Negotiating the ever-changing tide of monogamy
By Ayana Byrd

Thanks to an obsessive media culture, the Web, and a ubiquitous 24-hour news ticker, we are bombarded daily with dirt on celebrities or politicians who have cheated on their spouse. Recent examples abound—from Tiki Barber, Jesse James, and LeAnn Rimes to Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, and Kwame Kilpatrick. Watching their marriages unravel has become a spectator sport and makes us wonder: Is everybody cheating?

The answer largely depends on whom you ask and how you define infidelity. According to a 2006 study conducted by the University of Chicago, 22.6 percent of blacks have had sex with a person other than their spouse while married (the same study reports that 15.8 percent of whites have cheated while married). However, the majority of recent studies report much higher numbers for the U.S. as a whole, citing 45 to 55 percent of married women and 50 to 60 percent of married men have engaged in extramarital sex at some point during their relationship. Infidelity expert Ruth Houston, who is the author of Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs and has conducted more than 8,000 interviews on the subject, estimates that 80 percent of marriages have been touched by infidelity if you expand the definition of cheating to include emotional infidelity, kissing, and online sex. Two things are certain. With the efficiency of modern transportation and increased access to advancing technology, it’s easier to cheat than ever before. It’s also easier to get caught. Exhibit A, Tiger Woods.

The reasons people cheat and the way people react to learning that their partner has cheated tend to break down by gender. In a 2007 MSNBC poll, the leading reasons why men had sex outside of their relationship were because they wanted more sex and variety. Women desired more emotional attention and reassurance of their desirability. Twice as many women as men said retaliation was a motivating factor for their infidelity. According to Michelle Callahan, a psychologist and dating coach and the author of Ms. Typed: Stop Sabotaging Your Relationships and Find Dating Success, both sexes do their share of freelancing, but “husbands typically are more concerned with the fact that their wives had sex with someone else—they aren’t as interested in knowing when and how it happened because they can’t get past the act itself,” she says. “Whereas wives are more concerned with the details of when and how they were deceived, in addition to being hurt by the infidelity.” Either way, the betrayal is often insurmountable, which explains why 54 percent of the divorcés who answered MSNBC’s poll said that cheating was at least partially responsible for their split.