A listener recently reached out with a common question: "Is it possible to trust again after your partner has cheated? Is it worth trying to repair the relationship?" While this is a common concern, there, unfortunately, isn't a very clear answer because this issue is so complex.
So, to start, let’s talk about how prevalent cheating is today. Infidelity is not uncommon behavior. A 2021 survey found that 46.1% of people in seemingly monogamous relationships have reported cheating on their current partner. In a given year, nearly 2 to 4% of spouses report having cheated on their partner, according to one study. In data from 2018, men were more likely to report cheating on their partners than women, and people older than 55 were more likely to report cheating than their younger counterparts.
It is surprising, however, given how prevalent cheating is in relationships, that it is nearly universally considered unacceptable and inappropriate behavior—there are very few people who believe that cheating is an okay thing to do.
The biggest complication to providing a solid answer to this listener’s question is that cheating is a fairly broad term, and different people have different thresholds for what behaviors qualify as cheating. When we enter into a relationship, we form a sort of contract for behaviors that are acceptable or unacceptable in the confines of that relationship. Sometimes, these contracts are negotiated explicitly, while most times people adhere to broader social expectations for relationships. For example, when people start exclusively dating, there is an unspoken expectation that we won’t have romantic or sexual relationships with other people.
One study asked people to rate different behaviors based on whether or not they thought the only explanation for that behavior would be that their partner is cheating on them. The specific examples they were looking at took place between their...
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