According to HuffingtonPost Divorce, a study conducted by Kayla Knopp, University of Denver psychology graduate student, included 484 unmarried adults, ages 18-35, to determine whether or not you are more likely to become a repeat offender after cheating in a previous relationship.
Participants were asked a series of questions in the survey, including (but not limited to) the following:
“Have you had sexual relations with someone other than your partner since you began seriously dating?”
“Has your partner had sexual relations with someone other than you since you seriously began dating?”
Knopp explained to The Huffington Post that, “Those who admitted to having sexual relations outside their relationship were three and a half times more likely to do so in their next relationship as well.” She also noted that, “This means that of those people who said they had sex with someone else in their first relationship, about 45 percent said they also had outside sexual contact with someone in their next relationship.”
Other correlations were also made in the study. For example, people who had previously been cheated ON were three times more likely to have unfaithful partners in future relationships, and people who had suspicions that their significant others were cheating in a previous relationship were also 10 times more likely to carry their behavior into their next relationships…and so on and so forth.
On the surface, the results seem to be indicative of our culture’s collective feelings about trust, fidelity and commitment in modern relationships, as well as the decline in the ability to sustain monogamy.
Please note, this study ONLY focused on sexual contact outside of their relationships, which does not include emotional infidelity/online relationships/sexting/etc.