In Denmark, close to 46 percent of people admit to sleeping with someone outside of the marriage. Germany and Italy are not far behind, where 45 percent of people who are married in both of these countries admit to committing infidelity.
Iceland is the country with the least number of cheaters (9%). Some people prefer one-night stands with strangers! In fact, most respondents from Thailand, France, Russia and Australia said they've slept with a stranger behind their partners back.
Extramarital Affairs/Infidelities are common. Most estimates indicate that around 60% of men and 45% of women are willing to report that an affair has occurred sometime in their marriage and it suggests that 70% of all marriages experience an affair.
However, monogamy is only part of the human reproductive strategy. Infidelity is also widespread. Current studies of American couples indicate that 20 to 40% of heterosexual married men and 20 to 25% of heterosexual married women will also have an extramarital affair during their lifetime.
Research from the past two decades shows that between 20 and 25 percent of married men cheat and between 10 and 15 percent of married women cheat, according to professor Nicholas Wolfinger. Read more here.
In addition to gender and age, the infidelity rate also differs by a number of other demographic and social factors. For example, cheating is somewhat more common among black adults. Some 22% of ever-married blacks said that they cheated on their spouse, compared with 16% of whites and 13% of Hispanics.
Research in the field of infidelity reveals that there are three distinct personality types correlated with a higher likelihood of cheating: sociopaths, narcissists, and lonely hearts.
France is the only country in which most people believe affairs are morally acceptable and only 28 per cent of adulterers said they regretted their affairs. It might come as a surprise that the Germans are more likely than the French to have affairs.
An analysis revealed eight key reasons: anger, self-esteem, lack of love, low commitment, need for variety, neglect, sexual desire, and situation or circumstance.
Adultery is not a crime in Australia. Under federal law enacted in 1994, sexual conduct between consenting adults (18 years of age or older) is their private matter throughout Australia, irrespective of marital status.
Australians though, can breathe a sigh of relief. No such laws exist here, and unlike some States in the USA such as Massachusetts, Idaho, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin where adultery is a criminal offence, cheating on your spouse is not illegal in Australia either.
For better or worse, a spouse's infidelity rarely impacts legal issues related to divorce or the process leading up to it. Australia uses a "no-fault" divorce system. This means neither party is considered legally responsible in a divorce.
In the UK, adultery is not a criminal offence and like many other countries, one of the main reasons given for divorce. Couples cannot use adultery as a ground for divorce if they lived together as a couple for six months after the infidelity was known about.
The Hindu Sanskrit texts present a range of views on adultery, offering widely differing positions. The hymn 4.5. 5 of the Rigveda calls adultery as pāpa (evil, sin). Other Vedic texts state adultery to be a sin, just like murder, incest, anger, evil thoughts and trickery.
90% of Indian marriages are still fixed by families and only 5% of the couples marry for love. Further, 49% of married people in India confessed of having had an intimate relationship with someone other than their spouse, while almost 5 out of 10 have already indulged in casual sex (47%) or one-night stands (46%).
The Maldives has the highest divorce rate in the world, with 5.52 divorces per 1,000 people per year.
Adultery covers all types of sexual behaviour
Legally, adultery only covers sexual intercourse, which means behaviours such as kissing, webcam, virtual, and “emotional adultery” do not count for the purposes of getting divorced. This makes adultery very hard to prove if your spouse will not admit to it.
The basis for punishment of stoning specifically for adultery is clearly provided in Leviticus (20:10-12) which reads: "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, even with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and adulteress must be put to death...." Further, in Deuteronomy (22:22-24), it is stated ...
Historic data suggests that men have always been more likely to cheat. But in the 1990s, the infidelity rate peaked among men in their 50s. In that decade, older men were less likely to cheat than those who were middle aged. Then, in the 2000s, the highest rate of infidelity shifted to men in their 60s.
Experts found men with more “masculine” faces were more likely to be thought to be unfaithful, and such men also self-reported more cheating or “poaching” of other men's partners.
No, cheating doesn't mean your love wasn't real.
Whether you believe that someone can love their partner in the moment of infidelity or not, it's difficult to argue that there was never any love in a relationship just because someone cheated. People fall in and out of love all the time.
Yet, most affairs usually end one of two ways: with divorce or a stronger current relationship. How the end plays out is up to you, how you choose to react, and how hard you want to work to stay together. Learning how to overcome grief and pain is going to be difficult, but Couples Academy can help.