How many people do you really think have had affairs?

[Funiculus]

I actually think the number is a lot higher than stats show because it’s a hard metric to baseline (most people won’t admit to it.) So for this analysis 🧐 I’m assuming an affair is not just emotional contact but physical of any kind. Just a quick google (out of pure morbid curiosity yields this;

Studies show that 20% to 40% of adults admit to having an affair at least once in their lives. However, because this relies on self-reported data, experts estimate the true rate of infidelity—including emotional affairs and one-night stands—could be closer to 40% to 50% across committed relationships.

However I posit that the true data is even higher. I would benchmark it as around 70% over the course of a long marriage - and this includes both sexes. Reason? Whilst societal views remain disapproving of extra-martial liaisons, the reality is most people (not all, most) are not engineered to be monogamous long term. Nature favours procreation over societal disapproval and we are hardwired to prioritise sex with suitable partners throughout our lives. This is why you often see the sexual trend of an older man running off with a younger woman. It’s primal programming in action.

Of course not everyone is a long term marriage has an affair, I’m not suggesting that. But I reckon a lot do. At different points in their marriages. I think it’s a sort of unspoken truth of the human condition that has been pushed underground by modern sensibilities and religious conformity.

@Iwillcomeouttheotherendand @moderate

I would say that everyone has their own mindset and coping techniques. Sadly, I cannot help you to understand your own partners actions, which I feel is behind these questions…

Agreed. In our friendship group, more wives have had affairs than husbands (4:2 if you want figures).

Of course, that may be that husbands are better at concealing it.

My suspicion, @Iwillcomeouttheotherend, is that some people (including you and me) are given to metabolising and some people (including @Curlyreine) are given to compartmentalising, and we’re never really going to get the answers we seek.

I know many males who have cheated, I don’t know any females who have - that’s either because the females in my life haven’t, or they don’t talk about it.

I really don’t know. I like to think, of course, that my husband hasn’t had an affair, I’m as confident in that as I feel I could be, but given one could never really know for absolute sure, that one’s spouse hadn’t, how could we even begin to guess at the wider population?
I am another who’s worked long term with 99% men and while of course there were some who cheated, whether that be affairs or ONS, I don’t think it was the majority.
My personal experience has been that men are more likely to go for opportunistic cheating (as well as some affairs of course) whereas I’ve found women to be more inclined to cheat by way of long term affairs and the ONS type just aren’t so common. No evidence to prove as such, just my anecdotal data!

I'd accept 20-40% for long term "relationship" type affairs, if you're including all physical contact, from ONS to a snog at the Christmas party, much much higher.

Weirdly I don't know one single person (apart from my Mum and FIL) who has admitted or been caught out having an affair. I know so many people (about 130 people came to my 50th, none of them family or collegues) all people I consider friends. I have about 20 close friends and many more other less close.
Obviously some of them are having affairs or have had them, but they keep them well hidden!

Yes, but think about it — how would you know, unless the affair led to the breakdown of an existing marriage/committed relationship? I didn’t confide in anyone at the time, and neither did my affair partner. Only years later did I tell two close friends.

I had a 10 year on/off affair when I was married (so was he). There were probably rumours at work but outside of work, amoung my family and friends I guarantee no one had a clue, and if they found out they'd be very very shocked. I live a very boring life, don't seek attention, quite moral and upstanding really.

There were a number of circumstamces that came together to cause (but not justify) our affair, and TBH it was miserable most of the time. I wouldn't do it again and hope I'd be much more aware of early "symptoms" to make sure it doesn't, but my experience suggests to me there really isn't anyone who would never have an affair. And yes, that women are at it, very quietly.

With restrictions that having children brings I think generally women have more to lose in the event of a marriage breakdown so are either more restrained or more discreet. Men don't worry so much about ending up poor and the resident parent of the children.

Men (again generally) have more opportunities with more hobbies, overnights with work etc. I know you could meet someone online but that requires a conscious decision to cheat rather than developing feelings for someone over time.

Like OP says it really depends on what we are defining as cheating, if we go for an Old Testament style definition of cheating where just looking at someone 'lustfully' is adultery, then probably most of us are guilty of just noticing that someone is attractive.

If you include anything physical at all, across the whole lifetime of a marriage, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you get to well over half. But that still includes a huge number of couples who are completely faithful for an entire lifetime. And the vast majority of those who are unfaithful didn’t think they would be.

Polyamory doesn’t belong in the same box as cheating imo. For me personally I would say ethical nonmonogamy is different from polyamory as well. It is and remains a preference for a tiny minority. I’ve got a looser attitude to infidelity than a lot of those on MN, and I have zero interest in polyamory, partly because it sounds so flipping dull.

I’m happy for those open and comfortable enough to enjoy polyamory, but the thought of being in that kind of relationship myself makes me feel a bit sick. I think I’m just deeply conditioned to think monogamy is the way things work (when it clearly isn’t—so many people are having affairs).
I guess this doesn’t count, but DH had a snog with someone else before we were married. We were in a long distance relationship at the time and he told me about it immediately. It hurt me, but it seemed clear he regretted it and wanted to stay together—and living far apart was hard, we were very young (it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been tempted myself, I just never did anything) so I forgave him. I think things would have gone differently if he’d slept with someone else and then told me about it. That would have made me feel even more sick than the thought of a polyamorous relationship.
I’m happy in my little bubble I’ve created where I believe monogamy works, although as others have said, I can never really know for certain that my husband hasn’t cheated since that one kiss 30 years ago. I choose to believe it, because the alternative would ruin my life.

I would have said common in the 70s/80s but not now.

Why? Easier now, if anything.

No idea. Perhaps people don’t struggle to leave unhappy marriages in the same way? But there again I’d disagree with the OP. I think humans are very obviously naturally monogamous (that kind of coupling is seen worldwide) and when they’re not it’s more they weren’t joined in the first place than they want affairs.

A marriage doesn’t have to be unhappy for an affair to happen, though. That’s a total myth.

I think this is truer of women, however an awful lot of men will just cheat if they can, not necessarily out of unhappiness.

And certainly I can think of women I know who’ve had affairs to make their marriages continue. Because they didn’t want to end them.

Interesting take. I’m not sure I fully fit the ‘compartmentalising’ category though, but I understand that to someone on the outside looking in( especially if dealing with strong emotions whilst looking for answers to explain the behavior of their partner), it can seem to look that way.

I think people process things in more fluid ways than that, and I think that people probably move between those modes regularly. People, perhaps, can do both at different times, depending on what they’re dealing with.

I do hope that you can find answers that help you handle your situation.

I disagree.

I think humans are naturally monogamous, in that we thrive better on one partner at a time, but I'm not sure it's natural to expect that to be the same partner for 60 years, through different life stages.

I don’t think people are perfectly 100% one or the other either, but equally your non-answers have come as no surprise to me 🙂

“Naturally” we wouldn’t have experienced old age at all, and if we did it would have been in the blossom of our family. Do most affairs occur in later years? Do they occur in already failing marriages?

Are these affair rates specifically within marriages or affairs within relationships, op?

Regardless, I don't agree that polyamory is on the rise. Certainly people are noisier about it and the media like to cover it because it has 'man bites dog' commercial appeal.

I think people misguidedly assume that the proportion of relationships they have observed where there has been cheating actually represents the same proportion of people who are prepared to cheat.

But I think that some people are very promiscuous and they move through life leaving a trail of destroyed relationships in their wake and they artificially give the impression that many people are likely to cheat.

But every statistic that has ever existed shows it not to be true that human are 'naturally monogamous'. The entirety of human religion exists largely to control women's sexuality by attempting to make it a moral issue who she sleeps with -- adultery is only a sin because of patriarchy, so that a man is leaving the family goods to his own child, not some other man's.