Why People Cheat: The Psychology Behind Infidelity

Why People Cheat: The Psychology Behind Infidelity

“I just can’t believe that I am having an affair.”

“How can my husband have an affair? We were so happy.”

“I have found my soul mate but he is married. What am I thinking?”

These are phrases that I hear from my clients all the time when cheating has touched their lives. They just don’t understand why people cheat – and most of the time it’s because they don’t understand how affairs happen. Affairs happen, more often than not, not because of the sex but something much deeper. Understanding what these things are might help you understand why infidelity has become a part of your life, in one way or another

#1 – Their depression makes them vulnerable.

The number one psychological fact behind why people cheat is that their mental health issues make them vulnerable to having an affair. Perhaps they are depressed, perhaps they are anxious, perhaps they are dealing with something that causes them to lose control of their emotions. Whatever the mental health struggle they are dealing with, it is making them vulnerable to doing something that will make them feel okay again.

Having an affair is one of those things that can make people with mental health struggles feel like they are okay, at least for a little bit. For that short period of time they are with their affair partner, they feel loved. They feel like they’re enough. The feel-good chemical ‘dopamine’ that comes from being with their affair partner courses through their veins, making them feel happy, even if for a moment.

#2 – They are feeling hopeless and feel like they will never be happy again.

One of my clients has been having an affair with a married man for four years. She just doesn’t understand why she got into it and why she can’t get out of it. After talking, we came to understand that one of the reasons she embarked on this affair was because she was feeling hopeless. She had divorced her husband, her kids were gone, and her career was on hold because of the industry in which she is worked. She just didn’t see how she could ever be happy again.

And then this married man came into her life and made her feel alive. He made her feel important, relevant, and like she had a future where she could be happy. Unfortunately, while she was happy for a while, she eventually became miserable again. What she thought was hope for the future turned into hopelessness because she knew she would never have the happiness that she sought.

#3 – They are unhappy in their marriage and don’t know how to fix it.

Many people who cheat are feeling unhappy in their marriage and they have no idea what to do about it. They married their person because they loved them madly but, over time, 1000 little cuts have eroded the marriage. Sure, they’ve been to therapy. Sure, they’ve made date nights and gone on mini vacations and done all the things that their therapist encouraged them to do. But still, they are unhappy and not sure what to do next.

So, what they do instead of fixing their marriage is they find someone who can meet their emotional needs. Someone who understands what they are going through, perhaps is even going through it as well themselves. Instead of having to deal with their marriage, they are getting their emotional needs met outside of the marriage, and it makes their marriage more tolerable.

#4 – They feel emotionally abandoned and lonely.

One of my clients had a husband who traveled all the time. He would be away for days at a time, only to come back, distracted by work and not interested in spending any time with her. She was not only lonely while he was gone, but she was lonely when he was back. They lived in the house together, going about their daily tasks, but not connecting emotionally in any way.

When my client met a man with whom she connected emotionally, it changed her life. She had believed that it was her fault that the emotion had died in their marriage and that her loneliness was the result of some kind of desperation. When she met her guy, she realized that she could still feel and that there was a man who could make her feel not so alone.

#5 – They need to numb the pain of a current trauma.

More than one of my clients has found themselves having an affair as they have gone through a period of intense trauma. One of my clients’ mothers was dying slowly of cancer. She spent a ton of time in the hospital with her mother, watching her be sick. She spent a lot of time on her own, wondering what she was going to do without her mother. While she had to go about her daily tasks because of her husband and her children, she was feeling empty.

When she met a man while watching her son’s hockey game, their small talk took her out of her life. She sought him out at games and talking to him allowed her to  forget what she was struggling with daily and lean into someone who made her feel something other than pain. Once again, the dopamine that was created from the connection that she had with a man who was not her husband helped her let go of the pain, if only for a few hours.

#6 – They feel heard and understood for the first time in a long time.

Marriages are long and hard. We always try very hard to keep them healthy, but it can be very difficult.

Many people embark on affairs after spending a period of time talking to their soon-to-be affair partners. Perhaps they have met at the office, and over time, have confided in each other about things that they struggle with. Perhaps they are parents of their kids friends and spend a lot of time with each other, and have developed a very deep friendship. What happens is, for the first time in a long time, they feel listened to and heard. And this feeling is very compelling and addictive. This feeling heard and understood makes them fall in love with this person, and, sometimes before they know it, they slide into an affair.

#7 – They are addicted to the affair and can’t let it go.

The number one reason why people have a hard time letting go of an affair is because they are addicted to it. Much like drugs, or ice cream, once they get a taste, they can’t let it go.

When they are put in a position where they must let go of their affair, they go into deep withdrawal. Even though they might have been miserable in the affair, which made them break up with their affair partner, the pain that they feel when they don’t get that dopamine rush, when they don’t hear their partners voice, when they don’t have the physical intimacy that they love, is intolerable. This leads them to go back to their partner, and the cycle begins again.

Understanding why people cheat is a hard thing to do for someone who hasn’t been there.

Affairs seem to be the tawdry things that we read about in books and see in movies. But, in fact, they’re more complicated than that. They are, more often than not, not the result of needing sex, but the result of trying to fill some emotional void in their lives, to give themselves hope for the future, to make them feel like a person again. And, unfortunately, their addiction makes it impossible for them to let go and so they are stuck in the cycle of a relationship that, eventually, makes everything that they struggle with worse.

Mitzi Bockmann

I am a NYC based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate. My writing has been published on The Huffington Post, Prevention,  Psych Central, Pop Sugar, MSN and The Good Man Project, among others. I work with all kinds of people to help them go from depressed and overwhelmed to confident and happy in their relationships and in their world.