7 Women Reveal Why They Cheated On A Partner: 'It Felt So Freeing'
Listen to our weekly podcast Am I Making You Uncomfortable? about women’s health, bodies and private lives. Available on Spotify, Apple, Audioboom and wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Women are increasingly cheating on their partners – or we’re becoming more likely to admit it. Since 1990, the amount of married women who admit to cheating has risen by 40%, according to researcher and psychoanalyst Esther Perel, author of The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Meanwhile, the number of married men who report cheating is largely unchanged.
A 2015 survey by YouGov backs this up, reflecting that the cheating gap has more or less closed. It found that the number of men and women who have had an affair is almost the same (20% and 19%).
In the latest episode of Am I Making You Uncomfortable?, HuffPost UK’s weekly podcast on women’s health, bodies and private lives, we look at the stories behind the stats.
We wanted to find out why women are cheating – not to put women on trial, or to excuse cheating, but to investigate how our attitudes to sex and relationships may have changed over time.
We speak to therapist Miranda Christophers about what she hears from clients who’ve cheated, plus chat to Tolani Shoneye and Audrey Indome, from The Receipts Podcast, to get their take on the topic.
In the episode, Audrey shares her own experience of cheating on a former partner and we also hear from listeners about their experiences of infidelity. Here are just seven of their stories.
‘Cheating doesn’t hurt everyone’
“I used to think people who cheated were appalling human beings. Now I do it.
“My life is great and my long term partner and three children adore me and I adore them. The problem is that I am not truly happy and want other people. I feel trapped and have spoken to my partner about it all, but he doesn’t want me to leave and freaks out and gets really, really upset. It kills me.
“I spent years questioning my feelings and have...
