'I'm an affairs counsellor. These are the real reasons women cheat.'

Every day, Catriona Lightfoot sits down with couples who are living through something most of us hope we'll never face: an affair.

Catriona, who is a relationship counsellor and educator with Affair Recovery Australia, has seen it all.

"I work with affairs that cover the whole spectrum," she told Mamamia. "From one-night stands and text-only affairs, through to long-term random or regular encounters. I also have a speciality of affairs that involve children born of the affair.

"The couples who find me to help them want to explore whether they can rebuild their marriage after an affair.

"Some are sceptical… but are looking for what is possible. Many have been told by other therapists that their relationship won't survive, but that doesn't sit right with them. I support them to do the work needed to recover."

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The word "affair" is often treated as shorthand for sex and betrayal, but the reality is far more complicated.

"Affairs can be just sexual, just emotional, or both," she said. "They can be in person and, nowadays, can also be via text or messaging apps…. in some cases, the two people have never met up."

But the type of affair "really doesn't matter."

"The devastation for the couple is huge and real and not related to the intensity of the affair but rather the meaning they attach to the betrayal," she explained.

So, why do women cheat?

It's all about numbing a type of pain.

"When I look for reasons people have affairs, I look for the areas in their lives that are causing them pain — sometimes pain they are not even fully aware of feeling," Catriona explained.

"This pain makes them more vulnerable to the heady hit of dopamine that the initial attraction stage of an affair can provide."

That pain can come from different places. Sometimes it's personal: "self-esteem; lack of self-love; perfectionism; shame; emotion dismissing or ignoring how you feel; attachment style other than secure; dissatisfaction with life choices, like career or career break at home with kids or trying to juggle both."

Sometimes it's about the relationship itself.

"Needs not being met; not feeling like an equal; spending a lot of time apart or structuring life separately, like no couple time and recreation spent with friends instead of partner; relationship expectations – high or low."

"When relationship vulnerabilities show up it's no one's fault," Catriona said. "Relationships are a system that develops over time, and it's hard to change that system without knowing how or even that the system is there."

One of the biggest misconceptions Catriona wants to challenge is the idea that affairs only occur within "bad marriages."

"Absolutely nothing," she said firmly when asked what affairs reveal about the state of a relationship.

"Affairs happen in good relationships and struggling relationships. Affairs are totally about the person who has the affair," she said. "The idea that 'Affairs only happen in bad marriages' or 'there must have been something missing at home' are myths that are repeated because couples who have not had an affair in their relationship want to believe it cannot happen to them.

"Actually, affairs can happen in any relationship, and believing it can't is a vulnerability that leads to the slippery slope."

She also wants to bust the myth that women's affairs are always more emotional than sexual.

"Just like for men, they can be emotional or sexual or both," she said. "There is still a stereotype that men enjoy sex more than women. Research has shown this is not true."

Catriona Lightfoot is an affairs counsellor. Image: carolinalightfoot.com.au

And if you imagine an affair is about planning an escape, that's also not what she sees.

"In most affairs, especially between affair partners who are both married, it is never discussed and often not even thought about. Affairs serve a purpose in the moment and most do not think past that moment," she explained.

In fact, said the counsellor, most women who cheat "cannot articulate or pinpoint a decision point".

"Falling into an affair is more a slippery slope of opportunity presenting itself or being cultivated at a time of high vulnerability," she said.

Regardless, the impact on women themselves is often devastating.

"Maintaining a double life and keeping big secrets is emotionally draining, to say the least," said Catriona.

"While a woman is in an affair, how well she maintains her mental health will largely depend on how well she can compartmentalise her life into areas that don't overlap within her emotionally – if she can maintain an 'everything is normal' front with her partner and be in the moment with her affair partner, she has a chance."

Even when the affair ends, there's an emotional toll. "In the recovery phase, there is a combination of shame and remorse often without a good sense of self-compassion and self-kindness – it's like an emotional roller coaster."

If there's a pattern to when affairs happen, Catriona said it's often during life transitions "as they involve change, which often comes with grief and loss, and questions about identity and direction."

In those moments, she said, "when faced with grief, connection is what we need the most."

"An affair provides an escape and a feeling of connection through the heady brain chemicals such as dopamine that numb the pain," she said.

At the heart of her work is the reminder that affairs shouldn't be reduced to stereotypes or easy answers.

"Women also get blamed – woman as seductress – and get a reputation. I have heard horrendous stories about affairs in workplaces where men get promoted out of the area and the woman's career is stalled, and she essentially has to leave. It takes two to have an affair," she recalled.

For the counsellor, affairs are about human vulnerability, pain, and choices.

"Affairs do a lot of damage to both people in the relationship, both emotionally and psychologically," she said.

"They can happen in any relationship, to any person. That's why the work I do is not about judgement. It's about understanding."

Feature Image: Getty (Stock image for illustrative purposes only).