Infidelity: Ethics or opportunity?

[Tara Woods Turner]

Power figures, celebrities, pro athletes, etc often appear to treat infidelity as a contractual obligation while cheating seems to be out of the question for good old Joe and Martha who live just down the street. Fact or fiction? Is infidelity the result of opportunity, no matter who you are, or do the wealthy play by different rules?

[Michael]

Most people that I have encountered are as loyal as their opportunities. Ive only known a few men that havent cheated and slightly more woman who havent. (Percentages 20-25% of men and 30-35% of women) But then again, its not as though Im hanging around with the church going set.... lol

[Nik]

For some - infidelity may be more of a rule than the other option..
One reason is celebs have more opportunities, temptations and abilities and often - more diverse life, new people, etc, and 2-nd - some become quite cynical, where many ideals or notions turn relative. For good old down the street the ideals may still remain ideal..

[Tara Woods Turner]

Nik wrote: "For some - infidelity may be more of a rule than the other option..
One reason is celebs have more opportunities, temptations and abilities and often - more diverse life, new people, etc, and 2-nd ..."

Great point about ethical erosion.

[Tara Woods Turner]

Nik wrote: "For some - infidelity may be more of a rule than the other option..
One reason is celebs have more opportunities, temptations and abilities and often - more diverse life, new people, etc, and 2-nd ..."
I think those numbers sound about right. I think most people don't cheat because the costs are high - not because they simply wouldn't.

[Ian]

It is an interesting question. Obviously, the more the opportunity, the more likely the event will occur, and the wealthy have three advantages if they want to cheat: they don't care about the financial cost, they are less likely to be caught out through money tracking, and they can afford to go to the places where the opportunities are. On the other hand, there is a disincentive - if caught, the financial cost is very high as spouse walks away with plenty. Another question is, how did they get wealthy? If they did so through questionable ethics and by taking advantage of situations where they can skin their victim financially, they are hardly the sort of people who suddenly become trustworthy to their spouse.

[Tara Woods Turner]

Ian wrote: "It is an interesting question. Obviously, the more the opportunity, the more likely the event will occur, and the wealthy have three advantages if they want to cheat: they don't care about the fina..."
Often th wealthy hav infidelity clauses in their prenups. The rich really are different.

[Nik]

Tara Woods Turner wrote: "The rich really are different..."

They can be pretty diverse. It also depends whether they are self-made, meaning they started regular-low somewhere and were born to regular or even grim life and lived it for many years before making it big time or born into the money, meaning they never knew any different life style

[J.J.]

I've talked about this before, but the average person wasn't any more saintly 200 years ago. My second great grandfather, Jesse Mainor, was married to his second wife by the 1860 census. A 3rd great grandfather, Elisha Corbitt, skipped out on his wife and kids. Another Corbitt, Ishram also skipped out on his family around the same time, and all these abandoned Corbitt wives got together, packed up the kids and moved to the frontier of Southern Georgia.

Apparently, this kind of thing was a lot more common in the South in the early 19th century than you would think. And despite the image of the stately, slave-owning plantation farmer, most Southern whites were actually dirt-poor, illiterate sharecroppers, so there was an economic issue involved when it came to marriage and starting families.