What We Inherit About Betrayal

Monday, January 26, 2026.

Why Infidelity Rarely Starts Where We Think It Does

There is a comforting fantasy many couples hold: that infidelity arrives suddenly, summoned by temptation or opportunity or moral weakness.

A lapse. A rupture. A single bad decision on an otherwise clean ledger.

New research suggests something far less dramatic—and far more unsettling.

Infidelity, it turns out, often begins long before adulthood. Long before the partner.

Long before the opportunity. It begins in the family of origin, in what was modeled, concealed, normalized, or quietly endured—before anyone had the language to object.

A recent study published in The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families examines how parental infidelity, attachment style, and relational intimacy shape infidelity intentions among emerging adults.

Not behavior. Not outcomes. But whether cheating even registers as a conceivable response under relational strain.

That distinction matters. That is why homewreckers matter.

The research, conducted by clinical psychologist Esra Selalmaz and marriage and family therapist Gizem Erdem at Koç University in Istanbul, focuses on adults aged 18 to 30 who are unmarried, childless, and in committed relationships of at least one year.

This is the developmental window where loyalty is rehearsed, not yet hardened into identity. Where relationship templates are still being written in pencil.

What the researchers found should slow us down.

Half the Room Grew Up With a Secret

Nearly half of participants reported that at least one parent had engaged in an extramarital affair.

Half.

Most learned of this betrayal around age thirteen—a developmental moment when young people begin forming their first serious theories about love, trust, and permanence.

This is not a neutral age to discover that vows may be porous, that intimacy can fracture quietly, that betrayal does not always end a marriage—or even get named.

In many families, the affair was not processed. It was absorbed.

What children learn in these moments is rarely articulated as belief. It becomes atmosphere. A background assumption about what adults do when intimacy falters.

This is how patterns travel across generations—not as destiny, but as permission.

The Strongest Predictor Was Not Trauma—It Was Practice

The most powerful predictor of future infidelity intentions was not having been cheated on.

It was having cheated before.

This finding is clinically familiar and ethically uncomfortable.

Once a line has been crossed, it does not disappear—but it becomes imaginable. A behavior rehearsed once becomes a behavior available again. Not inevitable. Available.

Notably, being betrayed did not predict future intentions to cheat. Victimhood did not license betrayal. Experience did.

History, in other words, is not just backstory. It is sometimes behavioral rehearsal.

Avoidant Attachment and the Logic of Distance

One of the study’s most revealing findings was that attachment avoidance—but not attachment anxiety—was associated with higher infidelity intentions.

Avoidantly attached partners tend to experience intimacy as demand. Closeness registers as pressure. Dependency feels unsafe.

From this vantage point, infidelity is not driven by excess desire.

It functions as distance regulation—a way to siphon emotional or sexual energy elsewhere while preserving the appearance of commitment.

Cheating, here, is not impulsive. It is regulatory.

Attachment anxiety, by contrast, showed no significant association with infidelity intentions. The anxious partner clings rather than strays. Fear of abandonment can tether more tightly than desire pulls away.

This distinction matters clinically. It cautions against the lazy assumption that insecurity predicts cheating in a single direction. Insecurity fractures differently depending on whether closeness feels scarce—or suffocating.

Intimacy Still Protects

The study’s most hopeful finding is also its least sensational: intimacy matters.

Higher levels of emotional closeness and sexual satisfaction were associated with significantly lower infidelity intentions. When relational needs are met inside the relationship, the imagination wanders less readily outside it.

This does not mean intimacy mechanically “prevents” infidelity. It suggests something quieter and more useful: that cheating intentions often signal something already thinning—attention, curiosity, erotic presence, emotional risk-taking.

Infidelity, in this frame, is less a rupture than a symptom.

Gender Matters—Until It Doesn’t

Men initially reported higher intentions to cheat than women, aligning with cultural norms around masculinity and sexual latitude. But as attachment style, family history, and intimacy were added to the models, gender receded in explanatory power.

Gender may shape the script. It is not the engine.

Not Destiny. A Warning Light

The researchers are careful—and right—to resist fatalism.

Parental infidelity does not condemn children to repeat it. Avoidant attachment does not doom a relationship. A history of cheating does not erase agency.

What these factors do is raise flags.

They tell us where curiosity should linger. Where conversations should deepen. Where intimacy must be cultivated rather than assumed.

The past, here, is not prophecy. It is diagnostic data.

Frequently Asked Questions About Narcissists, Homewrecking, and Children

Are narcissists deliberately trying to “homewreck”?

No. And this is where public language misleads.

Most narcissists are not consciously attempting to destroy a family. What they are doing is prioritizing self-validation over systemic consequence. Marriage, co-parenting, and children are experienced as contextual details rather than ethical constraints. The damage is not the goal—but it is foreseeable.

Clinically speaking, this is indifference, not sadism.

Why do narcissists seem attracted to people who are already taken?

They are not reliably more attracted to attached people; they are simply less deterred by attachment.

The research shows that narcissists pursue desirable partners regardless of relationship status. What distinguishes them is not preference, but moral filtering. Relationship boundaries do not carry the same psychological weight they do for non-narcissistic individuals.

Is “homewrecker” a useful concept, or just moral panic?

It is useful when properly defined.

“Homewrecking” is not about sexual competition. It describes instrumental intimacy—using erotic or emotional access to extract validation, status, or power, without assuming responsibility for the relational system being disrupted.

The term persists because people intuit the asymmetry: one person exits enriched, while others inherit destabilization.

How are children affected when an affair destabilizes the family?

Children experience affairs not as betrayal narratives, but as ruptures in predictability.

Common clinical patterns include increased anxiety, loyalty conflicts, mistrust of permanence, premature emotional maturity, and difficulties forming secure attachments later in life. Children often sense that something fundamental has changed long before adults explain anything.

What harms children most is not the affair itself, but the absence of repair and coherent explanation.

Do narcissists understand the impact on children?

Often, no—not emotionally.

They may understand it cognitively if prompted, but they are typically insulated from the lived consequences. They are not present for custody exchanges, bedtime regressions, school fallout, or the slow work of rebuilding safety.

This absence is structural, not incidental.

Can families recover after narcissistic infidelity?

Yes—but recovery requires reality-based repair, not minimization.

Children need age-appropriate truth, emotional consistency, and visible accountability from the parent who remains. Attempts to “stay positive” or avoid discomfort often prolong harm.

Healing is possible, but it is labor-intensive—and unevenly distributed.

A Therapist’s Closing Thought

In couples therapy, infidelity rarely arrives alone. It brings attachment injuries, unspoken family legacies, intimacy deficits, and old permissions that were never consciously examined.

This study reinforces what systemic therapists have long known: infidelity does not emerge from nowhere. It emerges from patterns—relational, developmental, intergenerational.

And patterns, once seen, can be interrupted.

Not through moral vigilance alone, but through intimacy that is deliberate, curious, and alive.

The past whispers.
The present decides whether to bestow attention and listen.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Selalmaz, E., & Erdem, G. (2025).
    Emerging adults’ infidelity intentions in romantic relationships: The role of parental infidelity, adult attachment insecurity, and intimacy. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families. Advance online publication.