10 Common Assumptions About Why People Cheat That Have Zero Basis In Reality
Fact and what's fiction about why people have affairs.
Syda Productions | Canva Cheating in a relationship could happen to anyone. When people find out about infidelity, they often make all kinds of assumptions about why people are having affairs.
Even if someone cheated in your life, you may have thought you understood what affairs are all about. We live in a hush-hush culture when it comes to infidelity and it's not so easy to sort fact from fiction, and many of the common beliefs about affairs are wrong.
Here are ten common assumptions about why people cheat that have zero basis in reality:
1. Most people who cheat are looking for an affair when it happens
The truth: The majority of the time, an affair happens to people who aren’t looking for it. This is particularly true in cases in which a partner has only cheated with one person. Affairs often begin as friendships, which are followed by intimacy, which can then shift into a full-blown tryst.
2. Most people drift from their spouses for someone younger or more attractive
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The truth: While in some cases, the chronically philandering corporate CEO might seek out younger mates, typically paramours are no younger, richer, or more attractive than spouses.
3. Affairs almost always spell the end of a marriage
The truth: More than 30 percent of marriages can survive infidelity, research from 2023 tells us. Although the relationship may break up from other issues in the future, many couples are surprised when they find that they can stay together after an affair.
4. Once a cheater, always a cheater
The truth: While it is true that some individuals have repeated affairs, many affairs are a one-and-done thing. What happens after the affair can set a marriage on a course for stability or blow it out of the water. After ending the affair, the person who cheated must be completely honest for healing to take place.
5. Affairs happen because something is wrong with the marriage
The truth: There's something wrong with every marriage. Affairs may reflect that couples don't know how to work together to improve the problems in their marriages. Just because you are having marital issues doesn't justify infidelity.
6. Affairs are all about intimacy
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The truth: In reality, many affairs arise from one partner seeking an emotional connection to another person. Sometimes, that's as far as the affair ever goes. Although the sense of emotional closeness often leads to physical intimacy, hooking up wasn't the original intent when the connection began.
7. If there's no intimacy, there's no affair
The truth: Many affairs happen without being intimate at all. Is it cheating to stay up half the night, secretly texting an old classmate about your most intimate thoughts? The person doing it may not see it as cheating, but you can be sure that his/her partner sees it this way! When you give an emotional part of yourself to someone who is a potential affair mate, it's a form of infidelity. One YouGov survey found that 15% of married people have had emotional affairs.
8. Cheating is never about just intimacy; it’s about other marital issues
The truth: Just as it is a myth that all affairs are just about intimacy, it's also a myth that all affairs are just about unmet emotional needs. For some people — not the majority — an affair is just about going out and "getting some."
9. Most people who have affairs are unhappy in their marriage
The truth: In surveys that asked adulterers whether they wanted to leave their marriages, most said no. Among people having affairs, 56 percent of men and 34 percent of women rank their marriages as happy or very happy. (For marriage in general, more women than men say they are unhappy.)
10. Once an affair is out in the open, even if a couple stays together, they can never be happy together again
The truth: People don't talk about affairs to their friends and neighbors — that's why you rarely hear success stories. But many couples can learn to successfully rebuild their marriages; some even say their marriages are stronger after infidelity.
Scott Haltzman, M.D., is board-certified in Psychiatry and is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He has appeared on the Today Show, 20/20, Good Morning America, Rachael Ray, and in TIME Magazine, as well as others.