DATING & RELATIONSHIPS
T
o most Brits—80 per Can Cheating cent of women and 64 per cent of men—cheating is unacceptable, per a 2019 Ever Improve A BBC survey. One in ten UK ends due to infidelity. Relationship? marriages It’s not hard to see why. Cheating
Of all the sins you could commit in a relationship, cheating is seen as one of the worst. But could it also trigger a chance for a reset, which brings both partners closer together?
Monica Karpinski is a writer and editor focused on women’s health, sex, and relationships. She is the founder of women’s health media platform The Femedic 60 • JUNE 2023
causes breakage: of trust and commitment, and perhaps our grand plans for what our life with that person could look like. However, it also forces pent-up feelings out into the open. Could this ever be a wake-up call to what needs fixing between two people? I believe that it’s possible. But for a couple to emerge stronger from the wreckage, there needs to be an understanding that infidelity is nuanced—and, dare I say, a degree of compassion. We see cheating as so repulsive that we tend to frame it in binary terms: there’s wrong and right, a villain and a victim. Not all situations are so clear-cut. After all, a lot of us cheat—one in five, to be exact. Hurt people cheat,