I was wondering if there have ever been any studies done that indicates whether a man or woman that has cheated on his wife or husband is any more likely to cheat again?
I know the saying is once a cheater always a cheater, but then again, what about people who learn from their errors.
And is it different for people who cheat in marriages vs just a non-marriage but committed relationship
There are reasons for cheating. One normally doesn’t cheat in a happy. blissful, reciprocal relationship. One normally cheats when one is not in a happy, blissful, reciprocal relationship.
Should one then enter a happy, blissful, reciprocal relationship the cheating would normally end.
I agree with Leaffan. I think it has to do with the relationship that one is in. I also think that people learn from their mistakes and work hard at not making that same mistake over.
If this were IMHO, I would say that many cheaters are just not able to commit and so by their nature are not happy in relationships, and are always looking for something new or better.
But it isn’t, it’s GQ, and I don’t have a factual answer. Hopefully someone does.
BobMmm you may want to ask a Mod to move this to IMHO in order to get more opinions from the Dopers. I think the OP’s location is stifling the responses.
The OP specifically asked if there had been any studies done. That’s a GQ kind of question.
The unhappy relationship aspect is certainly part of it. However, that more strictly applies to females. There are plenty of males that just cheat because the opportunity presents itself and that is what they want to do. It doesn’t require an unhappy relationship from that viewpoint and you have all probably known some men that have done that. I know that I have and it includes many if not most of the males that I have known closely and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with their primary relationship.
My opinion not study results, but I think people cheat for different reasons. If a person is cheating because it’s their nature, then there’s relatively little likelihood their nature’s going to change. But if it was a situational thing - a husband who had this attractive co-worker flirting with him every day or a wife that spend six months overseas on a business assignement and got lonely - then it might truly be a fluke that wouldn’t have occurred if that particular situation hadn’t existed and won’t occur again.
I’ve been doing some searching, and so far have failed to come up with any actual studies dealing with the issue of recividism among the unfaithful. There’s plenty of homespun wisdom and common sense claims, but not much in the way of actual data. At first glance, it seems fairly unproblematic to assert that someone who’s cheated before is more likely to do it again, but common sense isn’t always borne out by the evidence in cases like this. I’d be willing to bet that there is a correlation, but i’d like to see a study or two to confirm the suspicion.
This is a piece of homespun wisdom that i’ve never found especially convincing.
I’m sure it’s true for quite a lot of cheaters, but it really depends on exactly what the unfaithful person is looking for outside the relationship. I’ve known guys who cheated only for sex, and who were perfectly happy in their permanent relationships. A couple of those guys said they would be devastated if their spouse found out about their infidelity, and that they considered their permanent relationship to be great. I’m sure it’s possible that there are problems they were unable or unwilling to admit, but i think that the idea that only people in unhappy relationships cheat is simplistic.
Another piece of common wisdom i don’t find convincing is one that comes up in the Potential Cheaters Quiz on this page. They ask if the guy has lots of women friends, and claim that “Close friendships with women are a common starting point for infidelity. Friends can quickly turn into lovers…” Well, again, that might be true for some men, but there are other cheating men who have no women friends at all, and who merely seek out strange new women for sex. The guys i mentioned in the above paragraph were exactly like that; they had no interest in developing relationships with other women, only in sleeping with them, and they were not comfortable having women friends.
I did find one study dealing with extra-marital relations, and although it doesn’t really answer the question asked by the OP, it does offer some general observations and some stats about cheating.
The study, by the National Opinion Research Center, can be downloaded here (pdf).
For a table looking at the incidence of extra-marital sexual activity among different demographic groups, go to pp. 54-55. But there’s no data on recidivism.
You might try Googling ‘sex addiction’.
I’m pretty sure there are a couple of studies, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to try searching for that term while on lunch at my desk at work…
Partially related, but at least factual, is that a majority of people who see a prostitute are in a stable relationship (not necessarily married.) I don’t know if I can find the studies which said this again, but I can say that this is what I read.
Also partially related: “Men Who Have Many Sexual Partners before Marriage Are More Likely to Engage in Extramarital Intercourse,” International Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 48-49 Men Who Have Many Sexual Partners before Marriage Are More Likely to Engage in Extramarital Intercourse on JSTOR
I don’t think I understand what specific data you’re looking for. More likely than whom? Is the question “Is the likelihood of a previous cheater doing so again greater than the likelihood of someone who has never cheated doing so for the first time?” If that’s what you’re asking, I would think the answer is yes.
According to the study mhendo cites in Post #10, 15-18% of people who are ever married can be expected to cheat on their spouse at some time. So the likelihood of someone who has never cheated doing so for the first time is 15-18% (because everyone starts off as someone who has never cheated on their spouse). I’m going to call that 16.5% for simplicity’s sake.
So the next question is whether more than 16.5% of that 16.5% cheat more than once. As stated upthread, there doesn’t seem to be much hard data available, but of the people I’ve known who cheated on their spouses, every single one did it more than once. (It is possible, of course, that I’ve known people who cheated one or more times and just didn’t tell me about it.) If there’s a desire/reason/opportunity to cheat in the first place, that seems likely to come up again in more than 16.5% of cheaters’ lives.
This is speculation, obviously, but hard data seems to be generally lacking on this topic.
Here’s n=1. I did cheat. Won’t do it again.
For GFactor, and others who might not be able to view this JSTOR article, i should point out that the countries discussed in the article are Tanzania, Thailand, Cote d’Ivoire, and Zambia. The cultures of those countries, especially regarding issues of sex and marriage, could be different enough from western countries like America that any comparison might be rather meaningless.
That’s a very good point. Thanks.
Thanks I asked for studies because while I search I only get opinion.
It’s always the same, if he cheated once he’ll do it again. But this leaves out a sense of proportion.
For example, I know it’s wrong to lie, and you always hear on TV courtroom dramas (yes I know it’s just TV but anyway), the guy says "If he lied about that what else is he lying about.)
But I counter with, if a friend of mine buys a new shirt and is all happy about it, and says “Do you like it.” I’d say “yes,” simply because it’s a small lie and it’s about taste and it’s not worth getting anyone worked up over. BUT if this same friend was wearing an awful shirt to a job interview I would tell him “No I don’t like it,” because in that case a wrong shirt can effect your life by not getting you a job.
So you see “just because you lie about something doesn’t mean you’ll always do it.”
So I got to thinking, just because a man leaves his wife for another woman (or vice versa) does it REALLY mean he’ll do it again?