3.6 Predicting infidelity

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This is an image of two people sat on a sofa, presumably in a counselling session. They each hold their hands up depicting anger or frustration with one another. In the foreground of the image we can see the back of their counsellor’s head and the edge of a clipboard on her lap.

To date we have been examining both the theories and research that seek to explain why human beings might engage in infidelity – non-sanctioned extra-dyadic sexual and/or emotional relationships versus engaging in consensual non-monogamy or monogamy. Much of the research we have considered is concerned with the function or individual benefits that accrue from different types of mating behaviour – i.e. theoretically why someone might cheat. A different kind of question is to ask empirically what factors might predict infidelity. There is a long-standing body of research which has used survey data to try to do exactly this. Such research is useful in counselling practice as it can help counsellors understand what might be ‘vulnerability factors’ for those in a couple relationship.

The table below is taken from Fincham and May (2017) and provides the authors’ summary of knowledge about infidelity predictors.