Affairs with Married Men Explained: Confession

Have you ever cheated with a married man? Or maybe you've been cheated on and you wonder why it happened? I've worked with hundreds of women who have been in this situation, and I've actually been on both sides of this equation myself. So today we're getting real. We're going to break through some taboos and discuss why affairs happen and why married men become the target. Let me paint you a picture. On the outside, you see a young, beautiful, talented, successful woman. But on the inside, she feels ugly, unwanted and discarded. She desperately wants to be wanted. She wants to be chosen, to be cared for, to feel, feel secure. She begs her husband for sex, for intimacy, for kindness. He turns her down, mocks her and belittles her, telling her she's not pretty enough, not fun enough, not fit enough. She didn't want to get a divorce, so she tried for years to make it work. I know this woman by heart. I feel her pain. And I deeply understand how stuck she felt. And I know exactly why she started cheating. Because that woman was me. Whether you've had an emotional affair, a physical affair, or you've been cheated on, whether you there's an uncomfortable truth that we need to confront right off the bat. Affairs happen when there's a problem in the relationship. Period. When you're in a loving, honest and trusting relationship, cheating just doesn't happen. It can't. Sometimes cheating happens due to an inability to withstand a compulsion. And this often pairs with excessive drinking, drug use, or other reckless behavior where your inhibitions are down and the immediate need for instant gratification takes over. Today, I'm not focusing on that type of situation. Instead, I'm going to focus on the types of affairs that I see in my clients and what I experienced myself. Like me, most of my clients tend to struggle with codependency. They are people pleasers. They struggle with self esteem. Many have been abused, neglected and or raised by at least one narcissistic parent. That means that many of us ended up marrying a replica of our parents and recreating the toxic dynamic of being with someone who would not love us or could not love us. When you live with someone who isn't able to be emotionally intimate with you, who regularly tells you that you're not pretty enough, thin enough, attractive enough, and who even withholds sex as a way to dominate and have power over you, you end up with a shattered sense of self worth, starved for attention and desperate for any tiny shred of love or kindness that you can find. So why cheat if you're so unhappy, why not just leave? This is what's so strange. When you know you're doing something morally wrong and you're deeply unhappy, yet completely unable to garner the courage to leave, it points to something deeper going on. Childhood abuse can actually rewire your brain so that heightened arous becomes confused with love. This isn't about sexual arousal. It's about your body's fight or flight response and how that adrenalized state becomes confused with love or connection. These types of dysfunctional relationships are often held together by something called a trauma bond, a complex psychological phenomenon where an emotional connection forms between the victim and the abuser, especially when the abuser offers intermittent reinforcement, small periods of kindness or affection. Over time, the trauma bond becomes so strong that it feels almost impossible to leave the relationship, even when you know it's toxic. The emotional and sometimes physical entanglement makes that thought of departure unbearable, despite the consistent harm being endured. And it's this dynamic, the feeling of being emotionally tethered, but not emotionally fulfilled, that can lead to seeking validation outside of the relationship. This can be a dangerous trap, setting the stage for being attracted to unavailability or even abuse. Because when you're used to equating love with turmoil, stable relationships might even feel boring or lacking some spark leading you back into this cycle of abuse or emotional neglect. And when you're psychologically predisposed to find unattainable appealing, a married man becomes the ultimate forbidden fruit. I want to pause here for just a second because I can vouch for the women I've worked with and I can personally attest to this myself. It's not like we consciously set out to destroy marriages or went out of our way to pick someone who was unavailable. When you're in relationships with narcissistic or emotionally unavailable partners, you get used to inconsistencies and broken promises. In relationships where emotional investment is scarce, even the slightest hint of affection can act like a magnet, pulling us into situations that mirror the emotional detachment we're used to. The sneaky, illicit and deceitful side of having an affair also mirrors the emotional games we've been conditioned to accept. When a person isn't available, it takes the pressure off of us to be vulnerable and emotionally open affairs are an invitation into a make believe world where we can pretend to be in love, we can pretend to have a relationship, we can pretend to be cared for, all while avoiding having to confront the reality of our actual life. When I had my daughter, it became glaringly obvious that I needed to heal from my childhood. I wanted to end the cycle of dysfunction and I started doing the intense inner work required for having happy and healthy relationships. This simultaneously unveiled how toxic my marriage was and I ultimately left. When I filed for divorce, it was like a switch flipped suddenly the on and off again affair was absolutely uninteresting. The last thing I wanted was a married man. I had finally healed enough and to take my own life seriously, and it became unthinkable to continue to marginalize myself. And although it took years like 10 to really rewire the trauma bonding and the weird attraction to emotional unavailability, I finally did get there. So what's the actionable advice here? When clients ask me how to stop cheating or how to protect their relationships from infidelity, I offer a concept from one of my favorite relationship books, the New Rules of Marriage by Terry Real. In it, he uses the term misery stabilizers for anything that helps you cope with an unhappy relationship, whether it's shopping or food, alcohol, drugs or affairs. He says, misery stabilizers are the things people turn to instead of turning to each other. Like steam valves, they bleed off your discontent, staving off a crisis but cementing your lack of fulfillment as well. So being aware of your own misery stabilizers is the first step. Are these actions actually solving the problems, or are they simply masking deeper issues? Next, you need to commit to your own healing. Do the intense inner work request required to dismantle these habits and thought patterns. Hire a coach, a therapist, or join a support group.