The Truth About Cheaters

According to Recent Statistics, More South Africans Than Ever Are Cheating on Their Partners – With Both Men and Women Guilty of Straying. Aoife Stuart-madge Reports on Why Infidelity Is More Common Than You Think.

- Aoife Stuart-Madge

From Scott Disick to Kristen Stewart and Jude Law, celebrity cheating scandals are nothing new. And while the biggest scandals can fill tabloid pages for months (we’re looking at you, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger), what happens to the couples when the dust settles? For Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale (who was reportedly cheating with the nanny), it was divorce court; others stick together somehow, with an even stronger marriage as a result (hello, Bill and Hillary).

But it’s not just celebrities who are doing the dirty on their partners: during the 2015 cyberattacks on extramarital dating site Ashley Madison, hackers claimed there are 175 000 cheating spouses in South Africa alone. A previous survey by the website – whose tagline is ‘Life is short. Have an affair’ – found that 62% of South African cheaters are male and 38% female, and that while male cheaters average four affair partners in their lifetime, women chalk up an average of two. A separate study by Victoria Milan, another website dedicated to extramarital affairs, assessed adult women of all ages in various countries and found that the average age for South African women to cheat was 35,8 years (typically 6,8 years after they got married).

Globally, the stats are just as shocking. The number of women having affairs has shot up by 40% in the past two decades, according to recent statistics from the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey, meaning that almost as many women as men now admit to cheating. In fact, the Kinsey Institute in the US reports that a whopping two-thirds of women have thought about hooking up with someone else, while figures from the Archives Of Sexual Behavior say that 19% of women (compared to 23% of men) have acted on this impulse.