In nearly every couple I’ve worked with, there was a long season of stress before the affair ever happened. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.
It starts with a glance, but not the kind you think. It’s not seductive or charged. It’s blank.
From across the kitchen table, one partner looks up and realizes the other hasn’t really looked at them in days.
Maybe weeks. The conversations have shrunk down to grocery lists and who’s picking up the kids. No one remembers the last inside joke.
But neither of them mentions it. Because there’s dinner to make. Bills to pay. A work deadline looming. A baby who still isn’t sleeping through the night.
This is how it begins. Not with passion, but with paperwork. Not with betrayal, but with busyness.
Take Erin and Jason, for example—a couple in their late thirties.
On paper, they were fine. Two kids, a decent house, stable jobs. They didn’t fight much.
But that was the thing—they didn’t do much of anything. Erin had slipped into what she called “autopilot wife mode.”
Jason, she later admitted, felt more like her coworker than her husband.
Then Jason met a woman from his gym who laughed at his jokes.
She remembered his name. Asked about his day. He didn’t set out to fall for her, but he did.
And by the time he realized what was happening, he’d already crossed a line.
This isn’t a one-off. It’s a pattern.
Infidelity, in most cases, doesn’t detonate out of nowhere.
It simmers. It builds. It grows quietly, almost respectfully, in the space where connection used to be.
Psychologists call it “emotional disconnection.”
Couples therapists call it “turning away.”
But in the trenches of everyday life, most people just call it being tired.
When life gets hard—and it will—people don’t always turn to their partners.
Sometimes they turn inward. Sometimes, if they’re starved for something they can’t quite name, they turn elsewhere.
And that "elsewhere" is often what leads people to search for answers to that haunting question: why did they cheat on me?
This isn’t to excuse infidelity. It’s to explain the storm that leads to it.
To show how stress, disconnection, and silence can collide in a way that even good people don’t always see coming.
And maybe, just maybe, understanding that storm is the first step toward clearing it.
Discover More About Why People Are Unfaithful Here.
1. How Life Stress Erodes Emotional Safety
Stress, like water, finds every crack.
For couples, those cracks often show up right around the time the hospital bracelet comes off and the diapers start piling up.
Or when the promotion turns into seventy-hour workweeks.
Or when the phone call comes in the middle of the night—someone’s sick, someone’s gone, someone’s world just changed.
The interesting thing isn’t that stress happens.
It’s what stress does—how it creeps in, unannounced, and begins to reshape the emotional geometry between two people who once couldn’t stop touching each other.
Let’s rewind to 1985, when researchers Cowan and Cowan were studying married couples adjusting to parenthood.
What they found wasn’t surprising—but it was sobering.
After the birth of a child, marital satisfaction dipped. Across the board. Less laughter. More arguments. Even the good couples—the “we’re solid” types—started to fray around the edges.
Some of them, of course, grew stronger under the pressure.
Kazak and Marvin found that in 1984. But those couples had something the others didn’t: they had the tools. The language.
The ability to reach for each other even when everything else was falling apart.
Most couples aren’t that lucky.
Take Drew and Melissa. Newly married, new baby, new city. Melissa was navigating postpartum depression she didn’t have words for yet.
Drew had just started a demanding sales job with a boss who believed 5:30 p.m. was the perfect time to schedule meetings.
“We were exhausted,” Melissa said later. “We weren’t mad at each other—we were just… nowhere near each other.”
They stopped sharing jokes. They started eating dinner in silence.
Eventually, they stopped talking about anything real.
This isn’t just anecdotal.
Repetti’s 1989 study showed something subtle and profound: when men had stressful workdays, they came home less emotionally expressive.
But here’s the twist—they did this only when their wives were supportive.
In other words, it wasn’t just the stress that caused the withdrawal—it was feeling safe enough to collapse that triggered it.
The relationship became a casualty of comfort.
Because that’s the paradox of closeness: the more someone loves you, the more space you might take to fall apart in front of them.
But when stress is chronic, that “falling apart” turns into a lifestyle.
And the partner waiting on the other end?
They don’t know whether to give you space or beg you to come back emotionally. Eventually, both stop trying.
Over time, these stressors chip away at emotional availability.
Conversations turn into checklists.
Intimacy becomes logistics.
Love gets buried under to-do lists and laundry piles.
Emotional safety—the invisible current that holds a couple together—starts to short out.
And when emotional safety erodes, so does relationship trust.
And once emotional safety goes, something else sneaks in to take its place.
Not always a person. But sometimes it is.
Discover How People Compartmentalize Infidelity Here.
2. Why Stress Makes Us Turn Away Instead of Toward
There’s a moment-a small, easily missed moment—that happens in the middle of stress.
It’s the moment when someone needs comfort, thinks about asking for it, and then decides not to.
Sometimes they don’t even know they’ve decided. They just go quiet.
Call it survival. Call it self-protection.
Call it a communication breakdown.
Call it the breakdown of proximity-seeking—what John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, would’ve described as one of the most basic human instincts: the desire to reach for someone when you’re scared, overwhelmed, or in pain.
But when the person you’d normally reach for is the same one you’re upset with—or worse, the one who feels miles away—you don’t reach.
You fold. You hide. Or you escalate.
But when your partner feels distant—or worse, like a source of pain—you don’t reach out. You shut down.
Take Nina and Marcus. Married seven years, two kids, an unexpected layoff, and a mortgage that suddenly felt less like a home and more like a trap.
Nina wanted to talk—needed to talk—but every time she opened her mouth, Marcus shut down.
“It’s not the right time,” he’d say, and disappear into his laptop.
She started texting him long paragraphs instead. He’d respond with a thumbs-up emoji. That’s when she stopped texting.
From the outside, they looked like a functional couple under pressure. But underneath?
They were two people standing back-to-back in a burning room, each thinking the other had the fire extinguisher.
The science behind this is elegant—and devastating.
According to Bowlby (1969) and further developed by Mikulincer & Shaver (2007), our attachment system kicks in when we feel threatened or distressed.
Ideally, that system leads us to seek closeness, comfort, reassurance.
It’s why kids cry for their parents.
Why adults hold hands in hospital rooms.
But if your partner feels emotionally absent—or worse, dangerous—the system short-circuits.
Securely attached people tend to say, “I need you,” and expect to be heard.
Insecurely attached people? They get creative.
Avoidantly attached partners shut down. They don’t reach out—they go inward. They become stoic, task-focused, quiet. They tell themselves they don’t need anyone. Learn More About Avoidant Attachment Here: It’s Causes, Why It Hurts, and How It Leads to Infidelity. And Discover How Avoidant Attachment is an Armor Against Intimacy Here.
Anxiously attached partners do the opposite. They cling. They text. They cry. They test. They don’t feel safe unless the other person proves—again and again—that they won’t leave. Discover How Anxious Attachment Style Leads to Emotional Affairs.
Now introduce stress into that equation.
A sick parent. A lost job. A cross-country move. Suddenly, those patterns intensify.
The avoidant partner becomes a ghost in plain sight. The anxious partner becomes a pressure cooker. And neither feels understood.
Mikulincer & Shaver found something chilling in their research: when people perceive their partner as emotionally unavailable, they don’t just feel sad. They stop seeking support from them altogether.
Even when they desperately need it.
Instead, they suffer in silence.
Or they find a friend who listens.
A coworker who notices.
A neighbor who asks the right questions at the wrong time.
And that’s how infidelity often starts—It doesn’t start with passion.
It starts with loneliness.
With unmet emotional needs.
With a longing for something that used to be there.
How Couples Operate Under Stress: The Missing Piece
Stress doesn’t just make us tired—it changes how we treat the people we love.
And when you're in a committed relationship, that change often flies under the radar until something breaks.
Why Stress Leads to Conflict
So what actually happens under the hood when stress enters a relationship?
According to Christensen and Shenk (1991), there are two big shifts:
Increased Need for Support, Decreased Ability to Give It
When both people are stressed, they’re running on empty. They may desperately need emotional support but lack the energy, patience, or clarity to give it. Stress reduces problem-solving skills and makes it harder to focus (Jarvis, 1982), so even small miscommunications can spiral.Self-Focus Over Partner-Focus
Stress turns our gaze inward. When you’re overwhelmed, your partner’s needs can feel like just another demand. Cohen and Spacapan (1978) found that after people experienced unpredictable stress, they were less likely to help others and more likely to act aggressively. Not because they didn’t care—but because they were maxed out.
How Stress Warps Marital Interactions
Researchers like Whalen and Dumas (1989) have explored how stress affects everyday interactions.
Under pressure, partners often misread each other.
A tired tone gets interpreted as annoyance. A delayed text feels like rejection.
Perspective narrows, empathy shrinks, and the assumption of goodwill fades.
And when communication breaks down, conflict isn't far behind.
Stress Doesn’t Just Amplify Old Problems—It Creates New Ones
Let’s say a couple already has a low-level disagreement over who does what around the house.
Enter a new baby, sleepless nights, and an avalanche of laundry.
Suddenly, that small disagreement becomes a battleground.
One partner feels overwhelmed; the other feels criticized. Resentment builds in the silence.
Or take coping styles.
One person wants to talk through stress; the other needs space.
That difference was manageable before—but now it feels like rejection.
The very way each partner tries to survive stress can start to feel like an attack.
Stress distorts perception, drains empathy, and makes closeness feel harder to reach.
It doesn’t just pull couples apart—it scrambles the very tools they need to find their way back to each other.
3. The Perfect Storm: How Disconnection Becomes a Gateway
There’s a recipe to it. Not that anyone plans it this way—but the ingredients are eerily consistent.
Start with stress.
Not the once-in-a-lifetime kind. The slow-burn kind.
A newborn who doesn’t sleep. A parent with dementia. A new job with a boss who thinks weekends are optional.
Life, as it tends to do, cranks up the pressure.
Next, add emotional hunger.
Nothing dramatic. Just a sense that something’s missing.
One partner feels invisible. The other feels like a disappointment.
Neither says anything at first. But both start wondering: Do you even see me anymore?
Now strip out the vulnerability. The jokes fade. Conversations become logistical: Did you book the pediatrician? Can you Venmo the sitter? You start communicating like coworkers.
Then, shut down the last remaining safety valve: proximity-seeking.
The “I miss you” text doesn’t get sent. The late-night reach for a cuddle never happens.
It’s not that the need is gone—it’s that asking for it feels too risky.
The emotional bank is overdrawn.
And then comes the last, inevitable ingredient: someone else.
A colleague who remembers your birthday. A friend who doesn’t just ask how you’re doing.
Maybe it’s an ex who sends a casual “Hey, saw this and thought of you” message that lands like a thunderclap.
The danger isn’t in the moment—it’s in the meaning.
Suddenly, this person feels like proof that you’re still interesting, attractive, funny. That you matter.
That’s how the door opens.
Lori, a former client of mine seeing me for affair recovery counseling, put it this way:
"I didn’t go looking for someone else. I was looking for myself. And he just happened to be there when I found him."
This doesn’t make what happened okay. It doesn’t justify it.
But it does explain how otherwise kind, committed people end up doing things that devastate the very person they once promised to protect.
The betrayal, then, isn’t just about what happened.
It’s about what got lost long before that first boundary was crossed.
What began as silence and survival turned into a storm. And by the time anyone noticed the damage, the roof was already gone.
Infidelity doesn’t just happen. It grows from the small moments where we stop seeing each other.
Where relationship support is needed, but not given.
Where relationship trust quietly breaks before any physical line is crossed.
What started as survival turns into silence. Then into betrayal. And then, into a reckoning.
4. Infidelity as a Coping Mechanism (and Why It Backfires)
On a cold Tuesday morning in late February, Tyler meet with me for therapy and said the line that still makes him pause:
"It wasn’t about her. It was about me not disappearing."
He wasn’t trying to blow up his marriage.
He wasn’t trying to fall in love.
He was trying not to vanish under the weight of his own life.
This is the part no one talks about. The part that doesn't make it into the headline.
That many affairs don’t begin with lust.
They begin with loss.
Of self.
Of identity.
Of the belief that you still matter to someone.
Researchers Shirley Glass and Thomas Wright (1992) were among the first to suggest that infidelity often functions less like rebellion and more like relief.
A maladaptive way of coping with stress.
An attempt to self-soothe when everything else feels unspeakably hard.
Here's what that looks like up close:
The affair offers emotional escape. It’s a break from feeling like a failure. A pause in the loop of rejection and resentment. A temporary bubble where you get to feel seen again.
You feel more confident. Inside the marriage, you’re the nag, the disappointment, the guy who forgot to pick up the milk. But to this new person? You’re clever. Desirable. Funny. You’re alive again.
And most of all, it gives you a feeling of control. Life feels chaotic—kids, bills, aging parents, the body that doesn’t bounce back anymore. But this? This is something you choose. You orchestrate. You own.
For a moment, it works.
But only for a moment.
Because the escape route was built on lies. Because the real problem—the stress, the disconnection, the unmet needs—was never addressed.
And now it’s compounded by betrayal.
Tyler’s wife found the messages on a Sunday morning while loading music onto their shared iPad. By Sunday night, he had moved into his brother’s guest room.
By Monday, the kids knew. He said it felt like watching his life collapse from the outside in.
This is what the research means when it says it backfires.
Infidelity as a coping mechanism doesn’t solve the pain—it detonates it.
It wounds the person you love, shatters your sense of integrity, and adds a second trauma to the one you were trying to outrun.
The irony is brutal: the very thing that made you feel whole again is now the thing that breaks you.
5. The Fallout: Why Betrayal Hurts So Deeply
Betrayal doesn’t just break your heart. It breaks your brain.
Ask anyone who’s lived through it, and they’ll tell you: it’s not just the lie itself—it’s what the lie does to you and everything else.
You’re staring at your life like a crime scene. Every memory is suspect. Every smile, every trip, every quiet Tuesday afternoon—you start wondering what was real and what was just good acting.
This is a massive rupture. Not just of trust, but of reality.
One moment you’re in a story called “us.”
The next, you’re cast solo in something you never auditioned for.
And your body knows it before your mind catches up.
Psychologist Jennifer Freyd coined the term “betrayal trauma” to describe this particular kind of pain—the kind that comes not from strangers, but from the very people you rely on for protection and safety.
In other words: the person who hurts you is also the person your brain is wired to run to for comfort.
And that makes healing... complicated.
The brain responds like it would to any trauma:
You become hypervigilant. Every glance, every phone notification, every shift in tone feels like it might contain another bomb.
You get flashbacks. Random moments—where they said they were, what they were wearing, what song was playing—loop in your mind like a horror reel.
You might feel numb. Or the opposite—wildly emotional, swinging from sobbing to shouting in the time it takes to microwave coffee.
You start doubting yourself. Not just your memory, but your worth. How could I not see it? Was I not enough?
One woman described it as “losing my favorite person and my sense of reality at the exact same time.”
Another said, “It was like someone cut the brakes on my brain—I couldn’t stop spinning.”
And it’s not just the injured partner who suffers.
The person who betrayed—the one who strayed, broke the trust, made the choice—often finds themselves spiraling too.
Especially if they still love the person they hurt. Guilt turns into shame. Shame into self-loathing. And even as they try to repair the damage, they’re haunted by the question:
How did I become the villain in my own love story?
This is the emotional terrain couples enter after infidelity.
It’s not just about repairing a relationship—it’s about rebuilding a shared reality.
Brick by agonizing brick.
6. Can Couples Recover? Yes!!!
There’s a myth in our culture—quiet but persistent—that time heals everything.
That if you just wait long enough, the storm will pass, the dust will settle, and the pain will dull.
Ask anyone who’s lived through infidelity, though, and they’ll tell you: time doesn’t heal. You grow numb and feel a persistent deadness inside.
What heals is work—often awkward, uncomfortable, soul-rattling work that starts not with forgiveness, but with understanding.
The couples who make it—really make it—don’t just try to go back to what they had. They figure out why what they had broke in the first place.
That process usually begins with a question:
What weakened the bond?
Was it the stress? The exhaustion? The years of polite disconnection that felt too small to mention, until suddenly they weren’t? Most couples don’t get there overnight. And they certainly don’t get back by accident.
Recovery isn’t about one big conversation. It’s about a series of them.
But the couples who do this work—the ones who don’t just survive betrayal but come out stronger—report something strange.
They say their post-affair relationship feels deeper. Realer.
Like a house that burned down, then got rebuilt without the secret cracks in the foundation.
That’s not time. That’s intention.
Understanding Isn’t Excusing—It’s the Beginning of Healing
By the time most couples land in the aftermath of an affair they’re looking for answers.
Why did this happen? Was it me? Was it us? Can this thing we built—even if it’s cracked and scorched—ever feel safe again?
These aren’t easy questions. But they are, surprisingly, the right ones.
You’re not stuck. You’re not powerless. You can heal.
Ready to Heal?
If you're trying to navigate the fog after betrayal—whether you want to repair the relationship or simply repair your own sense of self—there’s real help available.
Our workshops, masterclasses and programs at Healing Broken Trust are designed for couples and individuals facing the aftermath of infidelity. You’ll learn how to process the pain, rebuild trust, and rediscover clarity about what you want and what comes next. Click here to learn more about our couple’s workshop. Click here for our masterclass on triggers and trauma and click here for our masterclass to help the unfaithful partner.
You don’t have to do this alone.
There’s a way forward. Let us help you find it.
References:
Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Christensen, A., & Shenk, J. L. (1991). Communication, conflict, and psychological distance in nondistressed, clinic, and divorcing couples. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59(3), 458–463.
Cohen, S., & Spacapan, S. (1978). The aftereffects of stress: An attentional interpretation. Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior, 3(1), 43–57.
Cowan, C. P., Cowan, P. A., Heming, G., & Miller, N. B. (1985). Becoming a family: The impact of a first child on couple relationships. In I. E. Sigel (Ed.), Parental belief systems: The psychological consequences for children (pp. 195–219). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Harvard University Press.
Glass, S. P., & Wright, T. L. (1992). Justifications for extramarital relationships: The association between attitudes, behaviors, and gender. Journal of Sex Research, 29(3), 361–387.
Jarvis, L. J. (1982). Stress and problem-solving performance. Psychological Reports, 50(1), 55–64.
Kazak, A. E., & Marvin, R. S. (1984). Differences, difficulties, and adaptation: Stress and social networks in families with a handicapped child. Family Relations, 33(1), 67–77.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. New York: Guilford Press.
Repetti, R. L. (1989). Effects of daily workload on subsequent behavior during marital interaction: The roles of social withdrawal and spouse support. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(4), 651–659.
Repetti, R. L. (1992). Social withdrawal as a short-term coping response to daily stressors. In H. S. Friedman (Ed.), Hostility, coping, and health (pp. 151–165). American Psychological Association.
Whalen, C. K., & Dumas, J. E. (1989). Toward a theory of residential stress and its impact on children's behavior. Clinical Psychology Review, 9(3), 247–273.
