Episode 134: When Everything Seems Fine… and They Still Cheat

 Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host relationship expert and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope.

Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope and this is the Loving Truth. Today we're going to be talking about infidelity and betrayal. And why someone would cheat when there's nothing wrong in the marriage. As a matter of fact, they're very happy in the marriage. So then why would someone turn towards someone else?

It's an interesting question. So a very sweet woman named Ellen wrote to me, and I wanna share with you what she wrote, and I'm gonna read it in its entirety because I think every piece of this is important to her story. I. She said, just like many other women, I also stumbled upon your amazing podcast, especially for the episodes on infidelity.

To keep things short, I found out three weeks ago that my husband cheated on me. My mind and emotions are ever since all over the place, and I am helpless. I heard during one of your podcast episodes that people can reach out to you and you can potentially speak about cases. In the podcast, you mentioned very specifically that when there is infidelity in a marriage, something almost always is wrong.

Prior. You also said that you had rarely heard of any case where everything is great and there is still infidelity. Well, we are that exceptional case. We have been together a little over 10 years now. Our lovely daughter was born in 2023 and in 2024 we got married. Now early 2025, I got a message from my husband, oh, sorry, from the husband of the other woman that my husband and his wife were in an affair.

This was confirmed by my husband. It concerns an old ex of his, which he never even really took seriously. It was puppy love during the early years and was not serious at all, which is why within three months he broke up with her in a bad manner, leaving the woman hurt and perhaps vengeful. That same woman approached him mid-December 2024 via email for weeks.

They just exchanged some emails speaking of the past as though it was the present, perhaps some flirtation included. Then early February when I was away on a business trip for two days, he invited her to our home and had sex with her. Approximately five years ago, he also had a short term affair with another woman, a different woman in which he only dated the woman and kissed.

On a few occasions, they did not have sex. This has been confirmed, so I know he is not lying about that. At that time, we almost broke up. He was devastated and begged me to not leave him. Ever since we have been working on our relationship, we even had couples counseling, which did help us. Things were great.

We got married. We adore being a family together and our amazing one and a half year old daughter and lovely dog. We had it all. The perfect picture between us. Things were also fine. Of course, we had our ups and downs, but nothing major and our loves seemed stronger than ever. Yet here we are. Obviously I am devastated, confused, and hopelessly sad, but he is as well.

He has no clue as to why this happened. As he says he was not planning for it. The other woman had a meeting in our neighborhood and they decided to just briefly have a coffee. However it did happen and he did it in his full consciousness when speaking to him about it. Now it almost sounds schizophrenic like it concerns two completely different men.

He sought out professional mental care to understand why he did this. As he says, he loves me and is extremely happy with our relationship and life. So here it is. Two happy people that love each other, that have a lovely family and life together, and a bright future ahead. Yet he cheated on me and he can't answer the question why he did it.

He's devastated and desperate, regrets this with every cell in his body and is petrified to lose me. All of this is even more confusing to me as he really seems to regret this and is willing to go to any extent, to not lose me. I'm so lost and clueless. Can you please shed some light on the situation, perhaps in a podcast?

I will be eagerly waiting. Thank you, Ellen. So Ellen, I spent some good time with your question today because I really wanted to give you a thoughtful answer. It's not every day that I see. Someone who they've been genuinely happy inside their marriage and there's an affair. Most everyone that comes to me when there's an affair, there's something wrong or there's something missing in the marriage, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

So I went looking for some helpful information from people who. Have had more experience with this than me, and I wanted to share that with you. So we're going to begin with some statistics around affairs, specifically men and why they cheat. Now, most of the statistics that I'm gonna share here came from a book by Gary Chapman called Why Men Sheet, and.

This book, I believe was published in 2008. The reason why I'm telling you that and why it's important is because all of the stats that we see today around affairs are not better than they were a couple decades ago. They're worse, so you should just assume that the numbers are higher today than they were then when this book was published.

But at least it will give you some context, some range for like what's happening. So here we go. Nearly one in every three couples will be impacted by an affair. The number that I have seen recently is 68%. Of couples have affairs, but I think that that's even understated. That's a more recent number, but I think it's more understated because that's only people who will admit that what they did was in fact, an affair.

And we don't have a common definition around what an affair is, besides one common definition that when there's sex, then it was an affair. So 69% of husbands who cheated never considered it a possibility. I tell you that stat Ellen, because I want you to know that just because he didn't plan it doesn't really tell you much because most people don't plan it.

Sure. There are some people that are planning to have an affair and they go on specific websites to do that, but most people, women included, are not planning to have an affair. They're just not planning to not have an affair, and then they go unconscious. 88% of men believe that their cheating was linked to some dissatisfaction in the marriage, but that leads the remaining 12%.

The of cheating men who said that their wives actions or inactions had nothing to do with their cheating. That 12% is where your husband falls into so far. Okay. And we're gonna talk about that 12% in detail. What sort of marital dissatisfaction contributed to men's infidelity? So, because I know that there are people listening to this where there was a reason in like there was something missing inside the marriage and that's why they turned to someone else.

So I wanna give you this information as well. 48% said it was primarily emotional dissatisfaction. 8% said it was primarily sexual dissatisfaction. Although that is different than what some smaller studies have said. Um, that number is usually higher. 32% said it was equal emotional and sexual dissatisfaction inside the marriage, and 12% said other or no dissatisfaction in the marriage.

So there's that 12% again. In terms of what is creating emotional dissatisfaction in the relationship, this is in order from most answered to least answered response. The first one, and this is the one that you hear most commonly in terms of marital challenges from the male perspective, is no matter what I did, I couldn't make her happy, I couldn't win.

And when a man can't win at home, he will look to win somewhere else. Um, more conversation at home about what he's doing wrong than what he's doing right. He didn't feel appreciated by his wife. Appreciation is big for men. She wasn't thoughtful and caring towards me anymore. And then the bottom four are I felt disconnected from her.

My wife would often lose her temper. There was a lack of communication and we no longer share the same values. So some other important stats around this that lead to the why question. 50% of men who have cheated also had a father who had an affair or was suspected of cheating compared to 28% of faithful men.

21% of men who have cheated had an affair. Sorry. Had a father who had multiple affairs, so 21% of men who have cheated, had a father who had multiple affairs compared with 8% of faithful men. So if you grow up with a father who's cheating, you are more likely to also cheat yourself. Interesting, right. Also, in this book it talked about friends.

If your friends are cheating on their wives, you are more likely as opposed to less likely to also cheat. Okay. The average time that men were married before having their first affair was six years. 54% cheated with only one woman. 46% had multiple affairs. Your husband falls into the 46%. Okay. At this point, how long did they cheat?

47% were less than a year. 24% were between one and two years. 9% were between two and four years and 20% had cheated of, of those who had cheated, 20% did so for more than four years. So let's dive into this 12% where there's nothing wrong in the marriage. So what this, this study said was that the marriage or their, their wife.

Her actions or inactions was not the catalyst for them cheating. Some of them said if our marriage was something different, I might not have cheated. Such as if we were more communicative or if we were more, I. Close or if we were more sexual or more spontaneous, whatever, like if it, if there was something different, maybe I wouldn't have cheated.

I think you gotta take that with a grain of salt, because anytime you're talking about affairs, there are going to be people who will not completely own that they made this choice. And so some of the people answering these questions are just like, oh, maybe I wouldn't have cheated. You know, like if, if we were, if we communicated more, maybe I wouldn't have.

So I think you gotta take that with a really big grain of salt. But the other people that make up that 12% are people that cannot or will not ever be monogamous, that they will always cheat. And Ellen, I know that's probably your deepest fear. It might even be your husband's deepest fear that he's that guy.

So he might not be. Let's explore it. Okay. First of all, I just wanna say I hear you that you are happy and that everything was perfect. Here's what I also know, even though I don't know you, here's what I know. Going from being a couple to then having a family is the most challenging time of your entire marriage.

You're going from a time where the two of you are sort of the center of your universe to a time where overnight, a little child has now become the center of your universe and most couples, because no one tells you this, by the way, most couples lose the couple part of them. Once a child comes along.

Because all of their time and energy and love and attention is invested in this sweet little baby, as it should be. But that creates its own unique set of challenges. So let's just think about this for a second. You two used to be the center of the universe, and now this little child is the center of the universe.

You're not sleeping well. Neither of you are probably sleeping well for a good portion of the last year and a half. And that means that neither of you are bringing your best self. You're not your most patient, you're not your most creative, you're not your most energetic, right? Like you're not bringing your best to the marriage.

Most people, when they have an infant and then a toddler, they're just doing the best they can to get through the day, right? And do and do all the adulting things that they have to do, and that's completely understandable. It's also just very real. You are probably getting your love tank filled and your physical touch needs filled through the child because she always wants to be held and you've been kissing her little fingers and kissing her little toes and playing with her and holding her and loving her up and bathing her and all this stuff.

Right? So you have physical touch in spades, your husband probably to a lesser degree. And so that can create a missing piece because when he reaches for you, sometimes the last thing you might want is to be touched. But no one tells you that either. And then he's thinking, wait a minute, I used to be the apple of her eye.

What happened? Right? You may I, I think that sex can become a very tricky thing post pregnancy. It takes a while for your body to be able to respond again and to feel normal again, and to have desire again. Like you may not feel completely at home yet inside your body. Or maybe a year and a half later you do.

But before that, maybe, maybe not quite yet, and that's okay. And we don't know, like he could also just be scared to death about all the responsibility that comes along with being a father. So I just say that because it's a lot, I know it looks really picture perfect from the outside. Like we have a dog and now we have this beautiful child, and now we got married and everything is great, but only the two of you know if maybe it was a really challenging time and maybe there were some challenges that maybe you just weren't talking about 'em.

I just offer that as a little seed to plant. We'll see if anything grows from it, like you'll know if, if there's something there for you to look at. Now, I know it's not about this other woman I know it's not that she was just something so magical and so lovely and so irresistible that that's why he did it.

There's two big things that tell me this one is. Only 12% of men who have cheated said that their affair partner was more attractive than their wife, which means 88% said that, Nope, my wife is either as attractive or more attractive than the affair partner. And so you might think, well then why would they cheat if she's not more attractive?

28% said she made him feel wanted, loved and appreciated. That was the highest response. Second highest response was they offered me things sexually that my wife wouldn't do. That sort of leads me more down the path of like the massage parlors with happy endings sort of vibe. Um, and then 12% they could communicate more openly with this person than they could with their spouse.

Now the other thing, the reason why I know that this is not about you, and I want you to hear me on this in the best possible way that you can make of such a betrayal. He did this in your home, which means he wasn't thinking about you at all, which means this is not about you at all. This is a hundred percent about him.

So what could that reason be? If everything is great, as you said it was, the marriage isn't broken at all, why would he cheat? So let's just explore the options.

Maybe he felt flattered, maybe she said or did something that made him feel important or appreciated or desired or sexy or whatever. He felt flattered by that. Maybe he thought he could get away with it, that what he was doing wouldn't hurt anyone, and the dopamine rush was just too exhilarating to pull away from that risk.

The adventure, the novelty of it, the forbiddenness of it. He wasn't willing to pull away from that. Maybe he learned that there's a certain amount of infidelity that just gets overlooked because maybe he learned that from his father growing up. I don't know. Did his father have affairs? Did his father cheat?

Maybe he's lost, like emotionally, mentally lost. He doesn't feel successful. He doesn't feel confident. He doesn't feel secure. He doesn't feel empowered. Maybe he's scared that he will fail as a husband and a father, and then whatever our deepest fear is, we actually go and unconsciously create the exact experience that will prove it to be right.

That will bring that worst fear into reality. 'cause he created the exact experience. You haven't even been married two years and your daughter isn't even two years old, and he essentially has failed as both a husband and a father.

Maybe that's what's going on.

There are some people who stop looking at their wives in a sexual way. Once they have children, it's sort of like, well, now you're the mother of my child and I revere you and I respect you, and I sort of put you up on this pedestal, but now I can't sexualize you. So now I start to sexualize other women.

He might have learned that home was a place to feel safe, but not a place to feel pleasure, and he hasn't integrated those different parts of himself. And probably the last one, the scariest one, is that he cannot or will not ever be monogamous and look. There's no shame or judgment around, like if you're not ever going to be monogamous, okay, fine.

But just be honest about that with people. Don't get married, promise monogamy and pretend to be someone that you are not going to ever be because now you're just leaving a trail of hurt behind you. I have a good friend who, she has an ex-boyfriend and he says like, like, and she even says she, he's an amazing guy and I adore him.

He flat out told me like, I will never be monogamous. I'm not that guy. And she's like, then I'm not your girl, but she still thinks he's great. You know, it doesn't mean she's with him, but at least he's being open and honest about that. Don't get married and try to, and pretend and do something just because you think you should do it.

So. Because you've listened to my podcast around infidelity, you've heard me talk about Esther Perel. So hopefully you have her book a state of affairs. It's brilliant. Um, she's another person that I went to as I was thinking about answering this question for you, and so I wanna share with you a few of her insights that I think are really relevant here.

She said, at the heart of affairs, of course, is betrayal and hurt, but there is also longing. Longing for emotional connection, for intensity, for different sexual experiences, for suddenly feeling alive because we have numbed ourselves to the point where we just feel dead inside. Like think about how our lifestyle choices today are leading to a place of just not very much.

Passion and aliveness in us. We, if you're going to work all day and then you come home and you're numbing out in front of the TV and scrolling on whatever social media platform you wanna scroll on, and you're watching the news and you're drinking your scotch every night, like no wonder you feel dead inside and then something that's super risky and new and adventurous and all those things comes along and it makes you feel alive again.

You're going to be drawn to that. Now the other thing that she says in her book that I think is, it makes so much sense, but I've ne I had never heard anyone talk about this before, and that is that what we're seeking oftentimes isn't another partner. It's we are seeking another version of ourselves, sometimes a version of ourselves that we've suppressed.

And so then that gets into a conversation about. Who am I? Like, who is your husband when he's with you, and who is your husband when he is with this affair partner? And that's something that is worth him exploring because if you think about it for most of us, and whether you've had this situation, whether you've had infidelity in your marriage or not, this is relevant to you and, and that is think about how you show up in your marriage versus how you might show up in an affair.

We come home, we've worked all day. We might bring work home with us. We certainly bring the stresses of the day home with us.

We are not as fun. We're not as free. We're not trying to woo our partner. We're not as charming as we were when we were trying to win them over. Now we're married, so we don't have to try that hard, right? We don't, we don't think about what we're gonna wear. As, as frequently we don't think about how funny we are or like we're just not trying as hard, right?

We might have our nose in our phone or watching TV more often than we are sitting across the table touching our partner and saying, babe, how was your day? Tell me about the best part of your day. Tell me about the worst part of your day. Right? You said that he was sending flirtatious emails back and forth with this woman.

I. Where are your flirtatious emails or text messages? This is where I think all of us can learn from your experience, which is, and this is a a, it's not a direct quote. I'm sure I'll screw it up, but the, the spirit of it, of where Esther Perel says if we brought only 10% of the creativity. That we give to affairs.

If we brought that into our marriages, we would not have as many marriages in distress and divorce as we do today, period. And I believe that only 10%, like we don't even have to go so over the top in terms of sending flirty messages all day long. Thinking about what underwear you're gonna be wearing or what outfit you're gonna be wearing when you meet this person being super charming and being super funny, like if we brought 10% of that home.

Our marriages would be different. So one of the other things that no one taught us was that when you come into marriage, it's going to feel predictable and comfortable, and there's some beautiful things that come along with that. It starts to feel like a place that you can land, a safe place that you can call home.

But the desire side of the equation is still there for us as human beings. We still want that. And if we don't nurture it, no one told us it's gonna head south. It's not gonna be here in a matter of a few years if you don't nurture the desire side of the equation. So what creates desire, but novelty and things that are new and things that are different, and things that are exciting or maybe a little adventurous.

And so we have to nurture that. Like even when you're thinking about date nights, like if you're just going to dinner and you come home and you turn on the TV and you brush your teeth and you get in your pajamas, kiss each other goodnight and go to bed, like, are we really doing what the date night is supposed to do?

Is it really giving us the benefit or are we just going through the motion so we can say that we did it? Because all we did is we talked about work and we talked about the kids, and we talked about logistics and we talked about the weather. We didn't talk about us as a couple. Right. We didn't really spend that intimate time together.

So when we're doing things that are the same old, same old, the familiar, it's going to lead to a place of comfort, which is going to dampen desire, familiarity, dampens or suppresses desire. But when you start doing new things together, that creates more energy in the relationship. If you go rollerblading together, if you take a cooking class together, if you, um, whatever, anything that is new and interesting and you go do that together, that's going to bring new energy into your relationship and it's gonna amp up the desire side of the equation.

So you've gotta be able to pay attention to that in the future. So another quote that is super relevant from Esther, she said, we set out to make love more secure and dependable, but in the process, inevitably we dial down its intensity On the path of commitment. We happily trade a little passion for a bit more certainty, some excitement for some stability, right?

We need the family to be stable. We need it to be predictable. We need it to be certain. But we gotta pay a little bit of attention to that desire side of the equation. So Ellen, I think that there's some good news for you here in this. He's in therapy. That's good news. Um, he needs to be there a while.

Like minimum a year, but I'm not talking like just show up, pay your dues for a year and then you get your Get Outta jail free card. I'm just saying it's at least a year because there's a lot to unearth here and change doesn't happen overnight. So make sure that that's a requirement for you of this is gonna be a long journey if we're gonna try to work on this and he's gotta commit to that sort of.

Timeline, that sort of trajectory. It sounds like he's showing a great deal of remorse, and that's good news. It sounds like he knows what he has in you and in the family and in this relationship. That's good news. Um, he needs he'll, he will need to be more forthcoming for longer than he wants to be. What I mean by that is, you know, like handing over the phone.

Because technology has made it so easy to cheat. So that open book like has to be there. It, and it's gonna be there for way longer than he's gonna be comfortable. 'cause it, it just is inevitable. Whoever is the one that cheated is, has moved past it much more quickly than the one who was cheated on. So.

It's not six months. You're not gonna be over this in six months, but if you're still hanging onto and talking about it six years from now, well then, then Ellen, maybe there's something there for you to look at. But it's somewhere between six months and six years. And I promise you that's longer than maybe he's thinking.

And he could carry this so that you don't have to. And what I mean by that is he could, like, when he senses that you are troubled, he could say, babe, is there anything you wanna talk about? Do you have any questions you wanna ask me? Like most people, when they sense that their partner's upset about the affair that they had, they run away.

They're like, oh God, I'm late. I gotta go to work. Like they run away from it because they're scared to have those conversations. You could dive into it because if not, what happens is that then you're always the one bringing it up like this. This. Shit sandwich that you got handed. Now you are the one that is always bringing it up and then you become the nag in the relationship because you're the one that has to keep bringing it up in order to calm your fears.

He could take that away from you and say, you know what? I'm gonna carry this. I'm gonna own this, and you're free to talk to me about this anytime you need to. And trust needs to be rebuilt, and that is gonna take more than a minute. This isn't just one, this is now his second one. And so I really want you to think about this, Ellen, because, well, last time it was like you weren't married yet.

There wasn't a child in the picture. Now the stakes are even higher, so you're going to be more likely to want to get over this more quickly and sort of bandaid this so that you can get back to. Life that you are creating. Like that's gonna be the temptation. But I don't want you to do that. Like I want you to really be able to honor the feelings that you have and the pain that you have.

Because the only way through it is through it, which means you gotta feel it and you gotta process it, and you are going to need support around you, right? You cannot look to him to be your support right now. You can't look to the person who caused the hurt, who caused all the pain, to now heal that pain.

You have to heal that, but you're gonna need support around you to do it. By the way, I am right here, ready to go to work when you are, but you might say, oh, I need a therapist or a counselor, like whatever. But you need support around you because you need to be heard and you need to be able to process your experience of this.

It's not just about his experience. It's also equally about your experience. The last thing I will say is there's an opportunity here for the two of you to grow closer. I know it sounds impossible right now and probably feels impossible, but affairs blow things up, um, in a way that provides an opportunity, which is we start dealing with the what's real.

We start getting underneath like who we really are. What our motivations are, what our deepest fears and insecurities are. We start talking about what's real and we start dealing with what's real and we can create a more honest relationship. Once things get blown into smithereens and it's all just sort of the shrapnels just laying there, we can potentially put it back together and it could be even more beautiful than it was before.

It's just a long walk. It doesn't mean it can't be done. I mean, everything that's worthwhile that we genuinely value and appreciate is hard work. So this would be hard work, but it's completely possible. So please just take care of yourself and make sure you're not. Moving on too quickly as a way to try to bypass the pain that you're feeling.

You gotta take care of you right now.

I know I was speaking to Ellen today, but I was also speaking to many of you. Some of you are dealing with your husband's affair and there was a lot here for you. Some of you are trying to make sense of your own affair going, how in the world did I get here? I. I'm married to a kindhearted man who would never hurt me like this.

What, what kind of person am I? And maybe this gives you some insight into why you might do what you do. Human beings are fascinating creatures in terms of why we do what we do. And even if you've not had an affair, you can look at what am I bringing to this marriage versus what I might bring to an affair.

And how could I show up for this marriage differently as a way to sort of a fair proof my marriage, if you will. If you have a question or a challenge in your relationship that you'd like to share with me, I'd like to be able to answer it. All you have to do is leave me a voicemail. You can make it anonymous if you want, leave me a voicemail at 727-537-0359.

Until next time, take really good care. If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a Truth and Clarity session with a member of my team on the call. We'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage.

Go to Clarity for my marriage.com to fill out an application now that's clarity for my marriage.com.