the same coin.

This comes down to the ws’s relationship with themselves:

If one doesn’t know how to self validate,self love, they will use other people to fill that void.

Because the ws deep down doesn’t believe they deserve love, it renders them unable to receive it. Over time, they need more and more to feel it.

Affair feelings are artificial. They are created specifically out of the following fabric:

They do not know the person as well as a spouse so they can project an image on them tha is false.

There is emotional instability in an affair. Most ws have chaotic childhood and chaos feels normal to them and often confused with love. The feelings I had toward my AP were created by the dynamic of not having his love —-in many ways winning it would have been the way I could achieve validation. The reality is if it had ever been given it would now no longer hold any promise of further validation. But during the time that was the goal, I worked very hard to achieve it. All that would have happened is I would have repeated the cycle of looking for my next form of validation.

Lack of self love and validation eff ya your boundaries surrounding respect (if I don’t respect myself how to I respect others)

I spent decades earning my husband’s love (in my ow mind) and the more I would do the less I felt appreciated and seen. But it was really because I was doing all these inauthentic things to please him and after a long period of time what’s not authentic wears on you. Unchecked, there becomes this unconscious feeling of I knew he was too good for me when we got together and I am to tired to be all these things anymore to keep him. That turns into hardened resentment and the belief that he and our marriage makes me unhappy.

No what made me unhappy was not honoring myself and staying in tune with what I need instead of hustling to be loved. By the time I cheated I just didn’t have two shits to give about any of it and be awe all this was unknown to him he could only feel and see the dehumanization and disregard that seemed to come from nowhere.

The reason you are struggling is you do not have this mindset. You are only seeing the behaviors that whatever unhealthy mindset these people had manifesting itself in a crisis form.

Now this probably doesn’t describe all cheaters, I do think some people are pathological assholes. But I think it explains a very big portion of them.

Thanks for contributing BackfromtheStorm. Your thoughts, though dark imo, do reflect a common post betrayal mindset. I know that for quite a long time my thoughts and attitude toward being generous in my affections were quite acerbic. It took a long long time for me to recover from the level of disregard shown me to the point that I was no longer hesitant in showing affection. If Im honest though, Ive never really recovered that part of myself. Not as generous. Not as joyful in extending that toward my wife, even now in my second marriage. Oh, Ive come a long long way, and I am focused on loving my wife and showing her that love in the way she prefers (love languages), but the shadow of doubt and self preservation remains. Some may call this hard learned wisdom but Im not sure. I miss the doubtless days of carefree generosity......

Is not that dark, is human reaction to emotional chaos.

I think both WS and bs go through a very similar chaos after infidelity, one is just prompted by the infidelity itself but you also fall.

The dark part is that our weaknesses can be manipulated, by knowing it you can work on those with boundaries to protect them or at least make them more robust.

Or you can give it into the dark side and become an asshole.

We always have choices.

I think it’s universal, our particular situation just forced us to look into this mess while most people go through the life happily ignoring the pit (unless they fall).

That’s what feels carefree.

Not said that you can’t be carefree again once you really heal, different from careless but you might get the good part back.

I read 'disregard' as 'don't see' or 'don't think about'. If I misunderstood, say more about how 'disreagerd' is used.

It's easy to disregard support if the supported isn't recognized. And it's difficult to communicate the kind of support one wants if one's self-esteem is low.

Apparently the love language theory doesn't get validated in experiments, but it certainly does in anecdotes. I learned after d-day how my W showed love - and much of it was in ways that I didn't value. My W didn't value many of my ways of showing love.

I think that made it easier for my W not to think of me while she cheated. That may be how other WSes disregard their BSes while cheating.

*****

I think it is possible to respect others even if one doesn't respect oneself, but it's in a 'I wish I could be like them' way - IOW, 'I'm not worthy of respect, but others are.' That's very different from the respct one gives after learning to respect themself, but it is a type of respect.

When someone is selfish and has a black hole in their heart, no amount of affirmation or acts of love can fill it.

And then there's the other, most simple answer... cheaters acknowledge their APs efforts because they need their immoral acts to have value and meaning. They ignore/disregard their spouses' acts of love because it's the only way they can justify their betrayals.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 3:57 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

Hikingout, thanks for yet another deep dive into this topic. I appreciate your insight very much and I accept much of what youve put forth as the backdrop of damage and screwed up perspective that render the wayward unable to receive the authentic rather than embrace the counterfeit/sham version that is offered in an affair. This really is a good summary imo:

This comes down to the ws’s relationship with themselves:

If one doesn’t know how to self validate,self love, they will use other people to fill that void.

Because the ws deep down doesn’t believe they deserve love, it renders them unable to receive it. Over time, they need more and more to feel it.

Affair feelings are artificial. They are created specifically out of the following fabric:

They do not know the person as well as a spouse so they can project an image on them tha is false.

All true....BUT....it didnt make the pain that young husband/father DT experienced any less cutting. DT also grew up in a fractured abusive home. One filled with strife and constant upheaval. Young DT did his dead level best to rise above and give his wife and young children the best he had to offer, only to have his "best" dismissed (pearls before swine?) and trampled on.

Ill admit that my ability to love generously took a HUGE hit after this. I have done a lot of work to recover that part of myself and believe that I have majoratively restored that facet of being able to love generously (my wife attests to this) but I know that the joyous sparkle of it is still a bit diminished (continue to work on it).

This made me laugh, albeit darkly...

Now this probably doesn’t describe all cheaters, I do think some people are pathological assholes. But I think it explains a very big portion of them.

You have a way with words Ma'am. I wonder what the percentage is of simply damaged to pathological assholes? A discussion for another time perhaps......

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 6:16 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

I completely understand that the explanation does not take pain away. It didn’t for my husband. What does help is he knows how and why it happened, he knows as a result of if I am doing the maintenance on my self or in our relationship. There is an honesty and awareness now that wasn’t there before between us.

I understand about what you say about having heartfelt generosity with your spouse rather than intentional. It’s a difference between mind and heart. For us, this many years out I think we have begun merging the two again.

One of the funny things about healing is that over time, you can feel a wider range of emotions again. The bomb of infidelity leaves a lot of shrapnel that can put a slightly negative spin or feeling to about anything you can point at. Later, as healing occurred, we both started focusing away from the shrapnel and some of that authentic generosity began flowing, and even better: the appreciation of that generosity has become sweeter and more profound. The noticing these little things sometimes comes with a feeling of thank god we worked though this. Thank god he still loves me. I can’t believe we almost missed out on this.

It takes a lot of time, and the openness to allowing that process to slowly bring in more light varies from person to person.

There are things that lose their innocence forever as well, and I too grieve those things, but I celebrate harder than I used to as well. Despite the infidelity we continue to grow and remove barriers we didn’t even know we had before.

I am not trying to take away from the feelings of injustice you are expressing in your post. But I am trying to offer some ideas of things you also still might have in your future. Best wishes to you.

I’ve been reading through these responses, and while I appreciate the psychological depth, I can’t help but feel that a lot of this is just over analysis. To me, it doesn't need to be this complicated. We can talk about "internal voids," "bottomless bottles," and "self validation" all day, but at the end of the day, I believe it merely comes down to being a bad, immoral person.

​a few examples to help illustrate what I'm getting at:

Many years ago, my mother did a thesis on child sexual abuse and, staggeringly, she found that a disproportionately high number of people abused as children go on to become abusers. This isn't to say that every victim becomes an abuser, but it’s a notable trend. Conversely, some of the leading activists in that space were victims who channelled their trauma for good. Why do I reference this? Because in both scenarios, an atrocious act occurs, yet one person processes that stimulus positively and the other negatively. They both experienced similar stimuli, yet their outcomes are worlds apart.

​It’s like the classic case of two kids growing up in poverty; one uses it as an excuse to turn to crime, whilst their brother works three jobs to put himself through university and build a successful career. Every single one of us could provide valid seeming psychological reasons for why we "theoretically" could have cheated. We’ve all had bad days, bad childhoods, or moments of feeling unloved. Yet, there is a line. That line is being an upstanding person with integrity.

​Consider the "usual suspects" mentioned here: low self worth and people pleasing. There are millions of people who struggle with low self esteem or a desperate need to please others, yet they do not cheat. Why don't they? If these psychological traits were the true "reason" for betrayal, every people pleaser on earth would be an adulterer. Is it merely a lack of opportunity for them? I don’t buy it. Most people with these struggles remain faithful because their internal moral compass outweighs their insecurities.
​Now, you could start looking into the weeds of why some people possess that integrity while others struggle with it, or whether you can have integrity one minute, lose it the next, and somehow regain it later. But for my money, you will never get to the bottom of that question. It’s an endless loop of excuses.

​When a spouse disregards years of faithful support and genuine love—dismissing it as a "job description" or "expected"—only to be wowed by the paltry efforts of an AP, it isn’t a "brokenness" issue. It is a character flaw. It’s the act of someone who is fundamentally selfish and lacks basic integrity. I think we often look for these complex psychological "whys" to avoid the simpler, harsher truth: some people are just pathological assholes who choose to be cruel. The "disregard" you’re talking about isn't a symptom; it’s a tool they use to dehumanise a good partner so they don't have to feel guilty about their own choices.

​None of this is to say these people are entirely irredeemable in the grander scheme of life, though they are certainly irredeemable as a partner to the person they’ve betrayed. I don't believe it’s a faithful spouse’s job to be a therapist for someone who is busy stepping out on them. If I were ever put in that position again, I wouldn't go digging for "whys" or trying to understand their childhood trauma. I’d know exactly what it was. They simply weren't the person I thought they were. I’d tell them to do one, jog on, and keep on the hunt for someone who actually has a moral compass and can remain faithful. Life is too short to spend trying to fill someone else’s "void" when they’ve already proven they don't value the person standing right in front of them. It’s about self respect and recognising that you shouldn't have to teach a grown adult how to be a decent human being.

Not said that you can’t be carefree again once you really heal, different from careless but you might get the good part back.

Still working on it. AsI said,I believe I am majoratively there.

Dr Soolers

Correlation not causation

Low self worth and people pleasing and the facets stemming from them are commonly found in cheaters.

They are not the cause but they are a root issue.
Cheating is a coping mechanism.

Other spiral into drugs.
Other become narcissists. Others get into depression. Other work on those flaws and can smooth them out if not resolve them.

Some people find solace in fantasy others make the fantasy real like. Others repress their impulses because education, history or simple fear. Other would really like to cheat but they never got the chance…. We can go on.

It doesn’t mean that everyone act on these flaws. It doesn’t mean that everyone who acts cheats, others find other coping mechanisms to soothe the unhappiness that can be more or less destructive in different ways.

Point is when you check the coping mechanisms, as in behaviors you will often find, almost always in this case, those red flags.

The red flags 🚩 warn you of the minefield ahead. It doesn’t mean you will necessarily blow up your leg if you cross it, but when that happens well the red flag was there.

Addressing those issues and healing is removing the mines.
Is not theory is therapy or self awareness

Hi sisoon! We havent interacted as of late. Thanks for pitching in.

As to this:

I read 'disregard' as 'don't see' or 'don't think about'. If I misunderstood, say more about how 'disreagerd' is used.

The perception of "didnt see" or "didnt think about" is certainly part of it. I interpreted this as being dismissed/disregarded, therefore, why not pick up your marbles of loving actions and/or gifts snd go play in another sandbox (Ive said many times that I endured "for the kids" and deeply regret that decision to this day).

The recognition piece comes to play but whats hard is when the pos AP's crapload of counterfeits is certainly "recognized". Its a bitter pill sisoon. It was more bitter in my case as the OM was my erstwhile "best friend". My then WW was famished for his attention while disdaining my own. Pathetic.

The effect can then be that the BS puts the relationship in a starvation diet (I did) and never returned to the open hearted love and acts of love shown prior to the affair. Sad way to exist.

BTW, we HAD taken the love languages test and I did my best to show her love in the languages that she preferred (gifts snd acts of service)....fat lot of good that did me at the time.

Hi BluerThanBlue. When you say:

And then there's the other, most simple answer... cheaters acknowledge their APs efforts because they need their immoral acts to have value and meaning. They ignore/disregard their spouses' acts of love because it's the only way they can justify their betrayals.

Are you referencing demonizing the faithful spouse? Can you expound on this a bit? Im really interested in the justifying thought.

To reduce people who cheat as simply bad people is to not acknowledge our humanity. We are all shadows and light and have different flaws that we all work with. Someone who is bad to their core has no chance for redemption, no hope. Most people have done things they are ashamed of and learned why they don’t want to repeat this in the future.

I personally think people can grow from their bad decisions, and to suggest that you tell a person who is bad that the now must figure out how to be good doesn’t provide any roadmap to understand how to improve, how to avoid this in the future, and how to have healthier relationships.

I have never claimed I cheated because I was a people pleaser or because I was broken. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and in the aftermath I knew this was not the person that I wanted to be.

What I learned about myself is what I share here to provide insight on some of the areas to strengthen in one’s life in order to be more reliable for others. The most ay one’s mental environment can become toxic.

Prior to my affair I didn’t think of myself as a people pleaser. I thought of myself as a dedicated wife who took extremely good care of my husband and kids. They were my world.

Now I am still an extremely good wife and mother, but I know that I have to make room for myself in the equation. I am glad you do not know what it’s like to lose your identity in that, how painful it truly was, and how this skewed my perception of my world. Within this depression, I wished i could kill myself but I couldn’t do it to my kids. I was looking for pain relief in the wrong places because so much of my life was being run by a woman so invested in everyone else in hopes that I could be loved, and everyone around me stopped appreciating it. Why? Because so much of what I did was unnecessary, that they thought this is just what I liked to do.

There was a lot of desperation in what I did. But I do not believe it’s because I am just this bad person. I believe I made some very bad decisions instead of consciously trying to figure out how to get my life straight. When you feel completely hopeless, the things you grasp on to aren’t always healthy. It’s why people develop drinking problems, start on drugs, gamble, shop, hoard, and all sorts of stuff. Those people are not bad people either- they have mismanaged their life until terrible decisions look appealing. They lack coping skills and use avoidance as tgeir go to.

The complexity of why one person who has been sexually abused becomes and abuser versus one who doesn’t is the same sort of thing you have to apply to cheating. It’s not as simple as they had the same thing happen yet reacted differently. Perhaps one was abused as a child and had a good family and a good support system. Or maybe they are like me- sexually abused and had a poor support system, a school counselor who accused me of liking it, a mother who knew yet never really prevented it from reoccurring. In fact my mother recently wanted me to contact my abuser because she needed his help over a family death legal issue and thought it was rude that I didn’t comply. She said I was being ridiculous.

Now of course I didn’t go on and become a pedophile, nor have I gone on to be an advocate. Instead I pushed it all down and didn’t realize that some of what I was doing in my affair was allowing replication of that conditioning. He is who first taught me how to get validation through his grooming.

I can’t help that I have had extensive therapy, have spent years tracing all my motivations and behaviors to try and find all the areas that led me to those terrible decisions I wish I had never made. But I can tell you that knowledge has helped me to grow and become a person who knows how to have peace rather than seek chaos. Someone who loves herself and is highly capable of loving others well.

I also have enough compassion in me to believe people are redeemable, they have complexities that feed the perceptions they had that led to all the decisions they have made in life, good and bad.

I know I will never convince you of my point of view but if it helps someone who needs it so that the can either understand the cheating had nothing to do with them (bs) or how to grow past the wretched person they find themselves today (ws) then I am going to give them something constructive to work with other than sorry, you are simply a bad person.

But, that’s just me.

Are you referencing demonizing the faithful spouse? Can you expound on this a bit? Im really interested in the justifying thought.

I believe she is and she is right. I never said bad things about my husband to the ap, but internally I felt my husband really wanted a servant rather than a wife and because of this belief categorized a lot of his actions to support this belief.

I had decided I wanted to be loved for who I am and not what I do for people. Which is absolutely insane to think I would get that from an ap.

When I went to therapy after the affair my counselor said to stop doing all the things I could do and only do the things I should do. This was absolutely terrifying to me. I was like, you want me to start doing a lot less for the man I just cheated on? I thought you understood I want to stay married.

She said "this marriage is only going to work when you stop believing those things are needed for him to stay."

So I told him and I tried it and what a fool I had been to believe he only kept me around for what I did for him.

I mean really I look back and the whole thing is a face palm.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:57 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

Hikingout

There are things that lose their innocence forever as well, and I too grieve those things, but I celebrate harder than I used to as well.

Well put. I am there too. While I grieve that is lost, I a celebrate that which has been restored and healed. I am now living a full, loving and generously giving (in both directions) marital life and its wonderful. What sparked this vein of thought was reading of so many other betrayeds having their pre affair efforts disregarded out of hand. "Devalued" may actually be a more accurate term.

Or even dehumanized.

Everything is a reflection of one’s relationship with themselves. I dehumanized myself, which allowed me to dehumanize him.

Again, I realize he was the innocent person in all of it and I dehumanized him and no reasons behind it take away that fact. I am merely explaining, not excusing. I do not excuse my affair in the least. It took precious years from both of us.

[This message edited by hikingout at 9:05 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

@ BackfromtheStorm I follow your logic regarding 'red flags' and vulnerabilities, but I believe we are conflating predisposition with causation.

​You suggest that low self-worth and people-pleasing are 'root issues.' I disagree. Those are merely internal conditions—the 'weather' inside a person, if you will. The true root issue, and the only one with explanatory power, is a lack of moral integrity. What I have been defining here as a 'bad person' as short hand.

​To test this, let’s use a simple logical control group:

​If you took 100 people who suffer from low self-worth and people-pleasing tendencies, you would find that while some might spiral into depression or workaholism, many remain fiercely loyal partners. If the psychological flaws were the 'root,' the outcome would be consistent.

​What actually separates the 'struggling but faithful' person from the 'cheater' isn't the presence of a 'void'—it is the presence of a moral boundary that deems certain 'coping mechanisms' (like betrayal) as non-negotiable and abhorrent.

​Why this line of thinking dragged me into this thread was I feel that categorising cheating as a 'coping mechanism' akin to depression or drug use, we inadvertently strip the cheater of their agency. Depression is something that happens to you; an affair is a series of active, conscious, and deceptive choices.

​Ultimately, there is a fundamental difference between being unhealthy and being immoral. A person can have a 'minefield' of trauma, be deeply deppressd but it takes a specific lack of character to decide that someone else—their spouse—should be the one to pay the price for it. I am not interested in the 'mines'; I am interested in why the person chose to pull the pin. That isn't a therapy issue; it's a character flaw

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 9:45 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

DRSOOLERS:

​

When a spouse disregards years of faithful support and genuine love—dismissing it as a "job description" or "expected"—only to be wowed by the paltry efforts of an AP, it isn’t a "brokenness" issue. It is a character flaw. It’s the act of someone who is fundamentally selfish and lacks basic integrity. 

The concept of explanations vs excuses, or, explanations and excuses, or explanations OR excuses has been bandied about her and elsewhere ad infinitum.

As it pertains to the "brokenness" vs "character" issue, this too has been oft discussed. Suffice it to say, for my part, Experience has taught me that both issues play a role in the life of the betrayer to varying degrees of both. Of course, as Hikingout has said, there are always an amount of pathological assholes.

I do agree with you in that if this shyt EVER reared its ugly head in my life again, an exit visa would be dispatched pronto. I do not have it in me to attempt reconciliation ever again. Thankfully, I assess that the probability of that eventuality ever happening again is very very low.

Thanks for your input.

I told there’s no causation, but high correlation.

Cheating is one of many coping mechanisms for deep character flaws.
It doesn’t necessarily correlates with lack of morality.

You would be surprised how many cheaters are surprised they ever cheater, because morally they never ever thought they could. But they did.

The mind will go to insane extents to quench the chaos and will justify the unjustifiable if that can give respite.

We often do the same. Betrayed partners, we go through a similar process of coping that doesn’t make sense and can even go against our morals.

Morals are a construct of what is felt as good or wrong. There is good and bad in absolute but when we rationalize it we get "morals " that are a good enough general approximation without the nuance of any specific situation.

Stealing is wrong, morally reprehensible. I bet you don’t blanket the morality for all though, a child stealing an apple because it’s starving is not the same as a politician stealing for greed.
Killing is wrong. You would possibly kill if that means to save your child. I know I wouldn’t blink, and I don’t even kill bugs if I can avoid it.

Morality is still there but can be suspended if feelings of the moment override it.

Not that the above example is like cheating, just saying things are more complex when emotional chaos is involved