Infidelity: Is Loyalty Still A Value Or Just A Vibe?

On a warm July night at the Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Boston, thousands of Coldplay fans sang their hearts out under a canopy of lights. Couples held hands to Fix You, exchanged glowing wristbands, and let Chris Martin remind them — for a couple of hours — what love could feel like. And then the kiss cam (jumbotron) zoomed in on two people who, for a moment, embodied that love. Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his HR head Kristen Cabot were caught on screen, leaning into each other, hands clasped, faces sheepish when they realised the world was watching. 

By the next morning, everyone knew the truth: they weren’t just coworkers. They weren’t just shy. They were having an affair. And somehow, no one was really surprised.

When the Glow Fades

Byron, married with children, resigned within days. Cabot, also married, was placed on leave. Both families have reportedly “gone dark”, and Astronomer’s work culture is under scrutiny. There’s outrage, sure — but also that cynical undertone we’ve all grown used to. 

It’s the same refrain every time another public cheating story breaks: Oh well. Everyone cheats anyway.  

That’s what makes this moment so telling, and it is so troubling.  

We sing about love that stays. We post about trust and devotion. We want partners who choose us and only us. And yet, our culture has somehow accepted cheating as an inevitable footnote to every love story.  

In the age of dating apps, infinite swipes, and “you deserve to be happy” it feels like everyone is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A Culture of Options and Excuses

In recent years, surveys have shown nearly 1 in 3 millennials admit to having cheated, while many more rationalise it as sometimes “understandable.” Infidelity is no longer always whispered about — it’s joked about on late-night TV, it’s meme-ified, it’s written off as a symptom of boring marriages or unfulfilled needs. 

We tell ourselves: better to cheat than to feel trapped. Better to follow your heart than to honor your word. 

But here’s what we don’t say: when you cheat, you don’t just break a promise to someone else — you break your own ability to live with integrity. 

Byron and Cabot didn’t just disappoint their spouses. They didn’t just put their company in legal jeopardy. They broke the very trust that makes love and leadership even possible. 

Why Coldplay? Why Us?

What’s ironic about this story is the setting. At a Coldplay concert, you’re reminded — even if just for a night — what it feels like to believe in the kind of love that stays.

We still crave that. We still scream the lyrics to The Scientist: “Nobody said it was easy / It’s such a shame for us to part.”

We still dream of someone who fixes us when we’re broken, who chooses us even when we’re difficult, who stays even when it’s not convenient.  So why can’t we seem to live up to that dream?

Maybe it’s because love — real love—isn’t sexy. It’s not easy. It’s not a constant rush. It’s a series of choices. Choices that don’t always feel thrilling in the moment, but that build something much deeper over time.  

What We Lose When We Shrug

If we keep treating cheating like a harmless inevitability, we risk hollowing out the very thing we claim to value: trust. And trust isn’t just about marriage. It’s about kids feeling safe in their homes. It’s about coworkers feeling respected by their leaders. It’s about showing up for each other when no one’s watching.

It’s easy to roll your eyes at yet another corporate scandal. But what happens in boardrooms and bedrooms eventually shapes our collective expectations of what’s normal — and what’s worth fighting for.

We have to stop pretending that cheating is just the price of modern love. We have to stop glorifying “options” at the expense of being the kind of person someone else can actually count on. 

Fix You

At the end of that concert, the band closed with Fix You: "Lights will guide you home / And ignite your bones / And I will try to fix you."

And maybe that’s what love should still mean: the willingness to fix, rather than to flee. To make the hard choices. To tell the truth before you betray. To stay — even when it’s not easy.

The Aftermath

Andy Byron and Kristen Cabot’s lives will never be the same after that kiss cam. But neither will the lives of the people who trusted them. We can’t undo their choices. But we can decide what kind of people we want to be in our own aftermath.  

Do we want to live in a world where cheating is inevitable? Or do we want to live in a world where, when the lights come back on, we can still look the people we love in the eye?

Love isn’t what you feel at a concert. Love is what you do when no one’s watching. That’s still worth believing in.

Views expressed by the author are their own.