The clip is less than a minute long, but you can practically hear group chats fizzing. On Lock Upp Season 2, Akanksha Chamola looks Ram Kapoor dead in the eye and says, in essence, that cheating is not a slip. It is a sequence. You undress, you touch, you finish. That does not happen “by mistake.”

Ram pushes back with the classic defense: in a long marriage, during a bad phase, a one time lapse should not automatically be a dealbreaker. If you have ever sat across from a friend over martinis while she whispers, “He says it just happened,” you know this argument well. So who is closer to what experts actually see – the “error” camp or the “choice” camp?

From Reality Show Clash To Real Life Question

Akanksha Chamola Calls Cheating A Process

Akanksha’s point is brutally practical. To be physically intimate with someone, you have to send the text, meet up, ignore the voice in your head, remove clothing, and keep going. That is a chain of conscious micro-choices, not a banana peel on the sidewalk.

Ram Kapoor Argues For The One Time Lapse

Ram speaks to a truth many married couples know: long relationships go through dead seasons. In that exhaustion, a fling can be framed as a “mistake” – unfortunate, regrettable, but not the whole story of the marriage. The split between their views is really a split in language. Are we talking about intent, or about regret?

What Counts As Cheating In A Relationship

Four Flavors Of Infidelity

Psychologists define infidelity as secret sexual, romantic or emotional behavior that breaks the exclusivity your relationship is built on. It is not just hotel-room drama. There are four main types:

Sexual cheating, emotional cheating, combined (both emotional and sexual), and internet infidelity – that late night DM spiral or explicit chat you conveniently label “just online.” The mistake-versus-choice debate applies to all four, not only to intercourse.

Is Cheating Really A Mistake Or A Choice

Why Psychology Sides With The Choice Camp

Research across multiple studies lines up more with Akanksha than with the “it just happened” chorus. Infidelity involves intention, even if it is messy, conflicted or later regretted. You choose to respond to the flirt, to hide the chat, to book the room. Each step is a decision, however fast it feels in the moment.

Impulsive, Yes Helpless, No

One 2016 study found that sexual impulsivity is linked to risky sexual behavior, including cheating. Translation: some people are quicker to chase immediate gratification. But impulsivity is a trait, not a destiny. You can be impulsive and still say no. You can also be stone cold cautious and still decide to have an affair.

Power, Ego And The “I Can Do Better” Fantasy

New work in Archives of Sexual Behavior suggests powerful people are more likely to stray. When someone feels they bring more to the table – more money, more fame, more social capital – they are more aware of “better options” and less committed to the partner they already have. “The belief in having other options … can weaken their commitment to their current relationship,” Harry Reis says. Again, this is context, not a cosmic accident. Opportunity knocks; choice opens the door.

Two Types Of Cheaters Therapists See

The Relational Cheater

French couples therapists often talk about the “relational” infidel. This person cheats to find what feels missing at home: sex, affection, calm, admiration, basic emotional safety. The relationship is cracked, and the affair grows in the fracture. Both partners are co-responsible for the state of the relationship – but the moment someone crosses the line, that act is their choice alone.

The Personal Or Chronic Cheater

Then there is the “personal” or chronic cheater. They cheat in every relationship, even ones they describe as happy. Sometimes there is a family script (a chronically unfaithful parent), sometimes it is thrill seeking or a need to seduce just to feel alive. Here, the betrayed partner is not responsible. The pattern belongs to the cheater, full stop.

Why Calling It A Mistake Changes The Healing

For The Partner Who Cheated

Language is not cosmetic. “I made a mistake” can sound like, I tripped. “I made a choice that hurt you” acknowledges agency and harm. A 2023 affair-site study led by Dylan Selterman found married people in affairs reported high sexual and emotional satisfaction and surprisingly low regret. “These findings paint a more complicated picture of infidelity compared to what we thought we knew,” Selterman says. In other words, a lot of “mistake” talk after the fact is about PR, not transformation.

For The Partner Who Was Betrayed

If you accept the “mistake” framing too quickly, you risk gaslighting yourself. Seeing cheating as a choice lets you ask sharper questions: What was happening in our relationship, and what was happening in their character? Is this a one time collapse of boundaries, or part of a pattern I have been minimizing?

Can You Actually Stop Yourself From Cheating

Perspective Taking As A Practical Tool

Gurit Birnbaum and Harry Reis have shown that a simple mental move – perspective taking – can cool desire for that tempting colleague. Participants were asked to imagine a flirtation from their partner’s point of view, right down to the conversation they would have if the cheating came out. “Perspective-taking does not prevent you from cheating, but it lessens the desire to do so,” Reis says. Less desire equals more room to choose differently.

Boundaries, Alcohol And The Hotel Bar Problem

No, you cannot control every attraction. You can control the set-up. Do you keep texting the person you are low-key into, under the guise of “venting about work”? Do you keep drinking when you are already tired and annoyed at your partner? People often cheat when they are depleted – too drunk, too exhausted, too lonely – to access their better judgment. “People often cheat not because they planned to do so. Rather, the opportunity presented itself and they were too depleted … to resist the temptation,” Birnbaum says. Depletion makes saying no harder, but it does not delete the fact that you still said yes.

Where Experts Land On Akanksha Versus Ram

So is cheating an error or a choice? Psychology suggests it is always a choice, made inside a particular context – bad marriage, intense power, poor skills, sheer exhaustion. You can deeply regret that choice and change. You can also dress it up as a “mistake” to dodge accountability. Akanksha’s insistence that infidelity is a process forces everyone to look at each tiny decision along the way. That is uncomfortable. It is also where real repair, or a clean exit, finally begins.