"All men cheat, you just never find out about it"

I think that your friend said this to you so as to bait you, upset you or make you doubt your relationship.

In fact I wouldn’t be convinced that he actually believes what he said.

I think he’s shit stirring and not a good friend.

Rubbish. My husband worked away for many years. I would stake our children’s lives on his fidelity.

I agree. My best friend was being cheated on by her husband and left him which according to him was disgusting behaviour on her part as he definitely wasn’t cheating on her. He was talking sexually with, having phone sex with and sexting with other men, he used male prostitutes, had one night stands with men and had a male friend with benefits but he absolutely wasn’t gay so it wasn’t cheating. He was very upset my friend would consider it cheating because he had never even thought about cheating with a woman.

I believe it's half and half. DH came back from a stag beyond disgusted with someone talking about being unfaithful but totally sure it would never get back to the wife by brocode

I would tend to agree. I also think some men have a conveniently restricted definition of what constitutes cheating, so don't see themselves as cheaters. My DH cheated on me, in my opinion and in the opinion of my female friends, but he would say that he didn't really cheat because there were no emotions involved (random snogs, online stuff, using sex workers). I just think men can compartmentalise these things more easily and don't see the harm if they don't get caught.

I'm no Sherlock Holmes but to hazard a guess, I'd imagine having the opportunity to cheat might be a factor.

No, it's bullshit.

For starters, it's not "all men". It's "some people". Women are just as capable.

Secondly, this man's friends do not represent everyone. It speaks quite poorly of him.

When I used to be a drug addict, everyone I knew took lots of drugs. I genuinely thought that was normal, and was often heard to utter "everyone takes drugs, these days". I'm sure there are plenty of people reading this right now who do not take drugs, and don't really know of anyone who does. I just thought this way because I surrounded myself with like minded people. This is what your "friend" has done, OP.

I've never cheated, and I know very few people who have. Funnily enough, when I hung around with drug addicts, I did know a lot of them cheated. I have much better friends these days. Cheating is rare in my social circle.

I'm a gay guy and therefore I'm innately promiscuous and certainly likely to cheat. Nah, I've been with my dp for 22 years, never cheated (unless you can call a quick five finger shuffle, thinking about some randomer I may or may not know, cheating), and as far as I'm aware, dp hasn't cheated either and has never given me a reason to believe otherwise. Your friend is talking shit by saying all men cheat. Some do, some don't. Some women do too, some don't.

The thing is none of us can know for sure. Trusting someone not to cheat is not the same as knowing they haven’t cheated - its possible only the cheater will know. Hence why So many people are shocked to find their OH cheated.

To echo a PP, I’m shocked at the number of people I’ve come across who do, both male and female. From the outside they seem to be in happy committed relationships. Often they’re the ones constantly posting on social media about family first! Maybe they are actually perfectly happy they just want to get away with having fun on the side. My personal experience I’ve come across lots of men who are married or in long term relationships, who will try it on if the opportunity arises, and I am still surprised by that

That’s nonsense.

Of course some men do cheat, but so do some women. But for most ordinary men, finding a woman who is willing to have sex with him isn’t as easy as going into a bar to pick someone up or swiping on a dating app. Unless he is very attractive or high status, that approach isn’t going to work for him.

This has randomly tickled me

The Yougov survey covers who the affair partners are. Men are more likely to cheat with work colleagues and sex workers than women: women ore likely to cheat with friends than men.

As the survey finds that women and men cheat in more or less equal numbers whether a small number of women are cheating with a larger number of men is beside the point.

I used to work in a male dominated area and most of the men had loose morals. Don't know if they were typical or not.

It’s also possible that they cheat and don’t tell their friends because they know they would all disapprove.

My god, no. None of my male friends in particular would cheat on their partners and I know for certain that if one of them did, they'd be ostracised by the other men in the group. As PP. said, birds of a feather flock together

All of this maths chat only stands up if both affair partners are attached - yes this happens but a lot of people cheat with someone who is single and therefore wouldn’t be classed as a cheater. The single partner may not even know the other person is attached.

I think it depends on about ten different things, their emotional maturity, their impulse control, their wisdom, whether or not they think their partner would dump them if she found out! how good looking he is (ie does anybody else even want him?) whether doing the right thing holds any significance to him or not...
How many options he believes his partner has... more than him?

Lot of variables.

Given the number of married men who have come on to me heavily or pursued me during the course of my life, most men would like to cheat if they are able to.

Your mate is just trying (and failing) to be macho. Ignore. Everyone has the potential to cheat. Doesn’t mean everyone does.

CraigDavid · Today 22:07

Statistically it's half

Could you explain this. Half of all people cheat once in their life or half of relationships have a cheating episode or half of marriages end because of cheating or some other definition? It's importan because if you cheat in one relationship you are far more likely to cheat in another so does that person (who repeatedly cheats) count once or everytime they cheat?

Some men and some women cheat. Some repeatedly. Cheats are despicable cowards.

Many others of both sexes don't ever cheat, perhaps totally happy and in love with their partner or just not that horrible and would rather end things first.

I suspect more women cheat, let's face it it's so much easier for women to indulge in a casual fling.

I remember an article some time ago about stag and hens where hotels were saying hen parties were a lot worse than stag dos. Stag dos tended to be lads getting drunk, hen parties were wilder with more sex.

Birds of a feather flock together
Agree with this. It's like the fact that I don't know anyone who uses coke but I know there are groups of people where everyone uses.

I am sure that not all men or women cheat.

Perhaps not all men, but the vast majority. I never in a million years thought my dh would and he did. I don’t trust a soul now.

I think more people cheat than whose partners know or ever find out about it - after all, look at all the MN threads where shocked posters suddenly discover affairs which have been going on for months or years which they never guessed about, and who would probably never have found out at all had the affair ended before the point of discovery or had only been a short fling or one night stand.

I think men get more opportunities to cheat if a couple has children. I suspect among young childless people the percentage difference between the sexes isn’t that much.