Sexual variety, neglect, lack of love… reasons people give to justify cheating

Drunkenness, neglect and a quest for sexual variety could make people cheat on their partners, a new study has shown.

The study, entitled Motivations for Extradyadic Infidelity Revisited, says one’s personality is related to the motivations for cheating on a partner.

A 2005 research by Barta and Keine, had previously listed dissatisfaction, neglect, anger, low commitment, self esteem, and sexual desire as motivations for infidelity.

But using an internet-based questionnaire on 495 people, who were mostly young adults, researchers listed some other motivations for infidelity.

“In addition to evidence for previously studied motivations, our data demonstrate additional factors, including lack of love (“I had ‘fallen out of love with’ my primary partner”), low commitment (“I was not very committed to my primary partner”), esteem (“I wanted to enhance my popularity”), gaining sexual variety (“I wanted a greater variety of sexual partners”), and situational factors (“I was drunk and not thinking clearly”).

“Consistent with predictions, attachment insecurity was associated with motivations of anger, lack of love, neglect, low commitment, and esteem, while unrestricted sociosexual orientation was associated with sexual variety. Implicit beliefs (e.g., growth, destiny, romanticism) were deferentially associated with sexual desire, low commitment, lack of love, and neglect.”

The study was published in The Journal of Sex.