When I started dating my wife back in 2014, I instantly understood why men cheat. And why most not-married people cannot fathom why someone will cheat on a spouse, who by all reasonable standards, looks like a catch.
This isn’t a defence of infidelity.
I want to point out a trap most of us fall into without noticing.
I call it the fallacy of the 20%.
There's a concept in neurology called habituation. It explains why the 20% is powerful. Your brain is built for efficiency, so with long enough exposure to the same stimulus, it acclimatises and then forgets about it. What once stood out to you slowly fades into the background. Not because the thing is less valuable now, but because it’s become predictable. It's now "normal".
Your brain basically says: if this is going to be here for a while, I don’t need to spend energy paying attention to it.
Instead, I'll look for what's not here. I'll seek out something new.
I think my wife is incredible. Truly. But no one is perfect. So there's that missing 20%. Traits she doesn’t have. Interests she doesn’t share. Ways of being she doesn’t embody. That missing slice doesn’t disappear just because the other 80% is solid. In fact, it is what catches my eye in other women.
Eldad, are you saying other women catch your eye? Yes. And if that line made you uncomfortable, we need to talk. Attraction doesn’t turn off because commitment exists. The difference is what you do with that attention. But that's probably an essay for another day.
Here’s where the trap forms.
When a thing is absent, the desire for it intensifies. Because it’s rare in your current life, it feels valuable. And because someone else carries it, your mind starts filling in stories.
When some men(and women) cheat, they’re not chasing a person as much as they’re chasing contrast. Novelty. The thrill of what hasn’t been domesticated by reality yet. Slightly funnier. Slightly more exciting. Slightly closer to a fantasy that’s never been stress-tested.
This is also why infidelity, once it starts, becomes cyclical.
This pattern first became obvious to me in my romantic relationship.
But once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I started noticing it in work. In ambition. In creative life. In leadership.
There is always a 20% you don’t have. Something that you wish existed. Something that you believe will complete your life.
So if this is an inevitable part of life, how do you deal with it?
Well, most advice will tell you to focus on the 80%. Be grateful. Reframe your attention. Count your blessings. That's true. Reframing is one of the powerful tools for a grounded, fulfilling life. But I think it's incomplete.
Because it assumes that if you focus hard enough on what you have, the sense of lack will go away. Sometimes the opposite happens. The more you try to pay attention to what you have, the more you're reminded of the piece of it that's missing.
A more interesting and perhaps honest approach is to accept that you will never have the 20%. Not in your relationship. Not in your work. Not even in yourself.
A unified life demands some rejections. The moment you choose one thing, you give up others. Paths you won’t walk. Temperaments you won’t have. Versions of yourself that will never exist. In economics, this is known as opportunity cost. The problem isn’t the lack. The problem is the delusion that it shouldn't exist.
In meditation, there’s a practice of welcoming unwanted sensations. Instead of tightening against discomfort, you sit with it. When you do that, something strange happens. The sensation loses its grip. Like a perfectly fitting puzzle piece, it siezes to stand out, and all you see is the final image. This is not an easy practice. But once you learn to do it, you're surprised by how effective it can be.
Imagine holding a rope loosely. Mild discomfort. Nothing dramatic. But the moment a force starts pulling from the other end, and you resist, pain arrives quickly.
The trouble is in the resistance.
What acceptance really does is free up headspace. And with more headspace, it becomes easier to enjoy what you already have.
I’ve come to believe this: enjoying what you have isn’t a discipline. It’s an emergent property. It emerges when you stop fighting reality.
This doesn’t mean accepting everything as fixed. There are problems to solve.
Skills to build. Systems to improve. Habits to change. These gaps respond to effort.
But there are also tensions to manage. Conflicting desires. Temperamental limits. Trade-offs between equally valid goods. These don’t disappear through optimisation. They soften through honesty. Trying to solve a tension is how people burn down good lives chasing imaginary upgrades.
I’m not sure who said this, but the idea has stayed with me: some things aren’t problems to be solved. They’re situations to be managed.
So name your 20%.
Don’t dress it up. Don’t minimise it. Don’t pretend it’s temporary.
Admit what you lack. Admit what you want. Admit what likely won’t change.
The 20% will always promise you wholeness, it can never deliver.
Don't let it fool you.