You found the messages. You went through his phone, checked his pockets, and there it was. You knew something was there, and now you have the proof. All those thoughts and suspicions are suddenly vindicated, and some of your worst nightmares just came true.
Now the next part becomes easier. Whose fault is it? Obviously, it’s his! I can almost hear you saying it from here.
But maybe not. Maybe there’s more to the story.
I’m not here to excuse infidelity or blame someone for feeling betrayed. Give me five minutes, though, because I think we’ve become so focused on the moment someone crosses the line that we’ve forgotten all the steps that were taken before anyone ever got there.
Affairs don’t start in hotel rooms, offices, or at conferences. That’s usually not how this begins. Imagine a marriage in which two people haven’t really been emotionally connected for years. They still live together, pay the mortgage, go to work, raise the children, and do all the things married people are supposed to do. From the outside, they look married. From the inside, they’ve slowly become roommates. Affection has become a fading memory. Sex has become infrequent or nonexistent. Conversations sound more like board meetings than two people who love each other. One partner has stopped feeling appreciated while the other has stopped feeling understood.
Sometimes indifference is every bit as damaging as rejection.
The uncomfortable reality is that both of them probably knew something was wrong. They may not have understood exactly what was wrong, but they knew. Both had an obligation to themselves, to each other, and to their family to recognize the problem, talk about it, and decide what they were going to do about it.
Being responsible for the condition of your marriage is not the same thing as being responsible for every decision your spouse makes. But neither is being the person who didn’t cross the final line proof that you had nothing to do with how the two of you got there.
This is the point where couples should reach out for help. In fact, this is where a therapist can often do their best work—not after the explosion, but while two people still have an opportunity to understand why they’re drifting apart.
Human Beings Need Other Human Beings
We all have emotional needs. I don’t mean wants or preferences. These needs are fundamental to us. We need affection and companionship. We need to feel valued. We need somebody who is interested in what we think and how our day went. We need to feel seen.
That’s what marriages are actually built on. Not the children. Not the bills. Not the house or the vacations. Those things may become parts of a life together, but the relationship between two people is what made them want that life together in the first place.
Now imagine being deprived of that connection for years. Then somebody comes along who actually listens. Suddenly, this person feels heard, understood, and validated. For someone who has been living through an emotional drought, that can feel like manna from heaven.
Most affairs don’t begin with lust. They begin with relief.
And that’s all it takes to begin.
Nobody has done anything sexual. There hasn’t been a hotel room, touching, naughty messages, secret meetings, or even a long talk over a cup of coffee. Nobody intended to have an affair. People generally don’t wake up in the morning and say, I think I’ll destroy my entire life today by having an affair.
They just wanted someone to talk to. Then they found someone, and it felt good. Really good. Unbelievably good. It was a relief they may not have felt in years, so naturally they wanted to talk again. Soon they started looking forward to seeing that person. Eventually, they’re sharing things they haven’t talked about with their spouse in years, all the while telling themselves that nothing inappropriate is happening.
But something is happening. They’re beginning to get important emotional needs met by somebody other than their partner.
This is where saying, “Cheating is a choice. Period,” becomes far too simple for me. Human beings don’t work that simply. Finding yourself in this situation doesn’t mean an affair is guaranteed, but it certainly means there is a serious problem. And saying, “But I didn’t cheat,” can become a convenient way of ignoring all the years when you may have neglected the partner who eventually did.
That’s where this conversation becomes uncomfortable. If our entire definition of cheating is sexual intercourse with someone outside the marriage, we’re reducing an extraordinarily complicated relationship to one physical act. That simply doesn’t fit what happens in many marriages.
So let’s ask some harder questions. What were the two of you doing to keep your relationship healthy? Did you make time for your marriage every week? Every day? Did you compare your marriage with all those carefully edited marriages you saw on Facebook? Did you become more interested in what you imagined an ideal relationship should look like than in nurturing the imperfect, real relationship you actually had?
If you haven’t touched your partner in two years except when you brush past each other in the hallway, haven’t shown any interest in the things that matter to them for so long that you’ve forgotten what they even are, and barely know what is happening inside their life anymore, does none of that matter simply because they were the one who eventually crossed the line?
And here’s the biggest question: When you realized something was seriously wrong, what did you do about it?
Because failing to act is an action.
I can almost hear the objections from the back of the room now: So you’re saying she made him cheat?
I’m saying she was part of the relationship. The responsibility for the health of a marriage rests at both people’s feet. That’s why asking who “made” someone cheat isn’t particularly useful. Here’s a better question: Did years of emotional or sexual rejection contribute to creating an environment in which an affair became increasingly likely?
I believe the answer can absolutely be yes.
And husbands don’t get a pass here. If you’ve ignored your wife for years, belittled her, stopped noticing her, or treated her more like furniture in your home than the woman you chose to share your life with, should you really be shocked when being noticed by another man feels intoxicating?
Understanding how you became vulnerable to an affair doesn’t give you permission to have one. But if an important emotional need has gone unmet for years, attention from another person may suddenly serve a need that hasn’t been met inside the marriage for a very long time.
Marriage Changes Because People Change
A marriage that worked wonderfully when you were 25 may not be the marriage you need when you’re 45. There’s no blame to assign for that. People change. Careers change us. Children change us. Our bodies and appearances change. Success, disappointment, aging, loss, and experience change us.
A healthy marriage has to change with the people inside it. When it doesn’t, the two people inside it can slowly become strangers.
So Whose Fault Was the Affair?
Now we’re back to the question I asked at the beginning. The person who cheated is still responsible for their behavior, but they weren’t living inside that marriage alone. Their partner was there too. And that’s why I think we’ve been asking the wrong question.
If a couple spends an entire session in my office trying to determine who is to blame for the affair, I think they’re looking at the consequence instead of the cause. As a therapist, I’m much more interested in a bigger question: What happened to this marriage before the affair ever occurred? Because the actual crossing of the line isn’t the real problem. The real problem is the couple’s unwillingness or inability to acknowledge that something was wrong long before either one of them ever sat down for coffee with someone who wasn’t their partner.
I know there are exceptions. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all explanation for infidelity. But I’m talking about the couples who sit down on my couch and genuinely cannot understand how their marriage ever got to this point. In many of those marriages, there were two people living inside the problem long before a third person ever entered it. And very often, there were two people who spent years trying to ignore what was happening, hoping that somehow it would eventually fix itself.
That’s why I don’t think the greatest tragedy is necessarily the affair. The real tragedy may be the years that came before it: the loneliness, the rejection, the indifference, the unmet needs, and the years two people spent hurting while continuing to sleep beside each other every night. The eventual crossing of the line simply gave all that pain something to point to.
So if that couple were sitting across from me and one asked, “Did my spouse’s behavior make me cheat?” while the other asked, “Was the affair my fault?” my answer wouldn’t be a verdict. I’d tell them, “If you want to save this marriage, stop trying to win the trial.”
We already know something terrible happened. Now we need to understand how you got here.
Because the affair isn’t sitting in the counseling room with me.
The marriage is.