Extramarital affairs: reasons, effect, love, and emotions!

Updated On March 18, 2024 | Published By: shahid | In Affair , Interesting Facts

The normal assumption in society is that one of the married partners cheats due to lack of love in their married life. Moreover, there is a general feeling that people having extramarital affairs suffer from feelings of guilt and remorse. But a study done last year by researchers from Johns Hopkins University showed that neither of the above assumptions are true.

The shocking result of the study showed that the reason for people cheating on their married partner is not lack of love in the relationship. And such infidel spouse also has no guilt feelings or remorse for it.

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Infidelity in relationships

Cheating is common in relationships. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, USA conducted a survey to find out the percentage of people who cheat and reasons for it. The survey was done on the Ashley Madison website for extramarital affairs and people’s opinion was sought on the feelings after cheating their respective married partner. The survey and it’s results were published in the journal titled Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Extramarital affairs are common (Source: Pinterest)

2000 website users were surveyed before and after they had the extramarital relationship. The aim of the study was to comprehend the psychology of such people in a better way. The research team posed questions to the participants about how their marriage fared, the reason for them to have a desire to have an affair, and how was their general well-being on cheating their sexual partner.

Read here: Queen Letizia had an extramarital affair with her future brother-in-law, Jamie del Burgo!

Surprising results of the survey

The study showed that 20-25 % of married partners and 33-50% of unmarried dating people had cheated on their love partners. But most of these people had high level of love and regard for their cheated partner.

The main reason for having an affair was stated to be lack of sexual satisfaction in the present relationship. Additionally, people resorted to an affair because they wanted sexual variety. Many were satisfied with the feeling of independence that came with the cheating.

Lack of love towards their partner was the least cause of infidelity. And anger and revenge was also not mentioned commonly as the cause.

Dr Dylan Selterman, the lead author of this study said:

“Ratings for satisfaction with affairs was high sexual satisfaction and emotional satisfaction. And feelings of regret were low. These findings paint a more complicated picture of infidelity compared to what we thought we knew,”

This infidelity was not due to deeper relationship issues at all. Dylan added:

“People have a diversity of motivations to cheat. Sometimes they’ll cheat even if their relationships are pretty good. We don’t see solid evidence here that people’s affairs are associated with lower relationship quality or lower life satisfaction,”

Was there moral guilt due to the extramarital affairs?

Well, the answer is No. Most of these relationship cheaters had no regrets about it. They never demonstrated any moral guilt on it. Dylan explained:

“In popular media, television shows and movies and books, people who have affairs have this intense moral guilt and we don’t see that in this sample of participants,”

He continued:

“People just assume that their partners are going to be totally satisfied having sex with one person for the next 50 years of their lives but a lot of people fail at it,”

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