Getting cheated on can be a painful and traumatic experience. It is costly for the one who got cheated on. If your boyfriend or husband cheats, they’re likely to leave you for their affair partner, leaving your future reproductive success in danger. Getting cheated on can also be a major blow to your sense of self-worth, especially if you are already struggling with low self-esteem.1Shrout, M. R., & Weigel, D. J. (2020). Coping with infidelity: The moderating role of self-esteem. Personality and individual differences, 154, 109631. So, a common fear people have in relationships is that their partner is cheating on them.
The dilemma
The sooner you catch a cheating partner, the more you can minimize the costs of cheating. If you catch a cheating partner now rather than 10 years later, you can restart your life and find a new partner. So, there is a significant evolutionary advantage in catching a cheating partner earlier.
Due to this, we have evolved psychological mechanisms that are sensitive to the cues of cheating. Oftentimes, you won’t have solid evidence that your partner is cheating on you. But your mind can’t wait to get that kind of evidence. The costs of waiting are too high. So, your mind is sensitive to the signs of cheating. When your partner behaves in a way that points to infidelity, your mind senses a red flag, and you feel something is off.
Something could be genuinely off, or you could be misreading signals. In the latter case, you’re just being insecure. Your doubts have nothing to do with reality. So, it’s common for people to doubt the doubts they have about their partner. More often than not, you have to have enough red flags or solid evidence before you can accuse your partner of cheating.
Insecurity can be a superpower
Generally, people are in a hurry to detect infidelity in their partner for the evolutionary reasons mentioned above. Some people, however, are in a greater hurry than others. These are people who are insecurely attached. Because of their insecurities, they have problems with self-esteem and/or trusting people. They’re sensitive to the slightest, most subtle cues of cheating.2Ein-Dor, T., Perry-Paldi, A., Zohar-Cohen, K., Efrati, Y., & Hirschberger, G. (2017). It takes an insecure liar to catch a liar: The link between attachment insecurity, deception, and detection of deception. Personality and Individual Differences, 113, 81-87.
This can be both a good and a bad thing. It means that they see the red flags of infidelity more easily and readily than others. This makes them prone to think their partner is cheating on them, even if the latter is not. This above-average sensitivity to the cues of infidelity can also make them better at detecting actual infidelity earlier than other people. It’s a double-edged sword.
Hence, being insecure and your partner actually cheating are not mutually exclusive phenomena. You could be insecure because your partner is cheating. This is why you should never dismiss your feelings and collect more data to understand what’s really happening with your partner.
