SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Nickerson, K., Rein, B., Gottman, J., Stone, R., Davies, R., Petrova, M., & Johnson, A. L. (2026). Should I Stay or Should I Go After Infidelity: Pathways to Relationship Preservation After an Affair Amongst Individuals Accessing Social Media Contents on Post-Infidelity Recovery and Reconciliation. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 1–22. doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2026.2680162

That's actually the first and only controlled study I've found that addresses at all whether there is actually an empirically demonstrable need to cut ties with an affair partner! Without overselling the work as perfect, the study's authors deserve credit for their groundbreaking work. Interestingly, the paper does not actually conclude that blocking an affair partner is mandatory for marital survival. On the contrary, the paper found that some couples still remained together even when the affair partner was not blocked, provided other repair behaviors compensated for it. For example, one pathway with no blocking but increased help at home still showed a relatively high probability of preservation (about 80%).

Very slippery terrain trying to formalize behavioral and trauma response as repeatable and replicable, especially due to the huge bias introduced by social media monitoring, the playground of ego, dysfunctional social behavior, validation and false performance ramped up to 11.

Finding tendencies as discovering the hot water is a thing. Drawing any conclusions needs real tact.

There is a non zero chance that it can be used to justify continuing abusive behaviors based on the dynamics between abused and abusers which are know since Stockholm and before.

I wonder how many might get excited about that 20% chance of keeping the affair partner and still successfully get "reconciled".

20% ain’t that bad, one in five, to keep doing it and still live consequences free for the cheater.

I can see this might get some excited.

One thing I have constantly stated here on SI is that there are very few constants in human behavior, and that our advice is very often based on odds.
In some ways it’s like using a seat-belt while driving. Using it won’t ensure you don’t get into an accident, nor does it guarantee you will get out of one unscathed. In fact – the odds of having a serious accident while driving are relatively low. You are more likely to eat or overdose on something that kills you, or fall off a chair or ladder, than to die in a road accident. Yet we always put on that belt…

Near standard advice here on SI is to ensure NC. One thing is 100% guaranteed: If a spouse is having a physical affair and accepts and respects total NC – the physical aspect of the affair is over. However, we know total NC is seldom achieved right at d-day.

It’s like our standard advice to tell the OP spouse. Our experience indicates that doing so increases the odds of the affair really being over, or at least makes it quicker to discover it isn’t. Doesn’t guarantee it’s over – but maybe jacks the odds up from 1/5 to 4/5.

To anyone using that survey to dispute the effectiveness of NC because 20% of those that reconciled still have some contact with the AP… We could reverse that logic to that 80% of those that reconciled didn’t. Eighty beats twenty every day in my books.

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I know of people that have reconciled and remain in contact with OP. In the instance I know of, both AP and the WS had a frank discussion and decided to remain in contact (joint business owners that socialized a lot) but the chemistry definitely changed. Took years for the situation to reach some stage of normality. So yes it’s possible, and in this instance possibly saved both families financially.
I also know of an instance I have often referred to where reconciliation first started making advances once the OW left the place of work of the WH. This despite there not being any real interaction at work, and the distances still within the range of a quick hookup at lunch, had they both wanted to.
I put both above instances to a) the commitment of the WS and b) the mentality of the BS. If the BS can be convinced the WS is committed and is open and accountable, then a BS can probably learn to live with the AP being somewhere in their lives.

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Finally:
A lot of research has gone into the special type of stress families of LEO’s and active military experience. Frankly – the biggest risk for a typical LEO is boredom. Yet research shows LEO’s have a higher rate of divorce, and that both LEO’s and their spouses have a slightly higher infidelity rate. Not much higher, but significantly the spouses of LEO’s – and active service military – are more likely to cheat than the "normal" spouse.
The reason is attributed to the special type of stress where you know that when you hear news of conflict, the sound of a siren, news of a shooting, see a government-looking Buick with two uniformed men drive down your street… creates a certain level of pressure on the spouse. This in turn can increase the risk of infidelity and/or divorce.

I think the "special type of stress" placed on the BS when the WS has to maintain contact with AP might be comparable.

ok. And....

Are you planning to show that to your wife to convince her? Because you could you show me a million such studies, and I still wouldn't accept that in my marriage. My prerogative in my marriage.

Edit: Honestly, I would file for divorce for asking. To me, it simply means you aren't dedicated to the marriage. What's the point if you need to be friends with that person?

[This message edited by KitchenDepth5551 at 4:42 PM, Saturday, November 14th]

duplicate.

[This message edited by KitchenDepth5551 at 4:17 PM, Saturday, November 14th]

duplicate.

[This message edited by KitchenDepth5551 at 4:17 PM, Saturday, November 14th]

Note that there's a difference between what SIers call 'R' and 'staying together.' R requires rebuilding - and sometimes just building - a new M. One requires nothing more than passivity or settling for staying in the same household. The study focused on relationship preservation more than the quality of the relationship that was preserved.

I'd hypothesize that the quality of the relationship varies with the work put into the relationship by the partners. What kind of relationship do you want? What work are you willing to do to get it?

*****

How is this a controlled study? It's not a study. It's a survey, an anonymous survey, of people who are not neutral in their desires and who self-report. The subjects want to preserve their relationships, so it's skewed to begin with. Self-reporting has its place; it's about the best we can hope for WRT infidelity. But it's not as useful as observing behavior.

They classify the subjects into 'ended A + R' and 'Not ended A + R'. I think I'd get more from the report if they reported separately on 1) those who ended the A and R'ed, 2) ended the A and split, 3) didn't end the A and R'ed, and 4) didn't end the A and split.

The authors do not cite Peggy Vaughan's Help for Therapists (and Their clients), still available on Amazon and probably other sites as well, which reports the result of over 1,000 surveys. It's not new, but the numbers are probably still relevant, since human nature hasn't changed that much in the last 30 years. See Help for Therapists and their Clients.

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[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:34 PM, Saturday, November 14th]

I saw this study too. Sisson’s absolutely right, it’s not a controlled study. They asked people who visited their sites to fill out a survey. So it was not a random sampling of people, it was people who were online looking for relationship advice. As the authors themselves note:

"The high levels of relationship preservation recorded in this study are not generalizable to the general population due to characteristics of the sample—recruited through social media communities focused on recovery and reconciliation after infidelity—but are likely to be indicative of tendencies amongst individuals motivated to work toward such outcomes."

As Sisson also noted, they did not examine the quality of the reconciliation. They divided the world into two groups: those that maintained their original relationships and those that did not. So, none of the results can tell you if you can reconcile and be happy about it.

For example, this finding:

A highly effective (88%, 2% of sample) yet arguably pathological pathway of staying together was a long and convoluted pathway amongst betrayal-experiencing partners which passed through questions not answered; affection not stopped; affair partner not blocked; partner not helping more at home; some support from friends and family or not told anyone; partner continuing to lie and no social media help received, with the pathway ending in being blamed for the affair (by the partner who had the affair). Moreover, being blamed resulted in double the likelihood of relationship preservation than not being blamed (88% vs. 43%). It appears likely that this rather negative pathway picks relationships characterized by an underlying emotional dependency, power imbalances, and fear of abandonment, which lead the betrayal-experiencing partner to accept some blame for the affair. Further research on the issue is warranted.

Yikes.

I think the authors are missing something here, too:

Finally, some of the surprising findings from the study were those around truth telling. "Coming clean" (in the case of commitment-breaking partners) and receiving answers to one’s questions (in the case of betrayal-experiencing partners) tend to be thought of as a foundation for reconciliation, rebuilding trust, and rebuilding the relationship. Psychological lore would assert that the person who had been lied to experiences a deep need to receive answers and to feel like there are no more secrets. Otherwise they may not be able to feel, once again, safe in the relationship, regain trust in the other person, and decide to recommit. Empirical research too bears such ideas out. For instance, Afifi and colleagues found that admitting the affair was strongly correlated with forgiveness…

Findings from this study were ambivalent in terms of truth telling. For instance, both answering and not answering a partner’s questions were found to be part of very effective pathways to relationship preservation. Clinical experience suggests that there may be temporal dynamics around truth telling after an affair. On the one hand, it is very common for commitment-breaking partners to slowly trickle truth out over time. On the other hand, betrayal-experiencing partners may, initially, be experiencing a trauma-related/protective response of heightened levels of doubt and suspicion toward anything their partner is saying and thus believe there is more to be told than has been told. Nevertheless, findings are also compatible with the possibility that after some affairs, in some relationships, and for some people full disclosure is not the best policy. Factual completeness may involve painful details which lead to worsening of rumination and thus hinder emotional repair. Clarifying the truth of the past may also make it harder to envisage and create a different reality—a different truth—for the future. In light of findings of this study, truth telling is less likely to be a monolithic phenomenon and a certain therapeutic value in relationship preservation after infidelity than a multidimensional phenomenon whose therapeutic value varies across people, relational contexts, and stages of recovery.

Maybe they’re right, and it certainly makes sense that some people will reconcile better without knowing the truth of the affair for the reasons they suppose. But, that also looks an awful lot like a description of rugsweeping. And if all you’re measuring is whether people D or not, well, rugsweeping is a very effective way to stay married. Just not happily married, probably.

And I’m a little surprised if not troubled that they didn’t discuss this result: if you look at Supplement 4, the results from the BSs: 3% of those that R’d say they’re healed from the A (versus 11.5% who D’d). Not great!

I do think the finding that the BS telling their friends and family about the A makes R less likely is super interesting and probably the most important finding in the study.

[This message edited by Letmebefrank at 9:07 PM, Saturday, November 14th]