Why Do Avoidants Cheat?

What is it about the avoidant attachment style that leads people to cheat on their partners?

Can you even trust an avoidant to be faithful?

Why exactly do avoidants cheat?

A study by The University of Kentucky found that people with an avoidant attachment style are more likely to cheat than people with anxious or secure attachment styles.

But this doesn’t make sense, logically. Avoidants seem to need less intimacy than the rest of us. They’re always pushing away their partners so they can spend more time alone. It seems like they have more love than they can handle at times.

So then why do they end up cheating on those partners instead of just accepting the love that’s offered to them? Why take on someone new when they can’t handle what they already have?

Well the answer lies in what avoidants are getting from romantic relationships, or–more often–not getting.

But first, what is an avoidant?

Basically, we can divide people up based on how they handle intimacy in relationships. One of these groups is the avoidants. Avoidants fear intimacy so they find ways to keep their partner at a distance to prevent getting too close.

These are the ghosters, the one-word repliers, the people who push you away, and are always wanting space.

Why Avoidants Cheat

So then why do avoidants cheat? Surely, they want less intimacy, not more?

Well that’s exactly WHY avoidants will cheat a lot of the time. Or at least it’s the primary reason we see this behaviour.

1. Cheating is a way for avoidants to avoid closeness

Think about it this way. Avoidants aren’t avoiding everything.

They’re specifically avoiding closeness and intimacy—even more specifically they’re avoiding the tradeoffs that those things represent. It’s not just about having independence in their lives. It’s emotional independence they’re really seeking here.

They fear losing themselves in a relationship with another person. They think that if they connect too deeply then they’re going to lose track of where they end and the other person begins. It’s this fear of being subsumed, consumed by the relationship, that makes them act the way they do.

It’s kind of like claustrophobia. A claustrophobic goes into a cave and right away, they feel like they are being crushed. They have every reason to believe that they’re totally fine.

They may even have a very good reason to be in that cave. But they can’t make their mind and body understand that they’re safe. It’s happening on a subconscious level that they can’t explain away with logic.

Even though they want to stay in the cave, they have to actively fight their instincts to leave. If they let their guard down, their instincts will take over and they’ll find themselves moving towards the exit. Depending on how bad their fear is, they might yell, scream, and really embarrass themselves just to get away from this imaginary threat.

The Avoidant’s Trap

Avoidants can feel much the same way in a relationship. They want to be in the relationship. It gives them the love and intimacy that they crave as much as anyone else.

But even though they want it, it still scares the hell out of them. They don’t know how to accept it because they fear that that level of closeness will affect their sense of self. They don’t know how to give back the same love they’re receiving because they fear being relied upon by another person.

So they’ll enact a series of strategies to keep the other person at a distance. We’ve talked about several of these already. They’ll leave you on read. They’ll drag their feet on hitting certain milestones. And they’ll go cold when you get too close. They’ll reject you, again and again.

But, ultimately, they do love and care about you. They want you around. So if you’re able to get through their walls, you’ll be able to create something approximating a happy relationship with this person.

And they’ll love most aspects of this relationship but they’ll still feel that closeness encroaching on their sense of self and giving them that claustrophobic feeling that they can’t fight.

And avoidants are bad at communicating this because they know how hard it would be for you to understand and because they don’t actually know what can be done about it, besides breaking up.

So knowing that their attempts to get space have failed and caused big problems, they’ll be looking for something that they can do to get that distance emotionally. This feeling will fester in the back of their minds.

Because they know that cheating is wrong. It’s a bad decision and it’s going to hurt the person they love and possibly destroy the relationship. But they don’t see another way of getting that space that they feel they need.

So how does cheating create emotional space for the avoidant? Isn’t it just giving them more of the intimacy they’re trying to avoid?

Actually, no, it’s not. Cheating relieves their feeling of being trapped in a few ways.

First, keeping a secret from someone creates a wall between you and them. Because intimacy comes from sharing yourself and your life in order to connect with another person. It comes from knowing another person on as many levels as possible.

When you cheat you create this huge secret that your partner doesn’t know about. You’ve created a new level of your life that they have no access to.

Think of it this way. Say you go on a date with someone. You know so little about them and their life. As time goes on, you start to fill in the gaps. You learn where they grew up, their hopes and dreams. what their family is like.

As you enter into a relationship and become closer, you know more and more. Eventually, you basically know where they are at almost all times.

Before you ask them a question, you feel like you know what they’re going to say. You’re getting close to knowing them as much as you can know another person. And the more they let you in, the more intimacy you have.

But if your partner is cheating on you, or lying to you, you don’t actually have the intimacy that you think you do, not really. This is actually the best of both worlds for the avoidant, on an internal level.

Their partner thinks that they know everything and have achieved this solid bond, but the avoidant has this secret which means they don’t have complete intimacy. They have achieved a level of emotional distance and because it’s a secret emotional distance, they don’t have to give it up, or justify it to their partner.

This is rarely satisfying to the avoidant. Like I said, they want this connection with their partner. They want what’s in the cave. It’s some deep-seeded subconscious drive that is causing them to run away, to sabotage their own happiness. They’re like the drug-user who wants their fix even while knowing it’s destroying them and the people they care about.

And that’s actually another way that cheating helps them to avoid closeness. It gives them an instant out of their relationship any time that they feel things are getting too close. A way to break up.

As we spoke about, it’s so hard for avoidants to communicate their need for space. They struggle to have these conversations because it feels like a rejection of their partner and because they’ve already had so many fights over the same thing.

So instead of opening this Pandora’s box by sharing their needs, they now have a button to push that will end the relationship instantly without any messy conversations about feelings. And that is to either admit to cheating or let their partner catch them.

This is just one more way that avoidants have one foot out the door in their relationships.

If their cheating comes in the form of an ongoing affair, this allows them another escape valve for their anxiety around closeness. It’s just a simple fact that if you date multiple people simultaneously, you can’t be as closely connected to either one.

And this actually lines up with something that the University of Kentucky study found: avoidants tend to engage in more casual relationships with multiple partners when they’re not in committed relationships. This allows them to get some of the intimacy they want without the emotional commitment.

This is what they’re doing by having an affair. They get to have two people who they can go to for love, sex, and affection and they’re never afraid of getting too close because, by having the affair, they’re limiting their ability to connect. They don’t have to invest fully because they have options.

But limiting closeness is just one reason that avoidants are more likely to cheat. So let’s talk about another reason which is that…

2. Avoidants struggle to get their needs met in the relationship

We’ve talked about the fact that avoidants will do everything they can to keep others away from them, especially in relationships. But we also talked about how avoidants actually want intimacy.

So we have two options here. Either their partner is able to worm their way in and the avoidants receive intimacy in exchange for their independence, or their partner respects their need for space so the avoidant doesn’t get the intimacy they want. Either way, avoidants have a very good chance of missing out on one of their fundamental needs in a relationship.

And since avoidants are so bad at communicating, the chances that they’ll raise this issue and come to a compromise are very slim.

Instead, they will suffer in silence. They will resent you for failing to meet the needs that they have failed to share with you–a classic pattern in many relationships, regardless of attachment style. And then, since they still care about you and don’t want anything to change, they’ll opt to cheat to try to get these secret needs fulfilled.

But does it work? Does the avoidant get their needs met by having an affair?

It may hurt to hear this but the answer is yes, for a little while. And that’s actually another one of the reasons that avoidants will cheat.

3. A cheating relationship allows them intimacy without risk of being overwhelmed.

So they want closeness but they’re afraid to get any closer to their primary partner. How does an affair partner fit in? Well an affair partner is catnip to an avoidant because they feel so much safer than their primary partner does.

Since they don’t actually intend to end the relationship, oftentimes, the cheater will feel no fear of being overwhelmed by their affair partner.

Because of this, they’ll feel safe to be as intimate and loving as they want to be with this other person since they know it’s not in danger of becoming a real, ongoing relationship for very long. It’s like gambling with fake money.

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You’re not afraid to lose it all because you don’t really think you have it in the first place.

This is not to suggest that their actions aren’t going to hurt the avoidant, their affair partner, and–of course–their primary partner.

These affairs destroy lives and leave people shattered and unable to trust others for years afterwards. But funny things happen at a subconscious level when we start looking at love and intimacy in this way.

4. Avoidants are less committed because of their attachment style

Here’s something else that the University of Kentucky study found: avoidants tend to be less committed to relationships, full stop. It makes sense, right? As people who avoid emotional intimacy, they are often just less emotionally invested in their relationships.

So both because the relationship isn’t as close as it could be and because they’ve failed to truly empathize with their partners, they won’t feel as bad about cheating and so they’ll be more likely to do it.

The study found that they’re more likely to rate people outside of their relationships as more attractive and it “indicated that avoidantly attached people were faster to have their attention “caught” by attractive opposite-sex targets.” This means that avoidants are more likely to have their head turned by people who aren’t their partners.

Other studies have found that avoidance is associated with dishonesty, giving them a higher likelihood of acting on these feelings.

Can Avoidants Be Trusted Not To Cheat?

All this adds up to a pretty damning picture of avoidants when it comes to being faithful in relationships. But the study is far from conclusive. The truth is that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what attachment styles mean and how they can be used to predict human behaviour.

So don’t think that an avoidant is doomed to cheat and you should just leave them. The truth is that while they may be SLIGHTLY more predisposed to cheating, it’s far from a sure thing. Other studies have actually found that some aspects of the anxious attachment style actually predict infidelity as well.

Hopefully the information I shared has given you a window into the mind of a partner or an ex and helped you to realize that being cheated on is never your fault. It’s the result of complex psychological processes that are hard to identify and affect.

You can’t control their actions and you can’t watch them at every moment. Only they decide what they do. On top of that, your partner doesn’t cheat because you weren’t enough for them, or because you were too much.

While avoidance contributes to this issue, it’s ultimately a failing of impulse control and empathy that allows someone to betray their partner like this and you can’t hold yourself accountable for that.

So then what is your role in all this?

Well I think just being aware of your partner’s issues is the first step. You can help balance their need for intimacy and independence. You can learn to give them space, take things slowly and create closeness without smothering them. You can manage your own expectations and understand that them taking space isn’t a rejection, but a symptom of their attachment style.

And you should do all of this. Not because it will prevent cheating, but because it will help create a relationship where you both feel happier and more fulfilled.

Brad Browning

Brad Browning is widely regarded as the world's most trusted breakup experts, boasting over 12 years of experience working with clients from around the world. Brad's #1 best-selling breakup reversal guide, The Ex Factor, has helped more than 130,000 people from 131 countries to re-unite with an ex. Brad is also the author of Mend The Marriage, a comprehensive self-help guide that teaches married couples how to save their dying marriage and prevent divorce. Brad’s YouTube channel has over 400,000 subscribers and 50 million views, and he has been featured in a number of well-known media outlets and industry journals.