Ten Interesting Facts About Adultery

Myrna Loy and Frank Morgan in When Ladies Meet (1933)

1.) A marriage has a fifty percent chance of survival after a spouse is discovered cheating.^[1]

2.) Approximately 69% of husbands who cheated never imagined that they were capable of cheating.  Their affairs just snuck up on them.^[1]  

Walter Huston and Mary Astor in Dodsworth (1936)

3.) The murder-themed adultery films are certainly fanciful.  But most other types of adultery films have an authentic premise.  Take, for instance, the films that involve an interloper.  You might call these villains by other names.  Homewreckers.  Spouse-stealers.  Love Thieves.  Evolutionary psychologists David M. Buss and David P. Schmitt verified that these characters are a real-life threat to a marriage.  They dubbed the tawdry pastime of these shady and shameless individuals as "mate poaching."  In a 2001 survey of single American men and women, Buss and Schmitt asked, "Have you ever tried to attract someone who was already in a relationship with someone else for a short-term sexual relationship?"^[2]  The majority of the respondents (60% of men and 53% of women) admitted to engaging in mate poaching.  A greater number of respondents (93% of men and 82% of women) said that they had someone try to woo them away from a committed relationship.  It is important to note that the participants of the survey were unmarried college students.  But Buss and Schmitt insisted that married men and women are equally subject to mate-poaching efforts.  Not surprisingly, a married person is more hesitant to acquiesce to the charms of a poacher.  According to a 2017 study by Alastair P. Davies and Todd K. Shackelford, a poacher requires a greater amount of wealth or physical attractiveness to successfully seduce a married person.^[3]   

Dutch Heinemann (Lyle Bettger) represents the classic marital interloper in All I Desire (1953).  

He is undeterred by social rules as he aggressively pursues a married woman.

4.) Three authors, Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz, and James Witte, examined happy couples in a 2013 book titled The Normal Bar.  They warned that a couple's happiness can depend on effective mate guarding.  They wrote:

Are your friends your competition? Are you attracted to your partner’s friends?  An overwhelming 86% of men and 85% of women said they don’t think they have any friends who tempt their partners. However, it appears that they are very much mistaken because, when we reversed the question, we found that nearly half (45%) of men and more than one-fourth (26%) of women in fact are attracted to friends of their partners and are tempted to act on it. This poses an uncomfortable dilemma, since most of us would like our partners to be friends with our friends.^[4]

She's Having a Baby (1988)

5.) The majority of adulterers do not want to leave their marriages.^[4]  

6.) A third of unfaithful wives cheated with an old boyfriend.  This is yet another surprising revelation of The Normal Bar.^[4]  A chapter of my new book, Unfaithful: The History of the Adultery Film, is devoted to this topic.

7.) General David Petraeus resigned as CIA director due to an adulterous affair.  He could no longer be seen as an honorable or trustworthy leader.  His mistress was a writer and former military officer named Paula Broadwell.  Petraeus had regular close contact with Broadwell while working with her on his biography.  Yet, the United States has had several Commanders in Chief who held office despite extramarital affairs.  A prime example of this is John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy's many mistresses included Hollywood actresses (Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Tierney and Angie Dickinson), socialites  (Mary Pinochet Meyer and Gunilla Von Post), a Mafia moll (Judith Campbell Exnerl), a German prostitute (Ellen Rometsch), a stripper (Blaze Starr), his wife’s press secretary (Pamela Turnure), a White House intern (Mimi Alford), and at least two White House secretaries (Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowen).

8.) Adultery is illegal in 23 states.  In Michigan, adultery falls within the definition of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.  Under the law, it is possible to sentence a convicted adulterer to life in prison.  Many other states have laws that explicitly state that a person who cheats on their spouse can be imprisoned, with sentences ranging from 30 days to five years.  But these are long-standing laws that are no longer enforced.

9.) A husband is five times more likely to cheat if he earns less money than his wife.^{[5] [6]}  

Kirk Douglas and Ann Sothern in A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

10.) More than 60% of affairs start at work.^{[7] [8]} 

Reference sources

1. Scott Haltzman, M.D., The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press (2013). 

2. David M. Buss and David P. Schmitt, "Human mate poaching: Tactics and temptations for infiltrating existing mateships," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 80, pages 894-917 (2001).    

3. Alastair P. Davies and Todd K. Shackelford, "Don't you wish your partner was hot like me?: The effectiveness of mate poaching across relationship types considering the relative mate-values of the poacher and the partner of the poached," Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 106, pages 32-35 (2017).  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886916310571.

4. Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz, and James Witte, The Normal Bar, Harmony (2013).

5. M. Gary Neuman, The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It.  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2008).  

6. Christin L. Munsch, "Her Support, His Support: Money, Masculinity, and Marital Infidelity," American Sociological Review, Volume 80, pages 469–95 (June, 2018).

7. Shirley P. Glass, Not Just Friends: Protect your relationship from infidelity and heal the trauma of betrayal.  New York: Free Press (2003).  

8. Abby Chinery, "Love from Nine to Five: Office Romance Statistics," Reboot (November 24, 2020), https://www.rebootonline.com/blog/office-relations-study/.

https://www.amazon.com/Unfaithful-History-Adultery-Anthony-Balducci/dp/B0C8Y1L7KK