Why is cheating so devastating

Many painful, hours-long conversations followed, as did an attempt at an open relationship. A few years later, I got a taste of my own medicine when a new partner cheated on me.

I completely lost it, and despite my need to ask how he could hurt me like that over and over again, none of his explanations mattered. In my mind, he was bad, cheating was bad, and it was that simple.

Pretty hypocritical, right? Cheating can destroy a marriage , shatter your ability to trust future partners, hurt your kids, and even lead to depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD. According to a article published in the Journal of Sex Research , explanations for infidelity often dip into three main categories: personal problems, beliefs, or characteristics; issues with your partner or the relationship as a whole; and situational factors like easy access to dating websites, long business trips, or liquid courage.

Research shows our definitions of infidelity can range vastly from having a celebrity crush or watching porn on the conservative side to only in-person sex acts on the more liberal side. Although sexual relationships are often considered the worst of betrayals, Dr. But to give you some insight, we asked real people to explain why they cheated—and asked relationship experts to weigh in on the reasoning, plus how you can begin to sort out what comes next after infidelity.

Thompson, Ph. On a biological level , people who are more prone to infidelity may be driven by an upsurge in pleasure chemicals like dopamine, vasopressin, and oxytocin.

Those who are more extroverted may be more likely to cheat because they thrive on new social connections. Over half of people who cheat say self-esteem has something to do with it.

A better alternative? Just be honest with yourself and your partner about what you want, says Dr. Science has some encouraging news for anyone who has been cheated on … or thinks they may have been.

It can lead to emotional distress, anxiety, depression, an increase in risk-taking behavior and actual physical pain. In short, it hurts like hell, and the impact can be far-reaching. But, as with so many aspects of human behavior, it turns out we are fairly adaptive creatures, especially over the long term, and even an experience as calamitous as being cheated on has a potentially large upside. In fact, new scientific research suggests that cheating may be neither as common nor as devastating as we imagine.

And if you are worried that you are being cheated on, or are still recovering from the aftermath of infidelity , then science has some encouraging news for you. Breaking up with a romantic partner can be particularly traumatic for women. Studies suggest that from an evolutionary perspective, women tend to be more selective in their mate choice and bear more of the costs of parental investment, and thus have more to lose when things go south.

Still, where evolution taketh away, it can also giveth: It appears that natural selection may have also favored some psychological coping mechanisms to help those who have been bucked off the horse get back on … and get back on a better horse. The same parts of the brain — the secondary somatosensory cortex and the dorsal posterior insula — lit up in both instances.

These areas are connected to the processing of pain sensations, and it appears that they're also part of our discomfort at "social exclusion" or "rejection," whether by friends or by a partner.

For monogamous people, infidelity is a rejection of our core value as a partner, and that's why it hurts like hell. It turns out that our physical responses to infidelity in relationships are mediated by gender, but we're still figuring out exactly why that is. A study of people in Toronto was designed to prove a hypothesis: the researchers thought men would feel guiltier about engaging in emotional cheating , and women would feel guiltier about sexual infidelity.

Unfortunately for them, the results were exactly the other way around: men, it turned out, felt far more remorse and misery about their sexual infidelity, while women were more upset by emotional cheating, regardless of sexual contact. But does that change when you're cheated on, as opposed to being the one doing the cheating?

A study decided to go all out and test a whopping 64, Americans between 18 and 65, of all sexual orientations, about how they'd feel if a partner cheated, emotionally or sexually. The results, as it turned out, were similar to the Toronto study: 46 percent of straight men were upset about emotional infidelity, while 65 percent of heterosexual women were; and 54 percent of straight men were devastated by sexual infidelity, compared to 35 percent of straight women.

And that was the interesting thing; none of the LGBT people tested experienced even close to the same gender gap in distress. Some have theorized that the extreme straight male worry about sexual infidelity could be down the evolutionary theory that some researchers call "paternal anxiety " — the idea that human males have no real way to know whether a child is theirs until birth and so get rather distressed if anybody goes near their potential mate.

But it's also likely to do with modern social roles. Interestingly, when non-monogamous people were included in this equation, they demonstrated no gender differences at all. Working through infidelity can often strengthen a relationship. Saving a relationship takes work, but it's possible. Whether you're trying to make long distance work or dealing with a betrayal, we've got 22 tips…. Rebuilding trust in a relationship is no small task, but it is possible. Whether you've been betrayed or hurt your loved one, we've got you covered on….

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Here's a guide to identifying potential commitment issues and overcoming them. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Why Do People Cheat in Relationships? Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, Ph.