Escaping the Relationship

Rachel’s world came crashing down the day she found the messages. For ten years, she thought she had a happy marriage, a comfortable life, a partner she knew inside and out. But that discovery shattered everything. When she finally confronted him, he was so calm, so detached, it made her feel like she was the crazy one.

"I thought we were happy," she said later. "How could he do this after ten years? He acted like it was nothing. Like I was overreacting."

Rachel’s story is heartbreaking, but it’s also incredibly common. She had spent a decade married to a man who was emotionally unavailable, and the affair was just the final act in a long, painful pattern. The man she married was an avoidant.

Out of all the different ways people handle relationships, guys with an avoidant style are the most likely to cheat. One study found that nearly 70% of avoidant men had thought about cheating, and over 40% had actually gone through with it.

So, why? What’s going on here? Well, an avoidant man doesn't cheat because the relationship is broken. He cheats because it’s working, and that scares the hell out of him.

For someone who is terrified of real intimacy, every step closer; moving in, getting married, having kids, it all feel unbearably suffocating. That’s when he begins to pull away.

But why would someone who fears closeness look for more of it outside their relationship? Doesn’t really make sense, right?

In therapy, James tried to explain it. “Whenever Rachel wanted to talk about our future, I just felt trapped,” he said. “But with Jennifer from work, I could be myself without any pressure. There were no big expectations, no heavy conversations. It just felt… easier.”

The thing is, avoidants still want connection. They still want sex and validation. But they want it on their own terms, without having to be emotionally present or accountable to anyone. So, they build a secret world on the side. In that world, they get to feel wanted and in control, but without the messy reality of a real relationship.

They don’t cheat to get closer to someone else. They cheat to create distance from you. An affair lets them get just enough connection, without the pressure, without the real vulnerability.

What’s weird, and incredibly painful, is that an avoidant man can seem more emotionally open with the person he’s cheating with than he ever was with his own partner. It’s not because he cares more about them. It’s because it’s easier. The affair isn’t real life. That other person doesn’t know his flaws, his history, or his stress. They don’t have to build a life together, pay bills, or argue about whose turn it is to take out the trash. That distance is exactly what makes it feel safe enough for him to talk.

Rachel found that out the hard way.

“What broke me wasn’t the sex,” she said. “It was knowing he told her things he never told me. His childhood fears. His insecurities. I begged him for years to open up to me, and he always acted like I was asking for too much. Then I find out he’s having these deep conversations with a stranger.”

It’s not just the cheating. It’s being shut out emotionally for years, then finding out he gave that part of himself to someone else, while you were begging for scraps.

Therapists have a name for this: “low-stakes vulnerability.” It’s like telling your deepest secret to a stranger on a plane. It feels profound in the moment, but there’s no real risk because you’ll never see them again. Opening up to your actual partner—the person who sees you every day, flaws and all—is much scarier. Because if they see your real, messy self… they might not love you. And that's such a deep fear for avoidants.

The timing also usually makes it worse. Many avoidant men start cheating not when things are falling apart, but when the relationship is actually good, right after getting married or when your baby is born. These are the moments when a healthy partner leans in, but an avoidant partner panics and runs.

“After our second baby was born,” a woman named Emma shared, “my husband just checked out. I needed him more than ever, and instead, I found out he was having an affair. He told me later he felt trapped by our family life. The affair made him feel ‘free’ again.”

The more you need them, the more they pull away.

Being cheated on by an avoidant man hurts on a whole different level. You’ve likely already spent years feeling lonely in the relationship, wondering if you were being too needy or asking for too much. The affair feels like the final confirmation of your worst fear: that you were never enough.

You start to blame yourself. “Maybe if I’d given him more space.” “Maybe I was too demanding.” “Maybe I shouldn’t have needed him so much.”

That’s the poison of being with an avoidant partner. You start to believe that your completely normal, human need for love and connection is a flaw.

But it’s not.

You are not “too much” for wanting love. There was nothing you could have done differently to stop it. You can’t make someone want real closeness when they’ve spent their entire life running from it.