Dec. 3, 2024 – Around her 10-year wedding anniversary, Allyson Arons found out that her husband was having an affair with one of her closest friends. The infidelity started a year after she had given birth to their third child. Her mental health quickly got worse; she started having panic attacks and anxiety beyond anything she'd had in the past – but that was just the beginning.
After Arons learned about the affair, her weight dropped and her body broke out with psoriasis. Her doctors later found multiple blood clots in her legs. She had never had any issues with psoriasis or blood clots.
“They ran all the tests and couldn’t find any reason why I should have blood clots, and there’s no family history of this either,” Arons said. “My doctors could only say that my central nervous system was so shaken up because I went through a traumatic event.”
Getting Cheated On Can Hurt You Physically, Too
Those who’ve gone through romantic betrayal often have a higher risk of stress, anxiety, and depression. That’s not surprising. But along with those mental health challenges may come physical ailments, too.
“There are higher risks of co-occurring medical conditions, especially endocrine and autoimmune disorders – anything that’s highly susceptible to stress,” said Kayla Jimenez, PsyD, a psychologist with a focus on relationship issues and a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
A vast body of medical literature can plainly tell you that, yes, stress can put your physical health at risk. But there is very little data-backed research examining how being cheated on can specifically impact long-term health.
The newest study used health data from the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) study, a large-scale, national study that examines how social and biological factors impact health and well-being for people between the ages of 25 and 74.
The researchers used data from 2,500 people. Even after controlling for gender and socioeconomic status, they found that those who reported romantic betrayal by a partner were more likely to also report chronic health issues. The research uncovered that people who have lower incomes and those from ethnic minority groups were even likelier to have health issues after a partner had cheated.
It’s one of the first studies to dive into how infidelity can influence someone’s physical health.
What Happens When It Happens to You
The first thing to understand if this happens to you is it’s like any other health issue in that it can be treated and managed – and the faster you seek help, the better. Chronic health issues can range from heart disease to sporadic migraines. Some issues – like Arons’s blood clots – can be life-threatening, and others can be a daily burden, like psoriasis.
“I think it's also important to remember that [in the study,] the overall effect sizes were small. What this means is that although there could be lasting links between being cheated on and one's chronic health, the impact is not so severe as to completely overwhelm all other aspects of life,” explained Vincent Oh, PhD, one of the study’s authors and a psychology lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. “This should give us some hope that the adversity of experiencing infidelity – while certainly extremely undesirable and distressing – is not insurmountable.”
The recent research found that having a supportive community outside of your relationship with friends and family members did not seem to ease the negative link between getting cheated on and chronic health issues.
This was a shock to both Jimenez and Oh because so much previous medical research has proven a positive link between strong support systems and better health outcomes.
Jimenez thinks this might be because of the shame wrapped up in talking to others about getting cheated on. Upon hearing the news that a loved one has been betrayed, a person often has a knee-jerk reaction to tell the victim to end the relationship, or to refuse to understand why the victim might decide to stay in the relationship. That can bring the victim even more stress.
While the newest research doesn’t explore this, Jimenez is curious about how the health of the relationship impacts the person’s ability to recover from negative health outcomes borne out of a betrayal. She wouldn’t be surprised, she said, to learn that people who are in loving and caring relationships recover more smoothly after infidelity than those who continue to stay in a conflict-ridden partnership.
While the research tells a different story, Jimenez says that in her experience treating clients, having a nonjudgmental, compassionate support system is a key factor in preventing poor mental health outcomes from worsening. And in theory, that should help ease the physical symptoms that follow. For all these reasons and more, there are still many questions left unanswered by standard medical research that should be addressed in studies to come.
In Arons’s case, she and her husband confronted the infidelity head-on, went to marriage and family counseling, and remain together to this day. Her honesty and vulnerability in sharing the infidelity with their four children and working through it as a family has been invaluable.
“I was able to show my children that relationships can be tested and still persevere,” said Arons. “We don’t talk about it shamefully, but my husband doesn’t want us to ever forget – he knows what he did was a complete violation of our commitment to each other.”
Ten years later, she feels her marriage is stronger than it was before the affair. Still, physical effects linger. She continues to see a hematologist and takes a blood thinner and anticoagulant medication twice a day.
