Extramarital affairs more common in dependent spouses, study finds

Study finds people are more likely to have an affair if they are not the breadwinner in the relationship, and men are more likely to do so generally

People are more likely to have an extramarital affair if they are economically dependent on their spouse, and men are much more likely to do so, according to a study released on Monday.

While it may seem counterintuitive to cheat on the relationship’s breadwinner, the study says that there is a 5% chance that women who are completely economically dependent on their husbands will have an affair, and a 15% chance that men in that financial position will. Meanwhile, the economically independent partner is more likely to remain faithful – up to a certain point.

“We don’t really like inequity, and there’s probably something about masculinity that means men really don’t like it,” said Christin Munsch, a University of Connecticut professor and author of the study, which was published in the American Sociological Review.

Munsch has examined this dynamic for more than six years, inspired by discussions about cheating with her friends – specifically, one unemployed young man who cheated on his partner, saying that he had felt emasculated because she made more money.

The study pooled data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, between 2001 to 2011. The results are based on 2,757 individuals, and is limited to heterosexual couples between the ages of 18 to 32 who were in the same relationship for more than a year.

The analysis shows that as the amount of money men make relative to their wives increases, it becomes less likely that they will cheat. But that only holds true until their share of the total income reaches 70% – after that, they are more likely to cheat again.

Women, however, are least likely to cheat when they earn 100% of a couple’s total income.

Munsch said that these differences indicate that gender scripts still have considerable influence on how people understand marriage, which slows societal progression towards egalitarian marriages.

For a separate project, Munsch has been interviewing young men at a university that has more female than male students. She is surprised by how most of these men expect to be the breadwinners in the family, despite more women attending college – and performing better than male students – than ever before.

“It’s 2015 and they’re looking around at their very successful women peers and they still feel this need to live up to that expectation,” said Munsch. “It speaks to how strong of a social norm that is, particularly in older generations, and I think that’s what’s going on with men who are economically dependent.”

Now that same-sex couples in the US have gained significantly more marriage rights in the time since the survey was conducted, Munsch is curious to know how the data compares for those couples. She thinks this could be beneficial to understanding how spouses can adopt expectations of themselves and their partners that are not based on gender, reports The Guardian.