I’m a 34-year-old guy who has been married for eight ...

I'm a 34-year-old guy who has been married for eight years and has two wonderful kids. Life should be great, except I find myself always needing to have a little side action. In the eight years of marriage, I seem to always find myself having a girl on the side at some point. It's usually a very casual thing except for one girl that I fell in love with (being a smart girl, she cut me loose, but that's another story). Anyway, I don't want to be one of those assholes who continues to live this compartmentalized life cheating on his wife and chalking it up to some amoral libertine sensibility, but I really do enjoy seeing other women (but only one at a time-for what that's worth). Any thoughts on how to stay on the straight and narrow?

-Trying to Stay Faithful

I have plenty of thoughts, the first of which being why in the hell do scammers like you get married? I don't get it. And how do you suddenly "find yourself" with side action? Do these young mistresses suddenly appear out of the vapor one fine day? Do you have no measure of self-control or free will? And are we supposed to be impressed that Married Guy has only one extracurricular girlfriend at a time? Fuck you-I don't even have one steady piece of ass and I'm single! Greedy!

Because your question worked my nerves so hard as to preclude much rational thought, I consulted a professional. Michael Carolan, PhD, a clinical psychologist in private practice at the Arbor Center in New York City's Sinful East Village, told me, "When someone is motivated enough to actually make an inquiry to an advice column, clearly cheating is posing an increasing danger to the relationship and it is important to such an individual to make some change, or another."

Which brings us to the main cheating demotivators: fear and guilt. A formerly philanderous friend of mine wisely stated "It's just a sleazy, stupid business all around. No one can tell you it's not worth it-you have to find out for yourself. And you usually do-once you get caught and your friends stop speaking to you, your family thinks you're a scumbag and you're so crippled by guilt and shame you start hating yourself."

As you appear to have avoided detection for eight(!) years, you're cheating on borrowed time. David, a 30-odd-year-old hiphop writer, had a girlfriend whose intuition actually precluded him from straying. The two had been at a party together when a mutual acquaintance with a reputation for man-stealing set her sites on our boy.

"My girlfriend let it simmer for a week," he told me. "The following week she said, 'You can fuck that bitch if you want to, but if you do, I'm gonna whip her ass and then I'm gonna come looking for you.'"

A couple weeks later he and the flirt were caught alone and all signs pointed to go. He was actually on his way home with the would-be temptress when he heard his girlfriend's voice in his head. He fled.

I asked my friend Veronica, who's been monogamous for two years but has a long history of cheating, how she manages to stave off temptation now that she's hitched. Apparently, it ain't easy. "I've been thinking about sleeping around," she told me over coffee. "We haven't been having sex lately, and as he knows I have a history of infidelity, he should be putting out." Veronica is looking for more than just dick, though. "It's not just about getting off, it's about feeling wanted and vibrant."

Dr. Carolan agrees that the act is rarely the sole reason for cheating. "Often people cheat because they need some kind of narcissistic thrill; they need to be seen-and they need their partner to be seen-in an exciting, sexy light."

But the whys and why-nots of cheating aren't really the question here. You wanted a practical solution for quitting, so I wracked my brain to come up with one. I reckoned that if every time you got the urge to cheat on your wife, you instead pictured her fucking the hottest guy the two of you know, that would dissuade you. Maybe he's the mailman or, better yet, your brother. I wanted you to imagine your wife taking Hot Guy's dick into her mouth-oh, and his wiener is twice the size of yours. Your poor little missus can barely wrap her lips around it. You know that thing you've always bugged her to try, but she won't? She's does it with him. And loves it. Once your brother/mailman has plugged his dick into every conceivable orifice and then finished her off with a tit fuck, I thought it'd be helpful for you to envision the two of them lying in your bed-your marital bed-guffawing about what an ass you are for not seeing what's going on right under your nose. That weird noise you make when you come? She's imitating it, and he's laughing as he goes down on her for the third time. That naughty negligee you got her for your seventh wedding anniversary? She'd never wear it in front of you, but now it's sitting tattered on your bedroom floor.

I excitedly shared my theory with Dr. Carolan, certain that congratulations on my insight were forthcoming. Instead, he laughed at me! "We're talking about a guy here for whom such a threat make him more likely to cheat."

Oh. So don't do that.