Affairs are often a search for a lost self, not a new partner

Perel repeatedly finds that people who cheat are rarely chasing a better lover; they're chasing a version of themselves they feel they've lost. Marriage, parenthood, and career often require people to shelve certain traits — spontaneity, sexual boldness, ambition — that once defined them. An affair can become a covert reunion with that shelved identity, a way of feeling desired, funny, or adventurous again after years of feeling flattened into a role like 'spouse' or 'parent.' This doesn't excuse the deception, but it explains why so many unfaithful partners insist, sometimes truthfully, that leaving their marriage was never the goal. They weren't running toward someone else so much as running back toward an earlier, less constrained self. Takeaway: the more useful question after an affair is often not 'who were they with' but 'who were they trying to become.'