Cheating on a committed partner vs staying faithful when tempted
Last reviewed 2026-05-28
Evidence quality 4.25/5
Eight-dimension review score against the
quality rubric
. Each dimension scored 1–5.
D1 Source verification
5/5
D2 Source authority & independence
5/5
D3 Regret-rate accuracy
2/5
D4 Source comparability
3/5
D5 Gilovich pattern
4/5
D6 Prose quality
5/5
D7 Caveat completeness
5/5
D8 Sample quality
5/5
Average4.25/5
Proxy data — no direct regret survey exists for this decision. Rates are derived from satisfaction scores and access-barrier data rather than questions that directly asked about regret. See caveats below.
Action regret
Having an affair
55%
~55% of US adults with a history of extramarital sex separate or divorce from that spouse (behavioral proxy; attitudinal regret in affair-seeker samples runs far lower)
US adults, nationally representative panel (General Social Survey)
lifetime; cross-sectional analysis of EMS history and current marital status
Inaction regret
Resisting an affair / staying faithful
15%
~15% of spouses in fidelity-maintaining marriages show meaningful declines in marital satisfaction across 2–4 years (satisfaction-decline proxy; no survey directly measures regret-of-not-cheating)
Couples in longitudinal marital quality studies; non-infidelity couples in randomised therapy trials
2–5 years
% who regret this choice
Having an affairResisting an affair / staying faithful
55%15%
action dominates — Action dominates — most regret acting.
Related decisions
Semantically similar decisions — same territory, different trade-offs.
More than half of US adults with a history of extramarital sex end
up separated or divorced from the spouse they cheated on, according to
Allen and Atkins’ analysis of 16,090 respondents in the General Social
Survey (1991–2008). A history of extramarital sex raised the odds of
being currently divorced and not remarried by a factor of 4.1 and
separated by a factor of 5.8 relative to married, never-divorced
individuals. We use that “more than half” prose summary — rounded to
55% — as the action-side headline, with the explicit caveat that
this is a behavioural-dissolution proxy rather than an introspective
regret measurement.
A peer-reviewed direct measurement of attitudinal regret tells the
opposite story. Selterman, Joel and Dale’s 2023 study in Archives of
Sexual Behavior surveyed three samples of Ashley Madison users (N≈810,
868, and 234 longitudinally) and found that participants “were highly
satisfied with their affairs and expressed little moral regret.” On the
direct “I regret having this affair” item on a five-point scale, mean
scores sat near the disagreement end. That sample is, by construction,
people who proactively sought affairs — the floor of any plausible
regret estimate for the broader cheating population. The general-
population rate sits somewhere between the Selterman attitudinal floor
and the Allen and Atkins behavioural majority, and no survey lets us
pin it down more precisely.
The inaction side is weaker. No published survey directly asks faithful
spouses whether they regret not cheating. Karney and Bradbury’s 1995
review of 115 longitudinal marital studies (>45,000 marriages) found
that 60–85% of spouses experience stable or only minimally
declining satisfaction across 2.5 to 4 years. The inverse of the upper
bound, 15%, serves as a ceiling estimate of any plausible inaction
regret; most declining-satisfaction spouses never considered cheating
and would not describe their dissatisfaction in those terms. Marín,
Christensen and Atkins’ 2014 five-year follow-up of couple-therapy
participants found that 77% of non-infidelity couples remained
married, versus 57% of revealed-affair couples and 20% of secret-affair
couples — a structural signal that abstaining from cheating does not on
its own dissolve relationships.
Three different constructs hide inside the phrase “regretted the
affair”: regretting the act, regretting being caught, and regretting
having hurt the partner. None of the sources cited separates these
cleanly, and the mix almost certainly shifts with disclosure status and
marital survival. Clinical samples overrepresent distressed couples by
selection. Commercial samples overrepresent affair-seekers. Nationally
representative panels measure behaviour but not retrospective attitudes.
Recall bias and social desirability inflate noise in every direction.
What this entry shows is directional, not precise. The behavioural
evidence indicates that cheating destabilises relationships at high
rates; the attitudinal evidence among self-selected affair-seekers is
that they do not feel they did anything wrong. The road not taken — the
spouse who resisted an opportunity and stayed — is essentially absent
from the published record. Treat the 0.40 delta as a coarse upper bound
on the action-over-inaction asymmetry, not as a substantiated
percentage-point difference in introspective regret.
Sources: action
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Journal of Family Issues / Allen & Atkins — The Association of Divorce and Extramarital Sex in a Representative U.S. Sample
Peer-reviewed
History of extramarital sex raised the odds of being currently divorced and not remarried (OR=4.1), divorced and remarried (OR=2.6), or separated (OR=5.8); more than half of men and women who engage in EMS also separate or divorce from their spouse
Excerpt
“"Using self-reported history of extramarital sex (EMS), divorce, and separation data from 16,090 individuals assessed between 1991 and 2008 as part of the General Social Survey (GSS), the authors found that, relative to married (and never divorced) individuals, a history of EMS raised the likelihood of being currently divorced but remarried (odds ratio [OR] = 2.6), divorced and not remarried (OR = 4.1), and separated (OR = 5.8). The data from the GSS suggest that more than half of men and women who engage in EMS also separate or divorce from their spouse."
”
Source data from
2012-07-01
Accessed
2026-05-28
Calculation
Nationally representative GSS data, N=16,090, 1991–2008. The 55% figure is a behavioral proxy: it is the abstract's "more than half" prose summary of the share of EMS-engagers who later separate or divorce from the spouse they cheated on. The underlying odds ratios (2.6, 4.1, 5.8) do not translate directly into a single rate; "55%" is the rounded interpretation of "more than half" and should be read as a coarse estimate, not a precision number. This is divorce-as-behavioural-proxy for regret, NOT a direct measure of whether the cheater regrets the affair. People who divorce often regret the affair; some leave for the affair partner and do not regret it. The sign of the construct mismatch is unknown.
[2]Archives of Sexual Behavior / Selterman, Joel & Dale — No Remorse: Sexual Infidelity Is Not Clearly Linked with Relationship Satisfaction or Well-Being in Ashley Madison Users
Peer-reviewed
Participants on Ashley Madison reported high satisfaction with their affairs and low scores on 'I regret having this affair'; mean regret ratings sat near the disagreement end of a 5-point scale
Excerpt
“"Analyses revealed that participants were highly satisfied with their affairs and expressed little moral regret. … In contrast to previous findings, we did not observe low relationship quality (i.e., satisfaction, love, commitment) to be a major driver of affairs and the affairs did not predict decreases in these relationship quality variables over time."
”
Source data from
2023-04-03
Accessed
2026-05-28
Calculation
Selterman et al. 2023, three samples (Sample A N=810, Sample B N=868, Sample C longitudinal N=234) of registered Ashley Madison users. This is the strongest peer-reviewed direct attitudinal measurement of post-affair regret available, and it points in the OPPOSITE direction of the GSS divorce-proxy: in a sample of people who proactively sought affairs, attitudinal regret is very low. We do not derive the 55% rate from Selterman — we cite it as the explicit counter-signal showing that construct-of-interest (introspective regret) and outcome (divorce) diverge sharply, and that cohort selection drives the result. The Selterman sample is the floor; the general population almost certainly sits between Selterman's "low" and the Allen & Atkins behavioural majority. We chose the behavioural proxy as the headline because it is the only number from a nationally representative sample.
Sources: inaction
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Psychological Bulletin / Karney & Bradbury — The Longitudinal Course of Marital Quality and Stability: A Review of Theory, Methods, and Research
Peer-reviewed
Between 60% and 85% of spouses experience insignificant or minimal declines in marital satisfaction across intervals of 2.5–4 years, across 115 longitudinal studies covering more than 45,000 marriages
Excerpt
“"[Paraphrase from abstract — full text paywalled] An understanding of how marriages develop, succeed, and fail is best achieved with longitudinal data, and Karney and Bradbury reviewed and evaluated the literature on how the quality and stability of marriages change over time. Their analysis summarized and evaluated the methods and findings of 115 longitudinal studies — representing over 45,000 marriages. Newlywed studies found that between 60% and 85% of spouses experienced insignificant or minimal declines in their marital satisfaction across intervals ranging from 2.5 to 4 years."
”
Source data from
1995-07-01
Accessed
2026-05-28
Calculation
Foundational meta-review covering 115 longitudinal marital studies, >45,000 marriages. The 15% figure is the inverse of the upper end of the "60–85% stable or minimally declining" finding: roughly 15–40% of spouses show meaningful satisfaction decline over 2.5–4 years. We take the LOWER bound (15%) as the inaction-side proxy because most satisfaction declines have nothing to do with "I should have had an affair" — the construct mismatch is severe, and the rate is best read as a ceiling estimate of any plausible inaction regret. No published survey directly asks faithful spouses whether they regret resisting an opportunity to cheat. The 15% is therefore a proxy of a proxy, and is more accurately described as "near-zero direct-regret signal extrapolated from satisfaction stability data."
[2]Couple and Family Psychology / Marín, Christensen & Atkins — Infidelity and Behavioral Couple Therapy: Relationship Outcomes Over 5 Years Following Therapy
Peer-reviewed
Five years after couple therapy, 77% of non-infidelity couples remained married versus 57% of couples who had revealed an affair and 20% of couples with a secret affair
Excerpt
“"[Paraphrase from abstract — full text paywalled] The study examined the posttherapy outcomes of 19 infidelity couples for up to 5 years following participation in a larger (N=134) randomized clinical trial of couple therapy. At the 5-year follow-up, 57% of couples who had revealed the infidelity stayed married, while only 20% of couples with secret infidelity did, compared with 77% of non-infidelity couples still married 5 years after treatment."
”
Source data from
2014-01-01
Accessed
2026-05-28
Calculation
Marín, Christensen & Atkins 2014, Couple and Family Psychology (APA). N=134 total in the parent RCT, 19 infidelity couples analysed. The 77% intact rate for non-infidelity couples after five years complements the Karney & Bradbury satisfaction finding: in clinically-distressed but fidelity-maintaining couples, three quarters remain married. This is a behavioural anchor for "abstaining from cheating does not, on its own, consign the relationship to collapse." It is NOT a regret measurement. The selection bias is severe: this is a therapy-seeking sample where couples were already in distress. Despite this, non-infidelity couples fared more than three times better than secret-affair couples on the marital-stability outcome. We use this as supporting evidence that the inaction side does not generate large structural costs, not as a regret rate per se.
Caveats
Neither side has a direct regret survey from a nationally representative non-clinical sample, which is why this entry carries proxy_only: true. The two sides also disagree internally on what "cheating regret" even means. Allen and Atkins' GSS analysis (N=16,090) finds that more than half of EMS-engagers later separate or divorce — a strong behavioural signal that cheating destabilises relationships. Selterman, Joel and Dale's 2023 study of Ashley Madison users (N≈810–868 per sample) finds the opposite at the attitudinal level: active affair-seekers reported high satisfaction with their affairs and very low ratings on direct "I regret having this affair" items. The two findings are not in contradiction; they measure different things. Divorce is a behavioural consequence; the Likert item is introspective and answered by people whose presence in the sample already implies low ex-ante regret. The 55% headline reflects the behavioural-consequence interpretation, which is more population-representative. Three different constructs hide inside the phrase "regretted the affair": regretting the act itself, regretting being caught, and regretting having hurt the partner. No source we identified separates these cleanly, and the relative size of each component almost certainly varies with whether the affair was disclosed and whether the marriage survived. Clinical and therapy-seeking samples (Marín et al. 2014; most couple-therapy literature) overrepresent distressed marriages by construction; commercial samples (Ashley Madison users) overrepresent active affair-seekers; nationally representative samples (GSS, NSFG) measure behaviour but not retrospective attitudes. Recall bias, social desirability, and cohort-of-recruitment effects make this one of the noisiest data surfaces in relationship research. The inaction side is weaker still. Karney and Bradbury's review of 115 longitudinal marital studies (>45,000 marriages) finds that 60–85% of spouses experience stable or only minimally declining satisfaction across 2.5–4 years — implying that 15–40% experience meaningful decline. We use the lower bound (15%) as a satisfaction- decline proxy for inaction regret, but most declining-satisfaction spouses never considered cheating and would not describe their dissatisfaction as "regret at not having had an affair." The figure is best read as a near-zero direct-regret signal extrapolated from satisfaction stability data. Marín, Christensen and Atkins' 2014 follow-up of couple-therapy participants showed that 77% of non-infidelity couples remained married at five years, compared with 57% of revealed-affair couples and 20% of secret-affair couples — again a structural signal rather than a regret rate, but consistent with the directional finding that abstaining from cheating does not itself produce widespread dissatisfaction. Cultural and cohort context matters. The GSS data span 1991–2008 and the Ashley Madison data are from the mid-2010s; norms around monogamy, disclosure, and divorce have shifted, and the rise of consensually open relationships changes what "cheating" means in a growing minority of partnerships. Roese and Summerville's 2005 theory predicts that inaction regret dominates over time in domains with high perceived opportunity for corrective action; in monogamous relationships, both action and inaction have high corrective opportunity (one can confess, divorce, or seek a future affair), which complicates the standard Gilovich prediction. The action-dominates pattern reflected here is driven by the behavioural-dissolution proxy on the action side and the near-zero direct-regret signal on the inaction side, both of which are proxies for the constructs we actually care about.
