Experts have explained why cheating on your partner could actually ‘help' your relationship.
Dr John and Dr Julie Gottman, who specialise on 'marital stability and divorce prediction', have 50 years of experience in the field.
During an appearance on The Diary Of A CEO podcast, the US-based experts revealed why martial affairs are on the rise and how women are now 'catching up' to men.
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Dr Julie explained: "The thing that's interesting is that the stats for women having affairs has pretty much caught up to men now. But here's why.
"Before the' 70s and the women's liberation movement, women were stuck at home.
"They weren't out in the world working, they didn't have access to other things.
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"So you know, they were stuck at home having coffee around their kitchen table with their neighbour woman.
"But once they entered the workforce then they had access to a whole field of potential people out there and, so you know, they caught up.
"She doesn't have to stay in the marriage, she can support herself financially."
Host Steven Bartlett then asked if they have 'ever seen cheating help a relationship', to which Dr Julie replied: "Oh every time," before clarifying: "When there's recovery, not every time but very, very often when they get help.
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"If they don't get help it's going to get worse, but when they get help, the help can help them change all the patterns in the relationship and help them learn who the other person really is, what their needs really are, how they want you to turn up in the relationship, that they had no idea of before.
"So it can create more intimacy, a different kind of trust, of course, but more intimacy and more connection."
Overall, the Gottman doctors claim that affairs can be treated around 75 percent of the time - but only if the perpetrator gets the appropriate help from therapy.
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Before getting into therapy though, Dr Julie insists that the first step is that 'the person who did the betraying needs to respond totally transparently to every question the hurt partner asks them'.
An important caveat, she notes, is that the 'hurt partner shouldn't probably ask about
the kind of sex they had'.
The expert added: "Almost every person who suffered through an affair has PTSD from it, post-traumatic stress disorder, and part of post-traumatic stress disorder is having these images or flashbacks, which will come into your mind.
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"You don't want them there but they come in anyway and traumatic memory is different than regular memory."
She explained: "When a woman asks questions about sex and then gets the answers, guess what? Images now are like flooding her mind with the kind of sex they had, the partner and the affair partner that plagues her to an even greater degree and it's horrible."
Topics: Sex and Relationships
Anish Vij