I was sitting around the other day, watching Yu Yu Hakusho on the Cartoon Network and eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch, when suddenly my mind started to wander...

I have a friend who's basically given up on women. Not so much given up on women as set extremely high standards: his women have to be hot, vegetarian, non-Republican, non-religious, and ideally Asian, among other things. He wasn't like this a year ago, in fact he didn't care about any of those criteria previously. Why had his mind changed?

Because of his ex-girlfriend.

Now like so many of my friends recently, his ex- had cheated on him. I meditated on this and realized that I've never known a guy who has cheated on his girlfriend, but rather it's always been his girlfriend cheating on him. So I asked some of my friends, who also asked around, and a few things came up: almost all of us know guys who have been cheated on or girls who cheat, and most of them know more girls who have cheated than guys. In fact, most guys know fewer guys who have cheated than girls who have cheated. (Albeit some male Rush staffers know an overwhelming number of guys who have cheated, which goes to show you we're complete bastards.)

Given this non-scientific survey, I came up with a list of questions below, and after some discussion and rational analysis, I came to some conclusions. Note that this FAQ is designed for men, but much of the advice could be useful for women too.

Why do girls cheat?

I have no clue, and I don't want to give any long anecdotes, but that leads into the next answer...

How can I get in the pants of a girl with a boyfriend?

This one is easy. Ridiculous flattery and pretending you want to be her friend (somewhat successful), doing drugs with her (moderately successful), knowing how to surf and being in a punk band (pretty successful), being "ripped" (extremely successful), being European (99.9% success rate).

Now the first three items listed above make the most sense in the context of the next question:

What are some common tactics girls use to cheat?

Now besides outright getting trashed in the dorms and screwing the guy down the hall, there are three major tactics that are common across the board, each generally builds on the previous:

1. Hanging out with another guy with whom she wants to be friends, talking about her dissatisfaction over her current boyfriend, and then when she decides that her friend is better than her boyfriend (coupled with him making a move), she promptly runs off with him, often neglecting to tell her boyfriend.

Note on this that the girl must be confident that everything will work out with "her friend" before she moves to him, even if things have already gone too far. Don't be the bastard friend involved in this. Make her break up with her boyfriend, chances are she won't, if she still wants to continue this relationship on the side, be a good guy and ditch her.

If you're lucky, you have the type of naive girlfriend who never realizes that all her guy friends want to have sex with her, as guys aren't really looking to be just friends with an attractive girl.

2. Hanging out with another guy and doing something "wild" or "exciting" with him (i.e. drugs, learning to surf, getting tattoos and piercings), or being a groupie of a guy who does something "exotic" or "interesting" (i.e. punk rock, modern art, fire eating). There's really no better way to get in a girl's pants than convincing her she's the sexiest, most open and exciting, and interesting woman on Earth.

3. Going abroad, finding a cute Latin guy with a name like Alfonso, seeing all the great cultural sites with him over a period of a couple of weeks, and then, since she'll never see him again, making passionate love to him in the sand on the night before she catches her British Airways 8:15am flight from Lisbon to London. There's really no better way to get in a girl's pants than convincing her she's the sexiest, most open and exciting, and interesting woman on Earth in a foreign accent.

And to address being ripped, the basic answer is that girls are sluts for guys with muscles. Don't believe me? Ask them yourself.

As a word of advice to any guys inclined to do so after reading this: don't freak out whenever your girl talks to another guy. That's just pathetic and shows insecurity. Of course if you're willing to admit that you're pathetic and insecure, go right ahead. My thought is that if you have to worry about your girlfriend that much, then perhaps you'd be better off without her.

Why is there this (apparent) misconception that guys cheat?

This mostly has to do with the fact that a great number of guys and girls have a different working definition of what a relationship is. Most guys know a lot of guys who obviously make their intent to have sex with as many different women as possible publicly known. Unfortunately a lot of women don't pick up on this one, and in the case of women who want as much sex as possible, some guys don't pick up on it, so I'll oversimplify the idea to its essence:

If you made out or had sex and one or both of you was drunk or under the influence of illicit drugs, then it's not a relationship.

Additionally, if you just met this person a few hours earlier, and then had sex with them, it's probably not a relationship.

Hopefully that clarifies things for some people.

One other significant phenomena is that some persons (mostly women), refuse to acknowledge break-ups. If a guy sits a girl down and breaks up with her, and then proceeds to go out and meets some girl later that night and have sex with her, that's not cheating. If you have a psycho ex-girlfriend that will not accept this, just watch out for her, and any brothers she might have, and make sure she doesn't stab you in the leg with scissors.

Why did I deserve to be cheated on?

Now most people don't deserve to be cheated on, but basically see the two rules above. If you somehow managed to start a relationship out of either situation, it was probably a bad idea, especially in the second case. If you just met someone and had sex with them, you expect them not to have sex with other strangers later?

Also, just because I said so, if your girlfriend has ever said that she's, "Sick of being played." Then you deserve to be cheated on. Yes, you should be ashamed of yourself for having dated any girl who uses the term "played" in her daily vocabulary. Why? Because these girls don't understand the two rules mentioned above, plus she's probably been spending too much time watching MTV's Dismissed.

Weaver... What's in the box?

Nothing! There's nothing in the box! Stupid! You're so stupid!! (James’ Note: If you don’t understand this reference, leave the website immediately! No, wait… don’t. Sorry.)

Once I've been cheated on, what can I do?

Well, if she comes crawling back to you crying, generally it's acceptable to have make up sex, tell her you'll think about it, and then dump her.

In fact, provided you believe strongly in the monogamous relationship, there's really no reason to not dump her. I've never heard of any cheating couples staying together happily.

The logic:

Obviously if she felt you were that special, why didn't she know it before? What part of bouncing up and down in the other guy's lap helped her realize how special you were?

Now obviously a few women will probably be upset with this, and come up with quaint ideas that people truly have it in their hearts to change and rehabilitate their ways. Seeing as men will have sex with basically anything, and they're making a great struggle to straighten up their acts somewhat to conform to a monogamous relationship and not breed with anything that moves, they demand absolute loyalty. Otherwise, all that time that could've better been spent humping inanimate objects.

Regardless of rehabilitation, this essentially gives you a "Get out of jail free" pass. You can cheat with anyone you choose. Of course if she suspects you're going to cheat on her, why shouldn't she just go off and cheat again? A vicious downward spiral of cheating transpires.

If I have any other questions, where can I go to get answers?
What if I have issues with something you wrote?
What if I have additional ideas or praise?

For any of the above, go to the Rush Forums, register if you haven't already, and post a question. Hopefully I've gotten the basics down for you, and perhaps you've learned something.

Oh, and just in case you missed it, because it's so genius: The Onion's "European Men Are So Much More Romantic Than American Men." It's genius because it's true.