As I’ve
pointed out before infidelity is not all that common. It's difficult to measure, since no one really wants to admit to it, but no matter how you slice it, lot's of people are doing it. But how many? What portion of spouses are unfaithful? 10%? 50%? 80%? Salon
looks at the opinions of a few experts who study the matter:
The best educated guess, according to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, is that an affair takes place within 40 to 76 percent of marriages: "A conservative interpretation of these figures suggests that although perhaps half of all married couples remain monogamous, the other half will experience an infidelity over the course of a marriage."
And here's another take:
As the anthropologist Helen Fisher explains, a meta-analysis of a dozen American infidelity studies found that "31% of men and 16% of women had had a sexual affair that entailed no emotional involvement; 13% of men and 21% of women had been romantically but not sexually involved with someone other than their spouse; and 20% of men and women had engaged in an affair that included both a sexual and emotional connection."
OK, so it depends on who you ask, and what you call infidelity. But suffice it to say, a lot of people are stepping out.
