There’s a conversation that inevitably plays out online whenever an attractive celebrity is cheated on: how did someone so hot get betrayed? Most recently, we saw it after Megan Thee Stallion accused her now ex-boyfriend, Klay Thompson, of cheating on Instagram. Even The Sims account weighed in, tweeting: “If you can’t handle a Hottie stay out of the kitchen.” Before that, Emily Ratajkowski confirmed that her then-husband had cheated, sending ricochets across social media along the lines of: “If Emrata gets cheated on, what hope is there for any of us?” And before that, there was the same reaction to Jay-Z allegedly cheating on Beyoncé. So if it happens time and time again, why are we still so surprised when people cheat on their hot partners?

While what counts as infidelity depends on the boundaries of each relationship, cheating in general is more common than most of us would care to admit. In one recent survey, almost half (46 per cent) of American women reported that a partner or spouse had cheated on them. I’m not an infidelity researcher, but from my own observations over the years, almost all the beautiful women I know who date men have, at one point or another, experienced some form of infidelity, whether that means sex or flirty text messages. It’s a head-scratcher that leaves you wondering why a man would fumble someone with so much going for them. But the reality is that cheating is rarely a neat story about no longer finding your partner attractive.

Brooke*, a 28-year-old in New York, says she cheated on the most attractive person she’s ever dated. “I was super gassed that I had this hot ass boyfriend, but behind the scenes, emotionally, he acted like a toddler,” she says. “His attractiveness was all he had, so when that started to wear off, I craved emotional intimacy and connection that I sought elsewhere.” She found this with her boss, a less conventionally attractive man who treated her well and praised her for her intelligence. 

Rachel Wright, a psychotherapist based in New York, says cheating often stems from a sense of disconnection – either from the self or from a partner – as well as identity exploration, avoidance, and the very human urge to feel new and wanted again. In other words, it is often the result of something happening both within the cheater and within the relationship. “Cheating tends to be much more about the cheater's relationship with themselves than about the partner's body, magnetism, or hotness,” she says. “The people I sit with in my office who have cheated often talk about being bored with themselves and chasing some version of themselves they have lost, avoiding hard conversations that they didn’t know how to have, or feeling invisible in their own lives long before another person came into the picture.”

“Cheating tends to be much more about the cheater’s relationship with themselves than about the partner's body, magnetism, or hotness”

Trying to understand where infidelity comes from is not the same as downplaying its impact: a 2024 study showed that the effects of being cheated on by a romantic partner can extend beyond emotional pain, potentially harming long-term health. What is also true, however, is that as a society, we tend to flatten the complexities of infidelity into a question of desirability. Online, especially, cheating is treated as a punishable offence — just look at the commotion surrounding Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot, the couple (both married to other people) caught cuddling on the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert last year. Cabot received hundreds of calls a day after the video went viral, along with death threats and comments about her appearance, even though she and her husband were reportedly already separated.

Without excusing cheating, relationship expert Lauren Salaun says it can be easy to frame infidelity as solely the cheater’s problem. By recognising that cheating happens within the dynamic of a relationship, Saluan hopes people will feel more empowered to have transparent conversations about boundaries – and about the qualities they want to look for in a future partner. “It’s so much more about impulse control, character and integrity than it is about how incredible their partner is,” she says. “Attraction does not equal loyalty, because loyalty is a product of your values with a person. If you’re banking on attractiveness as the number one thing, then it’s not enough to anchor a relationship.” 

Christine*, a 25-year-old Kentuckian, says she cheated on her objectively “hot” partner because she had low self-esteem. “They were successful, received a lot of attention from other people, and seemed like the total package, which was just too overwhelming to a certain degree,” she says. “I was looking for outside validation, and I have this common theme in relationships where I feel like the other person is waiting to break up with me, so I made the decision to sleep with someone else.” 

“Women are socialised to believe that being good, attentive, sexy, and accommodating is what keeps a man faithful. This puts the entire emotional weight of fidelity on the woman's body and behaviour” 

I tried to speak to men who had cheated, as so many of our ideas about infidelity are shaped by patriarchal cultural scripts, but – shock, horror – none of the men around me would admit to it. These gendered narratives help explain why there is such an emphasis on women staying “hot” in a relationship, as though attractiveness might offer a kind of faux protection against being cheated on by men, who we’ve come to assume will stray whenever the opportunity presents itself and the “other woman” is attractive enough. It’s in his nature, after all. The tired “boys will be boys” logic can frame male infidelity as biology, while women who cheat tend to come under far harsher moral scrutiny. “Women are socialised to believe that being good, attentive, sexy, and accommodating is what keeps a man faithful,” says Wright. “This puts the entire emotional weight of fidelity on the woman’s body and behaviour.”

How we think about fidelity today often operates through what Wright calls a “reward system”, where being hot or successful enough is supposed to earn you loyalty. “Hotness is one of the few currencies women have been told they can rely on,” she says. “So when someone like Megan or Emrata gets cheated on, our brains short-circuit, but no one is immune to being cheated on.” The shock people feel, Wright suggests, is actually grief in disguise. The illusion that you can somehow “keep” a man by staying desirable – working out, doing your hair and makeup, and staying on top of beauty treatments – falls apart. No hotness shield can protect us from betrayal.

It can feel like we’re supporting women when we say Megan Thee Stallion or Beyoncé were too hot to be cheated on, but by placing attractiveness at the centre of the cultural conversation around infidelity, we reinforce the same narrative that holds women responsible for staying “worthy” of loyalty. It implies that people who aren’t conventionally attractive are somehow more deserving of the trauma of betrayal, while also reinforcing the idea that men are – and should be – driven purely by physical desire. It also flattens infidelity into a simple question of hot or not, good or bad. “I want us to move away from infidelity as a moral verdict and toward infidelity as information, and stop treating the partner who was cheated on like a defective product,” says Wright. “Their worth has nothing to do with someone else’s choices.”

* Names have been changed