Psychologist Can Predict Whether A Couple Will Stay Together After An Affair With 90% Accuracy By Asking Just 2 Questions
She stressed that an affair doesn't have to be the end of a relationship.
Jacob Lund via Canva Pro A psychologist named Dr. Kathy Nickerson has revealed the best way to figure out if a couple will reconcile after experiencing infidelity.
In a TikTok video, Nickerson explained that she and her colleagues surveyed 5,783 individuals about affairs through two different scenarios and analyzed the responses to figure out the specific likelihood that a couple would end up together again after experiencing a loss of trust.
She can predict where a couple will stay together after an affair by asking two questions.
In her video, Nickerson revealed that she and her colleagues' had one survey for strayed partners, those who had cheated in their relationships, and one for betrayed partners, those who were hurt by an affair. They gathered this data, and have recently begun to analyze their findings in detail, finding some predictive data from their research, with Nickerson sharing that they "found six variables that predict reconciliation 74% of the time, and two of these variables predict reconciliation 90% of the time."
"When people tell you that you can't heal from an affair, that's [not true] and I can scientifically prove it," Nickerson said. "My colleagues and I are in the process of writing a manuscript that we're going to submit to peer-reviewed journals and we hope to have this published soon, but the data is so important and so reassuring that I had to bring it to you."
She claimed that the narrative many people often believe and hear is that after an affair, there is no possibility of making up and moving on, but she wanted to challenge that and was able to figure out the two main variables and questions that can go against this belief.
Showing the chart from her research, Nickerson showed the variables that can predict whether or not someone's gonna reconcile. The biggest variable is titled "partner in love." From this, Nickerson can ask the question: Is the person still in love with their cheating partner? If a person is still in love with their partner even though they had the affair, they are very likely to reconcile.
The second variable that Nickerson showed was "AP in love." Was a person not in love with their partner during the affair? Nickerson found that if somebody was not in love with their partner during the affair, that could also predict reconciliation.
"Age is the third most important variable," Nickerson continued. "There are some interesting things we see with age. People who are very young versus older in the data tend to reconcile at higher rates than people who are at that midpoint."
Nickerson added that people who experienced limerence during the affair, which is a state of involuntary obsession with another person, were more likely to reconcile.
Research and studies have found that many factors often influence the likelihood of couples getting back together after infidelity.
According to a survey via Choosing Therapy, researchers found that with instances of secret infidelity, only about 20% of couples were still married after five years. However, for couples who revealed infidelity, that percentage jumped to 57%.
The American Psychological Association found that 20-40% of divorces are caused by an affair. While the discovery of an affair may trigger a divorce, there were sometimes issues in the marriage beforehand that were simply exacerbated by the knowledge of infidelity. Other data finds that 40% of adults who have ever cheated during a marriage are separated or divorced, while only 17% of partners who had not cheated are separated or divorced.
However, about 50% of partners who did have affairs are still married, compared to 75% of partners who never cheated. Men are also more likely to have an affair than women, with 61% of men who cheated still being married, while 34% are separated or divorced. Only 44% of women who have cheated are still married, and 47% are divorced or separated.
Of course, with all of this research, it doesn't account for every single relationship that has suffered from infidelity. Everyone is different, and while some people may still be in love with their partner despite their actions, it doesn't necessarily mean that all of that love will be able to salvage the relationship.
Experiencing a cheating partner, or being the individual who cheated, will have lasting and sometimes unforgivable effects on the partnership moving forward, but if you are committed to working through those issues, then there is always a possibility of reconciliation, you just have to be willing to jump through those hurdles.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.