In Western societies there is a general consensus that we adhere to marriage vows. But popular surveys often report otherwise e.g. the New York Daily News reports that 8 out of 10 men will be unfaithful to their spouse during marriage and almost 50% of women will cheat on their husbands.  Statistically speaking this of course makes very little sense.  Anyone with the dimmest logic can see that for 80% of men to be unfaithful when only 50% of women are sneaking between the sheets means that those females who do offend have to be far naughtier than their ultra-faithful sisters. They also have to be far, far naughtier than the seriously unfaithful men – otherwise how do 8 out of 10 men get ‘fixed up’ by only 5 out of 10 women?

A knee jerk response is – well, men use prostitutes and that accounts for the imbalance – wrong –  such surveys discount the use of prostitutes and in any case male prostitutes, otherwise known as escorts, are very popular with traveling businesswomen these days.

So why the apparent imbalance and illogical outcomes in fidelity surveys?

In a word – lying – even when doing an anonymous survey women often lie about their level of unfaithfulness. If it is another human being asking the questions, especially in a face-to-face survey, then of course some will lie – they care what anyone thinks about them, even anonymous strangers in lab coats. So it is safe to say that (at a guess) around 15% of women lie when answering a question like – have you ever cheated on your partner?

Then we have the male liars. Anyone with a pair of eyes and a skerrick of grey matter between them can see that as many as 8 out of 10 men are simply incapable of infidelity. You have your emotionally immature men, your romantically incompetent men, your impotent men, your ugly and/or stupid men – but ask 10 random men if they have been unfaithful to their spouse and a little thing called male sexual pride will kick in. So let us say (at another guess) 15% will lie, overstating the case this time, especially if they are immature, romantically incompetent, ugly, stupid and impotent.

So all of a sudden the stats begin to make more sense, and a plausible figure of roughly 65% infidelity from both sexes becomes the logical outcome.

Dr. Terri Fisher, associate professor of psychology atOhioStateUniversity and Michele Alexander, assistant professor of psychology at theUniversity ofMaine, have published their results in “The Journal of Sex Research”.

“Women are sensitive to social expectations for their sexual behavior and may be less than totally honest when asked about their behavior in some survey conditions,” says Fisher, who tested men and women under varying conditions – one of which included the use of a simulated lie detector. For more details on their results see http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/sexsurv.htm

So it is both fair and logical to say that just as many women are cheating as men, depending on how wide your survey is, the type of cultural conditioning the people in the survey have, and what age group you’re delving into – but most importantly, how you test them.

Sex is pretty high on anyone’s agenda – after all, procreation is our biological raison d’etre - so making it as hard as possible for survey participants to cheat is the key to an accurate outcome.

So why, if Western culture promotes, celebrates and supposedly cherishes fidelity do we have a shocking majority like 65% of both sexes playing hide the sausage with people they are not supposed to be playing with? – And all this, despite universal and strongly enforced fidelity folklore. What would the percentage be like if we were not already pushing the monogamy barrow? 70%? 80%? 90%? (Although it is wonderful news if you are in the business of selling ‘faithfulness’ – because the more naughty people you have to ‘cure’ the better business is, and indeed the higher your moral ground.)

So what’s going on here? – Humans naturally want to be unfaithful but we have developed a culture bent on pushing people the other way? Can that be right? If so, how did we manage to screw things up that badly? It’s a bit like being raised to believe in Santa then one day your find out he’s nothing but an obese burglar.

Unfortunately it’s all true, humans are polyamorous (if you want to stick a label on it) although evidence suggests Santa always had inside help so in a way is himself a victim (note the cookies and milk).

But to say, yes, humans are irrepressibly sexual and not that fussy about who or even what they have sex with, and leave it there, is like telling a very long joke and forgetting the punch line. It’s preferable such undertakings are never begun.

What is needed, and highly overdue, is education as to what makes human sexuality – the basis for our personal relationships – tick. Understanding how and why we are the way we are is fundamental to building successful relationships. It also helps us understand our own impulses and why, sometimes, we are tempted to cross the line and play hide the sausage ourselves, even though our cultural training says it is wrong to do that.

Understanding our cultural training – how we arrived at such a distorted culture which goes so against our natural urges, is very useful in alleviating the fear of infidelity.

For further reading please see “The Art of Creating Alpha Males” on this website