Peter Cook (Christie Brinkley’s ex-husband), Eliot Spitzer and John Edwards represent just three prominent, married men who ventured outside of marriage for intimacy. The question many married spouses ask, is this behavior the exception or the rule?
Researchers who have studied and analyzed the sexual exploits of Americans throughout the years paint a bleak picture regarding the future of marriage as a monogamous and sacred union between husband and wife. For instance, a widely reported upon scholarly article titled, Marital Infidelity, by Andrew Greeley critiques these oft cited statistics:
- A report by Morton Hunt for Playboy, indicated that 42 percent of the white middle class men and 25 percent of white middle class women had engaged in adultery.
- Linda Wolfe argued in Cosmopolitan that 54 percent of married women had at least one affair.
- Shere Hite deduced in The Hite Report that 72 percent of married men were adulterous. The June 1977 issue of Marriage and Divorce did not waver in reporting that "70 percent of all Americans engage in an affair sometime during their marital life."
- Samuel S. Janus and Cynthia L. Janus, authors of the Janus Report on Sexual Behavior in America, have reported that one third of married American men and about one quarter of married women have been unfaithful to their spouses.
Greeley resounded in his criticism that (1) readers of Playboy and Cosmopolitan were not representative samples of the American population, (2) random or stratified random sampling techniques were not used to improve the validity and generalizability of the findings and (3) participants who self select to complete a survey tend to represent outliers (or extremists) whose response can skew survey results
Further, Greeley pointed to research by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (1991) which asked a wide range of questions to a national probability sample of 1212 Americans. The survey participants were either married or had been previously married and were either widowed, divorced or separated. In this case, just 11% of the women respondents and 21% of the men replied that they had participated in extramarital sex. To pound his message home, he referenced his book, Fatal Attraction in which he found that in a poll conducted by Gallup organization about nine out of ten Americans say they have been faithful to their partners. A quick internet search on martial infidelity appears to validate Greeley’s claim for a survey by MSNBC on the subject adultery revealed that approximately 28% of married mean have cheated on their spouse.
Of course, to dispute unfounded and misleadingly high statistics of the prevalence of infidelity does nothing to soothe the wounds or calm the fears of partners committed to spouses with possible tendencies to seek intimacy outside the marriage. If you are a concerned partner, Dr. Lusterman writes that the best defense is to take the offense in dealing with infidelity (or possible infidelity). His recommended strategy is to first uncover the source of the behavior. Please find below the top ten reasons for adultery.
Top Ten Reasons for Adultery
- Inability to cope with cultural or ethnic differences.
- Disappointment that one partner hasn’t grown in the same ways.
- Unrealistic expectations about marriage.
- Sexual curiosity.
- Lost sense of fun and excitement in the marriage.
- Sexual addiction.
- Inability to accommodate a partner’s needs, interests or expectations.
- Inability to communicate one’s own interests, needs or desires.
- Boredom with the marriage, work, life, the relationship, or the routine.
- Lack of verbal skills or motivation to solve marriage problems together.
In building a resilient marriage for the long term and to strengthen your marriage to withstand any assault (no matter how tempting), we will discuss some of these factors in the next few upcoming articles of this webpage. Please visit this page for updated academic research findings on this hot topic.
Literary Resources
Greeley, Andrew, Society, Marital Infidelity, 1994.
Web Resources
Reasons for Extramarital Affairs: Why Partners Cheat on Their Spouses
http://psychological-counselling.suite101.com/article.cfm/reasons_for_extramarital_affairs#ixzz0Auvxc5HG
Statistics on Men Cheating
http://www.infidelityman.com/statistics-on-men-cheating.php
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