Are Affairs Really About Sex? What I Learned as the Other Woman
Everyone has a theory about why people cheat, and almost all of them start and end with sex. He wasn't getting enough at home. She wanted something new. Keep your partner satisfied and they'll never stray. It's clean, it's simple, and it lets everyone feel safe.
It's also mostly wrong.
I spent years as the other woman, so I've heard every version of the "it was just about sex" theory. This week I sat down with Dr. Marie Murphy, a non-judgmental infidelity coach, and we took the whole thing apart.
Do Happy People Cheat? I Don't Think So.
There's a statistic that gets thrown around constantly in the infidelity space. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found that 56% of men and 34% of women who cheat rate their marriages as "happy" or "very happy." You've probably seen it. It shows up in therapy blogs, Reddit threads, podcasts, news articles — everywhere. And it's used to push this narrative that cheating is random, unpredictable, and completely unrelated to the state of the relationship. That it could happen to anyone, even in a good marriage.
