According to research conducted by the University of New Hampshire, a man’s eye is most likely to wander at age 55, while women are most likely to have an affair at age 45, which is around the time where one usually gets hit by the inevitable Middle Life crisis.
The study, which focused on the economic costs and benefits of cheating on a spouse, also showed that for men, getting caught was a bigger deterrent than eternal damnation. Already seven percent more likely to cheat than women, the likelihood of a man having had an affair increases with age, peaking at 55.
“The benefits of female infidelity reduce after the age of 40 because a woman would no longer benefit in terms of improved gene quality from the affair.” report the researchers. “Men also experience a reduction of sperm quality around the age of 45, but the reproductive benefits of an affair expand further into a man’s lifetime than a woman’s.”
Interestingly, upper-class women are eight percent more likely to cheat than middle and lower-class women, while men were equally likely to cheat, regardless of their background. We never knew we’d see this day to come, where the numbers of women cheating has actually rivaled male cheating, in which it could even be surpassed at one point.
Alternatively, this whole cheating conundrum could be linked to having children, where most people who have been so busy with work and kids that their lives together had slid into the background.
As one started to lose confidence that he/she was still sexy, they somehow tend to seek confirmation from a stranger that found them attractive, instead of trying to fix their relationship by spicing things up with their existing partner. This scenarios often end up in divorce.
