Why Do Affairs Happen? Understanding the Reasons Behind Infidelity & Betrayal
If you've discovered that your partner has had an affair, one of the first questions you may find yourself asking is, "Why?"
Why did they do it? Why this person? Why now? Was something missing in the relationship? Did they stop loving me? Was I not enough? And perhaps one of the most painful questions is, "Could I have done something differently?"
If you are the person who had the affair, you may have a completely different set of questions. You may be trying to understand how you ended up crossing a boundary you never expected to cross, particularly if you still love your partner and didn't intend for the relationship to end. These questions are understandable. When infidelity happens, both people often want an explanation that makes sense of something that can feel incredibly confusing. The difficulty is that there isn't one simple answer to why affairs happen.
Research into infidelity has identified a range of motivations, including relationship dissatisfaction, neglect, anger, sexual desire, lack of love, low commitment, wanting sexual variety, seeking validation and situational factors. This tells us that affairs can develop for very different reasons, and sometimes several factors are present at the same time. Understanding those factors also doesn't mean excusing an affair. We can look honestly at what was happening within a relationship and within an individual while still recognising that having an affair involves choices and personal responsibility.
Sometimes Relationship Disconnection Is Part of the Story
Long-term relationships change. Work, children, financial pressure, family responsibilities, health issues and simply the busyness of everyday life can gradually affect how connected a couple feels.
Sometimes couples continue to function well as a team while becoming increasingly disconnected emotionally. They organise the children, pay the bills, go to work and attend family events, but they aren't necessarily sharing much of themselves anymore.
Perhaps conversations have become mostly about who is picking up the children or what needs to be bought from the supermarket. Perhaps one partner has had a difficult day but doesn't automatically turn to the other person anymore. Perhaps there is affection, but little emotional intimacy. Over time, this can leave one or both people feeling lonely within the relationship.
John and Julie Gottman's research into relationships has explored the importance of emotional connection, friendship and how couples respond to one another. Their work can help us understand how ongoing disconnection and negative patterns can contribute to relationship vulnerability, including around betrayal. However, there is an important distinction here.
Relationship problems don't make an affair inevitable.
A couple can experience significant problems and choose to communicate, seek counselling, work on their relationship or decide to separate. An affair is still a choice made by the person who has it.
Sometimes an Affair Is About How Someone Feels About Themselves
Not every affair is about something missing from the relationship. Sometimes the person having the affair is getting something from the experience that changes how they feel about themselves.
Perhaps someone has reached a stage in life where they don't feel particularly attractive or interesting. Then somebody else starts paying them attention. They compliment them, seem interested in what they have to say and make them feel desirable. That attention can feel very powerful.
Research has identified validation and self-esteem among the motivations reported by some people who have been unfaithful. This doesn't mean that everyone who has an affair has low self-esteem, or that receiving attention from someone else will result in infidelity. It means that, for some people, the affair is meeting an emotional or psychological need that goes beyond the relationship itself. For the person who had the affair, it can therefore be useful to ask not only, "What wasn't I getting from my partner?" but also, "What was this other relationship giving me, and why did I need it?"
Resentment and Unresolved Hurt Can Also Play a Role
Sometimes an affair happens in the context of a relationship where resentment has been building for a long time. One partner may feel unappreciated or rejected. The other may feel constantly criticised or as though nothing they do is good enough. Both people can have a strong sense that they are the one who has been trying while the other person isn't doing enough.
For example, one partner may believe they have carried most of the household and parenting responsibilities for years. The other may feel they have worked hard to provide financially but receive little appreciation for it. If neither feels heard, resentment can gradually replace curiosity and goodwill.
Research has identified anger and neglect among motivations reported by people who have engaged in infidelity. Understanding that resentment existed can be important, but it doesn't mean the resentment caused or justified the affair. There is a difference between saying, "I was unhappy and resentful in my relationship," and saying, "Because I was unhappy, having an affair was justified."
The first is something worth exploring. The second avoids responsibility.
Sexual Desire and Attraction Can Be Part of the Picture
For some people, an affair involves sexual desire, attraction or wanting sexual variety. This doesn't necessarily mean there were sexual problems within the relationship. Someone can have a satisfying sex life with their partner and still experience attraction towards another person. The important distinction is between experiencing attraction and acting on it.
You don't necessarily get to choose who you find attractive, but you do have choices about what you do with that attraction. There can be many decisions between noticing that someone is attractive and actually having an affair. For example, noticing attraction might be followed by deliberately seeking opportunities to be alone together, private messaging, flirting, sharing increasingly personal information and hiding those interactions from your partner.
For couples, this is also why conversations about boundaries can be so important. What one person considers an innocent friendship may feel very different to their partner.
Sometimes the Person Doesn't Fully Understand Why They Did It
One of the more difficult realities about infidelity is that the person who had the affair may not have a clear explanation themselves. They may know they were unhappy, but not understand why they didn't speak up. They may have enjoyed the attention without initially intending for anything to happen. They may have been avoiding problems in their relationship or themselves.
Sometimes they may genuinely feel confused about how a series of relatively small decisions ended with something that has had such significant consequences. That doesn't remove responsibility. Understanding how someone arrived at a decision is different from saying they couldn't have made another choice.
So, Does an Affair Mean the Relationship Was Bad?
Not necessarily.
A relationship can have genuine problems and still contain love. It can have periods of closeness and periods of distance. There can be sexual difficulties, resentment or communication problems while the relationship remains deeply important to both people. Equally, a person can have vulnerabilities, difficulties with boundaries or motivations that aren't primarily about their relationship.
Rather than asking only, "Was our relationship bad?", there are often more useful questions to explore:
What was happening between us before the affair?
What was happening individually for each of us?
Were there problems we had stopped addressing?
What boundaries were crossed?
What choices were made?
What does each person need to take responsibility for?
What would need to change if the relationship were to continue?
Looking at the whole picture can help a couple move away from trying to find one simple explanation for something that is usually much more complicated.
If You're Trying to Understand What Happened
If you're trying to make sense of an affair in your own relationship, you may not have all the answers yet. You may be trying to understand what happened, what it means for your relationship and what needs to change from here. You may also be carrying a lot of questions that are difficult to work through on your own.
Sometimes having a space to slow things down and look at what has happened can help. This isn't about finding someone to blame or deciding straight away whether you should stay or leave. It can simply be about understanding the relationship, the impact of what has happened and what each of you may need moving forward.
If you and your partner are finding it difficult to have these conversations without them turning into blame, defensiveness or further hurt, couples counselling can provide a safe and supported space to work through them. If you're in Redlands, Brisbane or elsewhere in Australia and would like some support to understand what has happened and what comes next, you're welcome to get in touch with me at Anchoring Your Life Counselling. You don't need to have everything worked out before you reach out. Sometimes the first step is simply having a conversation about where things are at and what support might be helpful.
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