Relationship therapists reveal the clues that suggest infidelity and tips for how couples can recover. Photo / 123rf
The clues your partner is having an affair – or might be about to start one
You can never tell if someone is cheating from one single clue. I am a consultant psychologist at the Chelsea Psychology Clinic and I’ve worked with hundreds of couples. When I sit with a couple in crisis, I always look at the whole picture and ask myself: is this person really cheating, or is the person telling me the story highly anxious and insecure? Because I do sometimes work with clients who think their partner is cheating and it isn’t the case.
There are scenarios where I can see from a few tell-tale signs that something is going wrong in the relationship, and one of the partners may well be cheating. The world of infidelity is complex but these are the clues I’ve observed over the years.
If somebody is quite insecure in themselves and they need a lot of affirmation from their partner, but the partner is a little more critical or just can’t give the person the attention they want, that tends to create a scenario where the more insecure partner might seek some external validation or affirmation from another relationship.
Usually this isn’t a problem in the early stages of a relationship, because the person who needs a lot of affirmation tends to get it. But once a couple are together all the time it’s natural that this fades. Then someone comes along who makes them feel amazing again, while their partner knows all their flaws – so there’s the danger of an affair.
Cheating happens when a relationship has a vulnerability gap that allows another person in. It’s unlikely to occur when each person is able to attend to the other’s needs and they understand each other at a deep level. But if there are gaps in looking after each other’s needs, this creates a space for a third party to enter a relationship.
Emotional needs, rather than practical or material ones, are always the issue. For example, a husband could be very loving and might think he is meeting his wife’s needs through providing a lot of material things – presents or holidays or experiences – but they might not be very emotionally attuned. And that might create this gap.
But if people stay connected – and communicate with each other – then it’s unlikely there would be a gap for someone new to move into.
Sometimes one person in the couple hasn’t made a very good choice to begin with. There’s a category of people – men and women, but most commonly women – who are very drawn to unavailable partners. Usually the underlying reason is an early childhood experience, perhaps an unavailable parent. They are repeating something in the hope for a better experience, but in reality they’re more likely to suffer.
Sometimes people make what we call pattern-driven choices – choices based on what has happened to them in their past – in who they choose to be with. These people are more at risk of being cheated on.
Usually, an event triggers an affair. Most people might occasionally come across the opportunity to have an affair – someone is attracted to them and the feeling is returned – without doing it. But for that opportunity to really take root there needs to be a reason – they need to be dissatisfied in their relationship.
Having children is the number one life change that creates distance. The attention gets redirected from the couple to the child. Usually a couple’s intimacy and sexual relationship is affected. The mother, typically, might be very attentive to the child. The father might feel a little on the outside. Ultimately, distance is created between two people and it’s quite easy for an affair to happen in that scenario.
Other big transitions could be the loss of a parent – in fact it could be anything traumatic that creates some psychological destabilisation in one of the two parties and throws a person’s normal ways of coping up in the air. If a relationship has an underlying vulnerability that is then combined with this sort of trigger, affairs can happen.
Generally, if a person has cheated once there’s a psychological reason behind it, meaning they will tend to do it again. Most of the time it’s some internal feeling about themselves – such as having a difficulty with being dependent in their relationships. There might be something about being vulnerable that freaks them out. There might be all sorts of things that happen that mean being in a committed relationship provokes anxiety for them.
When one person in a couple I am seeing is cheating, but hasn’t admitted to it, I can often tell. Usually there’s something about the stories that doesn’t add up. If the one party to the relationship is still very invested and committed to it continuing, but you see the other party acting in a way that doesn’t reflect that commitment, or their behaviour doesn’t really make sense, then there is something missing.
As the relationship therapist, you feel that something isn’t resonating about why these two people are really struggling. Usually, you find the answers in the person’s background – you begin to dig into their history and discover clues. Perhaps they are more likely to be unfaithful because they have low self esteem? Or because their partner is very dynamic and they’re feeling somewhat neglected?
Some people are more likely to be unfaithful because they’re very narcissistic. Generally, these people want to be absolutely loved and worshipped – they feed their sense of self through lots of attention.
There are two kinds of cheating – people who have lots of sexual encounters, and people who conduct an affair with one other person in a “parallel relationship”.
Serial cheaters can feel like “the rules don’t apply to me”. They might be more impulsive, prioritising pleasure and having fun as opposed to being a committed partner. They might also be a little arrogant in that they think they’re never going to be found out, and that the affair is harmless because they’re not really devoting themselves to another person.
Business trip flings are a good example of that – some people tell themselves it’s not really a commitment to another person. Their perception might be “I’ve been in this relationship for a long time and the sex isn’t rewarding, but this is keeping me sexually alive.” They might give themselves permission, and see it as just a bit of fun.
When people have a parallel relationship, there’s a bigger problem than being a serial cheater. They might have a parallel relationship because they’re really unhappy, or there’s something in their existing relationship that isn’t quite right but they are unable to address. They solve the problem through finding another relationship rather than fixing their existing one. It can often happen that the two people are both married or in a relationship, so both are cheating and there’s lots at stake.
The better the sexual relationship, the more likely it is that the relationship overall is in a good state. If couples say they have sex once every three months, or have never had a lot of sex, or it’s really died down, that is probably a sign for me that their relationship is going in the wrong direction. If I am in a session with one half of the couple I will ask how much time they spend together and what it’s like. I would also find out a bit about their partner – what is their history? Have they ever been unfaithful? What other changes have there been – are they as responsive? Are there long periods when one partner doesn’t know what the other is doing? These can all be signs of an affair – as long as one or other of the gaps I have mentioned exist.
Discovering that a partner has had an affair is a hugely painful thing for someone to go through, but at the same time I do genuinely feel that if something is understood and worked through properly, and both people are willing, it can also be a completely new beginning.
It is always so much better to act before an affair happens, such as by going to therapy to unravel the reasons behind the feelings. Because once you’ve gone down the path of infidelity it’s hard to turn back, particularly once something becomes public. It’s a huge betrayal, and some people just can’t get over it.
As told to Miranda McMinn
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