Well, I’ve explored a few reputable medical sites on infidelity statistics. Basically they all say that the statistics should be taken with a big shaker of salt. But they do tend to support the hypothesis that while men cheat more, women cheat a lot too.
Id be pretty surprised if there werent fairly large gender differences. For a start theres likely to be differences in why people have affairs in the first place and thier course.
Consider issues like who makes most use of prostitutes and the like. Theres a whole lot of reasons why thats so, and I suspect similar is true in regards to why people have or dont have affairs. Risk taking behaviour in general shows gender differences for instance. ‘Studs vs sluts’ is another issue. And fairly basic issues like fear of pregnancy.
How much thats biological and how much environmental is always the debate, and as is almost always the case, its going to be a mixture of the two I suspect.
Otara
Let’s see, the most famous adultery story is about King Arthur’s wife, Lady Guinevere, with his best friend, Sir. Lancelot.
Does that count?
jealousy: no
lust: yep
sexual attraction: ?? distinguish from “lust” please?
I don’t think these are useful definitions of cheating. Lust is at least partly physiological - I mean, getting turned on can be pretty unvoluntary at times. Does jealousy mean being attracted to other people, or are we talking about “coveting?” (I ask because lumping in lust and sexual attraction with cheating strikes me as a traditional Christian “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” kind of definition. Being attracted to someone is quite different from actually having an affair with them, as I think more goes into cheating than just attraction.)
The results of studies I have looked up on the web vary wildly. Most show men as cheating statistically more than women, but as Qadgop pointed out, most advise taking that with a grain of salt.
There could be any number of reasons why surveys show men to be statistically more unfaithful than women. Two that I can think of right now:
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Women have traditionally stayed at home more, and simply have less opportunity to cheat. If this is the case, the statistics will no doubt change as more women enter the workforce.
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People aren’t always honest on surveys. Since there tends to be societal pressure on men to exaggerate their conquests, and for women to under-report theirs, the surveys could reflect that bias.
Among my friends and aquaintences, I know of more women who have had affairs than men, but I don’t think anecdotal evidence is going to get us anywhere. The point is that it happens with both genders.
In my opinion, it’s disingenuous to look at statistical surveys and say “men cheat somewhat more than women, so they must be hard-wired to do so”. To repeat my analogy, I don’t see any difference in that kind of reasoning than saying, “more black people are in prison than white people, so they must be hard-wired to commit crimes”. It’s just absurd.
Meg Ryan tossed over Dennis Quaid for Russel Crowe. It made a few headlines.
Terrible lack of cite, I know, but I read about a study which found that going away on business conferences, women were just as likely to cheat as men were. So although there were (and probably still are) far less women than men attending conferences, pro rata they’re just as likely to cheat.
The only strange thing about this is it must mean many of the men aren’t cheating with the female delegates, eg if 10% cheat rate and 100 men, 10 women: that’s 10 cheating males and 1 cheating woman. Unless it’s gang bang time, the male cheaters must be looking elsewhere for their playing-away kicks.
That assumes they are cheating with fellow delegates.
Didn’t Princess Di cheat on Charles? Hard to get much more famous than her…
I’ll say. In a number of adulterious affairs the woman is also married to someone else. In others the woman is trying to steal someone’s husband and doesn’t give a damn about the adultery.
Ah! I recall that now.
Thanks for finding at least one.
But its not like they then forgave and stayed together either.
FTR, my former husband cheated (I’m guessing about 200 times) me, once.
If memory serves, SHE left HIM. There wasn’t any forgiveness to be had. In the case I mentioned, both parties cheated or were cheating, and nobody forgave anybody either. Virginia Woolf cheated on her husband, I think (although they had a weird relationship) and I don’t recall them divorcing. I’m not sure if we can attribute who stays together and who splits to some pattern, as it depends so much on the circumstances and individuals involved.