One in five married men and one in eight married women say they have had sex with someone other than their spouse. That is not a tabloid estimate - it comes from the General Social Survey, one of the longest-running nationally representative surveys in the United States, as analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies. Extramarital affairs are far more common than most people assume, and the newest data shows the pattern is shifting in ways that surprise even researchers.
Here is what the numbers actually show about who cheats, how often, and how that has changed.
How common are extramarital affairs?
According to the Institute for Family Studies' analysis of General Social Survey data, 20% of ever-married men and 13% of ever-married women report having had sex with someone other than their spouse while married. Put differently, roughly 16% of ever-married adults overall say they have cheated at some point.
Those are lifetime figures, not annual ones - they cover anyone who has ever been married, answering about their entire married life. The year-to-year rate is lower, but the lifetime number is the one that captures how ordinary infidelity really is.
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The gender gap is real - except among the young
The overall gap between men and women hides a reversal. Among ever-married adults ages 18 to 29, women are slightly more likely to report infidelity than men - 11% versus 10%, according to the IFS analysis. The gap then flips at ages 30 to 34 and widens steadily with age, with men pulling further ahead in every older bracket.
Researchers attribute the shift partly to changing social norms: younger generations report more equal rates of almost every sexual behavior, and infidelity appears to be following the same pattern.
Men are cheating less. Women are not.
The most striking trend is generational. Wendy Wang, director of research at the Institute for Family Studies, combined General Social Survey data by decade for adults ages 25 to 54 - the years when labor force participation peaks - and found that male infidelity has been nearly cut in half: 21% of men in the 1990s reported cheating, compared with 11% in 2021-2022, the most recent period with solid data. Women's rate, meanwhile, has held essentially flat at around 14% over the same span, as Wang reported in findings covered by Deseret News in August 2025.
The data also shows infidelity and divorce are tightly linked. Among divorced or separated adults, 52% had cheated on a spouse, versus 15% of those who never cheated - and the pattern is stronger for women (58%) than men (45%). Wang points to earlier research for one possible explanation: "Previous research based on a sample of undergraduate students suggests that men find it more difficult to forgive sexual infidelity, and they are more likely than women to end a relationship following a partner's cheating. If this holds true within marriage, then when a woman cheats, the marriage is less likely to survive."
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Who cheats: what the demographics show
Beyond gender and age, the IFS analysis finds several consistent patterns:
- Work status cuts both ways. Among working-age adults, the men most likely to cheat are those with prestigious jobs (18%) and those without jobs at all (20%). For women, infidelity is highest in low-prestige occupations (21%) and lowest in high-prestige ones (9%).
- Education matters. College graduates cheat less - 10%, versus 15% among those without a degree.
- Religion matters more. Adults who attend religious services regularly report infidelity at 8%, compared with 18% among those who rarely or never attend.
- Family background plays a role. Adults who did not grow up in intact families are more likely to have cheated, according to the IFS analysis.
What the data means
Read together, the numbers describe a behavior that is common, quietly stable among women, and declining among men - even as the cultural conversation around affairs has grown louder. The youngest married adults are also the first cohort where women report cheating at the same rate as men, which suggests the headline "gender gap" may keep narrowing as those cohorts age.
For anyone navigating this world - whether out of curiosity, frustration, or a marriage that has gone quiet - the research points to the same conclusion: affairs are not an aberration. They are a measurable, demographically patterned part of married life in America.
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Frequently asked questions
What percentage of married people cheat?
According to the Institute for Family Studies' analysis of General Social Survey data, 20% of ever-married men and 13% of ever-married women report having had sex with someone other than their spouse while married - about 16% of ever-married adults overall.
Are men or women more likely to have an affair?
Overall, men report higher lifetime infidelity than women. But among married adults ages 18 to 29, women report slightly more cheating (11% vs. 10%), and among adults 25 to 54 the difference (11% men vs. 14% women in 2021-2022) is not statistically significant, according to IFS research director Wendy Wang.
Is infidelity increasing or decreasing?
For men, it is decreasing sharply - from 21% in the 1990s to 11% in 2021-2022 among ages 25 to 54. For women, the rate has stayed roughly flat at about 14% over the same period.
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Related: What Is an Extramarital Affair? Definition, Types, and Data and Why Women Have Affairs.