TRACEY COX reveals the four things we get wrong about infidelity - including the myth that happy people don't cheat

We are quick to judge people who commit infidelity but, as a society, woefully ignorant of the real reasons why people do it. If sex is the prime motivation to cheat, how do we account for the dramatic rise in ‘look but don’t touch’ emotional affairs?

Thanks to the latest extensive research by well-respected leaders in the field, one thing we know for certain is that infidelity is a far more complex playing field than it was.

In the past, men had affairs with work colleagues and women with friends or neighbours because they were the only people they had frequent contact with. 

Affairs were mainly discovered by physical signs (the old lipstick on the collar or a restaurant receipt in a pocket) or people being followed by a suspicious spouse.

It's now the norm for both partners to work which increases opportunity tenfold. Today’s technology has so dramatically altered the stakes in cheating, it’s unrecognisable.

TRACEY COX: We are quick to judge people who commit infidelity but, as a society, woefully ignorant of the real reasons why people do it (file image)

How do you define infidelity?

Renting a hotel room isn’t up for debate but what about online interaction like sending an erotic photo? Is a flirtatious text a betrayal? Does a mutual masturbation session on Zoom count as cheating when it’s not flesh-on-flesh?

Technology makes an affair easier to have because it puts us in contact with other people with similar desires but it’s also the way people get found out.

Most studies settle on around 40 percent as an official figure of how many of us cheat. The undisputed expert on the topic of infidelity, Belgium therapist, Esther Perel, puts it at anything between 26 and 75 per cent because there is no universally agreed upon definition of what constitutes an infidelity in our digital age.

If you thought you knew everything there was about cheating, think again. There’s a lot we got wrong.

Like the assumption that….

PEOPLE WHO CHEAT ARE UNHAPPY

Esther Perel’s Ted Talk, Why Happy Couples Cheat, has been viewed by hundreds of thousands; her previous ‘Rethinking Infidelity’ has more than 22 million views.

Perel believes happy people cheat because affairs are a way of reinventing ourselves. If you’ve been with your partner a long time, it’s very difficult to get them to see how you are now, as opposed to who you were when you first met.

People who have no desire to stray, sometimes do because another person sees this new, shiny version of them. Recognises what they’ve worked hard to change or achieve…while their partner remains oblivious.

On a less altruistic note, let’s not forget that cheating is a glorious ego-boost and adds the excitement that’s lacking in most long-term relationships. Contentment and security are wonderful to experience but the fizz of the new has a powerful, intoxicating pull that lots of happy people find impossible to resist.

Happy men are more likely to cheat than happy women

Fifty-six percent of men who’d had affairs in one study said their marriages were happy (versus 34 per cent of women). Many men who love their partners and have great sex at home, still won’t turn down an opportunity to have a bit on the side.

Another study found men in long-term marriages who have affairs often report very high marital satisfaction. Women in long-term marriages having affairs report quite the opposite – they have the lowest satisfaction of all. In fact, everyone’s marital satisfaction went down the longer they were married – except the men who had affairs.

(Yes. Beyond depressing.)

ONLY BAD PEOPLE ARE UNFAITHFUL

Twenty years ago, anything written or said about infidelity was almost certainly from the victim’s perspective. Cheaters were bad people and going to hell for it and God help anyone who dared to suggest otherwise.

Then a funny thing happened.

Research suggested it wasn’t just bad people who were cheating - nice people were at it as well.

Perel talks about the ‘no-fault affair’: the idea that an affair doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a problem with the relationship or the person.

In short, good people cheat as well as bad people. Research tells us people who are exemplary wives and husbands, great mothers and fathers, who love their partners and are emotionally responsible in every other way sometimes stray.

Human beings are fallible and make mistakes, no matter how well intentioned we are. That ‘just one more drink’ at the office drinks party which ends with us snogging a colleague in the loo. An innocent friendship with a person who walks the dog the same time we do, transforms into something unexpected.

It's entirely possible to love more than one person at once. A lot of people having affairs didn’t set out to cheat and feel ashamed and horrified at what they are doing.

In this week's column, UK sex and relationships expert TRACEY COX tells why infidelity is a far more complicated playing field than it was

IT’S MEN, NOT WOMEN, WHO ARE AT IT

Wrong again.

The percentage of married women who admitted to being unfaithful rose forty percent – from 10.5 in 1990 to 14.7 in 2010.

One of the most cited studies in 2023 now indicates 13 per cent of women cheat on their partners (compared to 20 per cent of men).

It was originally thought that women predominantly cheated when they feel ignored or unloved. But US sex and couple’s therapist Dr Tammy Nelson (author of ‘When you’re the one who cheats’) has an interesting, contrary take on infidelity.

She thinks men cheat for companionship and intimacy – if it’s just sex that’s lacking, they turn to porn. If love and affection are lacking, they have an affair.

Women, she says, cheat for passion and sex – erotic sex. We’re tired of looking after our men and want selfish sex without complications.

Many women are serial cheaters

Or so says Wednesday Martin, the author of Untrue, a book that overturns the stereotype that says men are more sexual than women.

We marry the boring guy because he’s stable and reliable and would make a great Dad and have steamy sex on the side with the hot, bad ones. That way we get the security, stability and companionship of long-term love but the excitement of sex on the side.

Our culture has also changed: there’s a real sense of what’s ‘owed’ to us as individuals. There’s less ‘us’ in relationships and more ‘me’.

Lots of women have affairs as a ‘reward’ for being such a supportive mother and wife. “This is for me,” is something I’ve heard many times from women who cheat. “I do everything else in my life for my family, I deserve this”.

YOU SHOULD ALWAYS LEAVE A CHEATER

In the past, a woman was applauded for ‘standing by her man’ when infidelity was discovered.

Today, she’s judged badly for it. Any self-respectful person should march straight out that door to preserve dignity and self-esteem!

Besides, how will you ever trust them again?

It’s true that some betrayals are too painful to be forgiven. It might be the person they choose (your best friend/worst enemy), the length of time (years rather than weeks or months), the circumstances (you were pregnant, sick) or the humiliation level (literally everyone seemed to know except for you).

But sometimes the affair is a direct response to a problem in the relationship that the person who cheated has tried desperately to fix. If your partner has treated you badly for years and you’ve tried everything to make them happy but to no avail, an affair can be a passive-aggressive way of either sticking your fingers up at them or a last-call bid for attention.

It's not always one person’s fault

The person who steps outside the relationship for love or sex isn’t necessarily the person at fault. If it’s a reaction to a real problem in the relationship, an affair can be the wakeup call that’s needed to save it.

I personally know of several instances of people who cheated only after they’d told their partner they were extremely unhappy and had been ignored. Cheating was a way of showing just how unhappy they were.

Let me make it clear: I am NOT saying having an affair is a way to fix a relationship. It isn’t. Good communication and/or therapy is.

In many cases, having an affair kills the relationship instantly. But if the wronged person can see their part in why it happened, it can be a catalyst for change.

In this instance, of course you should stay and try to save the two of you. It’s no-one else’s business whether you choose to stay, and I highly recommend anyone who interferes or judges unkindly should be told in no uncertain terms where to go.

No-one can see into your relationship, only you both know whether you can come back from this.

Want to revamp your relationship or sex life? Check out Tracey’s product range at lovehoney and listen to her podcast, SexTok with Tracey and Kelsey, wherever you listen to your podcasts.