My clients don’t ask whether a monogamous neurodiverse marriage can survive infidelity because they’re looking for a simple answer.

They ask because something fundamental in the relationship—its orientation, its sense of direction—has shifted.

Neurodiverse couples already live inside a subtle daily negotiation: two nervous systems with different processing speeds, different ways of reading emotion, different thresholds for overload, trying to construct something shared.

Infidelity doesn’t interrupt that negotiation; sometimes it collapses it.

Not always loudly.
More like a building quietly failing behind its own walls.

This isn’t melodrama.
It’s what happens when a relationship built on translation loses the structure that once made that translation possible.

And it leads to the question no exclusive couple ever expects to need:

Is there anything left here that can be rebuilt?

The short answer is yes.
The longer answer—and the one that matters—is how.

If you search “does having a crush mean my relationship is over,” you get a digital avalanche of panic.

Partners write as if noticing another human being automatically voids their mortgage.

But the question is worth asking because most couples have no idea what a crush inside a committed relationship actually means—or doesn’t mean.

A new study in the academic journal Personal Relationships by Lucia O’Sullivan and colleagues finally gives us data instead of hand-wringing.

The researchers followed real couples for a year to see whether crushes (or, in research language, extradyadic attraction) actually reduce relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, or commitment.

Infidelity ends one marriage and begins another.The first ends the day the affair is discovered.

The second begins only if both people choose to stay and rebuild what’s left.

That new marriage has different vows, a different texture, and a new kind of honesty — the kind you don’t get until you’ve burned the old script.

After an affair, many couples find that their sexual lives collapse long before their relationship does.

They might talk endlessly but touch almost never. The bedroom becomes an archive of what used to be safe.

When your partner’s phone lights up after midnight, your stomach drops. You tell yourself you’re fine—but your body disagrees.
Jealousy is fast, primal, and oddly democratic. It shows up whether you want it or not.

But what if the way you feel that jealousy—whether it’s about sex, or about emotional connection—has less to do with being male or female, and more to do with your internal chemistry of masculinity, femininity, and attraction?

That’s the question behind new research by Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair and colleagues at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (2025), their findings complicate the neat evolutionary tale we’ve been told for decades: men rage over sex, women cry over love.

It turns out, the real story is in the dials—not the switches.

Once upon a time, infidelity required sneaking into a motel.

In 2025, it may only require logging into World of Warcraft.

Couples now show up in therapy not because of lipstick on a collar, but because one spouse whispered “goodnight love” to a digital elf at two in the morning.

On TikTok, the hashtag #AvatarCheating has millions of views, with users debating whether VR hookups, gaming “marriages,” or late-night AI love-chats should count as betrayal.

Over on Reddit’s r/relationship_advice, one thread asks: “My boyfriend married someone in Final Fantasy XIV. Should I be mad?”

The comments sorta split: half say “yes, absolutely,” the other half dismiss it as “delulu.”

Once upon a time, the great terror of love was adultery. Would he run off with his secretary? Would she fall for the man next door? Those fears, at least, had clear villains—flesh-and-blood humans with flaws you could name.

Today’s anxiety is quieter, but somehow sharper:
Will you look at me—or will the glowing screen in your hand win again?

This is what I call attentional infidelity. It’s the affair without a lover.

Charles Kuralt. The man who spent thirty years on CBS showing us America’s backroads — Sunday mornings with fly-fishing, general stores, and pancake breakfasts that felt like Norman Rockwell illustrations come to life.

He had the voice of your favorite uncle and the looks of a man who would never miss a church supper.

And then, of course, he died. Which is when the other woman walked in.

It turned out Uncle Charles had a second life in Montana, complete with cabins, land deeds, and promises made on stationary no one in New York had ever seen.

His widow learned she had been only half a wife. His lover learned she would have to battle the courts to prove she wasn’t a mistress but an alternate spouse.

And America learned, once again, that the wholesome mask often hides the more interesting face.

When we talk about infidelity, we usually talk about heartbreak. But betrayal doesn’t just lodge itself in the soul—it also gets written into the body.

Affairs can raise blood pressure, disrupt sleep, and even increase the risk of chronic illness years down the road.

And the body doesn’t respond the same way for everyone: men often pay the price in their hearts, while women carry it in their nerves, hormones, and daily aches.

Infidelity, it turns out, is a love story with a medical sequel.

Infidelity is more than a story of heartbreak—it leaves physiological traces.

And while betrayal wounds everyone, the health fallout can look different depending on gender.

But the picture isn’t complete until we also ask: what happens in same-sex couples, where cultural scripts and relational expectations may differ?

Infidelity is one of those topics everyone thinks they understand.

But when researchers dig into the details, they find it’s not one single thing at all.

In fact, the meaning of betrayal shifts depending on culture, generation, and even technology.

A global review of infidelity research makes a striking point: how we define infidelity matters more than how often it happens.

Some couples say only sex counts. Others see emotional intimacy, flirting online, or even private messaging as a serious breach.

What looks like “cheating” in one culture may not even register as such in another (Levine, García, & Thomas, 2024).

Esther Perel likes to remind us that infidelity offends the human sense of the sacred so much that it got not one, but two slots on the Ten Commandments.

One says don’t do it. The other says don’t even think about it. That’s how seriously the ancients took cheating — it wasn’t just bad behavior, it was considered cosmic vandalism.

Infidelity is less like a “mistake” and more like a meteor strike.

It doesn’t just wound; it redraws the map. Couples talk about life in two eras — the before and the after.

Some relationships don’t make it across that fault line. They end in slammed doors, divided houses, and the dull paperwork of divorce.

Others, bafflingly, survive.

They pick through the rubble, bandage their wounds, and, in time, rebuild. Not the same house, mind you — something different. Sometimes sturdier. Sometimes stranger.

So what separates the couples who collapse from the ones who crawl forward together?

Let’s say it plainly and with love: getting cheated on feels like getting hit by a bus driven by someone you made dinner for last night.

It’s confusing. It’s cruel. It’s humiliating.

You go to sleep thinking you’re in a marriage and wake up in a courtroom of public opinion, with strangers in the jury box and TikTokers posting analysis videos of your last Instagram carousel.

So when the world sees a betrayal—say, a Coldplay kiss cam moment between a C-suite executive and someone clearly not his wife—the internet does what it does best.

It organizes itself into a moral army. It chooses sides.

And almost instantly, the betrayed partner is crowned: Saint of the Week. Patron of the blindsided. Keeper of virtue. Defender of vows.

But should we be doing this?

Do betrayed partners deserve automatic moral elevation?
Do we owe them our uncritical support just because they were the one left in the dark?

In a word: no.

In several more words: not unless we’re ready to flatten them into caricatures, ignore the actual emotional mess of long-term relationships, and assign sainthood like it’s a raffle prize handed out after a trauma drawing.

A CEO and his Chief People Officer were caught on the Coldplay kiss-cam, which is either ironic or poetic depending on how you feel about HR guidelines and "Viva La Vida."

We don’t know their full story — maybe they're in love, maybe it's new, maybe it's an affair, or maybe they're just very, very bad at hiding things in public.

But it’s sparked a national cringe — and conversation — about what happens when emotional intimacy, sexual chemistry, and professional ambition all show up wearing lanyards.

And let’s be honest: it happens more than anyone wants to admit. A lot more.