Once a Cheater, Always a Cheater?

With Tiger Woods said to be in treatment for sex addiction and former presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards admitting he had a love-child with videographer Rielle Hunter, the question can be asked: Is cheating on a spouse something someone is destined to do over and over, or can those cheating ways be stopped?

On "The Early Show Saturday Edition," Cosmopolitan magazine Executive Editor Nicole Beland and sex therapist Ian Kerner offered their views to co-anchors Erica Hill and Chris Wragge.

Beland was generally more receptive to the idea that it isn't necessarily a matter of once a cheater, always a cheater.

"There are two different questions," she observed. "Can men like John Edwards and Tiger Woods change, and then, is a cheater always a cheater? And, to the second question, I believe, no, a cheater's not always a cheater - that, if you change the circumstances, if you address the reasons they cheated in the first place, I absolutely think a cheater can change."

"We're learning from these two cases," Kerner said. "Look at John Edwards: another lie comes out after years, and that's the thing that really makes it hard to recover from infidelity. It's not always just the cheating, it's the lying and the aftermath and not being able to rebuild trust. Tiger Woods will have his family. ... He's gonna have an opportunity to come straight with everything that happened and, potentially, re-establish trust."

"(Tiger's) been lying continually, too," Beland pointed out. "Every transgression is a lie, every text (to a supposed lover) is a lie. If you added up all the times Tiger lied and deceived his whole family, wow!"

"Most cheaters don't end up confessing," Kerner noted. "They end up getting caught. Whether it's after one infidelity 20, Tiger Woods has now gotten caught, and he does have an opportunity to come clean, to have nothing to hide, and to be honest. So I would rather be in Tiger Woods' shoes, in some ways, than John Edwards."

Beland asserted that, "If someone cheats because they are unhappy in their relationship, that's almost best-case scenario, because then, if you fix the relationship, if they become happy in the relationship, they may not cheat again. Or, if they move on to a better relationship, they may not cheat again.

"But, if somebody is happy in their relationship and they cheat in spite of that, that's where there's a big problem. It's like the difference between a homeless person shoplifting and Winona Ryder shoplifting - Winona's got a much bigger problem!"

"That's why Tiger Woods might not be just a cheater," Kerner asserted, "and might really be a sex addict, in that he's really using sex compulsively, he's going after sex for the thrill of sex, like it's a drug."

Kerner said if Woods is indeed in a sex rehab clinic, "It could be because of an immediate (image) rehabilitation strategy. But he also does fit the profile. He (is said to have) had close to 20 mistresses. He took a lot of risks where he could get caught having sex. ... He does fit the profile of somebody who is using sex compulsively. So he does have a chance of recovery."