This research addresses the connection between childhood trauma, relational needs, and infidelity in adult relationship. Our goal was to investigate if relational needs could be a mediator between traumatic experience in childhood and infidelity. The survey involved 401 participants, of which 85.5 % were women and 14.5 % were men. For the purpose of the study, we used the Relational Needs Satisfaction Scale (RNSS), the Childhood Traumatic events Questionnaire (CTQ), and the Infidelity Scale (IS). The findings from our study have shown statistically important connection between the experience of any type of childhood trauma and satisfaction of relational needs in adult relationship. The findings suggest that emotional abuse and sexual abuse are associated with lower satisfaction of relational needs. The positive connection is manifested by emotional neglect and authenticity, which means that individuals who experienced this type of abuse also reported higher satisfaction with authenticity, which we did not anticipate based on previous research. The results imply that individuals who report satisfaction of authenticity, support and protection also report experiencing physical neglect in childhood, which is not in line with the findings of past research. The results show a low and negative correlation between the experience of physical abuse and the satisfaction of support and protection, but the satisfaction of authenticity in the relationship is positively associated with the experience of physical abuse. We have not found a connection between traumatic childhood experiences and tendency for infidelity. We also did not find statistically significant association between relational needs satisfaction and infidelity. The infidelity was reported by 41.2 % of participants, but there was no statistically significant difference in responses between females and males. The results obtained could be influenced by the sensitivity of the topic and the insincerity of the responses, as well as other characteristics of the sample, such as disproportionate gender distribution, self-report, social desirability and non-clinical population sample. The results thus do not allow the formation of solid conclusions, as they are largely different from the findings of past research. Despite the limitations of our research, we propose further research in the direction of finding the causes of infidelity, which is an important problem of all modern societies. The results of our research open new questions and the possibility of research that would contribute to the reduction and better understanding of the researched topic and as an important guideline of psychological and therapeutic work.
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