I never thought my ex would have an affair. I'll never forget the time when my cousin revealed that her husband was having an affair and my ex said to her, "ugh. How can you stay with him after he's had his THING in some other woman??" dripping with disgust. And then he goes and does the same thing? And in my home! When I think of it I can only shake my head. If 50% of marriages fail ya gotta think that about every two people in three that we know have had or are going to have an affair.

I sat in my mom and dads living room the other day (married 50 years last march) and juust wondered...... I do this with evryone all the time now.

I too suspect that most married people will be rocked by infidelity. According to most books on the subject, 80 percent is the number. With Fuckbook, Ashley Madison and other chat & social networking sites, it has been made easy to find and flirt with an ex, where it wouldn't have been so, only 10 years ago.

My CS wants me to still see him as the the person I fell in love with. I do not and probably never will. I had unconditional love and trust, and I considered him my soul mate. I no longer believe in soul mates. On the other hand, because of his selfish actions, I have learned that I loved him too unconditionally and I put up with a lot of things I should not have. I did not know he was cheating, but I knew he was flirty and crossed lines with women. So no, I will never look at him the same again, but in discovering who he really was, I found my lost self as well.

I see everyone and everything differently now - I assume NOTHING, question everything - and really, I'm over it. It was years ago - they did me a favour, I wish them both well, I'm done - but I'm changed.

If I was wrong about him/them - I have to wonder what else I was wrong about. Strangely though - my life is better for it. Whilst the pain was huge - I'm better off for it.

I've heard that 70% of married couples commit adultery. With the internet making it easier, the numbers are staggering. Also, I feel that many women have become more sexually aggressive and have no reservations about pursuing married men. In my case, the OW seduced him at work. He didn't even have to spring for dinner.

My H and I both thought neither one of us would ever do such a thing. It wasn't even on the radar. Even as the CS I now find that I TOTALLY do that.

Yeah, we just heard over the past weekend that a couple we used to go to church with was divorced, and another is separated. And we couldn't help but wonder how much was due to adultery.

Yeah, we just heard over the past weekend that a couple we used to go to church with was divorced, and another is separated. And we couldn't help but wonder how much was due to adultery.

I no longer envy the couples that appear happy and inlove because I know better. There is one couple I know where the H cheated. She acts like they are on their honeymoon. Fb about her love ping H blah blah blah.

I feel most couples will suffer infidelity at some point.

Based on this thread, do not marry nor commit there is no fidelity.

My W thinks cheating is disgusting and vile, there is no maximum punishment allowable for a man or woman that does it.

Yes she is very serious about it.

Fidelity until death, and if one survives only then is another relationship permissible.

I used to look at everyone, friends, people shopping, co-workers, etc wondering if we shared the same secret. I had to stop...it was one of several things that served as triggers and prolonged the pain.

Good point, rjl. I think you can't help but wonder a bit, but certainly you don't want to dwell on it. After all, you don't really know. And there are other reasons couples break up, separate, and divorce over than infidelity.

And maybe a majority of marriages will experience infidelity, but there is still a good sized chuck that do not if statistics are accurate. I've heard percentages of 50% to 65%. Which means 35% to 50% of marriages never experience it. While even 50% is way too many instances of infidelity, the group that is still left that doesn't experience that is nothing to sneeze at.

And, I think one of the reasons there is so much infidelity is because our view and understanding of what marriage is about is perverted from what it should be. Some don't see marriage as anything more than social permission to have sex with someone. Others think it all revolves around feelings of love. So when those feeling wane, as they will do in any marriage from time to time, and someone else comes along that lights that spark, guess what happens when that's your basis for marriage?

There are so many forms of infidelity, I don't think a real statistic exists. Also, how many don't get caught?

Granted, I'd have to do research to know what those statistics represent. Are they referring only to spouses who have had sex with another person while married? Or does it include on-line sex chatting? Inappropriate "dates"? Porn?

If it included all of those, the faithful would be a small number indeed, as most men have looked at porn at some point in their life.

And one might suspect that I've had "inappropriate dates" with my former boss. The fact I spent more time with her and ate more lunches with her than I did my own wife, is in a social sense, a form of infidelity, though I didn't think of it that way until reading Not Just Friends. I mean, we never discussed anything "intimate," just business mostly. And I personally never felt any chemistry or desire for her in any way that would be inappropriate. But depending on how wide a net you are casting, some could see what I was doing as cheating.

So a lot of that depends on where you draw the line. Someone like Kitty who believes even looking at porn is cheating, would have to conclude that well over 90% of men cheat. At least over 80%. And for some women, if and when they find out their spouse has looked at porn, will tend to feel cheated on. So did the survey ask CSs or BSs the question? Did they ask, "Have you cheated" or "Have you been cheated on?" Those would both get drastically different results.

And then you have the question of honesty, even in an anonymous survey, people will lie about it. How much is hard to pin down.

But the bottom line is, we are in the midst of it, and tend to project what is happening to us upon everyone else. Just like someone who is around cussing all the time tends to think "everyone cusses." Or in my case, because I'm not around it that much, hearing people cuss always seems so weird and unreal. As a matter of fact, I' think I've heard a whole lot more cussing since dday and have used and heard more cussing since dday than I have in the 50+ years before.

Anyway, like when you buy a car, suddenly you start noticing how many of them there are on the road, we start seeing it everywhere. Maybe those statistics are way off, maybe they are spot on. How would either of us know which is the case?

So it is more of a shot in the dark to say nearly everyone cheats than it is to say there are a good number that don't, because at least I have something to base it on. I can't assume those statistics are right, but what else do we have? It would be even more unsubstantiated to suggest one's shot-in-the-dark guess is right.

But, true. There are many variables that we don't know if or how they took into account in those statistics that could make them more or less usable as representing a true picture of infidelity, depending on how you define that.