Poll...Marry ever or again?

[haha]

No argument here!



Then, perhaps we are indeed different than most couples. In our 30 years of marriage, fidelity has never been questioned.

It appears that I am being misunderstood. I am sure that your marriage is perfect and as pure as the driven snow; I thought we were discussing events in a more general way. Do you not know people, or have read about cases where a spouse suddenly wants a divorce, and it comes out during the proceedings that s/he has been carrying on an affair sometimes for years? Or of cases where a 20 or even 30 year affair only comes to light after the involved party has passed?

Everyone is not so stupid as to leave matchbook covers and sexual text messages from their lovers lying around the house, or to make ridiculous confessions, or look guilty. At least some of them are not in fact feeling guilty at all.

Also I am not saying anything about "most couples". What would I know about most couples? I only know what I know, and that includes the demonstrated fact that a great many people get totally blindsided if/when an affair on the part of their spouse comes to light. It takes a certain degree of arrogance to assume that one's spouse would under no circumstances take another lover.

Ha

 

[NW-Bound]

OK, I will retract the word "most". It is really inappropriate, given that only about half of the people who were polled admitted to extramarital affairs. It still leaves about 1/2 of the couples claiming to be pure, which is not a minuscule minority. I should have used the word "some". Is that better?

 

[NW-Bound]

Arghh... Think about it, I have made a big assumption that the [-]cheating[/-] [-]untruthful[/-] whatever men are married to similar women. That is of course not at all true, meaning we would suspect that in many cases, one side of a marriage has no inkling that the other half has extramarital affairs. That was what Ha described.

So, the percentage of marriages where both sides are truthful may be quite a bit smaller than 40%. The latter is the percentage of men who claim to commit no adultery, but some of them might have a wife who does.

 

[haha]

From the article, "... as many as 60 percent of men and half of women will have sex with somebody other than their spouse during their marriage."

Wow! Sixty percent of men and fifty percent of the women.

I am not a sociologist, but I have a fair to middling understanding of numbers. And this quote from you suggests that out of 100 marriages, the absolute maximum number of unadulterated marriages is 40. If all women were pure, but 60% of men go walkabout, that means 60 out of 100 marriages have at least one cheating partner. If one posited minimal theoretical overlap, 100% of marriages would house at least one adulterer. However, we might guess that sometimes both the husband and the wife are naughty, so it appears that theoretically, and taking from the data in your quote, out of 100 marriages the minimum number that contain at least one adulterer is 60, and the maximum would be 100.

If this data is accurate, marriages without at least one adulterer are in the minority. How small that minority is we don’t have data to decide.

Ha

 

[NW-Bound]

We obviously cross-posted. Please see my post right above yours. Yes, marriages with both sides being truthful are in a definite minority, and difficult to quantify.

 

[BigNick]

Sounds like a twist on an old Groucho Marx quote....

Groucho (I think it was) had this take on divorce was "Next time, I won't get married. I'll just find a woman I don't like and buy her a house."

 

[haha]

We obviously cross-posted. Please see my post right above yours. Yes, marriages with both sides being truthful are in a definite minority, and difficult to quantify.

haha, yes I see. ¡Entonces, somos de acuerdo!

I do believe that it is likely that outmatings are less common amoung ERs than among the general population. For one thing, we are very cautious people. For another, we obviously have little difficulty suppressing immediate desires in favor of long term goals. And lastly, we have a lot to lose financially if caught in an affair.

I just went back to the faithfulness poll on ER.org that bbbamI posted. Thee numbers are not huge, but they do strongly suggest a much smaller % of unfaithful in this group than is apparently found in the population at large. Very close to exactly 20% of both men and women who report infidelity, as opposed to 60% of the men and 50% of the women in the population reported above.

ha

 

[kumquat]

I guess the grass is always greener. I would love to be able to marry my partner, but as a gay couple we can not.

Why not move somewhere where you can. I think even some places in the USA will accept you.

 

[Westernskies]

haha, yes I see. ¡Entonces, somos de acuerdo!

I do believe that it is likely that outmatings are less common amoung ERs than among the general population. For one thing, we are very cautious people. For another, we obviously have little difficulty suppressing immediate desires in favor of long term goals. And lastly, we have a lot to lose financially if caught in an affair.

I just went back to the faithfulness poll on ER.org that bbbamI posted. Thee numbers are not huge, but they do strongly suggest a much smaller % of unfaithful in this group than is apparently found in the population at large. Very close to exactly 20% of both men and women who report infidelity, as opposed to 60% of the men and 50% of the women in the population reported above.

ha

Infidelity and LBYM make for strange bedfellows.