People often assume that after years spent listening to confessions of infidelity, I’d become cynical about relationships. In reality, the opposite has happened.
As a therapist, I’ve spent years working with couples and individuals navigating affairs, and through my podcast The Affair I’ve heard hundreds more stories from people who’ve cheated, been cheated on or found themselves as the ‘other’ person. Every conversation reinforces the same lesson: affairs are almost never as simple as they appear from the outside.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t devastating. They are. I often describe infidelity as having a ‘blast zone’ because its impact extends far beyond the two people involved. I’ve spoken to people still carrying the emotional scars 30 or 40 years later. I’ve interviewed adults who were born as the result of an affair, and others whose parents’ infidelity shaped their entire childhood. The ripple effects can last for generations.
But if there’s one misconception I’d love people to let go of, it’s the idea that everyone who has an affair is simply selfish, cruel or beyond redemption.
Of course, there are people who behave with extraordinary callousness. But after listening to so many stories, I’ve learned that life is normally far more nuanced than that. Almost every person I’ve interviewed has told me some version of the same sentence: ‘I never thought I’d have an affair.’
Nobody grows up planning to become unfaithful. People find themselves in situations they never imagined, often during periods of loneliness, grief, trauma or profound emotional disconnection. Understanding that isn’t the same as excusing it, but if we refuse to understand why affairs happen, we’ll never learn how to prevent them.
One interview changed the way I think about judgment more than any other.
On paper, her story sounded almost impossible to defend. She had started an affair while her husband was dying from motor neurone disease in a hospice during Covid. She was caring for him while raising their young daughter, and when friends discovered what had happened, she lost every single one of them.
Anna Williamson has spent years listening to people who have cheated, been cheated on or found themselves as the ‘other’ person on her podcast The Affair
The headline alone paints someone most people would immediately condemn. But then I sat opposite her and listened.
She spoke about the relentless trauma of watching the man she loved slowly disappear while trying to keep life together for their child. She described feeling emotionally numb, completely disconnected from herself, as though she couldn’t access any emotion at all.
Then she met a colleague. The relationship wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t about leaving her husband. It wasn’t even about love. She told me that having brief, emotionally detached sex was the only time she actually felt anything during that period of overwhelming grief.
I left that interview thinking not about betrayal, but about trauma.
People are, of course, entitled to their opinions about her choices. We all have our own moral compass. But hearing her story reminded me that context matters. We may not agree with someone’s decisions, but understanding how they got there often changes the way we see them.
That’s happened time and time again.
One man I interviewed had been left by his wife after she had, as he jokingly described it, ‘done a Shirley Valentine’ and run off with an Egyptian waiter she’d met on holiday.
Again, it’s the sort of story that invites instant judgment. But what struck me wasn’t what she’d done – it was the way her husband told the story.
He wasn’t vindictive. He wasn’t interested in humiliating her. Instead, he quietly acknowledged his own part in the breakdown of their marriage. He admitted they’d lived in a sexless relationship for years and spoke honestly about the distance that had grown between them.
Listening to him, I found myself wondering what his former wife would say if she were sitting opposite me instead. I suspected there was another equally complicated story waiting to be told.
That’s something working as a therapist teaches you very quickly: every relationship has two realities.
That doesn’t mean both people share equal responsibility for an affair. The decision to cheat always belongs to the person who cheats. But every relationship has its own dynamics, communication patterns and unmet needs. If we only ever look at one perspective, we’ll always miss part of the picture.
Rivals characters Freddie, played by Danny Dyer, and Lizzie, played by Katherine Parkinson, are in one of TV’s most high-profile affairs
The question I’m asked most often is why people cheat.
People expect there to be one answer.
There isn’t.
Sometimes it’s boredom. Sometimes it’s low self-esteem. Sometimes it’s unresolved trauma. Sometimes it’s a craving for novelty or excitement. But after years of working with couples, one pattern appears more than any other: it’s rarely just about sex.
Again and again, people tell me they were searching for emotional connection.
Human beings have two competing needs. We crave safety, familiarity and belonging, which healthy long-term relationships often provide. But we also crave adventure, spontaneity and the feeling of being truly seen. When communication begins to break down inside a relationship, people often stop feeling emotionally connected long before anyone notices.
Many of the people I’ve interviewed have described the same thing: ‘I was so lonely.’
I’ve heard those words countless times – not because they weren’t physically living with someone, but because they no longer felt emotionally known by the person sharing their home.
That’s why, in my experience, affairs usually begin long before anybody kisses.
One of the biggest shifts I’ve noticed over the years is that emotional affairs have become far more common. Traditionally, we thought of infidelity as something physical, but emotional intimacy can be every bit as significant.
For me, the warning sign isn’t necessarily flirting. It’s secrecy.
The moment you begin sharing the deepest, most vulnerable parts of yourself with somebody outside your relationship – your worries, your dreams, your frustrations or the emotional support that would normally belong within your partnership – an affair has often already begun.
The progression is surprisingly predictable. It often begins with what I think of as a vulnerability window. Someone feels disconnected, underappreciated or lonely within their relationship. Then comes what appears to be an innocent friendship. It might be a colleague, another parent on the school run or someone they see regularly through work or shared interests. They become the person you vent to, the one you message first when something happens, the one who makes you feel understood.
Gradually, the boundaries begin to shift.
The conversations become more personal. You start sharing frustrations about your relationship or revealing parts of yourself that your partner no longer hears. Before long, you find yourself thinking, ‘We’re just really good friends.’
That’s usually the point where people begin to rationalise what’s happening.
Nothing physical has happened, so surely it can’t be an affair.
But once you’re choosing someone else as your primary source of emotional intimacy, you’re entering dangerous territory. The secrecy is often a far bigger warning sign than the sex itself.
Lizzie and Freddie are both trapped in unhappy marriages and grow emotionally intimate
Technology has only made that easier.
In almost every affair I’ve encountered, phones play a starring role. Passwords suddenly change. Notifications disappear. Someone who once left their phone on the kitchen counter now carries it from room to room. They place it face down on the table or become strangely protective whenever it lights up.
On their own, none of those behaviours proves anything. People become more private with their phones for all sorts of reasons. But when they’re accompanied by emotional distance, longer hours at work, increasing criticism of a partner or an unusual need for secrecy, they can form part of a much bigger picture.
One thing I’ve learned is that our instincts are often incredibly perceptive. People frequently tell me they couldn’t explain why they knew something had changed – only that they could feel it. It wasn’t one dramatic moment. It was dozens of tiny behavioural shifts that simply didn’t add up.
Another fascinating thing I’ve learned is that affairs rarely happen overnight.
People often imagine that someone wakes up one morning and simply decides to have an affair. In reality, it’s usually a gradual process of self-justification. People tell themselves they’re only talking. They’re only friends. Nothing has actually happened.
Meanwhile, the emotional intimacy inside their relationship quietly shrinks while it grows somewhere else.
Ironically, many people tell me the affair itself loses its appeal almost the moment it’s discovered.
I’ve heard guests describe feeling as though somebody had thrown a bucket of cold water over them. The secrecy disappears. The adrenaline evaporates. Suddenly they’re no longer living in a fantasy fuelled by dopamine and excitement; they’re standing in the cold light of reality, confronted by the consequences of their choices.
That doesn’t undo the damage, of course, but it reveals something important.
Very often, the affair wasn’t really about the other person at all. It was about what that relationship represented: feeling desired, feeling understood, feeling alive or simply escaping something painful.
Perhaps the question I’m asked most often, though, is whether a relationship can survive an affair.
The answer is yes. I’ve seen it happen. But only when both people understand one crucial truth: the old relationship is over.
You can’t return to what existed before because trust has fundamentally changed. Instead, you have to build an entirely new relationship together.
That means sitting in the trench with one another. It means allowing anger, grief and remorse to exist without rushing to move on. It means understanding why the affair happened without using those reasons as excuses. It means complete transparency, genuine accountability and a shared commitment to creating something healthier than what existed before.
Most importantly, both people have to want that future.
One woman I interviewed spoke about discovering, years earlier, that her husband had repeatedly betrayed her. As she described everything that had happened, I assumed I knew how the story would end.
I was wrong.
Instead, her husband recognised he needed help. He sought therapy. He took genuine responsibility for what he’d done, and together they committed to rebuilding their marriage.
Seven years later, she looked me in the eye and said: ‘My marriage is the best it’s ever been. I’m happier than I’ve ever been.’
I remember thinking how completely unexpected that ending was.
Some people reading might still disagree with her decision to stay. But who are we to tell someone else what healing should look like?
I’ve also seen relationships fail despite both people desperately wanting them to survive. Sometimes the betrayal simply proves too painful to overcome, and that’s OK too.
One of the biggest mistakes couples make is agreeing to rebuild while secretly holding onto the affair as a weapon for future arguments.
If you genuinely choose to stay, there has to come a point where the past remains in the past. If every disagreement, months or years later, ends with, ‘Well, you cheated,’ then the relationship never truly has the opportunity to become something new.
Equally, if you discover you simply can’t forgive, that’s OK too. Staying isn’t always the brave choice. Sometimes leaving is.
Ultimately, I didn’t create The Affair to normalise infidelity. I created it because I want fewer people to experience it.
If you’ve started noticing yourself emotionally leaning towards somebody else, I hope you’ll pause before crossing that line.
Ask yourself what you’re really looking for. What need isn’t being met? What conversation have you been avoiding with your partner?
Sometimes simply saying, ‘I’m worried because I’ve noticed myself becoming emotionally attached to somebody else,’ could save a relationship. It’s an incredibly difficult conversation to have, but it’s far easier than trying to rebuild after secrecy has already taken hold.
After years spent listening to people confess their biggest mistakes, I haven’t lost faith in relationships. If anything, I’ve gained more compassion for how complicated human beings really are.
We’re all capable of making wonderful decisions. We’re all capable of making terrible ones. But perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned is this: we can all choose what happens next.
One thing I’ve heard time and again is that it’s never too late to take accountability. Even decades later, people still long to apologise for the pain they caused. And when I ask those who’ve been betrayed what a sincere apology would mean to them, I’ve never heard anyone say they’d throw it back in the other person’s face.
That gives me hope. Because while affairs may begin with secrecy, healing almost always begins with honesty.
The Affair… with Anna Williamson is available now on Patreon, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Follow Anna on Instagram at @AnnaWilliamsonOfficial.
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