THE STORY of Emmanuel Modise is the perfect example of how your relationships can influence how your children respond to the opposite sex in the future.

The 29-year-old admitted to Sowetan that he is a serial cheater. He says he does not believe in love, and that women are there to be used and discarded.

He admits to being egocentric, arrogant and chauvinistic. He says he has never had a long-term relationship and has three kids with three different women because of how he was influenced when he was young.

Wait. Before we peg Modise as a male chauvinist pig with a hint of misogyny, we dig a bit deeper into his past.

It turns out that Modise attributes his lack of belief in love and commitment to his father.

He is a strong example for the "like-father-like-son" phrase, because he says his father was a shameless cheater who was unfaithful to his wife for years, information Modise found out as a teenager.

"I was 13 when I discovered that my father was having an affair and cheating on my mom," he says.

"He was a manager at a resort, and one time he took me and my little brother out to the resort for a fun day of swimming, while my mother was at work. He was then joined by some lady."

Even though he says he felt totally disgusted by his father's actions Modise says he respected his father and could not confront him about what was unfolding before his eyes.

Modise also stumbled on more evidence that his father was a serial cheat. He found explicit messages on his father's phone from different women.

"My father bought a Nokia which at the time was the in thing. I was so fascinated with the phone and fiddled with it whenever I got a chance. The pile of graphic, sexual messages I saw on his phone was shocking.

"He also had the habit of answering his phone outside the house and would say the network was bad inside the house.

"There were blatant actions that he was unfaithful, and I knew that my mother must have known."

Fast-forward 16 years later, Modise says a part of him lost respect for women when he saw how his mother tolerated his father's cheating ways.

"She must have known what was going on. He would come up with the most ridiculous excuses for why he had to sleep out, yet she stayed with him."

Modise says his father would make disparaging remarks about women, and that one of the things he learned from his father was the Sotho saying "a man is like an axe, and can be borrowed by anyone".

He now says he finds it difficult to commit to one woman because he is afraid of getting hurt, and that his worst fear is someone cheating on him behind his back, just like his father did.

Could it be possible that children can be affected by infidelity? Could you be damaging your children by having a mistress?

The experts say yes.

A 2014 study conducted by scientists at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic claimed that cheating runs in the family, especially for men, and that what the children observe while growing up has a subtle way of influencing their behaviour.

After studying 86 couples, the study found that men are more likely to have such sexual misbehaviour if their fathers were unfaithful when the children were growing up.

In another 2014 study, researchers from the University of Queensland found that 63% of unfaithful behaviour in men and 40% in women was due to genetic interference.

Suffer the little ones

WE SPOKE to consulting psychologist and psychology lecturer at the University of South Africa Mochabo Moerane about what impact having an affair can have on children, as well as lessons kids take from observing their parents' relationships.

"Being aware of your infidelity can definitely lead your children to being cheaters themselves," he says.

"Remember, children learn through imitation, and their biggest role model is the parent whose sex corresponds to theirs, which is where the phrase 'like father like son, like mother like daughter' originated," he says.

Moerane says during their teenage years, children go through a phase that is said to be ego-identity, meaning that they are discovering who they are.

Moerane says if a child's ego identity process is done, they reach a stage known as fidelity.

"Fidelity is a stage known for respect. Respecting authority, rules, love and a potential partner," Moerane says.

He explains that if a child is exposed to cheating in the ego- identity stage, this might influence his or her behaviour later in life, which may be the case with Modise's issues with intimacy and trust.

"Think of the moral dilemma you are putting your child through. They will feel caught in the middle.

"If they tell mom of your affair, they are betraying you, if they keep quiet, they are betraying mom.

"If they expose the affair, and it leads to a divorce, they will feel at fault.

"Children should be allowed to be children, not have such moral burdens on their shoulders," he says.

Moerane says while we cannot tell people not to have affairs, he begs parents not to expose it to their children.