Sometimes, an affair is a cry for help. A person trapped in a sexless marriage, a caregiver exhausted by a partner’s chronic illness, someone drowning in grief who just wants to feel anything but the numbness. The affair becomes a pressure valve. A desperate, destructive, very human attempt to feel alive again when the rest of your life feels like a slow death. The Forgiveness Part (That’s the Harder Work) If to affair is human, then what?
Does that mean we should all shrug and open our marriages? No. Most people still want the safety, intimacy, and trust of monogamy. And breaking that trust hurts in a way few other things do. To Affair is Human
The truth is messier. The truth is that to affair is, in many cases, profoundly human. We grow up on a diet of fairy tales and rom-coms. The narrative is simple: Love is pure. If you truly love someone, you will never feel a flicker of desire for another. And if you do? Your relationship must be broken. Sometimes, an affair is a cry for help
But what if we updated it for the 21st century? What if the most uncomfortable, whispered-about “error” in modern relationships—the affair—is also deeply, painfully human? A desperate, destructive, very human attempt to feel
We’ve all heard the old proverb: To err is human; to forgive, divine.
They are humans who got lost. To call an affair “human” isn’t to excuse it. It’s to explain it. Most infidelity isn’t about sex. It’s about a breakdown in one of three human needs:
Let me be clear upfront: This is not a defense of cheating. It is an autopsy of why it happens, and a plea to stop pretending that the capacity for infidelity lives only in “bad people” on the other side of a moral fence.