Few topics provoke more curiosity and anxiety than infidelity. The question of who cheats and why has long fascinated researchers and gossip columns alike.
Recently, dating platforms such as Ashley Madison and Illicit Encounters have claimed that nurses make up a large share of women seeking affairs, a claim that has fuelled a wave of dubious headlines about unfaithful healthcare workers.
According to Ashley Madison’s 2018 survey of more than a thousand users, 23 percent of women using the site worked in medicine, compared with just five percent of men.
A spokesperson suggested that stress and long hours might push women in these roles toward extramarital connections. Illicit Encounters, a similar UK-based platform, later echoed those findings, saying nurses were among their top female users.
These results tell us more about the dating sites’ members than about an entire profession. Research offers a far more nuanced picture.
A 2021 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that while 21 percent of healthcare professionals surveyed had been unfaithful, men were almost five times more likely to cheat than women. Night-shift workers were also significantly more prone to infidelity, suggesting that exhaustion and time away from home may play a role.
Ultimately, correlation is not causation. Stressful jobs can create circumstances where temptation or emotional disconnection thrive, but they do not determine behaviour.
Infidelity, psychologists agree, tends to stem from internal dissatisfaction with a relationship, oneself, or both.
The truth is that cheating cannot be reduced to a job title or gender. It is less about what someone does for a living and more about the emotional work they are, or are not, willing to do to sustain intimacy and honesty in their relationships.
