Why people cheat

0:00So good, so good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack Stores now. And up to 60 % off. Stock up and save on the brands you love, like Vince, Sam Edelman, Frame, and Free People. Join the Nordi Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. This program is both dedicated to the faithful and presented to the false hearted to encourage their renewal of temperance and virtue. Something don't feel right, because it ain't right. Because if a man can cheat on Megan Thee Stallion, what hope do the rest of us have?

0:47Jonquilyn Hill:A few weeks ago, I was zoning out, scrolling through Instagram. dinner recipes, museum pictures, selfies. And then I saw something that shook me to my core. Cheating. Had me around your whole family playing house. Got cold feet. Holding you down through all your horrible mood swings and treatment toward me during your basketball season. And now you don't know if you can be monogamous? Rapper Megan Thee Stallion said her boyfriend, basketball player Klay Thompson, cheated on her. Bitch, I need a real break after this one. Bye, y 'all. The group chats activated immediately. My friends and I were stunned, shocked, and then enraged.

1:29Jonquilyn Hill:The thing is, we don't actually know these people. And it's not the first time I've gotten worked up about a stranger's cheating scandal. Ariana Maddox and Tom Sandoval. Fuck yourself with a fucking cheese grater. Halle Berry and Eric Benet. This is a failure of my life. I love this man. And I thought I gave the best I had to give. Jay-Z and Beyonce. Are you cheating on me? Are you cheating on me? Even random Reddit situations that may be made up will still definitely raise my blood pressure. I'm Jonqueline Hill, and this week on Explain It To Me From Vox, the lowdown on our strong feelings about infidelity and how the rules may be changing.

2:13Jonquilyn Hill:So why does cheating piss us off so bad, even when it's not happening to us? That's the question I asked sexologist and dating coach Myesha Battle. I think specifically with high-profile couples, it's because we want to see them succeed, or we're excited by the prospect of the drama that unfolds from a cheating story like the Coldplay executive cheating scandal. Oh, look at these two. You're okay? Uh-oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy. So we quickly want to identify who the villain is, who's been hurt, and then rally around the person that we want to support in that situation.

3:00Often, it's very cut and dried. If you cheated, you're a bad person. If you were cheated on, you're a good person. And that's not obviously always the case. But because cheating happens so much, I think that's a really quick assumption that we can make and then kind of jump to our own conclusions and want to jump to the aid of the person who's been cheated on. And then, of course, jump on the person who has cheated.

3:27Jonquilyn Hill:Do we know why people cheat? Is there research on why people do this that explains this behavior? People cheat for so many reasons.

3:41From boredom to insecurity in the relationship to wanting to exert power or revenge in a relationship. I really love the book The State of Affairs by Esther Perel. Often when you are attracted by the gaze of another, it isn't just because you want to leave the person that you are with. But it is because you want to leave the person that you have yourself become. She really talks about the importance of delving into what the cheating meant for the person who cheated. What did this affair mean for you? Were you thinking about us? Did you hope I would find out? Did you think about the children? And what the impact was on the person who was cheated on.

4:28These questions are actually going to calm you and they give you a different sense of power over your life and over your relationship. If you can't really understand both sides of that and give space and process both, then it's not likely that you're going to get to a happy outcome on the other side of cheating, which is why it is one of the main reasons why people split up. It's a huge fracture in trust. And to rebuild that means that you have to do the work to understand why did this happen in the first place? Cheating is a choice. Monogamy is a choice. Non-monogamy is a choice. So when people are making these choices in relationship, they have consequences and you have to be able to have conversations about why and how you repair from that.

5:20Yeah.

5:20Jonquilyn Hill:Can we talk about the non-monogamy piece? I think especially ethical non-monogamy, it's a phrase that's used more and more. It's tossed around quite a bit. Can people who are non-monogamous cheat as well? Oh, yeah. Yes. Because at the core of cheating is betrayal. So when I work with non-monogamous couples or people that are exploring non-monogamy, one of the first things that I do is talk about whether or not they want to create relationship agreements. Some people do. Some people don't. And the people who don't maybe would identify with a more relationship anarchy style of relationship as opposed to someone who is wanting something that is very codified and making agreements that people say they're going to adhere to.

6:09hey we're going to be open but you can only have sex with people who are not in our friend group and only one time right that would be an example of having relationship agreements whereas relationship anarchy is like i'm going to do my own thing we're going to see each other when we see each other you know there's some intentionality about that but it's not necessarily that you have these structures around who can do what with whom have you ever been cheated on i have been cheated on. Yeah. And actually kind of a similar, I hate to compare myself to Megan Thee Stallion and Clay Thompson, but this person cheated.

6:50We were living together. It was uncovered on Valentine's Day. It was pretty rough. And the way that he sort of told me that he had started seeing somebody was by saying, well, I'm not sure if I want monogamy, right? And so that was a piece that came up in the Megan Thee Stallion post on Instagram. And I totally related to that. And I do think that there's definitely a person who is trying to figure out whether they can handle monogamy or non-monogamy. And they find themselves in a situation where, oh shit, you know, I can't handle monogamy, right? There are people for whom that happens, of course.

7:31But are there people that use non-monogamy as an excuse for their behavior? Absolutely.

7:39Jonquilyn Hill:For anyone who's listening, who's going through this, who's gone through this, what are some first steps towards healing? It is a trauma. And I think recognizing it and labeling it as such is a great first step. It's not just something that happened in your relationship. It has an impact on you. It may have an impact on whether the relationship continues. You know, in my case, it was my living situation. You know, I couldn't stay there. You know, it impacts so many things and you're feeling all of that in your nervous system. It can create a PTSD response. It can certainly diminish your feelings of trust and safety in relationships of all kinds.

8:27So really having a lot of support during this time, whether that's family and community that just takes you in no questions asked, like mine did, or friends saying, you know, I've been through the same thing and whatever you need, let me help. Like my friend coming with garbage bags to just dump all my stuff and get me out of the house. Or, you know, starting therapy when you're ready. So, yeah, it sometimes takes a village to get through this. And I think that's actually really important to remember because most people will feel shame having gone through this experience. I think on both sides, you know, if you're not a complete monster, you do feel ashamed of being a cheater on some level.

9:11And that is an opportunity for healing as well. So I don't want to forget those folks that like it's important to think about why you did what you did and what help you can get to make sure that you don't inflict that harm on other partners in the future.

9:26Jonquilyn Hill:I think for a long time, the definition of cheating has been pretty straightforward. Oh, you're dating someone who is not your partner. You're having sex with someone who is not your partner. But I think the internet and our online lives have even shaped infidelity differently. Has the definition of cheating changed? The definition hasn't changed. I think that is still very much aligned with what we expect. It's a betrayal. It's a romantic betrayal. But the mode has changed. The modes, I guess I should say. and things that we don't even really think about because they're so second nature to us, specifically related to technology, can cause issues in relationship.

10:12And that's why I'm a big proponent of people talking about what their definition of monogamy is. If that's your expectation, I think now more than ever, it's important to talk about what it means to have fidelity in your relationship so that you can then define infidelity with a partner. So, you know, everything from following exes on social media to maybe you had some subscriptions to OnlyFans before you got into a committed relationship. What do you do with those? Do you continue? you? Is that okay? In some relationships, it would be fully above board and in others, it will not be. And so if you continue those behaviors and your partner finds out, that may be something that leads to feelings of betrayal.

11:08So you can avoid that by being honest and having a conversation about, hey, this is what monogamy means to me. These are the things that are really important for me to feel trust and safety in the relationship. What about you?

11:25Jonquilyn Hill:The definition of monogamy is changing, and so is the definition of cheating. That's next.

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14:37Jonquilyn Hill:I'm JQ, back with more Explain It To Me. Okay, so I told my friends I was working on this episode about cheating and all the different ways people define it. And I was like, can you believe some people think liking an Instagram story counts as infidelity? They weren't shocked at all. In fact, a few of them thought I was being naive. To get fact-checked there, I called up Zoe Yu. She's about a decade younger than me, and she recently pinned an article about something called micro-cheating for The Atlantic. Just like regular cheating, micro-cheating is sort of nebulous and really hard to pin down because what goes for cheating in one relationship might not actually count as cheating in another one.

15:28And I think it's very much dependent on the two people in the relationship to litigate what the proper boundaries of behavior are. One person might think that flirting with someone over text is cheating. Another person might not. And this varies, I think, a lot from relationship to relationship.

15:47Jonquilyn Hill:So is it purely digital thing? It's not purely digital. But I think also just because of how tech-driven a lot of our relationships now are, a lot of these small behaviors that might constitute a breach in the exclusivity of a relationship are very much digital. So this can mean having an online dating account or subscribing to someone's OnlyFans. And then there are these emerging very little behaviors like hitting like on someone's Instagram post or sliding up on someone's story. Sliding up on a story? Sliding up on someone's story. And I think this is something that, as someone who's firmly in the Gen Z cohort, I was explaining to one of my older millennial friends just how much meaning that is suffused into something as tiny as a story-like, where a lot of Gen Zers and even my friends will sit around and be like, what does it mean that he liked my story?

16:56What does it mean that he split up and responded with so-and-so emoji? And I think it's because a lot of the times the first ways that we were like socialized with each other, at least in like the Gen Z demographic, was actually through like tech.

17:16Jonquilyn Hill:You know, OK, it's interesting because on one hand, I think it's very easy to sort of roll your eyes at like, really, you think liking a story, you think liking a profile. But, you know, I'm not above. You see someone cute and you're like, let me go back to that post from like a year ago, hit like and, you know, see what's happening. You know, I think we've all received the like little looking sideways emoji on a cute story on a on a picture of ourselves we posted. But it also seems like a lot to track. Does this mean people are tracking their partner's likes and other online activity? Yeah, I think like one defining feature of micro-cheating is how one-sided it is.

18:04Where people are very much in an investigative mindset, where you have all of these reels where girls are like, Ladies, if he liked another woman's pose, it's because he liked what he saw. It's about respect. You're saying not only to me, but to the world, I think this girl's hot and I'm letting her know. You have no sexual discipline, that you can't control your desires, that what you have is not enough, that you're always seeking for more. That's a weak show of character. What's really interesting about micro-cheating is that people are attempting to assign meaning to something that is actually a lot more complex.

18:42And I don't deny there is information that you can glean from someone's online behavior and the way that they present themselves publicly on a profile. but also the human reality is much more complicated and much more hairy. And I think one aspect of micro-cheating is that it sort of boils down all of the human contradictions and irregularities and things that you might not understand about a person into these very reductive data points. What's interesting is that the entire premise of micro-cheating is sort of couched on the assumption that if you snoop and you find something, This is kind of like uncorrupted evidence.

19:28Yeah, how much of this is actually less about the relationship itself and more about embarrassment?

19:34Jonquilyn Hill:Like everything is very public facing. And I think of conversations with my friends where it's just like, I really like this guy. I hope he doesn't embarrass me. I don't know. It feels like. It's like a Sabrina Carpenter song, right? Yes. Please, please, please. You might not actually object to your boyfriend liking some girl's post. What you actually might be concerned about is the message that it's sending to this person, given the social meaning that we've now assigned collectively to likes and comments and follows. And so you might not actually think, oh, like, my boyfriend might be attracted to this person because he's following her on Instagram.

20:15And it might actually be the fear that, like, how is this going to reflect on me? How is this going to embarrass me? And how is it going to affect the way that other people see my relationship and whether or not my significant other is sufficiently loyal?

20:31Jonquilyn Hill:Is it possible to have a full online life without micro-cheating? I mean, is it reasonable to expect people not to post or share memes or do whatever it is we do online if we also want to be in a relationship? I think the bar for exclusivity has gotten inordinately high to the point where people are demanding an exclusivity of emotion, of attraction. And you can't actually like share a laugh or share a private moment with anyone outside of this romantic relationship, which is supposed to be at the center of your life. and I think this is actually super damaging because it sort of closes off all of these really really great relationships friendships that are outside of a romantic concept but you can't really reach for if you think that you know every kind of small behavior might be potentially suspect dang does this mean that like in order to find love I'm gonna have to stop commenting need that on Michael B.

21:40Jonquilyn Hill:Jordan's Instagram photos. Like... In my opinion, by all means, go ahead. This might vary from person to person.

21:58Jonquilyn Hill:The reasons we fear cheating reveal a lot about us. So do the reasons we cheat. Up next, the other side of the story.

22:17Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, clinical psychologist and founder Dr. Becky Kennedy and I unpack what it really means to raise kids today. I think parenting is the most important job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your world and the world. It is non-stop. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app.