If you ask 10 people why they cheat , you’ll get 10 different answers. I wasn’t getting what I needed. I felt smothered. We’d grown apart. The truth is, those are stories we tell ourselves to feel like decent people doing indecent things.

People cheat (or micro-cheat ) for a thousand reasons, but the through-line is always the same—disconnection—and the problem is rarely the person you’re betraying. For me, cheating was a brief suspension of loneliness. It was also the only way I knew how to quiet the noise in my own head.

Serial cheaters are the most tragic kind. I know because I was one—and I dated them, too. They’re not villains so much as addicts: people who crave the high of newness and the rush of being seen. The thrill of being wanted feels, for a fleeting second, like proof

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