While 90% of Americans believe that affairs are morally wrong, experts do believe that close to 60- 70 percent of husbands and 45 to 55 percent of wives become involved in and extramarital affair by the age of 40.
Affairs affect one of every 2.7 couples, according to counselor Janis Abrahms Spring, author of After the Affair. Ten percent of extramarital affairs last one day, 10 percent last more than one day but less than a month, 50 percent last more than a month but less than a year, but 40 percent last two or more years. Few extramarital affairs last more than four years.
17 % of divorces in the United States are caused by infidelity. A lesser known fact is that those who divorce rarely marry the person with whom they are having the affair. Dr. Jan Halper’s study of successful men (executives, entrepreneurs, professionals) found that very few men who have affairs divorce their wife and marry their lovers. Only 3 percent of the 4,100 successful men surveyed eventually married their lovers.
So who has affairs?
22 percent of married men have strayed at least once during their married lives.
• 14 percent of married women have had affairs at least once during their married lives.
• Younger people are more likely candidates; in fact, younger women are as likely as younger men to be unfaithful.
• 70 percent of married women and 54 percent of married men did not know of their spouses' extramarital activity.
• 5 percent of married men and 3 percent of married women reported having sex with someone other than their spouse in the year1997.
• 22 percent of men and 14 percent of women admitted to having sexual relations outside their marriage sometime in their past.
