Huffington Post

Past research has suggested that infidelity is one of the leading causes of divorce. But what drives a person to become unfaithful?

Thanks to a new study published in Contemporary Family Therapy, we now have an inside look into why married women cheat.

Researchers Michelle Jeanfreau, Anthony Jurich, and Michael Mong conducted case studies on four women aged 24 to 51 who cheated on their spouses and whose marriages subsequently ended in divorce. Through in-depth analysis, researchers discovered three common risk factors that contributed to the infidelity.

First of all, an in-depth case study analysis of four people barely constitutes a study at all…

That being said, it is refreshing to see the popular media finally making the politically incorrect admission we’ve only known was proven true since the 1940’s:

It almost always takes two spouses to create an affair for one of them.

No, that’s not license or open season.

But, it does mean that the one who (Knowingly or otherwise) neglected the other and the one who suppressed his or her heart and built a spark of resentment into a firestorm of rage need to work together to fix it.

It also means that the victim/perpetrator model so many therapists seem to see infidelity through really needs to die.