Why people cheat

Summary

Today, Explained — “Why People Cheat” (May 31, 2026)

Podcast: Today, Explained
Host: John Gillen Hill (with contributors Maisha Battle, Zoe Yu, and listener Vicki Etchison)
Main Theme: Exploring the reasons people cheat, societal reactions to infidelity, changing definitions of cheating, and personal stories of navigating betrayal and self-discovery.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into why infidelity happens—from celebrity scandals to everyday relationships—and how our cultural understanding of cheating is evolving. Through expert insights and deeply personal stories, the show unpacks the complexities of betrayal, discusses the gray areas amplified by digital life, explores healing after infidelity, and challenges listeners to consider what “cheating” really means.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Cheating Hits a Nerve (01:10 – 03:57)

• Pop Culture Scandals: The host reflects on public outrage over celebrity infidelity (e.g., Megan Thee Stallion/Klay Thompson, Jay-Z/Beyoncé).
• Parasocial Investment: “If a man can cheat on Megan Thee Stallion, what hope do the rest of us have?” — (Vicki Etchison, 01:10)
• Dramatic Narratives: Sexologist Maisha Battle notes that we quickly assign hero/villain roles, even when we don’t know the people involved.
  • “Often it's very cut and dried. If you cheated, you're a bad person. If you were cheated on, you're a good person. And that's not always the case, but... that’s a really quick assumption.” — Maisha Battle (03:32)

2. Why Do People Cheat? (03:57 – 05:50)

• Multiple Motivations: Maisha Battle lists boredom, insecurity, power, or revenge among classic reasons.
• Esther Perel’s Perspective:
  • “Often when you are attracted by the gaze of another, it isn't just because you want to leave the person that you are with, but it is because you want to leave the person that you have yourself become.” — Esther Perel (04:27)
• Cheating’s Aftermath: The betrayal is deeply personal; healing requires understanding both sides and honest reflection.

3. Non-Monogamy & Betrayal (05:50 – 08:10)

• Can Non-Monogamists Cheat? Absolutely, if agreements are broken. Cheating is about violation of trust and agreed-upon boundaries—not just monogamy.
• Relationship Agreements: Some couples set specific rules, others follow “relationship anarchy”—more fluid, less structured.
• Personal Story: Maisha Battle shares her own experience of being cheated on by a partner who claimed uncertainty about monogamy.
  • “Are there people that use non monogamy as an excuse for their behavior? Absolutely.” — Maisha Battle (07:53)

4. The Path to Healing (08:10 – 09:57)

• Impact as Trauma: Being cheated on can feel like trauma, even lead to PTSD-like symptoms.
• Community & Therapy: Support systems—friends, family, therapy—are vital. Both “sides” can experience shame and require healing.
  • “It sometimes takes a village to get through this. And I think that's actually really important to remember because most people will feel shame having gone through this.” — Maisha Battle (09:16)

5. Redefining Cheating in a Digital World (09:57 – 11:56)

• Shifting Boundaries: Social media and online interactions create new gray areas—following exes, OnlyFans subscriptions.
• Communication Is Key: Couples must define what monogamy and infidelity mean for them.
  • “Everything from following exes on social media to... OnlyFans before you got into a committed relationship, what do you do with those? ...if you continue those behaviors and your partner finds out, that may be something that leads to feelings of betrayal.” — Maisha Battle (10:55)

6. “Micro-Cheating” and Generation Gaps (15:07 – 22:18)

• What Is Micro-Cheating?: Zoe Yu explains it as ambiguous, low-level behaviors (e.g., liking posts, DMs) that may or may not be considered infidelity, depending on the relationship.
  • “A lot of Gen Zers... will sit around and be like, what does it mean that he liked my story?” — Zoe Yu (17:00)
• Surveillance & Anxiety: Technology enables obsessive tracking of partners’ online activity.
  • “One defining feature of micro cheating is how one sided it is — people are very much in an investigative mindset...” — Zoe Yu (18:27)
• Public Embarrassment: Sometimes, the real anxiety is about public perception—not just the act itself.
  • “What you actually might be concerned about is the message that it's sending... How is this going to embarrass me? How is it going to affect the way other people see my relationship?” — Zoe Yu (20:19)
• Critique of Extreme Exclusivity: Zoe Yu argues that demanding total emotional exclusivity isolates people from healthy relationships outside romance.
  • “The bar for exclusivity has gotten inordinately high... I think this is actually super damaging…” — Zoe Yu (21:17)

7. A Listener’s Story: The Other Side of Cheating (24:07 – 30:55)

• Personal Testimony — Vicki Etchison: After 25 years of marriage, Vicki’s emotional friendship with a female coworker turned into an affair, catalyzing her self-realization as gay, the collapse of her marriage, and eventual happiness.
  • “At that point I had no idea that I was gay. It had never occurred to me... Then eventually the snuggling just became more and more until it became a sexual relationship.” — Vicki Etchison (25:46)
• Pain and Guilt: Vicki faced loss of community and family tension, but ultimately found acceptance, a new partner, and continued co-parenting with her ex-husband.
  • “We’re still good friends...but I still feel the guilt of it, honestly, every day.” — Vicki Etchison (29:41)
• The Lingering Guilt: Despite therapy and positive changes, guilt persists. She wishes she’d handled it differently, but recognizes “both of our lives are in a much better place now than they would have been” otherwise (30:55).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Maisha Battle on societal reactions:
  “Often it's very cut and dried. If you cheated, you're a bad person. If you were cheated on, you're a good person. And that's not obviously always the case...” (03:46)
• Esther Perel on the meaning of affairs:
  “What did this affair mean for you? Were you thinking about us? Did you hope I would find out?” (04:46)
• Zoe Yu on Gen Z digital culture:
  “A lot of Gen Zers... will sit around and be like, what does it mean that he liked my story?” (17:00)
• Vicki Etchison on the aftermath of cheating:
  "I still feel the guilt of it, honestly, every day... I just, I can't seem to let go of it." (29:41)

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Key Timestamps

• [01:10] — Setting the stage: celebrity infidelity and why we care
• [03:32] — Societal villain/good guy narratives about cheating
• [04:27] — Esther Perel on leaving “the person you have yourself become”
• [08:20] — Cheating as trauma; early steps to healing
• [09:57] — Evolution of what counts as infidelity in digital life
• [15:45] — Zoe Yu explains “micro cheating”
• [18:27] — How online life enables surveillance and anxiety
• [24:19] — Vicki Etchison’s personal story of infidelity, self-discovery, and complicated healing

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Tone, Language, and Final Reflections

The episode moves between analytical, conversational, and deeply personal tones, reflecting the emotional weight of infidelity alongside cultural analysis. The guests and host validate listeners’ experiences while challenging simplistic views, encouraging open communication and self-compassion.

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This episode ultimately asks listeners to question not just why people cheat, but what those actions and our reactions to them reveal about ourselves, our changing society, and the enduring complexity of love and trust.

Transcript

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[Zoe Yu]

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[Vicki Etchison]

That's. This program is both dedicated to the

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faithful and presented to the falsehearted to

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

encourage their renewal of temperance and virtue. Something don't feel right. Cause it ain't right.

[Vicki Etchison]

Because if a man can cheat on Megan Thee Stallion, what hope do the

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

rest of us have? A few weeks ago, I was zoning out, scrolling through Instagram, dinner recipes, museum pictures, selfies, and then I saw something that shook me to my core.

[Friend of John Gillen Hill]

Cheating had me around your whole family playing house, got cold feet holding you down through all your horrible mood swings and treatment toward me during your basketball season, and now you don't know if

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

you can be monogamous. Rapper Megan Thee Stallion said her boyfriend, basketball player Klay Thompson, cheated on her.

[Friend of John Gillen Hill]

Bitch, I need a real break after this one. Bye, y'.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

All. Next, the group chats activated immediately. My friends and I were stunned, shocked, and then enraged. The thing is, we don't actually know these people, and it's not the first time I've gotten worked up about a stranger's cheating scandal. Ariana Maddox and Tom Sandoval.

[Zoe Yu]

Fuck yourself with a fucking cheese grater.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Halle Berry and Eric Benet.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

This is the failure of my life. I love this man. And I thought I gave the best

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

I had to give Jay Z and Beyonce. Are you cheating Che Cheating on me? Even random Reddit situations that may be made up will still definitely raise my blood pressure. I'm Jonquin Hill, and this week on Explain It To Me from vox, the lowdown on our strong feelings about infidelity and how the rules may be changing. So why does cheating piss us off so bad, even when it's not happening to us? That's the question I asked sexologist and dating coach Maisha Battle.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

I think specifically with high profile couples, it's because we want to see them succeed or we're excited by the prospect of the drama that unfolds from a cheating story like the Coldplay executive cheating scandal.

[Zoe Yu]

Oh, look at these two.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

You're okay. Oh, what? Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy. We quickly want to identify who the villain is, who's been hurt, and then rally around the person that we want to support in that situation. Often it's very cut and dried. If you cheated, you're a bad person. If you were cheated on, you're a good person. And that's not obviously always the case, but because cheating happens so much, I think that's a really quick assumption that we can make and then kind of jump to our own conclusions and want to jump to the aid of the person who's been cheated on and then of course, jump on the person who has cheated.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Do we know why people cheat? Is there research on why people do this that that explains this behavior?

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

People cheat for so many reasons, from boredom to insecurity in the relationship, to wanting to exert power or revenge in a relationship. I really love the book the State of Affair by Esther Perel.

[Esther Perel (Author)]

Often when you are attracted by the gaze of another, it isn't just because you want to leave the person that you are with, but it is because you want to leave the person that you have yourself become.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

She really talks about the importance of delving into what the cheating meant for the person who cheated.

[Esther Perel (Author)]

What did this affair mean for you? Were you thinking about us? Did you hope I would find out? Did you think about the children and

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

what the impact was on the. The person who was cheated on?

[Esther Perel (Author)]

These questions are actually going to calm you and they give you a different sense of power over your life and over your relationship.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

If you can't really understand both sides of that and give space and process both, then it's not likely that you're going to get to a happy outcome on the other side of cheating. Which is why it is one of the main reasons why people split up. It's a huge fracture in trust. And to rebuild that means that you have to do the work to understand why did this happen in the first place? Cheating is a choice. Monogamy is a choice. Non monogamy is a choice. So when people are making these choices in relationship, they have consequences, and you have to be able to have conversations about why and how you repair from that.

[Vicki Etchison]

Yeah.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Can we talk about the non monogamy piece? I think especially ethical. Non monogamy, it's a phrase that's used more and more. It's tossed around quite a bit. Can people who are non monogamous cheat as well?

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

Oh, yeah. Yes. Because at the core of cheating is betrayal. So when I work with non monogamous couples or people that are exploring non monogamy, one of the first things that I do is talk about whether or not they want to create relationship agreements. Some people do, some people don't. And the people who don't maybe would identify with a more relationship anarchy style of relationship as opposed to someone who is wanting something that is very codified and making agreements that people say they're going to adhere to. Hey, we're going to be open. But you can only have sex with people who are not in our friend group and only one time. Right. That would be an example of having relationship agreements. Whereas relationship anarchy is like, I'm going to do my own thing. We're going to see each other when we see each other. You know, there's some intentionality about that, but it's not necessarily that you have these structures around who can do what with whom.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Have you ever been cheated on?

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

I have been cheated on, yeah. And actually kind of a similar. I hate to compare myself to Megan Thee Stallion and Klay Thompson, but this person cheated. We were living together. It was uncovered on Valentine's Day. It was pretty rough. And the way that he sort of told me that he had started seeing somebody was by saying, well, I'm not sure if I want monogamy. Right. And so that was a piece that came up in the Megan Thee Stallion post on Instagram, and I totally related to that. And I do think that there's definitely a person who is trying to figure out whether they can handle monogamy or non monogamy, and they find themselves in a situation where, oh, shit, you know, I can't handle monogamy. Right. There are people for whom that happens, of course, but are there people that use non monogamy as an excuse for their behavior? Absolutely.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

For anyone who's listening, who's going through this, who's gone through this, what are some first steps towards healing?

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

It is a trauma, and I think recognizing it and labeling it as such is a great first step. It's not just something that happened in your relationship. It has an impact on you. It may have an impact on whether the relationship continues. You know, in my case, it was my living situation. You know, I couldn't stay there. You know, it impacts so many things, and you're feeling all of that in your nervous system. It can create a PTSD response. It can certainly diminish your feelings of trust and safety in relationships of all kinds. So really having a lot of support during this time, whether that's family and community that just takes you in, no questions asked, like minded, or friends saying, you know, I've been through the same thing and whatever you need, let me help. Like my friend coming with garbage bags to just dump all my stuff and

[Vicki Etchison]

get me out of the house.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

Or, you know, starting therapy when you're ready. So, yeah, it sometimes takes a village to get through this. And I think that's actually really important to remember because most people will feel shame having gone through this experience. I think on both sides, you know, if you're not a complete monster, you do feel ashamed of being a cheater on some level. And that is an opportunity for healing as well. So I don't want to forget those folks that like, it's important to think about why you did what you did and what help you can get to make sure that you don't inflict that harm on other partners in the future.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

I think for a long time, the definition of cheating has been pretty straightforward. Oh, you're dating someone who is not your partner. You're having sex with someone who is not your partner. But I think the Internet and our online lives have even shaped infidelity differently. Has the definition of cheating changed?

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

The definition hasn't changed. I think that is still very much aligned with what we expect. It's a betrayal. It's a romantic betrayal. But the mode has changed. The modes, I guess I should say, and things that we don't even really think about because they're so second nature to us. Specifically related to technology can cause issues in relationships. And that's why I'm a big proponent of people talking about what their definition of monogamy is, if that's your expectation. I think now more than ever, it's important to talk about what it means to have fidelity in your relationship so that you can then define infidelity with a partner. So everything from following exes on social media to maybe you had some subscriptions to OnlyFans before you got into a committed relationship, what do you do with those? Do you continue? Is that okay? In some relationships it would be fully above board, and in others it will not be. And so if you continue those behaviors and your partner finds out, that may be something that leads to feelings of betrayal. So you can avoid that by being honest and having a conversation about, hey, this is what monogamy means to me. These are the things that are really important for me to feel trust and safety in the relationship. What about you?

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

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[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

I'm JQ back with more. Explain it to me okay, so I told my friends I was working on this episode about cheating and all the different ways people define it. And I was like, can you believe some people think liking an Instagram story counts as infidelity? They weren't shocked at all. In fact, a few of them thought I was being naive. To get fact checked there, I called up Zoe Yu. She's about a decade younger than me, and she recently pinned an article about something called micro cheating for the Atlantic.

[Zoe Yu]

Just like regular cheating, micro cheating is sort of nebulous and really hard to pin down because what goes for cheating in, like, one relationship might not actually count as cheating in another one. And I think it's very much dependent on the two people in the relationship to litigate what the, you know, proper boundaries of behavior are. One person might think that flirting with someone over text is cheating. Another person might not. And this varies, I think, a lot from relationship to relationship.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

So is it, is it purely digital thing?

[Zoe Yu]

It's not purely digital, but I think also just because of how tech driven a lot of our relationships now are, a lot of these small behaviors that might constitute a breach in, like the exclusivity of a relationship are very much digital. So this can mean having a online dating account or subscribing to someone's onlyfans. And then there are these emerging very little behaviors like hitting, like on someone's Instagram post or, you know, sliding up on someone's story.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Sliding on a story.

[Zoe Yu]

Sliding up on someone's story. And I think this is like something that as someone who's like, firmly in like the Gen Z cohort, I was explaining to, like, one of my older millennial friends just how much meaning that is suffused into something as tiny as a story, like, where a lot of Gen zers and even my friends will sit around and be like, what does it mean that he liked my story? What does it mean that he slid up and responded with so and so emoji? And I think it's because a lot of the times, the first ways that we were socialized with each other, at least in the Gen Z demographic, was actually through tech.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

You know, okay, it's interesting because on one hand I think it's very easy to sort of react, roll your eyes at like really, you think liking a story, you think liking a profile. But you know, I'm not above. You see someone cute and you're like, let me go back to that post from like a year ago. Hit like and you know, see what's happening. You know, I think we've all received the like little looking sideways emoji on a cute story, on a, on a picture of ourselves we posted. But it also seems like a lot to track. Does this mean people are tracking their partner's likes and other online activity?

[Zoe Yu]

Yeah, I think like one defining feature of micro cheating is how one sided it is where people are very much in an investigative mindset where you have all of these reels where girls are like, ladies, if he liked another woman's pose, it's because he liked what he saw.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

It's about respect. You're saying not only to me, but to the world, I think this girl's hot and I'm letting her know that

[Zoe Yu]

you have no sexual discipline, that you can't control your desires, that what you

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

have is not enough, that you're always seeking for more.

[Zoe Yu]

That's a weak show of character. What's really interesting about micro cheating is that people are attempting to assign meaning to something that is actually a lot more complex. And I don't deny there is information that you can glean from someone's online behavior and the way that they present themselves publicly on a profile. But also the human reality is much more complicated and much more hairy. And I think one aspect of micro cheating is that it sort of boils down all of the human contradictions and irregularities and things that you might not understand about a person into these very reductive data points. What's interesting is that the entire premise of microcheating is sort of couched on the assumption that if you snoop and you find something, this is kind of like uncorrupted evidence.

[Vicki Etchison]

Yeah.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

How much of this is actually less about the relationship itself and more about embarrassment. Like everything is very public facing. And I think of conversations with my friends where it's just like, I really like this guy. I hope he doesn't embarrass me. I don't know.

[Zoe Yu]

It feels like it's like a Sabrina Carpenter song, right?

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Yes. Please, please, please.

[Zoe Yu]

You might not actually object to your boyfriend liking some girl's post. What you actually might be concerned about is the message that it's sending to this person. Given the social meaning that we've now assigned collectively to likes and comments and follows. And so you might not actually think, oh, like, my boyfriend might be attracted to this person because he's following her on Instagram. And it might actually be the fear that, like, how is this going to reflect on me? How is this going to embarrass me? And how is it going to affect the way that other people see my relationship and whether or not my significant other is sufficiently loyal?

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Is it possible to have a full online life without micro cheating? I mean, is it reasonable to expect people not to post or share memes or do whatever it is we do online if we also want to be in a relationship?

[Zoe Yu]

I think the bar for exclusivity has gotten inordinately high to the point where people are demanding an exclusivity of emotion, of attraction. And you can't actually, like, share a laugh or share a private moment with anyone outside of this romantic relationship, which is supposed to be at the center of your life. And I think this is actually super damaging because it sort of closes off all of these really, really great relationships, friendships that are outside of a romantic concept, but you can't really reach for. If you think that, you know, every kind of small behavior might be potentially suspect.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Dang. Does this mean that, like, in order to find love, I'm gonna have to stop commenting? Need that on Michael B. Jordan's Instagram photos? Like,

[Zoe Yu]

in my opinion, by all means, go ahead.

[Vicki Etchison]

But this might.

[Zoe Yu]

This might vary from person to person.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

The reasons we fear cheating reveal a lot about us. So do the reasons we cheat. Up next, the other side of the story.

[Maria Sharapova]

Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode I sit down with high achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week on the show, clinical psychologist and founder Dr. Becky Kennedy and I unpack what it really means to raise kids today.

[Zoe Yu]

I think parenting is the most important job in the world and the one that has the most impact on your

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

world and the world.

[Vicki Etchison]

It is non stop.

[Maria Sharapova]

Check out pretty tough new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast.

[Maisha Battle (Sexologist and Dating Coach)]

Apparently,

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[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

This is Explain it to Me. I'm jq. We asked you for your stories about cheating. And we heard from a listener named Vicki Etchison who navigated infidelity with her husband.

[Vicki Etchison]

I had been married at that point for about 25 years. Wasn't an amazing marriage, but it wasn't terrible. My husband at the time was a good man and an excellent father. But yeah, we just had a lot of tricky things happening in our lives. My mother in law and nephew had just moved in with us because of an unexpected death in the family. My mom was very sick and I was a caregiver, caregiver for her. We had one child that was getting ready to graduate high school and move out of state and another one that was navigating the nightmare that is middle school. And on top of all that, we were having some financial issues. And so I was already working in a homeless shelter and I had to add a part time job at a, like just a retail job on top of that.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

That job turned out to be an escape. It was like every time she clocked in, she was walking into a different world.

[Vicki Etchison]

I made some friends and there was one woman in particular that I started hanging out with a lot after work. And when I would hang out with her, you know, we didn't talk about dying parents or teenage children or financial struggles. We gossiped about our coworkers and we, you know, complained about customers.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Eventually, that friendship grew beyond work.

[Vicki Etchison]

We had been friends for four or five months and we'd gotten to a place where we were doing things like snuggling while we were watching movies and she would like massage my shoulders when my neck was hurting. And I think if she had been a man, these would have been huge red flags for me. But she was a woman. And at that point point I had no idea that, that I was gay. Like it had never occurred to me to even consider it. Like I was married to a man and. And so none of those things were red flags to me. And then eventually the snuggling just became more and more until it became a sexual relationship.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

How did that relationship make you feel when you were in it?

[Vicki Etchison]

Yeah, it's a tough question. It's hard to say how I felt in the moment out loud because in the moment it felt really good. I Felt desired and. But at the same time I was able. My brain was completely relaxed and honestly, I didn't feel the pain of it until like only two months into the affair. Part of things, my ex husband found out and confronted me me with it. All of the, the pain and the guilt and the reality of what was happening hit me just like a tidal wave all at once. I was just in a panic because as stressful as my life was, I just felt like now I'm going to lose everything, I'm going to lose my kids and I'm gonna lose my job. And he was my best friend. Like we, we grew up as young adults together. He was. Yeah, it was, it was absolutely terrifying to me. But ultimately I knew that I was never going to be content in a sexual relationship with a man again. And he knew right away that it was not just the infidelity that caused everything, but he knew that he wasn't ever going to get that trust back. And so we just knew that it just wasn't going to be worth trying to hold on to.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

I want to thank you for sharing this. You know, it sounds, it sounds so hard because there's this relationship. You're also finding out more about yourself and your sexuality. You know, you're dealing with family. What's the aftermath been like for you?

[Vicki Etchison]

Probably about the first year was really rough. I lost a lot of relationships. My sister was very close to my ex husband and her two children were very close to him. And so they cut me out and my children were really upset. But now, you know, it's seven years later, almost eight years later, and I have rebuilt most of the relationships. Things are great with my kids and even my ex husband now is with a woman that can actually appreciate the fact that he likes to work out all the time, which I never could. And we're still good friends, you know, we. We're getting ready to plan our daughter's college graduation together and we, you know, put together our son's 21st birthday, like, so we're still doing all of the big events together.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

And Vicki fell in love again too, with another woman. Three years ago. They got mar. But she still struggles to forgive herself for what happened.

[Vicki Etchison]

I still feel the guilt of it, honestly, every day.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

Why do you think that is?

[Vicki Etchison]

I don't know.

[Zoe Yu]

I.

[Vicki Etchison]

Because there's like, if something happens to the kids or even to my ex husband, I feel like if I wouldn't have done this, if I wouldn't have had the affair, this wouldn't be happening. You know, the kids wouldn't be struggling with whatever it is. I just, I take that guilt on it and blame it on me having the affair. And I know that it's not real, but I just, I can't seem to let go of it. And I've, I've been through therapy for years, but my brain just wants to, to keep going back to. But if you wouldn't have done this, this bad thing wouldn't have happened. Definitely. If I could go back and do it again, I wouldn't do it that way. I would have some hard conversations. But also, both of our lives are in a much better place now than they would have been if we would have kept trudging through.

[John Gillen Hill (Host)]

And that's our show. We're doing an episode about the joys of home maintenance. Is there something you tried to fix and you wish you didn't? How's that TikTok tutorial working out for you? Tell us about it. 1-800-618-8545 or email askvoxox.com also a quick plug. If you like what you hear, consider becoming a Vox member. You get perks like ad free podcasts and you get to help us make the show. Head over to Vox.com members to learn more. This episode was produced by Kelly Wessinger and Hadi Milwaukee. It was edited by Ginny Lawton and fact checked by Melissa Hirsch with engineering by Bridger Dunnigan. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy and I'm your host, John Gillen Hill. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye.

[Vicki Etchison]

Sam.