It’s a familiar scene in romantic tragedies: a tear-stained, betrayed spouse confronts the partner who, with a hangdog look, guiltily confesses to an extramarital affair.
But new research finds that most men and women who cheat on their spouse have no regrets about the affair, and found them to be sexually and emotionally satisfying.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences surveyed almost 2,000 users of Ashley Madison, a popular website for people seeking extramarital affairs.
The results of the survey, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, revealed a wide gap between the reality of infidelity and how it’s portrayed in movies.
“In popular media, television shows and movies and books, people who have affairs have this intense moral guilt and we don’t see that in this sample of participants,” said lead study author Dylan Selterman.
Previous research has found that most people have a dim view of infidelity, and extramarital affairs are a leading predictor of divorce. A 2019 Gallup poll revealed that 89 percent of people would describe an extramarital affair as “morally wrong.”
“Conventional wisdom is that affairs are harrowing and leave lasting emotional scars on those involved in part because infidelity degrades and destroys very important relational bonds,” the Johns Hopkins study authors wrote.
But despite this moral indignation, about 20 to 25 percent of married people — and 33 to 50 percent of young adults in dating relationships — have had sex outside their relationships, according to the Johns Hopkins study.
Together, these findings paint a more complex picture of fidelity and infidelity than is typically found in Hollywood scripts — and the Johns Hopkins study confirms that.
People responding to the Ashley Madison survey were mostly middle-aged males, and most reported a deep level of love for their spouse and no serious relationship problems, such as anger or a lack of mutual love.
However, about half of the participants also reported being sexually inactive with their spouses. In fact, sexual dissatisfaction with their spouse was cited as the leading reason for having an affair.
This finding throws cold water on the popular theory that people cheat because their marriage is fundamentally unhealthy, troubled or emotionally unfulfilling. Basically, it’s the sex.
“We don’t see solid evidence here that people’s affairs are associated with lower relationship quality or lower life satisfaction,” Selterman said in a Johns Hopkins news release. “Sometimes they’ll cheat even if their relationships are pretty good.”
And a clear majority of Ashley Madison users found that their affairs were satisfying, both sexually and emotionally. About 80 percent also reported that they kept their affairs a secret from their spouse or relationship partner.
The study authors noted some limitations to their survey, including the fact that the sample was drawn only from Ashley Madison users, and a majority (84 to 90 percent) were married, middle-aged, male participants.
“The take-home point for me is that maintaining monogamy or sexual exclusivity, especially across people’s lifespans is really, really hard and I think people take monogamy for granted when they’re committed to someone in a marriage,” Selterman said.
“People just assume that their partners are going to be totally satisfied having sex with one person for the next 50 years of their lives but a lot of people fail at it. It doesn’t mean everyone’s relationship is doomed, it means that cheating might be a common part of people’s relationships.”