Divorce lawyer explains difference in how men and women cheat and how to spot signs

A straight-talking divorce lawyer has revealed the biggest differences between how men and women typically cheat.

With more than 20 years of experience dealing with messy marriage breakdowns, New York divorce lawyer James Sexton has seen just about everything.

He sat down with us at LADbible to share what he's learned about infidelity, and the patterns that keep cropping up.

When asked which sex was more likely to cheat, based on what he's seen in the field, the lawyer said that, while 'men and women both cheat a lot,' the difference is that 'men cheat more, but women cheat better.'

"Like, women go big or go home, you know?" he continued.

"Men just do dumb s**t a lot of the time."

He also noted that men 'get caught more often than women do,' while women are 'better about it in terms of how they hide it.'

Noting that not all cheating is 'created the same,' Sexton told LAD that men and women also react to being cheated on quite differently.

"Although it's not a popular thing to say out loud... When a man finds out that his wife has cheated, his first question is 'did you f**k him?'

"When a woman finds out her husband cheated, her first question is usually 'do you love her?'"

James Sexton spoke marriage breakdowns with LADbible. (YouTube/LADbible)

The lawyer noted that this subtle difference 'says a lot about what happens in these dynamics.'

He says that, while the latter question translates to 'What does this mean to you?' or 'Does this person mean more to you than I do?', the former is 'Has this person taken my property?' or 'Has this person touched my property?'

He told LAD: "It says something about our internal biases about how we approach our spouse and approach marriage."

Elsewhere in his interview, Sexton revealed that cheating is present in 'a lot of divorces', comparing it to a 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' situation.

From his experience, the divorce lawyer said that it can sometimes be hard to tell if a couple is 'divorcing because of cheating' or 'cheating because [they're] ill-suited for each other and were likely to divorce.'

Referring back to the Ten Commandments in the Bible, Sexton concluded that cheating 'has been a problem for a really long time,' but couldn't quite say whether it was more often 'the cause of divorce' or the 'symptom of divorce'.

One thing he was sure of was that it's extremely common for the two to go hand-in-hand.

"How many divorces is cheating a part of?" he said. "I would say a good 75-80%".