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Can Infidelity Support Marriage and Increase Happiness?
5 factors from research looking at infidelity-specific dating website users.
Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception. — Sophocles
America continues to hold traditional views on marriage, with long-term monogamy as the default expectation for adult romantic relationships in spite of recent challenges to this model. According to a recent report from the Pew Research Center, fewer adults over the age of 18 are married nowadays, down 8 percent from decades prior largely because people currently remain single longer.
Consensual non-monogamy (CNM), AKA “open relationships”, are relatively popular, with over 20 percent of respondents in a recent Kinsey Institute study reporting engaging in CNM at some point in their lifetime. Importantly, CNM is not the same as infidelity. Whereas people in open relationships consent to allow pursuit of activities outside of their primary relationships, those who engage in infidelity are doing so without their partners consent, typically under conditions of secrecy. Although not all individuals with an explicit agreement for CNM ever exercise the option, it supports a situation where partners can get their needs met more roundly by involving others in the equation. The kicker is that it has to be above-board…
