Who is unfaithful once, will he always be unfaithful?
One of the great fears that unite most monogamous relationships is that the couple is, or may be, unfaithful on occasion. This fear is even more accentuated if one of the two knows that the other has been unfaithful at other times or even in the same relationship.
Therefore, a person who has experienced a infidelity on the part of your partner Can you be sure that it will never happen again? Or put another way, a person who has been unfaithful once is more likely to be unfaithful in that or any other relationship?
- Maybe you're interested: "Open relationships: 7 tips and mistakes to avoid"
What are the causes of infidelity?
Traditionally, couple relationships considered as monogamous are based on sexual as well as sentimental or affective exclusivity. However, infidelity is a real fact that occurs in a large number of couples and both men and women.
It is not easy to know the exact figures about how many people have committed one or more infidelities throughout their lives, since it is a response that is often falsified enough with the intention of maintaining a good social image. Even in private psychology or sexology consultations, people are not always able to confess an infidelity.
Although the main issue of this article is to clarify whether a person who has committed an infidelity is more likely to commit it again, both in their current relationship and in later relationships, first of all we will review what risk factors influence the time of that someone is unfaithful
According to various investigations related to relationships, there are a number of common risk factors when committing infidelity. These include:
- Low degree of commitment with the current relationship.
- Decrease in satisfaction or lack thereof.
- Acceptance of sexual relationships outside of the relationship.
- Insecure attachment , avoidant or anxious.
- Individual differences in levels of sexual arousal and inhibition.
- Higher incidence in men than in women (although this factor is changing over time).
Personality, context and other variables
Further, the personality and character of the person it also modulates to a great extent all the risk factors mentioned above. Generally, hedonistic people with egocentric tendencies and a high need for positive rewards will be more likely to commit a greater number of infidelities throughout their lives.
Also, the context in which the couple lives can also exert a powerful effect when it comes to facilitating a person to have an adventure. That is, if in a relationship the only elements that unite both people is a mortgage or the children that both have in common, there will be much more likely that one of the two (or both) end up looking for relationships outside the couple .
However, there are no rules, patterns or determining symptoms that ensure that a person will be unfaithful in all safety.
Finally, when we are faced with the doubt of if an unfaithful person will be unfaithful for life or if, on the contrary, it is capable of maintaining a monogamous relationship with total exclusivity; Researchers in psychology and sexology determine that there are no absolute laws, since recidivism is conditioned both by the personality of the person and the reasons or causes that motivate them.
- Related article: "Infidelity: the second most important problem in relationships"
Who is unfaithful tends to repeat the betrayal?
Historically, studies of couple infidelity have focused on the couple's predictors to try to determine what leads a person to be unfaithful repeatedly; through the development of retrospective and cross-sectional studies.
However, a final study conducted by the team at the University of Denver and led by psychologist Kayla Knopp, has conducted a real-time investigation, and for five years, of stable romantic relationships (both married and not married) of a sample of more than 1200 people.
However, the study only aimed to collect information from those people who during those five years had passed, at least, by two different relationships so the sample was finally reduced to more than 400 individuals, both men and women.
Every so often (approximately six months) the participants were asked the following question: "Have you had sexual relations with someone other than your partner since they started dating seriously?" In addition, they were also asked if they suspected that their current partner had sex with other people .
Of course, the research took into account both the social desirability of the participants and the possible consensual agreements that they could have with couples when it comes to maintaining extramarital relationships.
The conclusions
The results obtained after the five years of investigation revealed that 40% of the sample had had sex outside of the couple , both in the first just as in the rest of relationships. In the same way, 30% of the participants reported that they suspected or knew that their partner had been unfaithful at some time.
Although the probabilities of deceiving the couple are much greater if one has already done so in the past, a person who is unfaithful in a relationship is not destined irretrievably to be in the next.
On the other hand, Knopp's study also revealed that those people who perceived their partner as unfaithful were more likely to think the same in the following relationships. They were also more prone to infidelity if it was thought that the couple was cheating or had cheated on occasion.
In conclusion, the study found that people who had been infidels in a relationship they were three times more likely to be unfaithful in the next , compared to those who had not cheated on their partner in the first.
However, as discussed at the beginning of the article, it is extremely complicated to determine the real probabilities that exist for a person who has been unfaithful once for the rest of his life. The combination of the factors: main motivation of the first infidelity, personality of the person and current relationship status are the best predictors when trying to find out if a person can become unfaithful or not.
