She's A Doctor Talking About Which Professions Are Most Likely To Cheat And How They Get Away With It

According to Dr. Sarah Hensley (@drsarahhensley), the people who cheat on their partners the most are those who often travel for work, those who work in the medical field, and stay-at-home moms. Now, she's on TikTok explaining why these groups are so prone to infidelity.

Dr. Hensley is a specialized social psychologist who has been studying attachment science for almost 20 years. It is important to note that her observation about cheating is not based on any national studies, but on data she has gathered from her years in practice.

"The people that I see doing it the most are people who travel for work for long periods of time," said Dr. Hensley.

"Obviously, not everybody who is in these professions is going to cheat, but a lot of them do. They are gone for weeks or days at a time, so it allows them to have more casual affairs when they are traveling with people that they do not know."

Those who cheat consistently with one partner tend to be in the medical profession. Of course, not every healthcare worker does this.

Next are stay-at-home moms, and they usually have more of an avoidant attachment style, or dismissive avoidance. Dismissive avoidants are considered the most likely attachment style to have an affair.

"When they are with a new partner, and that partner is low stakes, they can sort of do a vulnerability dump with that new partner, where their vulnerability has been shut down from the longevity, conflict, and expectation in their primary relationship," said Dr. Hensley.

The way that all these people are able to cheat is by having a second phone that their partners don't know about. They can share their location with their partner on the primary phone that's connected to their family phone plan.

Then, their other phone comes from another carrier on a month-to-month plan.

Halfpoint - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only, not the actual people

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They can leave their phones at work, at a hotel, or anywhere to trick their partners into thinking that they're where they're supposed to be. In reality, they're living a whole separate life.

"Usually, what I see behind that is something called effort justification, which is a social psychological theory that the more we risk we take with something, or the more effort we put into something, the more we are going to make it mean to us," explained Dr. Hensley.

"So, if you blow up your family or risk blowing up your family, you are going to view that thing you blew your family up for as being really great, even if it's not really great."

Unfortunately, mass cheating is all too common, and Dr. Hensley sees it a lot, as she is often working with clients who are dealing with these sorts of problems.