Exploring how people react emotionally to cheating reveals interesting patterns influenced by gender, sexual orientation, and commitment. Distress, anger, anxiety, jealousy, and humiliation are key emotions, with differences in responses to emotional and sexual cheating.
Gender and sexual orientation play vital roles. Women and heterosexual individuals feel more distress when facing partner infidelity compared to men, lesbians, and gay individuals. Commitment is crucial, correlating with distress and anger in emotional cheating, while sexual cheating triggers distress and anxiety. Surprisingly, love components and expectations about cheating show no significant association with emotional responses.
Commitment depth shapes reactions. Deeply committed individuals experience more distress and anger with emotional cheating, while those perceiving less intimacy report heightened distress and anxiety with sexual cheating. A stronger emotional bond intensifies the impact of emotional betrayal, while a perceived lack of intimacy heightens the emotional toll of sexual cheating.
Imagining a partner’s infidelity, regardless of passion, triggers strong negative emotions. Gender doesn’t predict jealousy in response to sexual cheating; heterosexual men report more distress than women. Emotional cheating triggers similar distress across heterosexual women, lesbian women, and gay men.
The study suggests that a weakened emotional bond may reduce the betrayed partner’s sense of security in sexual cheating, potentially lowering distress and anxiety. However, understanding the complexities of emotional responses to different cheating forms requires further research to uncover additional factors in the diverse emotional aftermath.
Reference:
Rokach A, Chan SH. Love and Infidelity: Causes and Consequences. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Feb 22;20(5):3904. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20053904. PMID: 36900915; PMCID: PMC10002055.