SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

On Wikipedia I read the following:

Differences in sexual infidelity as a function of gender have been commonly reported. It is more common for men compared to women to engage in extradyadic relationships. The National Health and Social Life Survey found that 40% of married men, 16% of cohabiting men, and 37% of dating men engaged in acts of sexual infidelity compared to 1% of married women, 8% of cohabiting women, and 17% of women in dating relationships.

There seems to be a vast difference between men and women with respect to which sex cheats more.

A study published in 2002 suggested there may be sex differences in jealousy. Those that posit a sex difference exists state that men are 60% more likely to be disturbed by an act of sexual infidelity (having one's partner engage in sexual relations with another), whereas women are 83% more likely to be disturbed by an act of emotional infidelity (having one's partner fall in love with another). Those against this model argue that there is no difference between men and women in their response to an act of infidelity.

Are these statistics real? Men care more about physical affairs than women do? Women care more about emotional affairs than men do?

Lucky me. Not only do I have a wife who is part of the 1% in this study but also had both a psychical and emotional affair.

I must be pretty lucky too.... My bogus meter is going off on this study. Who are all these men cheating with. Don't tell me that men are the decent ones and only cheat with singles.... Maybe men are just more honest on paper than with their wives......

I thought women were catching up with men with percentage that cheat, but yes, I've definitely read that men care more about PAs and women more about EAs.

My WH had both. He honestly believes he is in love with her. It bothers me more than the sex, and it was ultimately fatal to the marriage as he thinks their relationship is the real deal.

Well, my married wife cheated with a dating man. It was both emotional & physical.

Can't say that either one is an easier "part" to deal with (EA/PA). And Red makes a very good point...who ARE all these people cheating with? It can't be a bunch of single, non-dating folks...

I must be pretty lucky too.... My bogus meter is going off on this study. Who are all these men cheating with. Don't tell me that men are the decent ones and only cheat with singles.... Maybe men are just more honest on paper than with their wives......

The study struck me as questionable.

The National Health and Social Life Survey found that 40% of married men, 16% of cohabiting men, and 37% of dating men engaged in acts of sexual infidelity compared to 1% of married women, 8% of cohabiting women, and 17% of women in dating relationships.

I call BS on the stats. For one thing it would be difficult to study because I don't remember anyone asking me if I ever cheated in any survey. So, you know that's coming from a random sampling of people, and two - so many people who cheat would lie about it.

I don't think I am part of a 1%. With women in the workplace, I think that there are more opportunities for women to cheat than back in olden times. If you look at how many are on this site as WS, we outnumber men. Go to a support board for extramarital relationships, they are almost all women. My guess is that we are bridging the gap between men and women all the time in that arena. So, I think this is severely skewed.

The second paragraph seems to fall in more with what we see here in terms of people's posts. And, it makes sense, we are jealous of the things we value and we have definitely seen a gender divide on those things even if they aren't across the board true for everyone.

[This message edited by hikingout at 12:55 PM, October 21st (Monday)]

Who did these vast numbers of men cheat with? Either there are a few really busy women out there, or the numbers don’t make sense.

What I’ve never been able to understand is how folks could believe such a claim. How do you overlook the big picture and something as simple as a man has to cheat with someone in order to cheat? So I’m curious, why is this a gender issue?

Are these statistics real? Men care more about physical affairs than women do? Women care more about emotional affairs than men do?

No, those stats are not real. There is a gap, men do cheat more, but that gap has been narrowing for a long time. Most of the studies seem to pin the number around 20-30% of married men and 10-20% of married women cheat (marriage lifetime). While that already seems "bad" to me, there's a lot of lying in those stats, so, it's pretty easy to get to numbers like "most marriages" have at least one cheater in them (or did, until a D because of the cheating). The stats aren't good, but they are NOT anywhere near as lopsided as your indicate, at least not in any recent studies.

The 2nd part, yes, I think that, in general, men care more about physical A's and women emotional A's. There are a whole host of reasons for this. First is just plain old evolution, a female engaging in an A can extinguish a man's chances for reproduction/passing on his genes, the reverse is not true. And that problem will always persist, men cannot get pregnant and until very recently, couldn't tell if a child was theirs or not. A cheating woman could completely eliminate you from the genetic pool, so, kind of makes sense that's always been a focus.

The 2nd part, IMHO, comes down to value of the aspects of the A. Sex was hard to get for me. I valued it highly, and it was very important to me. So, the idea that my W "gave it away" is really hurtful, giving something away that I value so much. And I think that the same is true for EAs in reverse, getting the love an commitment of a man is hard for women, getting sex isn't. So, they value what they feel was valuable and given to another.

How do you overlook the big picture and something as simple as a man has to cheat with someone in order to cheat? So I’m curious, why is this a gender issue?

Men, in general, are more prone to extremes. The highest IQ's in history have almost all been male, and the lowest IQ's are almost all men. And that's GENERALLY true for sex as well, there are a lot of men who've had very few women, and a lot of men who've had a whole lot of women. It's much less evenly distributed than it is for women. Well, except for on notable difference; there are a small number of women out there with mind boggling numbers of sexual partners; IE, prostitutes. So, yeah, you could have 100 cheating men and 0 cheating women, if all 100 men were seeing the same woman. It's possible that these numbers could get entirely lopsided because without standard deviations, the averages don't tell the whole story. And that's also how you can wind up with uneven numbers of partners as the median between sexes, because there are some wily outliers. Men who've slept with 100's/1000's of women and women who've done the same. Those huge numbers skew things significantly. I still don't believe the study results, but, at the same time, it's not impossible mathematically because of the uneven distribution.

[This message edited by Rideitout at 1:08 PM, October 21st (Monday)]

If this is against the no politics policy I guess just take it down. But I don't think there's a soul out there that can trust a politician, and since lots of studies were done on the last election were all bogus, I have a hard time trusting any study based on liars.

Also. The only people that Lie more than politicians are cheaters.

1%??? FML. I knew she set a low bar as a partner but if 99% of women are more faithful than her what the fuck am I fighting for.

I have a hard time believing the 1% statistic, too. Who are men cheating with?? The same woman over and over?

Based on what I've observed on SI and personally experienced, I would think (IMHO) the percentage must be higher.

The Just Found Out new posters seem almost evenly divided between men and women. It would certainly be interesting were someone to take up the task to pull two years of new JFO posters and stratify the percentage of WS's by gender.

I did some searching and read the abstract for the study that this 1% statistic apparently comes from. It has to do with a self-reported survey about whether or not the surveyed individuals intended to have PAs, not whether they had actually done so.

[This message edited by emergent8 at 1:44 PM, October 21st, 2019 (Monday)]

Majority of the cheaters I know irl are female. Then again of those, most were associated or friends with my ex cheater so. I think cheating is on the rise compared to decades before both male and female. With social media bullshit and people wanting to live like there on fucking MTV on yachts, they slip into this delusional thinking that there lives aren't enough. Statistics mean nothing to me, 1%, yeah right, no way. It would be interesting to know exactly what the percentage is but cheaters lie, shit my exww still won't admit it.

The Just Found Out new posters seem almost evenly divided between men and women. It would certainly be interesting were someone to take up the task to pull two years of new JFO posters and stratify the percentage of WS's by gender.

I'll bet one of the Mods could provide some data.

I did some searching and read the abstract for the study that this 1% statistic apparently comes from has to do with a self-reported survey about whether or not the surveyed individuals intended to have PAs, not whether they had done so.

Ah, that makes sense. You could have asked me about my intentions a month before the affair and I would have honestly been able to say no, I was not considering anything.

Maybe it speaks more towards if a gender is pre-meditating it? Not sure, I would think many males end up surprising themselves as well, but I don't know what that looks like. The AP in my situation was definitely always scavenging.

This whole thread makes me wish I was just D'ed.

I found a copy of the actual article online. I'm happy to send the link if anyone wants to read it. Send me a PM. It starts from this premise:

Infidelity estimates range from 25-60% for men and 15-50% for women,

depending on measurement instruments and target groups (e.g., Gangestad & Thornhill,

1997 Glass & Wright, 1992 Hunt, 1974 Simmons, Firman, Rhodes, & Peters, 2004

Thompson, 1983).

emergent8:

They sure provide a wide range of estimates. They might as well say 1% to 100%.