What Do People Do, Say, and Feel When They Have Affairs? Associations between Extradyadic Infidelity Motives with Behavioral, Emotional, and Sexual Outcomes

Abstract

In this study, we surveyed a sample of U.S. undergraduates and internet-based participants (N = 495) about their experiences during/after romantic infidelity (affairs), and their initial motivations to engage in infidelity. Meaningful associations emerged between motivation and experience variables. Dyadic motivations (e.g., anger at one’s partner, lack of love) were linked with longer affairs, more public dates with affair partners, and primary relationship dissolution. Conversely, non-dyadic situational motivations (e.g., feeling stressed or intoxicated) were linked with shorter affairs, less satisfying sex during affairs, and lower rates of disclosure and dissolution. These findings suggest meaningful infidelity typologies and may aid researchers and practitioners in helping others resolve relational conflicts.

Keywords:

• Motivation
• infidelity
• interpersonal relationships
• intimacy
• extra-dyadic sex

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Christin Probst and Jesse Harrington for assistance with administering the study and analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We recognize that an increasing number of people are showing interest with and engagement in consensually non-monogamous relationships (Moors, 2016). In such relationships, the behaviors which are normally considered transgressive in monogamous relationships are far less problematic and often affirmative or joyful (Conley et al., 2017; Moors, 2017). Although many people engage in some form of consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives, research to date shows that most American’s practice and expect social monogamy and sexual exclusivity in their romantic relationships (Haupert et al., 2017). We will return to this topic in the Discussion.

2 See Selterman et al. (2019) for a developmental perspective on how infidelity research on young adults may partially generalize to other age groups, and see Tsapelas, Fisher, and Aron (2011) for a summary of findings regarding infidelity and demographic variables.