Who Has Affairs - And Why
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People are bombarded with images of women as sex objects in advertising and marketing campaigns. Over and over, the message to men is that the good life includes a parade of sexy women in their lives. Women inadvertently buy into this image and strive to achieve it.
The lack of good sex education and the existence of sexual taboos combine to make it difficult for most partners to talk honestly about sex.
As teenagers we get conditioned in deception when it comes to sex—engaging in sexual activity while hiding it from our parents.
The code of secrecy is a major factor in affairs because it provides protection for the person having affairs and leads them to believe they won't get caught.
Bottom Line: There is no ONE single reason a person has an affair. There are usually many reasons, including some of the forces that pull them toward affairs and some of the forces that push them toward affairs, combined with the influence of the general factors in society that contribute to affairs.
2. Who Has Affairs?
We tend to think that only bad people have affairs or only people in bad relationships. But no one is immune from an affair.
Monogamy is something most people say they believe in and want for themselves. Every survey ever done on this question shows a high percentage of people think monogamy is important to marriage and that affairs are wrong. But a belief in monogamy as an ideal doesn't prevent large numbers of people from having extramarital affairs. Most people don't intend to have an affair and most people don't think it will happen to them—but it does.
Bottom Line: No one is immune from having affairs disrupt their lives or the lives of those they care about; they happen to all kinds of people, in all walks of life.
3. How Prevalent are Affairs?
Conservative estimates are that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an extramarital affair. These figures are even more significant when we consider the total number of marriages involved—since it's unlikely that all the men and women having affairs happen to be married to each other. If even half of the women having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the 60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages.
But we need to take a closer look at the statistics on affairs to determine what they can contribute to an understanding of our sexual patterns. While affairs happen in non-marital, "committed" relationships as well as within marriage, most of the statistics deal only with "extramarital" affairs. These statistics began with Kinsey's reports in the 1940's and early 1950's. Kinsey's samples included 5,000 men and showed that by age 40, 50 percent of the men had experienced extramarital sexual intercourse. Kinsey's original samples of 6,000 women showed that by age 40, 26 percent of the women had experienced extramarital sexual intercourse.
Later studies dealing exclusively with men indicate a continuous increase in the number of men having extramarital affairs. The increase for women having affairs has been even more significant. Some of the statistics, both for men and for women, are extremely high and legitimately debated, but many people question any statistics on extramarital affairs, arguing that statistics are unreliable and confusing and that no one knows precisely how prevalent affairs are. While there are slight differences in the estimates based on clinical studies and questionnaires, the bottom line is compelling in showing an extremely high (and rising) incidence of extramarital affairs.
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