Can an honest woman cheat?

At Perfect Breakup, we’ve encountered a recurring pattern that men often fail—or refuse—to recognize when entering relationships with women who are still technically involved with another man. When a man starts a relationship with a woman who is currently in an unresolved or ambiguous relationship status, there is often a remarkable, at times even pathological, tendency to rationalize her infidelity. These rationalizations are frequently illogical to the point of absurdity.

From our consultancy work, we observe that if a man has been “the other man” prior to entering an exclusive relationship with such a woman, then the probability that her justification for cheating was merely that—a self-serving rationalization—is extremely high. Psychologists refer to this as motivated reasoning—a cognitive bias where individuals construct convenient narratives to reduce cognitive dissonance between their actions and their self-image (Kunda, 1990; Festinger, 1957).

In this case, a woman who cheats often preserves a self-concept of being “honest” or “faithful” by reframing the relationship as already broken, despite no formal or open resolution. From a psychological standpoint, this is not honesty—it’s emotional self-exoneration, often used by individuals high in self-serving bias or those employing moral disengagement strategies (Bandura, 1999).

The third-person perspective exercise

At Perfect Breakup, we’ve developed a simple yet powerful tool to cut through this self-deceptive haze. We ask the man to describe the woman’s story in the third person, without emotional involvement, as if he were advising a friend or narrating a scene from a film. This is crucial because emotional proximity distorts perception.

The results are often startling. Once emotional bias is stripped away, the story becomes grotesque—sometimes even laughable. A typical third-person reconstruction might sound like this:

“This woman is, allegedly, an honest, faithful wife, a victim of a toxic narcissist (a term suspiciously overused to label almost all exes), a loving mother of three, and yet, she just happened to fall into the arms of a masculine alpha—me. Her justification? She had ended the relationship in her mind, her partner didn’t listen, and so life pushed her into committing infidelity for love…”

When spoken aloud, the absurdity becomes self-evident. As a heuristic, if someone’s story requires elaborate justifications, hidden timelines, or overly emotional metaphors to make moral sense, it probably doesn’t.

Research in evolutionary psychology further supports this: cheating behavior is one of the most stable predictors of future cheating, and infidelity is rarely a one-off behavioral anomaly—it’s often embedded in broader personality patterns, such as high Machiavellianism, impulsivity, or low agreeableness and conscientiousness on the Big Five trait model (Barta & Kiene, 2005; Paul, 2006; Brewer & Abell, 2015).

The facts don’t lie

While it is always possible that a woman who engaged in infidelity was indeed “a victim of circumstance,” this interpretation is frequently a convenient emotional narrative rather than a reflection of reality. The alternative—less flattering but statistically viable—is that she is simply a woman capable of cheating in a committed relationship.

Empirical data on female infidelity paints a clear picture:

• According to large-scale studies such as those by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS, 2020), approximately 13% of married women report having cheated on their spouse at some point during the marriage.

• When looking specifically at long-term relationships without children, the figure is similar: around 12–15% of women have committed infidelity after 5+ years.

• However, the figure drops to 8–10% when children are involved, suggesting that maternal bonding adds a layer of moral or emotional restraint. That is, only about 1 in 10 women are both capable and willing to cheat on the father of their children during an ongoing relationship.
  
  

These women—while a minority—demonstrate a fundamentally different structure of internal values. For them, hedonic self-interest, novelty-seeking, and emotional escapism may rank above loyalty, commitment, or long-term family stability. In the framework we use at Perfect Breakup, this means their Structured Internal Value Hierarchy (SIVH) is aligned with individual gratification rather than collective fidelity.

But the statistical warning doesn’t end there.

The risk of repeat behavior

Cheating is one of the strongest behavioral predictors of future cheating. A study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior (Knopp et al., 2017) revealed that individuals who had cheated in one relationship were three times more likelyto cheat in a subsequent one compared to those who had never cheated. Similarly, research by Tsapelas, Fisher, and Aron (2010) shows that prior infidelity is a reliable indicator of future infidelity, particularly when the underlying motives are unresolved (e.g. thrill-seeking, resentment, emotional neglect).

This means that if your “dear new love”—with whom you are now building a relationship—has already demonstrated the capacity to cheat under pressure, your probability of being betrayed again is not marginal. It is not 5%, 10%, or even 20%. Based on conservative estimates, it can climb toward 40–50%, particularly when infidelity was justified through narratives of victimhood or spiritual “awakening.”

In essence: if she cheated with you, the likelihood that she’ll cheat on you is statistically close to a coin toss.

That is not cynicism. That is empirically supported risk awareness.

Never laugh at the cuckold — you might be next

One of the most dangerous illusions a man can hold is a sense of moral or relational superiority over the previous partner—the so-called "cuckolded" husband or boyfriend. We often hear statements such as: "He deserved it," "He was a fool not to see it coming," or "He didn’t know how to love her right." These are comforting delusions that create a false sense of security. They give the new partner—often the former lover—the illusion that he is somehow immune to the same fate.

But the brutal truth, supported by both psychological research and hundreds of real-life cases we have worked through at Perfect Breakup, is this:

If she cheated with you, there's a significant chance she will eventually cheat on you.

Studies from Psychological Science and Archives of Sexual Behavior consistently confirm that infidelity is highly recurrent behavior. Once the moral threshold has been crossed, and especially when it was rationalized rather than repented, the odds of repeat cheating in a future relationship increase dramatically. Some estimates place the likelihood as high as 70–75% when the previous cheating was part of a pattern rather than an anomaly (Knopp et al., 2017; Tsapelas et al., 2010).

The idea that the man "deserved it" is a form of psychological distancing—a defense mechanism to avoid facing the uncomfortable possibility that you are not special, but simply next. Men often live in what we call at Perfect Breakupthe Romantic Exception Illusion—the belief that their connection with this woman is so unique, so emotionally intense, that they will not be subjected to the same fate as her last partner. But this illusion is not grounded in behavioral probability.

Unless the woman has gone through a radical internal transformation—one that includes true self-reflection, remorse, personal accountability, and structured moral re-alignment—you are most likely dealing with the exact same person who cheated before, driven by the same unresolved psychological motives.

And transformation of this sort doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen because she met “the right man.” It happens through profound personal growth, which in most cases takes years, therapy, suffering, and a reevaluation of one’s value hierarchy.

So our advice is blunt, but clear:

Never mock the man she betrayed before you. Because unless something radical has changed in her, you are standing in his shoes—you just haven’t been told yet.