By Stephanie Boucher, Registered Psychotherapist | The Mindful Loft
The short version: If you have been cheated on, one of the most painful questions is usually: Did they ever love me? Cheating is not always a clean answer to that question. It often tells you more about the person who cheated than it tells you about your worth. It may reflect avoidance, entitlement, fear, validation-seeking, poor boundaries, emotional escape, or a failure to face something honestly. That does not make it less devastating. It just means the affair is not a simple measure of whether you were lovable.
The question I hear most often from betrayed partners is not always “Should I leave?” or “Can we fix this?” It is usually something underneath that: Did they even love me?
Sometimes it comes out differently. How could she do this if she cared? How could he say he loved me and still lie to my face? Was any of it real? But it is usually the same question underneath. The betrayed partner is trying to figure out whether they mattered. Whether what they built together meant something to the person who burned it. Whether the relationship was real, or whether they were the only one living inside it.
I want to take that question seriously, because it deserves more than quick reassurance.
Does cheating mean they did not love you?
Not necessarily. And I say that carefully. Not to let the person who cheated off the hook. Not to minimize what they did. Not to convince you to stay. Not to ask you to be understanding before you have even had room to be furious.
If you are reading this in the raw stretch after discovery, you may not care why they did it yet. That is okay. You do not owe anyone curiosity before your own pain has had somewhere to go.
But the alternative, that cheating is always a clear measure of love, does not hold up very well when you look at what often drives infidelity.
Therapist Esther Perel, whose work on infidelity has been useful to many clinicians and couples, describes affairs less as a simple rejection of the relationship and more as a reaching for something: aliveness, escape, identity, validation, or a version of the self the person feels they have lost. In that view, the affair is often less about the betrayed partner and more about what the person who cheated was chasing or avoiding inside themselves.
In my work, I would say that tracks. Many people who cheat do not describe it as a clean absence of love. They describe fear, numbness, resentment they did not know how to speak about, grief they did not know how to face, a need to feel wanted, a fantasy version of themselves, or an escape route from a life, a marriage, or an inner emptiness they did not know how to address honestly.
None of that excuses it. Whatever they were feeling, they were still responsible for what they did with it.
Cheating is a profound failure: of honesty, of courage, of boundaries, of protection, of choosing the harder conversation over the easier escape. But it is not always a simple statement that they never loved you. That is part of what makes it so disorienting. Someone can love you and still betray you. That does not make the betrayal smaller. It makes the grief more complicated.
Love is not repair
This part matters.
If someone says, “But I loved you the whole time,” that may or may not be emotionally true. But love, by itself, is not repair. Love does not erase the betrayal. Love does not answer the questions. Love does not rebuild trust. Love does not replace accountability. Love does not make the lying less damaging.
If the person who cheated wants repair, love is not enough. There has to be honesty. There has to be accountability. There has to be a willingness to understand the impact, answer hard questions, tolerate your pain, change behaviour, and stop asking you to make them feel better about what they did.
So yes, someone may cheat and still love their partner. But that is not the end of the question. The better question is: what does their love look like after the harm is exposed? Can it become accountable? Can it become honest? Can it become protective of you, not just protective of them?
What research tells us about why people cheat
Research supports the idea that infidelity is not driven by one single motivation.
One study of 495 adults who had been unfaithful in committed relationships identified eight motivations for cheating: anger at their partner, sexual desire, lack of love, emotional neglect, low commitment, situational circumstances, a desire to boost self-esteem, and wanting variety.
What is striking about that list is how many of those motivations are about the person who cheated: their internal state, their desire, their avoidance, their need for validation, or the way they handled discomfort. Some motivations are more relational. Lack of love, emotional neglect, resentment, or low commitment can tell you something important about the state of the relationship. Those cases can be harder to hold, because they do not fit neatly into “this was about them, not you.” But even then, the affair does not prove you were not worth honesty. It shows that something was not faced directly.
The study also found that motivations mattered for what happened next. Affairs driven by anger, lack of love, or disconnection from the relationship tended to last longer and were more likely to be connected to the end of the primary relationship. Affairs driven by self-esteem needs, situational factors, or emotional escape tended to be shorter and less likely to signal the same kind of fundamental break from the relationship.
That does not make any version less painful. But it does mean the “why” matters. Not because it excuses the cheating, but because it helps clarify what was actually happening and what may or may not be possible now.
Why it still feels like it was about you
Here is what I observe often in my work with betrayed partners: they usually understand, at some level, that the cheating is not proof they were not enough. They can say it out loud. They can explain it back to me. They may even believe it intellectually.
But they cannot feel it yet.
Because the body keeps a different kind of record. When the person you trusted chose secrecy, lied to your face, risked the relationship, and made space for someone else while you were still living inside the original agreement, your nervous system registers that as rejection. As evidence. As danger. As humiliation. As a verdict.
It does not matter, in the beginning, that the evidence may be pointing at the wrong conclusion. The conclusion your body draws is often: I was not enough. Something about me made this possible. If I had been more attractive, easier, more sexual, less needy, more interesting, less tired, more successful, this would not have happened.
That conclusion is often cognitively wrong. But it is emotionally very hard to dislodge. And it does not dislodge just because someone tells you it is wrong, including me.
What tends to shift it is time, support, and a place to process the grief of what happened without being pushed toward forgiveness, repair, or clarity before you are ready. The question “Did they love me?” often contains a deeper question underneath it: Was I real to them? Did I matter? Did any of it count?
Those questions deserve more than reassurance. They deserve space.
What cheating can be doing for the person who cheats
This is the part many betrayed partners do not want to hear right away, and I understand why. Understanding the person who cheated can feel dangerously close to excusing them.
So let me say this clearly: understanding why something happened is not the same as excusing it. Cheating is a choice. There were other options. They were not taken.
But if you want to understand what actually happened, rather than only name the harm, it can help to look at what cheating may have been doing for the person who did it.
Cheating often functions like a coping mechanism. A destructive one. A selfish one. A dishonest one. But still, often, a coping mechanism.
Some people cheat to escape feelings they do not know how to handle: inadequacy, grief, boredom, aging, resentment, shame, loneliness, or the feeling that they have disappeared inside a life they do not know how to talk about. Some cheat because they want to feel wanted. Some cheat because they have poor boundaries. Some cheat because they are entitled. Some cheat because they avoid conflict until the avoidance becomes its own betrayal. Some cheat because being truly known feels more threatening than being desired from a distance.
The affair may not be a statement about your worth. It may be a statement about their relationship with their own emotional life.
Again, that does not make it less harmful. It means the story is bigger than “they chose someone else because I was not enough.” In many cases, they were running from themselves, and you got badly hurt in the process.
What this means if you are trying to make sense of it
You are allowed to be furious. You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to not care, right now, about why they did it. You are allowed to have no interest in the psychological backstory of someone who broke your trust. You are also allowed to want to understand it if that helps you make sense of your own experience.
What I would want you to take from this is not that the betrayal was smaller than it felt. It was not. What happened to you was real. The confusion is real. The grief is real. The injury to your sense of self is real. The fact that cheating may say more about them than about you does not erase the damage. It just means the damage is not proof that you were unlovable.
I know you may know that. I also know that knowing it and feeling it are not the same thing. The gap between those two can feel enormous after betrayal.
The gap closes, but not because someone finally gives you the perfect explanation. It closes because, over time and with enough support, the truth starts to land differently in your body. You begin to see the person who cheated more clearly. Not only as the person you loved. Not only as the person who hurt you. But as a whole person with limits, choices, avoidance, wounds, entitlement, fear, or whatever else was part of the story.
And when you can see them more clearly, you often start to see yourself more clearly too. Not as the reason they cheated. As the person who was harmed by something they chose.
Frequently asked questions
Can someone cheat and genuinely still love their partner?
Yes. It is one of the more disorienting things about infidelity.
Love and harmful behaviour can exist in the same person. Love and avoidance can exist in the same person. Love and selfishness can exist in the same person. That does not make the betrayal smaller. It means love is not the only thing that matters. Accountability, honesty, boundaries, empathy, and repair matter too.
Does the reason for the cheating matter?
It can, especially if you are trying to decide whether the relationship has a future.
An affair driven by chronic disconnection, resentment, low commitment, or a feeling of being trapped in the relationship may mean there are deeper relational problems that need to be addressed. An affair driven by self-esteem, escapism, poor boundaries, or avoidance may mean something different about the relationship itself, though it still says something serious about the person who cheated and how they cope.
The reason matters because it helps clarify what needs to be repaired, and whether the person who cheated is actually willing to face it.
How do I stop feeling like it was about me?
Slowly. And usually not by being told it was not about you.
The cognitive understanding often comes before the emotional one. You may know, logically, that the cheating was not a verdict on your worth. But your body may still feel rejected, replaced, humiliated, or not chosen. What helps is being in a space where you are allowed to be angry, devastated, confused, and grieving without being rushed toward forgiveness or perspective.
Over time, it also helps to develop a clearer picture of who the person who cheated actually is, not only who you needed them to be.
Should I ask them why they did it?
That depends on what you are looking for.
If you want an honest accounting, that conversation may matter. It can help you understand what happened, what was avoided, what was chosen, and whether they are capable of meaningful accountability. But if you are hoping they will say something that makes the pain stop, that conversation may not give you what you need.
They may not fully understand why they did it. Even if they do, understanding does not automatically translate into healing for you. This is one of those conversations that is often better held with support, especially if you are considering repair.
Does cheating always mean the relationship is over?
No.
Some relationships survive infidelity and become more honest than they were before. Not because the affair was minimized, but because both people do the hard work of facing what happened, repairing the breach, and changing the conditions that made secrecy possible. Other relationships do not survive, and that can also be the healthiest outcome.
Neither answer is automatically right. What matters is what happens after the discovery: honesty, accountability, remorse, behavioural change, and whether staying would require you to keep abandoning yourself.
If you are in the middle of this
What happened to you was a real betrayal. The confusion and pain you are feeling are proportionate to what occurred, not evidence that you are handling it badly.
You do not have to know whether you are staying or leaving. You do not have to know whether repair is possible. You do not have to understand them before you are allowed to tend to yourself.
If you would like a space to start making sense of it, I offer free 20-minute consultations. You do not have to have decided anything. You just have to be willing to talk.
Sessions are covered by most extended health benefit plans. Fees are discussed in your consult.
Not ready to book? I write about infidelity, betrayal, and what recovery actually looks like in The Messy Loft, our monthly newsletter.
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Related articles
- What Is Betrayal Trauma?
- Signs You’re Experiencing Betrayal Trauma
- Understanding the Emotional Aftermath of Infidelity: Why It Feels Like PTSD
- After Discovering Infidelity: What to Do in the First 30 Days
About the author
Stephanie Boucher is a Registered Psychotherapist and the founder of The Mindful Loft, a psychotherapy practice in Ottawa, Ontario focused on betrayal trauma, infidelity recovery, childhood relational wounds, and relational recovery. She supports individuals and couples trying to make sense of what happened and figure out what comes next.
Further reading
Perel, E. (2017). The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Harper. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-state-of-affairs-esther-perel
References
Selterman, D., Garcia, J. R., & Tsapelas, I. (2019). Motivations for extradyadic infidelity revisited. Journal of Sex Research, 56(3), 273-286. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1393494
This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized mental health care.
If you are in immediate crisis or thinking of harming yourself, please reach out to a crisis line in your area. In Canada, you can call or text 9-8-8.
