# Men cheating on women **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 10, 2001, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769 "2001-09-10T23:10:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![flyhylittlebunni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@flyhylittlebunni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flyhylittlebunni)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/1 "2001-09-10T23:10:56Z")
I have seen my statistics about how more men cheat on women while married or not married (serious relationship). Is this true? Are men really not satisfied with just one woman? And what are the real statistics? ---
**Author:** ![flyhylittlebunni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@flyhylittlebunni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flyhylittlebunni)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/2 "2001-09-10T23:15:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by flyhylittlebunni \* > \*\*I have seen my statistics about how more men cheat on women while married or not married (serious relationship). Is this true? Are men really not satisfied with just one woman? And what are the real statistics? \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Kevin\_Partida](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Kevin\_Partida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevin_Partida)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/3 "2001-09-10T23:23:00Z")
Personally I think women are the unfaithful ones… =P ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/4 "2001-09-10T23:50:42Z")
What are the statistics you have seen? Where did you come across them? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/5 "2001-09-11T00:38:33Z")
From [this article](http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Feb-05-Mon-2001/living/15363489.html): > [@](#): > > Many of the statistics tossed around in popular magazines or books are simply guesses, family counselors say. > [@](#): > > Here are what various sources have claimed about infidelity rates in the United States: > > c About 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in some marriage, according to Peggy Vaughan, author of “The Monogamy Myth: A Personal Handbook for Recovering from Affairs.” > > c About 24 percent of men and 14 percent of women have had sex outside their marriages, according to a Dec. 21, 1998 report in USA Today on a national study by the University of California, San Francisco. > > c Affairs affect one of every 2.7 couples, according to counselor Janis Abrahms Spring, author of “After the Affair,” as reported by the Washington Post on March 30, 1999. Given that there are no hard numbers on the subject (but that men are rather more frequently _perceived_ to be less faithful than women), the usual idea _proposed_ to explain it is the idea of the “strategy” of ensuring genetic survival that is seen in some other species. A man can sire a child any time he can find a fertile woman who will have him. A woman needs at least 10 months to give birth to (usually) a single child. In this scenario, the man is “wired” to find as many mates as possible so as to guarantee that he will produce offspring. The woman is also “wired” to seek as many sperm donors as she can, **but** , since she also needs a certain level of protection and help in gathering food, it is _more_ to her interest to keep a single mate nearby who will assist in raising the kids. Since a woman mating with multiple men might not be able to keep _any_ of them around, she has a conflicting impulse that works against her “multiple mate” selection. That is the short version (lacking nuance) of one popular theory. Given that we do not have reliable statistics regarding actual infidelity, it is quite possible that the “theory” has no substance among humans. Recent re-examinations of several species that were thought to have followed the model noted above have shown that female infidelity among many of those species was much higher than originally reported. So the really short answer is: we don’t really know that men cheat more, and if they do we don’t really know why. We do know that both sexes cheat–to sime undetermined level. ---
**Author:** ![pantom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/34f0e0/32.png) [@pantom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pantom)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/6 "2001-09-11T03:19:54Z")
The problem with this has got to be: for every man who cheats, there’s got to be the woman he’s cheating with who’s also cheating, right? Or am I missing something? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/7 "2001-09-11T03:30:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Or am I missing something? Prostitution provides a number of people of one sex who can provide opportunities for cheating with a larger number of the opposite sex. I have no idea how many men or women rent out their genitalia through calling services, but there are far more female heterosexual streetwalkers than there are male heterosexual streetwalkers. This would tend to support a guess that more men cheat than women. (It does not make it true unless we can identify all the people who are actually cheating–and with whom. If, for example, the overwhelming number of men who avail themselves of the services provided on the street _also_ tended to engage in longer-term extra-marital affairs, then the “streetwalker effect” might be rendered negligible. It does, however, lend itself to the generally accepted perception.) ---
**Author:** ![JillGat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc29f/32.png) [@JillGat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JillGat)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/8 "2001-09-11T03:31:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pantom \* > \*\*The problem with this has got to be: for every man who cheats, there’s got to be the woman he’s cheating with who’s also cheating, right? Or am I missing something? \*\* If it’s a married man and a single woman - no. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/9 "2001-09-11T03:40:09Z")
I also recall a recent study that claimed 1 of 10 children were not actually related to the fathers noted on their birth certificates. IIRC this was the result of genetic tests. Don’t know if it was a random population and I cannot find a cite. But thought it might jog someone else’s memory. The theory being purported was that the woman would seek out a preferred provider of food and shelter to settle down with, but “cheat” to try to get the best sperm donor in terms of genetic material. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/10 "2001-09-11T12:10:14Z")
…is that they make a foolish promise, “I won’t have sex with anyone but you”. It is a promise poorly kept, and even when kept is badly suspected. If people would quit making the stupid promise (and quit expecting it to be made), there would be no cheating. ---
**Author:** ![galen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecc23a/32.png) [@galen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/11 "2001-09-11T13:03:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ShibbOleth \* > \*\*The theory being purported was that the woman would seek out a preferred provider of food and shelter to settle down with, but “cheat” to try to get the best sperm donor in terms of genetic material. \*\* A great discussion of this and related questions can be found in “Survival of the Prettiest”, by Nancy Etcoff. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/12 "2001-09-11T14:06:35Z")
I just watched an episode of “The Science of Sex” which dealt with infidelity. Again, there were no hard statistics about how many people cheat on their partner but it brought out some interesting theories on why men and women cheat, which **Tom** covered nicely. There are, from an evolutionary standpoint, very valid reasons for a woman to cheat and human females have adapted accordingly. As **Tom** points out, women have a dual interest in childbearing. On the one hand is survival of the species (and specifically her genes), on the other is the survival of self. Women need a good genetic “donor” to help ensure that her ofspring have the best chance to survive but child rearing is made easier by the presence of a good, steady mate to provide protection, food, and shelter during pregnancy and while she spends the majority of her time raising the baby. These two traits may not be possesed by the same male. Cloaked estrus (no outward signs of when a woman is fertile), unique to human females, may have evolved as a method to enable women to have “the best of both worlds”. Interestingly, in studies of primates, testicle size in males seems to be directly related to fidelity in females. Gorilla males keep a harem of females and have very little outside competition for mating. They also have small testicles. Chimpanzee females, on the other hand, may mate with most of the adult males in their social group during estrus. Male chimpanzee have very large testicles. One theory states that chimps need to produce more sperm than gorillas beacuse they are competing with more males to fertilize the egg - a battle of numbers. More sperm = bigger testicles. Where do human males fall in this equation? Right in the middle. Human testicles are larger than a gorilla’s, but smaller than a chimpanzee’s. Extrapolate the theory and it could be that human males evolved to expect some infidelity in females. Could be that size does matter. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/men-cheating-on-women/80769/13 "2001-09-11T15:20:20Z")
fly, what statistics are you talking about? & more to the point, how did you define ‘cheating?’ holding hands?