Is infidelity contagious? The new affair pandemic

Arecent study shows how unfaithfulness can spread among friends like a virus Lucy Holden reports on the risks

- Lucy Holden

AS if Covid and flu weren’t making our lives treacherous enough this winter, there is — according to experts — a very different, equally contagious phenomenon we should be fearing in our personal lives, too: infidelity.

A recent study by the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior recently found that exposure to others’ affairs made people more likely to be unfaithful in their own relationships, partly because they absorb the impression that cheating is acceptable. According to the Office for National Statistics, infidelity is one of the most commonly cited reasons for divorce in the UK, with around one in five admitting to having had an affair.

Of those who have had an affair, only half have stopped at one, a fifth had more than three, and eight per cent had five or more.

Meanwhile the National Opinion Research Centre’s General Social Survey found in the United States that while men have always been more likely to cheat, women are catching up. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of married women having affairs rose almost 40 per cent to 14.7 per cent (whereas 22 per cent of married men admitted the same).