Tip of the Cheating Iceberg

Once I learned, with the rest of the country, that the world's best golfer Tiger Woods had cheated on his gorgeous wife Elin Nordegren, I knew it would only be a matter of days before the full extent of his hot and heavy skeletons would come clamoring out of the closet. Clearly that first whisper of his affair with Rachel Uchitel was just the tip of an enormous hidden cheating iceberg because regardless of whether you're a gifted famous athlete or an average Joe from accounting, if you've cheated on your partner once, chances are you've cheated many many times.

When you cheat on a spouse for the first time, and don't come clean about it and work through it together, one of two things will happen.

1) You feel immediate guilt and shame and decide you have already broken your vow so you might as well do it again and again. The exhilarating rush of forbidden newness temporarily shuts down the guilt and the vicious cycle continues. It's like eating a cookie when on a diet. Once the calories are ingested it's easy think, "I've already ruined everything! I might as well eat 8 more cookies since they taste so good."

2) You don't feel guilty at all and instead feel a sense of great entitlement. "I work hard and deserve some fun." "My spouse doesn't want to have sex anymore so I'm allowed to get it elsewhere." "My wife got fat." "I'm Tiger Woods!"

In either case, the cheating is going to become chronic because there is no reason for it to end. That is until a text gets seen, an email read, a phone call taped, a photo taken, a rumor started, a car crashed into a fire hydrant and then a tree, or an STD spread. So if you catch your partner cheating, don't believe them when he or she promises it was the first time, the only time, a crazy singular instance because they have done it before. There is a giant icy iceberg of waitresses, co-workers, facebook friends, exes, pool boys and nannies hidden underneath. I'll bet 8 cookies and a bag of m&m's on it.