So what does the modern day cheaterpants look like?

Well…the truth is (and by truth, I mean the published research on the topic) it’s difficult to identify a cheater. Or someone who is going to cheat.

He/she could be young (surrounded by viable partners, armed with a cell phone and laptop to make those romantic connections) or he/she could be older (one study found that men are more likely to cheat as they get older, while women’s cheating might peak in the 30s).

He/she could be highly educated (some studies find that those with high levels of education are more likely to cheat) while other studies find that low levels of education is related to increased cheating.

He/she could be married (the majority of what we know about cheating comes from married individuals) or they may be in a relationship (partnered individuals who aren’t married can also cheat).

But how common is cheating? Well according to one recent study on infidelity by one of my SRBFF’s Kristen Mark, out of 506 men and 412 women (all residing in North America), approximately 20% of the sample had cheated. What’s cool about this study is that the researchers used a more encompassing definition of infidelity by asking if the person had ever “cheated (i.e., engaged in sexual interactions with someone other than your primary partner that could jeopardize, or hurt, your relationship).”

(Note that the individual didn’t have to be married and it didn’t have to be penetrative vaginal intercourse to count as cheating.)

As for their results, well there were roughly equal numbers of cheating – 23% of men, 19% of women. Yay gender equality!

Some interesting figures about their sample….the cheaters were less likely to report that religion was very important, more likely to work full-time, and had a higher number of lifetime one night stands compared to the non-cheaters (perhaps variety continues to be the spice of life even after these folks are in supposedly monogamous relationships).

Overall, individuals who were less happy in their relationship were more likely to report engaging in infidelity. Shocking. And for women, this lack of relationship happiness may be the key because women were more likely to cheat when they were dissatisfied with their relationship or felt that they were incompatible with their partners in regards to sexual values.

Sexual excitation (such as seeking out high-arousal sexual activities to negate potential sexual arousal problems, having sex with partners who don’t know any history of sexual problems) was more important in predicting men’s cheating compared to the relationship variables which were related to women’s cheating.

In another study, 5,187 users on AshleyMadison.com (nothing like getting the information from the experts) completed surveys related to their various online and offline behaviours. In the participants’ eyes, 63% had cheated on their partners online (one might argue that creating an account on a ‘dating’ website geared for individuals who are already in relationships might be considered cheating) and 74% had cheated in real-life.

Not surprisingly, women reported that it was easy to find men who were willing to engage in real-life sexual hook-ups whereas men were more likely to only find online sex partners.

Having previously engaged in cybersex (defined in this study as having had sex online with someone met on the internet) tripled the odds for women and quadrupled the odds for men in terms of predicting whether or not they would cheat online (as in, engage in even more cybersex? I wasn’t clear on this point!). But previously engaging in cybersex didn’t predict whether women would cheat in real-life, whereas it doubled men’s odds for real-life cheating.

And what about that sexting (defined in this study as sending sexually explicit text messages and/or sending nude photographs through e-mail or texting)? 60% of the sample had sext’d or sent photos and almost 22% of the entire sample had done both. Sending nude pics seemingly is the preferred behaviour at 29% versus sexting as 7%.

Except when you break it down by gender! Females were more likely to have sent nude photos of themselves by email or text to someone and to have engaged in sexting compared to men.

As for how monogamous Ottawans are…according to a local sex survey of 403 individuals (it was an online questionnaire, get your heads out of the gutters) by Guerilla magazine last winter, 63% of Ottawa/Gatineau residents report being fully monogamous and never stray while 10% live non-monogamous lifestyles. As for the remaining 27%…apparently they are not exactly monogamous. The rest of the study’s results are posted here.

Moral of the story….if you don’t want to cheat, don’t sign up for AshleyMadison.com.

And don’t have cybersex with people who aren’t your partners.

Or send naked pictures of yourself to people who aren’t your partners.

Jocelyn Wentland is a Sex Researcher, PhD student at the University of Ottawa. You will find her blogs are sexual, risqué (she likes to push the envelope), potentially offending, fun, but most of all, real. Read more of Jocelyn’s blog at Sex Research and The City.com