Does emotional infidelity bother us in the same way as sexual infidelity? This has been the starting point for the largest study to date on infidelity between men and women. The work has been developed by a team of researchers from Chapman University in California (USA) and has been published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior journal .
63,894 volunteers between 18 and 65 years old and with an average age of 30 years participated in the study. All of them completed a survey on the differences in response between gender and sexual orientation in relation to manifest infidelity, sexual infidelity and emotional infidelity. The participants had to answer what bothered them the most: the fact that their partner had sexual relations with another person without any feelings involved (only sex) or that their partners fell in love with another person but did not have sexual relations.
The results revealed that heterosexual men are most bothered by sexual infidelity (54% in men and 35% in women) and heterosexual women are the ones who are most angered by emotional infidelity (46% in men and 65% in women). Regarding bisexual men and women, there were no great differences in their results, as happened with gays and lesbians.
“ Straight men really stand out from all the other groups – they were the only ones who were much more likely to be more upset about sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity. Jealousy can also trigger harmful and violent behavior, so it is important to understand which are the most powerful triggers for jealousy, ”says David Frederick, study leader.
According to the conclusions of the study, the factors of age, income level, history of infidelity, age, income, children, type of relationship or length of the current relationship, were not related at any time with the greater or lesser inclination towards a u another infidelity. However, younger participants had the highest percentage of anger or annoyance at sexual infidelity than older participants .
