No one gets into a relationship expecting to be cheated on, but the truth is that infidelity happens even to the best of couples. How you handle that experience is up to the individual; some couples are able to forgive and forget and work past it while others end things immediately because the trust is gone. Either way, if you are going to get cheated on, a new study has determined that your partner is likely to step out on you with very specific people.
Australia jewelry company Forktip did a study of 5,000 people in relationships and the results weren’t all that encouraging. While 69.1% of women and 59.6% of men insisted that they’d never been unfaithful, 40% of men did admit to cheating (half of those doing it more than once), further legitimizing the popular assumption that men are the bigger perpetrators of infidelity. So who are guys cheating with?
A majority of cheaters (49%) said that their affair was with someone random and unconnected to the relationship, but 23.8% admitted to getting off with their partner’s friend. WTF? Unsurprisingly, 22.4% of men revealed that they’d had an affair with a coworker. In last place, at 3.9%, were people who had an affair with a member of their partner’s family.
Let’s get this straight: cheating is never OK, no matter who it’s with. Relationships are meant to be based on mutual trust and commitment, and having an affair completely violates those basic principles. Whether emotional or sexual (and this study specifically deals with sexual cheating), cheating can and does destroy relationships, and the fact that so many people seem to do it with friends and loved ones of their current partner seems to add an additional layer of betrayal to the whole thing.
Bottom line? Stay faithful to your partner. If you can’t, maybe you shouldn’t be in a relationship after all.
