How Men and Women’s Bodies Respond Differently to Infidelity

Extramarital Affairs

Aug 31

Written By Daniel Dashnaw

Sunday August 31, 2025.

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 and Chronic Health: A Universal Stressor

A longitudinal study using the MIDUS dataset tracked more than 2,500 adults for nearly a decade.

Partner infidelity was associated with a higher risk of chronic illness, including migraines and cardiovascular conditions—even years later (Hoy & Oh, 2024). This effect cut across gender, age, and socioeconomic status.

Betrayal, in other words, was a health risk no matter who you were, or how you love.

Men vs. Women: Divergent Stress Pathways

The health survival paradox offers one explanation for why men and women sometimes diverge in response to relational stress:

Men often internalize betrayal in ways that heighten cardiovascular risk—elevated blood pressure, suppressed immune function, and unhealthy coping behaviors such as alcohol use (Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001).
Women are more likely to experience somatic distress—headaches, insomnia, gastrointestinal issues—alongside heightened anxiety and depression (Rokach & Chan, 2023).

Both patterns underscore the body’s unwillingness to let betrayal go quietly.

Emotional vs. Sexual Infidelity: Gendered Distress

Across many studies, heterosexual men report greater distress over sexual infidelity, while women react more strongly to emotional infidelity (Frederick, 2015). These differences appear robust across cultures and persist even when accounting for relationship quality.

Same-Sex Couples: What the Research Shows

For too long, most infidelity research assumed heterosexual couples. Recent studies complicates that picture:

A large survey study by Mark et al. (2011) found that rates of infidelity in same-sex couples were broadly similar to heterosexual couples, but the meanings attributed to betrayal differed.
Gay men, for example, were more likely to distinguish between sexual exclusivity and emotional loyalty, while lesbian couples emphasized the primacy of emotional trust.
Research on relationship quality shows that minority stress—discrimination, stigma, and family rejection—can amplify the impact of infidelity for LGBTQ+ individuals (Rostosky & Riggle, 2017).
Betrayal isn’t just about a partner straying; it collides with the stress of navigating a world where many already fight to have their relationships recognized as valid.
Physiologically, the data remain sparse, but scholars suggest that same-sex couples may display stress responses similar to heterosexual pairs, filtered through different cultural narratives about fidelity and identity.

In other words: betrayal hurts the body regardless of sexual orientation, but context matters a great deal. In LGBTQ+ relationships, cultural stigma can worsen the blow.

Why Therapists Should Pay More Attention

If you’re working with couples recovering from infidelity, it’s not enough to focus solely on emotional repair. Ask about physical health—blood pressure, sleep, somatic symptoms. And in same-sex couples, don’t overlook the role of minority stress in compounding betrayal’s effects.

Healing requires a whole-body and whole-context approach because infidelity doesn’t just disrupt families—it also reshapes bodies.

Men and women often carry betrayal differently: men in their cardiovascular systems, women in their nervous systems. Same-sex couples may show similar physiological scars, but layered with the added weight of minority stress.

If Americans want to take infidelity even more seriously, we must stop treating it as “just” a private crisis.

Because it may also manifest as a public health issue—and, more importantly, one that can take on different shapes across gender and orientation. In other words, We’ll need a bigger intervention boat.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

References

Hoy, E. Q. W., & Oh, V. Y. S. (2024). The consequences of spousal infidelity for long-term chronic health: A two-wave longitudinal analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., & Newton, T. L. (2001). Marriage and health: His and hers. Psychological Bulletin, 127(4), 472–503. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.4.472

Rokach, A., & Chan, C. (2023). Love and infidelity: Causes and consequences. Frontiers in Psychology, 14,1172760. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1172760

Frederick, D. (2015). Chapman University study on jealousy and infidelity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44(8), 2225–2237. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-014-0362-1

Mark, K. P., Janssen, E., & Milhausen, R. R. (2011). Infidelity in heterosexual and same-sex couples: Demographic, relational, and personality factors. Journal of Sex Research, 48(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490903571923

Rostosky, S. S., & Riggle, E. D. B. (2017). Same-sex couple relationship strengths: A review and synthesis. Sex Roles, 76, 772–789. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0674-3

Daniel Dashnaw