The other day I invited you all to complete a survey regarding your experiences of infidelity. As I mentioned in the post, one of the fine people over at rDrama linked to the survey and invited his fellow users to populate it with troll data. As a precaution I closed the form and intended to delete any responses submitted after the rDrama post was made. However, after a cursory inspection of the responses, I only found one submitted after this time which was an obvious troll response (the person gave their preferred relationship style as "Warlord"), which suggests that not many rDrama users bothered to complete the survey. My apologies to those of you who would have filled out the survey had I not closed it prematurely.
Demographics
(All percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.)
Excluding the single troll response mentioned above, I received 172 responses.
- 159 respondents (92%) gave their natal sex as male, while 13 (8%) gave it as female.
- More than 80% of respondents listed their age as between 25-44 (46% as 25-34, 36% as 35-44). 22 respondents gave their age as between 45-54. 3 gave their age as <18 – mind the cussin' fellas, there's children present!
- 83% gave their sexual orientation as heterosexual, 12% as bisexual and 3% as homosexual. In the "other" field, exactly 2 users listed their sexual orientation as asexual, one of whom complained "quite frankly im offended the option isn't there": given that only 1% of respondents reported their sexuality as such, I think my reasoning for not listing it as a default choice is abundantly clear.
- 89% of respondents listed their preferred relationship style as monogamous, 5% as open relationship and 4% as polygamous. One respondent described their preferred relationship style as "I'm monogamous, but have no preference if partners are mono or poly", which sounds like polygamy with extra steps, but what do I know.
- 157 (91%) of respondents reported having been in at least one romantic relationship.
- Of these, 137 (87%) of respondents have only been in monogamous relationships. 18 (11%) have been in a mix of monogamous, polygamous and open relationships. 4 (3%) have only been in open or polygamous relationships.
According to this survey, the modal Motte user is a 35-year-old heterosexual male who has only been in monogamous relationships and likes it that way.
Sex differences
As noted above, the number of female respondents was very low (there were more bisexual male respondents than female respondents of any type), meaning the data is bound to be noisier, but for completeness's sake I thought I'd highlight ways that the female respondents differ from the group and build a profile of the modal female Motte user.
- Female respondents skewed younger, with an average age of 32.
- Every female respondent reported having been in at least one romantic relationship – not one femcel to be found!
- There was an almost perfectly even split between heterosexual and bisexual females (but no lesbians, curiously).
- Similarly, female respondents were much more likely than average to describe their preferred relationship style as polygamous, with a whopping 31% describing their preferred relationship style as such. They were also slightly less likely to have only been in monogamous relationships, with 77% reporting having only been in monogamous relationships (including one respondent who described her preferred relationship style as polygamous, curiously).
On the whole, the modal female Motte user doesn't differ that dramatically from the modal Motte user: she's a 32-year-old heterosexual female who has only been in monogamous relationships and likes it that way.
Infidelity (on the receiving end)
On to the juicy stuff. Of respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 69 (44%) report at least one unfaithful partner. The most common type of infidelity was non-penetrative sexual contact (kissing, groping etc.), reported by 37% of respondents. The next-most common type was penetrative sex (27%). Almost as many (26%) reported a partner who had an "emotional affair" or "affair of the heart" (i.e. romantic infidelity without any corresponding sexual infidelity). Only 20% reporting a partner who had cybersex (phone sex, sharing intimate photos etc.) with another person.
A significant number of respondents report repeated infidelity: of the 69 respondents, 30 (44%) report multiple acts of infidelity. (Given answers to other questions, the impression I get is that most such respondents had a single partner who was repeatedly unfaithful, rather than multiple unfaithful partners.)
Holy matrimony seems to offer a significant protection against infidelity: of the 69 respondents who report at least one unfaithful partner, only 13 (17%) report having been cheated on by a spouse.
Demographic observations
- Female respondents were more likely than average (54%) to report at least one unfaithful partner. Among female respondents, the unfaithful partner was equally likely (46%) to have had cybersex with someone else as to have had non-penetrative sexual contact.
- Only one female respondent reported having been cheated on by a female partner.
- By far the most common age at which partners cheated was between the ages of 18-24: of the 73 reported unfaithful partners, 37 of them (51%) were in this age bracket.
- There is an interesting sex difference to be observed here. Just looking at unfaithful female partners, 54% fell into the 18-24 age bracket, falling off to 22% for the 25-34 bracket, 5% for the 35-44 bracket and 2% for the 45-54 bracket. For unfaithful males, however, the picture is quite different: although males are most likely to cheat between the ages of 18-24 (30% of male partners were unfaithful in this bracket), a male aged 25-34 is just as likely to cheat as one aged 35-44 as one aged 45-54. This finding can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but suggests that a partner's propensity to be unfaithful is heavily determined by their sexual desirability (qua Chris Rock, "men are as faithful as their options" – and he would know). As I've noted before, women's desirability to the opposite sex peaks at 20 and declines steeply thereafter, while men's increases from 20 onwards and peaks at 50. There are, of course, other interpretations: perhaps women's sex drives peak between the ages of 18-24 and decline steeply thereafter, maybe their likelihood to be unfaithful at this age is a function of their emotional immaturity. I'm sure people in the comments will propose alternative explanations.
- LGBT people (62% of bisexuals and 67% of gay men*) were more likely than heterosexuals (41%) to report at least one unfaithful partner. Four male respondents report having been cheated on by a male partner. I regret failing to ask about the unfaithful partners' sexuality, to see if this finding bears out the old joke that dating a bisexual entails being twice as paranoid.
- Far and away the biggest thing that jumps out at me is the difference between monogamous respondents vs. poly/open relationship enjoyers. Among people whose preferred relationship style is monogamous and who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 40% report at least one unfaithful partner. But of the 18 respondents whose preferred relationship style is something other than monogamous, 14 of them (78%) report at least one unfaithful partner, nearly double the rate for monogamous respondents. Here I will quote directly from Gemini's analysis of the data: "There is a notable correlation between preferred relationship styles and the reporting of unfaithful behavior... [which] suggests that even in non-traditional structures, boundaries regarding 'knowledge and consent' are frequently crossed."
- However: of the 14 respondents mentioned above, 12 of them (86%) state that they were in monogamous relationships with their partners at the time the partner was unfaithful.
Infidelity (on the committing end)
Now we find out how many of you are dirty, dirty dogs.
Among the 157 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 53 (34%) report being unfaithful to at least one of their partners. As with those respondents who have been cheated on, the most common type of infidelity respondents reported committing was non-penetrative sexual contact (31%), followed by penetrative sex (22%), cybersex (19%) and emotional affairs (18%).
The majority of unfaithful respondents are repeat offenders: of the 53 who report unfaithfulness, 33 (62%) have been unfaithful more than once.
As with respondents who have been cheated on, marriage seems to offer some protection: of the 53 unfaithful respondents, only 11 (21%) report having been unfaithful to a spouse.
Demographic observations
- Female respondents were more likely than average (62%) to report having been unfaithful to at least one partner, compared to 31% of male respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship.
- Of the 8 female respondents who report being unfaithful to at least one partner, 2 were unfaithful to a female partner while 6 were unfaithful to a male partner. By contrast, only one male respondent reported being unfaithful to a male partner, with the remainder (44 male respondents) being unfaithful to female partners.
- Curiously, the age pattern among unfaithful respondents is radically different from those who report having been cheated on. The most common age at which respondents being unfaithful was the 25-34 bracket, with 21 respondents (38%) of respondents reporting unfaithfulness at this age. This was also the age bracket male respondents were most likely to cheat, whereas for female respondents it was <18 (4 respondents) followed by 25-34 (3 respondents). One female respondent answered this question with the response "Don’t like the word 'unfaithful' but I have never not been so in a relationship". Your guess is as good as mine as to what that's supposed to mean.
- Of the 24 respondents who listed their sexuality as bisexual or homosexual and who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 15 (63%) report being unfaithful at least once. This was more than double the equivalent rate for heterosexual respondents (30%). Dating a bisexual means being twice as paranoid, confirmed.
- Of the 18 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship and who listed their preferred relationship style as something other than monogamous, 12 (67%) report being unfaithful at least once. Once again, however, only two of these individuals report having been unfaithful in a polyamorous relationship, with 8 being in monogamous relationships at the time, 1 describing his relationship to his cuckqueaned partner as "it's complicated" (c'mon bro, this isn't Facebook) and the last giving an obnoxious troll answer I probably should have omitted entirely.
The "revenge" hypothesis
Of the 157 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 34 (22%) have both committed infidelity at least once and had a partner cheat on them. Among female respondents, just under half have both cheated and been cheated on. Among male respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 28 (19%) have both cheated and been cheated on.
Of respondents who have both cheated and cheated upon, the majority (79%) report that, at the time they were unfaithful, they were in the same age bracket or older compared to the partner who was unfaithful to them. Only 15% report being younger at the time they cheated compared to the partner who was unfaithful to them, with the remaining 2 respondents giving ambiguous answers. Assuming that people tend to date within their age brackets, one hypothesis for this finding might be that, after getting cheated on, some respondents seek revenge for this slight against their character: either directly cheating on the partner who cheated on them, or cheating on their subsequent partner.
Recommendations for those seeking to avoid getting cheated on
The single demographic most likely to be unfaithful to their partner is young bisexual women who are interested in polyamory. But I very much doubt you needed me to tell you that.
In infidelity, rehabilative justice seems about as effective as it does anywhere else. As mentioned above, 62% of unfaithful respondents were unfaithful more than once. Among respondents whose partners were unfaithful to them, 44% were unfaithful more than once. A simple average of these two metrics indicates that 53% of unfaithful partners are repeat offenders. If your partner is unfaithful to you once, the odds are slightly better than chance that they will be unfaithful to you again. My recommendation is to cut your losses.
Housekeeping
Anyone looking to see the raw data, DM me.
Ross from "Friends"
One respondent responded to the question regarding non-penetrative sexual contact with the answer "We were on a break".
*Bear in mind that only three respondents listed their sexuality as homosexual, all of whom were male.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Getting caught cheating is the coward's method of initiating a breakup. Especially during teenage years and early 20's.
I had two girlfriends cheat on me during that time, both readily admitted it and then didn't seem too upset when I broke up with them.
Single instances of infidelity are almost impossible to catch, and prolonged affairs are almost impossible to hide. Hiding is so difficult because humans are gossips and great at sniffing out who's fucking whom. Even if the affected partner doesn't figure it out, someone in their ~50-200 person social circle is likely to catch on. Way more likely if the "homewrecker" is in an overlapping social circle.
Big obvious takeaway from survey is that cheating is a common experience. Which is relevant to the original discussion about why Mr Brightside was popular.
Yeah, I think @100ProofTollBooth's interpretation was warranted.
Thanks. And thanks for doing the survey. Survey's take a little bit of doing.
The takeaways are interesting to me because of the next level of analysis they point to; the context and nature of the events surrounding an infidelity event.
Based on the survey and several different comments in the thread, I think a starting point framework could be as followed:
This mirrors the "porn versus romance novel" framework. Men are captivated by the act itself, while women like the lead up to the act.
I've been thinking about marriage in the west for about 7 years or so. That's when my friend group started to get married, so it makes sense. I wonder how many of these marriages will make it 5, 10, 20+ years. There's already been a few divorces less than 3 years after the wedding. Then, I think about how many of these marriages will turn into dead bedroom, mutual-resentment situations. How many will have to deal with either or both of physical infidelity or emotional infidelity.
The postmodern (and wrong) response to this is the current vibe of polyamory and its various branches. Interestingly enough, the survey demonstrated that that is a more unstable structure than monogamy.
The 'conservative' view of this is "welp, yep, marriage takes work and even couple goes through a rough patch or two." Think of the fat boomer (and, increasingly, millenial) men who like to say "happy wife, happy life", "let me check with the boss" when asked about going to a game / bar / boys night, and makes a lot and makes jokes about spousal murder. In many ways, I hate this "version" of marriage the most. It's a long-term, slow neutering of the modern married man and "battle-axe-ification" of the modern married woman. This is how you get "Karens" and their husbands, which google tells me are one of "Dale", "Darren", "Ken", or "David."
I've written before about how marriage is a miracle that, along with children, sits as the basis for the rest of a functioning, large scale, self-determined society. And I think that we've spent something like 4 or more generations now not only not doing the basic maintenance of marriage as an institution, but actively undermining it.
The results of that are hinted at in the survey -- realtionships, in general and across the board, seem to have more failure modes than success states. To be sure, this has been the case forever, but the entire point of the institution of marriage - along with the stricter courtship habits preceding it - is to give a massive social support to the odds of a marriage working out.
We've traded that for mobile-based-hookups and a silly vibe of "sexual freedom" and "self expression" and now, again according to the survey, the majority of people are having a very bad time, for at least part of their life, with it.
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I'm female and never been in any romantic relationship (voluntarily celibate if you like) but I didn't bother filling out the survey since "no experience of infidelity because never been in a position to cheat or be cheated on" seemed like it wouldn't be the respondent you were looking for.
There may be a few other sphinxes out there in the Motte ecosphere with the same experiences who didn't fill it out for the same reasons?
I, too, am a volcel, for complicated reasons. I, too, did not fill out the survey for this reason.
Why are you a volcel?
Several reasons, the two main ones being:
(1) Absolutely no interest in romantic love or sex at all. From the age of nine, I knew I didn't want a husband and kids. Of course, at that age, the adults think that's cute and they chuckle about "You'll change your mind when you get older". I got older. I didn't change my mind. When I hit thirty or so, my mother stopped asking me if I'd ever settle down.
(2) No offers. I think years and years ago there might have been someone working up to asking me if I'd go on a date, but I being clueless shot that down before it could happen. I'm ugly (really, I'm not being coy here) and fat all my life, so yeah: it would have sucked like an industrial vacuum had I wanted Twu Wuv because it never was on the cards. Not even in a "well if I was blind drunk, nobody would ever know, and I was blue-balls desperate then I'd fuck her" way, and who wants that kind of attention anyway?
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Sphinxes?
Looking for mythological creatures to use in this context of "so rare as to be legendary", didn't want to use unicorns as that has a particular meaning in polyamory, and basilisks has a bad repute around rationalist parts 😁
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@2rafa@Clementine @EdgeCityRed @fribble @Gaashk@HereAndGone2@hooser @MaiqTheTrue @OracleOutlook @TerracottaI'm missing at least
threefourfive.Alas I didn’t participate in this
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If the survey annoyed someone for not having the asexual option, I'm two-for-two on that: aromantic asexual. Never been in love, never wanted to be in love, never had intimate contact or partner and don't regret that.
Yes, I enjoy making life difficult for survey creators 😁
EDIT: Mind you, that does make things difficult for me when I'm in a job where it's relevant when dealing with clients, such as social housing: "this person is doing something really effin' stupid and messing up their entire life, how can they not see that, and no, 'but I looooove him/her' is not a good enough reason! Can't they just over-ride the gush of hormones with common sense???" Apparently, "no" is the answer there for all you amatonormatives🤣
EDIT EDIT: And it seems us asexuals, aromantics, and aromantic asexuals are now welcomed into the warm if slightly sticky embrace of the queer movement (we even have our own flags! yes, plural!) which highly amuses me after a few years ago when this was a hot topic in the LGBT space (before we got the + and the extra letters) - no you're not queer, no you don't belong here, no you are taking resources away from proper gay/lesbian folx. Me, I didn't care a straw one way or the other since I had no desire to be part of that movement, but some people did care and did want to belong and were unceremoniously given the boot. But now it looks like the Triumph of the Alphabet Soup, which makes me laugh as I said.
I considered being extremely granular with the sexuality options (asexual but romantic, aromantic but sexual etc.) but decided I was over-engineering it and just went straight/gay/bi/other. Based on the responses I received I think it was a sensible decision.
I am reeling back in shock here! Such an answer, in this sacred and holy month of
the Sacred HeartPride! When the struggle against genocide (trans), phobias of all ilks, and bigotry in general is even more vital and even more fraught thanks to Orange Man Bad!And you spit upon and trample queer folx in this manner? Who do I report this heinous outrage to?
Keep up, old-timer! It's MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ now!
Excuse me, I am pained. Deeply pained. It's like a knife in my heart.
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I'm surprised that the cybersex numbers are so low, given the model of infidelity as driven by availability. It's far less expensive and more available than normal dating, even for heterosexual men who care about their cyber-partner's real-life gender. Dunno how much that reflects not wanting it, or not seeing it as cheating.
At the risk of unmasking myself, you'd think so, but in the same way that a certain branch of the populace rounds bisexuals to straight or gay depending on their current relationship status, there's a pretty broad stroke who don't think you're poly unless you're either fucking or seeking to fuck a side piece.
Huh, that's surprising. I expected a discrepancy, but I didn't expect it to be this severe. Another point in favor of the infidelity-by-availability model given grindr, though I guess there's probably a soccon somewhere surprised it's not 100% - poly%.
Wonder if there's enough information to point in direction of causation. I could imagine either a world where people who were cheated on were more likely to become poly (either in the charitable 'let's be extremely explicit about boundaries' or less charitable 'might as well get in on the action'), and another entirely different world where people who were poly were likely to find cheaters even when looking at 'monogamous' partners.
Presumably didn't like the connotations of unfaithful, but did it anyway? I could maybe see the difference if their culture is like 1960s US where relationships and going-steady were different things, but more likely... not that optimistic.
My model of some cheating is that its an easy way for people to initiate a breakup. Especially for young people. It was done to me by two different girlfriends, and two other girlfriends didn't accept my reasons for breaking up with them. I had to just persistently say "its over", and looking back on those instances it would have been easier to just tell them I cheated on them to get them to hate me.
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As the sage and philosopher William of Clinton established, if it's not penis-in-vagina, it's not sex. Oral sex? Not sex. Thus, he did not have sex with that woman. And if it's not sex, then it's not cheating, now is it?
His reasoning was significantly more convoluted than that:
I’ve always been impressed by how Clinton, under depo pressure, was able to process Deposition Exhibit 1 in real time and use it to out jiu-jitsu the opposing counsel through a definition of sexual relations that opposing counsel themselves referenced. Clinton was indeed stating the truth under the definition provided.
Chad Clinton vs. virgin opposing counsel.
May the Lord grant me a fraction of such powers if I find myself getting deposed one day.
He earned that offer of MENSA membership.
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My understanding of monogamy is that it's a mutual arrangement, where two people both agree to be romantically and sexually exclusive with one another. "I'm going to be romantically or sexually exclusive with you, but I don't care whether you're exclusive with me" sounds... rather far removed from a conventional understanding of what "monogamy" is. I believe @ymeskhout once had a rather lengthy back-and-forth with Aella regarding her personal definition of what polygamy is, which seems to overlap with this person's conception of themselves as monogamous.
I had the same thought myself.
Your data as a whole is mostly supportive of a standard argument in favor of polygamy: there's a huge risk of failing at monogamy, so you're better off taking it out of your expectations at the start and adjusting your own beliefs concurrently, rather than trying and failing, as many people do.
I'm not persuaded that the existence of people who break a rule is a good reason to abolish the rule.
It depends on the rule, doesn't it?
Best practices for speed limits are to set them using the 85th percentile of drivers in free flowing conditions, assuming that 85% of drivers are responsible and choosing safe speeds when driving without restrictions.
If 44% have been cheated on and 34% cheated, then monogamy is safely outside the 85th percentile!
Though in general I'd suggest that the split is the result of differential interpretations of similar fact patterns and the easiest general answer is to average it and say 39% of people fail monogamy. Lots of people say they've never cheated, but have a person in their life who say they did, for various reasons. "We were on a break!" or "it was only xyz and didn't count" or "we were never in a relationship to start with" or the ever popular disagreements about when the contract of the relationship started and ended. You see this in marriage with divorces, where you'll see the spectacle of a woman who filed for divorce accusing a man of infidelity when he sleeps with someone else before the legal process has concluded.
If we set it around 39%, then monogamy is only a 61st percentile speed. If a road has a 25mph speed limit, but 39% of drivers will do 50, then the only reason to keep it at 25 is so that cops can write more tickets.
That doesn't suggest abolishing the speed limit, it does suggest raising it slightly.
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The fact that men report being cheated on less and also report cheating less makes me wonder if the "have you been cheated on" question is actually mostly measuring having been cheated on. Seems plausible it could primarily be measuring "what is your standard of proof for concluding you've been cheated on" and "how good are you at detecting when you've been cheated on".
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