After Affairs, Lots of Justifications but Little Regret

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Why do people cheat in monogamous relationships? Conventional wisdom suggests reasons like falling out of love, harboring anger towards your significant other, or feeling neglected. But these may not be important reasons after all.

And surely people feel guilt after an affair, right? Wouldn’t feelings of guilt or regret be commonplace? Actually, new data points to high rates of satisfaction instead.

These are some of the findings from a recent study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior by psychologist Dylan Selterman from John Hopkins University and his colleagues. Their focus was on users of Ashley Madison, a popular website and dating app that helps people who are typically in exclusive relationships have discrete affairs.

Selterman surveyed large groups of users of the website. In one group, for instance, based on 810 surveys, the average age of users was 51 years, with a huge skew male (684 participants) and straight (738), and with 52 percent either engaged, married, or in domestic partnerships. Additional questions covered everything from their current relationship, views about sex and love, self-esteem, interactions (including sexual) with other people on Ashley Madison, motives for having an affair, and feelings after having an affair (if they were successful).

Three results jumped out. One had to do with how people described their current relationship. They tended to report being in love with their partner, and to a high degree—about a 4 on a 5-point scale. On the other hand, sexual satisfaction was below 2.5, and about half of users said they were not sexually active with their significant other.

Why, then, were people going to a place like Ashley Madison to seek out an affair? The usual reasons we might expect have been mentioned already—lack of love in their relationship, anger at their partner, or a feeling of neglect. Yet when asked about those reasons, participants did not score them very highly at all.

Instead, it turned out that “sexual dissatisfaction was the most strongly endorsed motive for wanting an affair. Other commonly endorsed reasons included low commitment, autonomy (i.e., wanting freedom and independence), and a desire for a variety of sexual partners.”

Now, many of the users surveyed had not been able to have an affair with someone yet on Ashley Madison. But for those who had succeeded, what were their feelings afterward?

Here, too, the results were surprising, and arguably alarming. Emotional satisfaction was above a 4 out of 5, and sexual satisfaction was above 4.5. On the flip side, regret was rated very low—less than a 2 out of 5. In other words, these users tended to get what they wanted and not feel bad about it afterward.

The usual qualifications apply here. This is just self-report data. It could very well be, for instance, that users of the website did feel a lot worse than they were willing to admit. Or maybe they suppressed or rationalized away their guilt or shame. What's more, the participants were overwhelmingly male and straight, and we should not assume the results apply in the same way to other groups.

Above all, it is important to stress that this study is based on users of Ashley Madison; it would be a mistake to generalize to other apps like Tinder, or to more traditional ways of having affairs. In particular, it is important to highlight that this is a website for people who are already planning on having an affair.

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Another observation is worth making. It may be that a large reason why regret was so low after having an affair is that these were already habitual cheaters. Indeed, Selterman noted that 64 percent of the participants in one group reported having an affair before they used Ashley Madison. It's certainly possible that they regretted their initial affair, but over time, they got used to having them and so weren’t bothered as much. It would be interesting to compare regret levels between Ashley Madison users for whom this is their first affair and those who reported prior affairs.

Regardless, as an ethicist, it is hard for me not to find these results discouraging. There may be no such thing as a morally good reason to have an affair, but reasons like sexual dissatisfaction and wanting a variety of partners seem to me like especially bad reasons. Not to mention that after having broken personal bonds of commitment, loyalty, and honesty, to have the feeling be overwhelmingly one of satisfaction and not regret reveals something badly askew with these participants' moral compass.

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