A Relationship and Corporate Therapist Explains Why Most Infidelity Starts Long Before It Happens. Because Affairs Are Not Always About Sex. They’re About Unresolved Childhood Wounds.

Most infidelity starts long before the affair — with certain emotional issues that arise in childhood — which is why when people cheat, it isn’t always understood.

Let’s start here: It’s usually not really about the husband rather it’s about the wife. Why?

The mistress is often someone who never captured the attention of her father. Because he may have been physically or emotionally unavailable.

In Freud terms: the mistress or child that she once was, would try to “kill off mummy to claim daddy”.

This is evident in children between the ages of say 3–6. At this age, children try for example, to divide their parents when they hold hands, or vehemently claim that they hate mummy or daddy.

Or the little girl dressed in pink may sit on her daddy’s lap “wrapping him right round her finger”, in order to get what she wants, and so on.

But if her daddy doesn’t pay her attention or if he isn’t around, she may find dealing with this emotional growth phase very hard.