Who is unfaithful once, will be unfaithful always?

One of the great fears that unite most monogamous relationships is that the partner is, or may be, unfaithful on some occasion. This fear is even more accentuated if one of the two knows that the other has been unfaithful on other occasions or even in the same relationship.

Therefore, a person who has experienced a infidelity by your partner Can you be sure that it will never happen again? Or put another way, is a person who has been unfaithful more likely to be unfaithful again in that or in any other relationship?

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What are the causes of infidelity?

Traditionally, couple relationships considered monogamous are based on both sexual and sentimental or affective exclusivity. However, infidelity is a real fact that occurs in a large number of couples and in both men and women.

It is not easy to know the exact figures about how many people have committed one or more infidelities throughout their life. life, since it is an answer that is often falsified enough with the intention of maintaining a good image Social. Even in private psychology or sexology consultations, people are not always capable of confessing an infidelity.

Although the main subject of this article is to clarify if a person who has committed an infidelity has a better chance of committing it again, both in your current relationship and in later relationships, first of all we are going to review what risk factors influence when someone is unfaithful.

According to various research related to dating relationships, there are a number of common risk factors when committing an infidelity. These include:

• Low degree of commitment with the current relationship.
• Decrease in satisfaction or lack of it.
• Acceptance of sexual relations outside the relationship.
• Insecure attachment, avoidant or anxious.
• Individual differences in levels of inhibition and sexual arousal.
• Higher incidence in men than in women (although this factor is changing over time).

Personality, context and other variables

What's more, the personality and character of the person it also greatly modulates all of the risk factors listed above. Generally, hedonistic people, with egocentric tendencies and with a high need for positive rewards will be more likely to commit a greater number of infidelities throughout of her life.

Likewise, the context in which the couple lives can also have a powerful effect in making it easier for a person to have an affair. That is, if in a relationship the only elements that unite both people is a mortgage or the children that both have in common, there is much more probability that one of the two (or both) will end up seeking relationships outside the partner.

However, there are no determining rules, patterns or symptoms that ensure that a person is going to be unfaithful with all security.

Finally, when we are faced with the doubt of if an unfaithful person will be unfaithful for life or if, on the contrary, he is capable of maintaining a monogamous relationship with total exclusivity; Researchers in psychology and sexology determine that there are no absolute laws, since the recidivism is conditioned both by the personality of the person and by the reasons or causes that the motivate.

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Who is unfaithful tends to repeat the betrayal?

Historically, studies about infidelity in the couple have focused on the predictors of this to try to determine what leads a person to be unfaithful repeatedly; through the development of retrospective and cross-sectional studies.

However, a latest study conducted by the University of Denver team and led by psychologist Kayla Knopp, has conducted real-time research, and for five years, of stable romantic relationships (both married and unmarried) from a sample of more than 1200 people.

However, the study only intended to collect the information of those people who during those five years had passed, at least, due to two different relationships, so the sample was finally reduced to more than 400 individuals, both men and women. women.

Every so often (approximately six months) the following question was asked to the participants: “Have you had sex with someone other than your partner since you started dating? seriously?". In addition, they were also asked if they suspected that their current partner had sex with other people.

Of course, the research took into account both the social desirability of the participants and the possible consensual agreements that they could have with couples when maintaining relationships extramarital.

The conclusions

The results obtained after the five years of research revealed that 40% of the sample had had sexual relations outside the couple, both in the first one and in the rest of the relationships. In the same way, 30% of the participants reported that they suspected or knew that their partner had been unfaithful on some occasion.

Although the chances of cheating on your partner are much higher if you have already done so in the past, a person who is unfaithful in a relationship is not hopelessly destined to be unfaithful in the following.

On the other hand, Knopp's study also revealed that those people who perceived their partner as unfaithful were more likely to think the same in the following relationships. They were also more prone to cheating if the partner was thought to be cheating on him or had cheated on him on occasion.

As a conclusion, the study determined that people who had been unfaithful in a relationship they were three times more likely to be unfaithful in the next, compared to those who had not cheated on their partner in the first.

However, and as discussed at the beginning of the article, it is extremely difficult to determine the real probabilities that exist that a person who has been unfaithful once will be the rest of The life of her. The combination of the factors: main motivation of the first infidelity, personality of the person and state of the current relationship are the best predictors when trying to find out if a person can be unfaithful again or not.