Given the fact people are not exactly honest when talking about adultery, finding the cities with most unfaithful wives sounds almost impossible. Still, we managed to make a selection of cities, where women are, presumably, most likely to cheat. But first, let’s focus on what types of marriages (and relationships) exist, in order to understand what adultery is considered for in different parts of the world and whether it all comes down to the same – a partner’s lost trust.
So, nowadays, we have monogamous societies, where a state of being married to one person at a time is practiced, and polygamous societies, where having more than one partner is a norm. Moreover, even within polygamy, we can make a difference between polygyny, which implies a marriage between a man and several women, whereas, in the case of polyandry, it’s the opposite. Also, there are group marriages, where multiple wives and multiple husbands which are, in fact, the family unit.
And, while polygamy is banned in a number of developed countries, it seems like serial polygamy, “is generally accepted practice” as we witness it on a daily basis, having people divorced and then marring with someone else all the time. Unfortunately, in the US only, 67% of the second marriages and even 73% of the third, end in divorce. So, the conclusion would be that polygamy exists in every society but in different forms. Furthermore, these statistics don’t surprise if we take into account how common is cheating in this country. The percent of Americans who admitted they’ve been cheating ranged between 20% to 25% for men compared to 10% and 15% for women in the period between 1991 and 2008 (that’s more than a decade ago, and those are just the ones being honest about it). In addition, according to Ashley Madison, “the global leader for affairs,” Seattle, Denver and Dallas are the cities with most unfaithful husbands in the country, while San Antonio cheaters are not far behind. When ranking cheaters by state, it seems like Texas cheaters lead the way, since out of 20 top cities with the most unfaithful men, five are in Texas. So, those hubbies cheating in Dallas are just the top of an iceberg. However, those Boston’s cheating spouses should know that adultery is still considered as a criminal offense in Massachusetts, more precisely, a crime against chastity.
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The opinions on whether monogamy is “natural” or not for human species are rather interesting. In a book called “The Myth of Monogamy,” Professor David Barash, a zoologist and professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Washington, and (intriguingly) his wife, Judith Eve Lipton, M.D., also a psychiatrist, (who are married for more than 35 years) argued that we are carrying the “biological imprint of polygamy,” while discussing monogamy within the animal kingdom. Even though they didn’t justify infidelity among people, aiming to bust the myth of monogamy, they suggested “cheating is the rule,” for both sexes, for almost every species. So, when it comes to mammals, there are only a very few species living in, what might be called “monogamous arrangements,” or less than 5% of around 5,000 species. So, besides otters, some bats, foxes and occasionally wolves, we, humans, engage in monogamous relationships as well. The question is, why we defy biology by practicing monogamy?
To answer this question, let’s turn to a timeline of major events in the history of human society and the evolution of sexual behavior. Starting from the dawn of man, it’s almost impossible to give an answer to questions like “were cavemen monogamous?“. However, a number of ethnographic descriptions of hunter-gatherer societies as well as work of anthropologists during the last two centuries like Lewis H. Morgan and Friedrich Engels as well as geographer Jared Diamond, propose that prehistoric societies were built on the foundations of equality and polyamory, where anyone of any gender can have more than one partner. After all, in societies where a community was a vital factor of one’s survival, sharing was of utmost importance.
Fast forward some 15 000 years in the future, we are living in a world where both polygamy and monogamy are practiced. The agricultural revolution which had happened a few millennia ago brought with itself a shift from matrilocal to patrilocal residency. In plain English, this shift implies that a man is to remain living in his father’s house after reaching maturity and bringing his wife(s) to live there as well. Moreover, there are some suggestions that partner availability, or to be more precise partner scarcity may have played an important role in the evolution of monogamy. In addition, STDs also might have played a role in establishing this mating behavior, since larger societies were more prone to suffer from STD epidemics. In the end, we can’t diminish the influence of religion on sexual behavior. Christianity and monogamy go hand in hand, the same as Islam and polygyny. Even in countries which are embodiments of Western civilization, like Canada, polygamy is still happening in some Muslim communities, while a Muslim polygamy matchmaking apps are a real thing. So, to wrap up – the human being and its behavior, including sexual, can’t be observed from the biological aspect only. Therefore, it’s heavily influenced by the culture it belongs, while race doesn’t directly have that important role. The famous anthropologist Edvard Taylor once wrote that culture is that “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” That way when thinking about cheating and unfaithfulness, it’s important to determine what countries, societies, and cultures are we are taking into consideration. Therefore determining the most unfaithful race it’s not exactly something traceable.
So, what counts as “cheating”? And more importantly for our today’s list, why women cheat?
The term is definitely vague, and it goes from being sexual to being even (or “only”) emotionally unfaithful to your partner, and once again it depends on where the one comes from. The reason(s) why someone cheats, is(are), on the other hand, heavily impacted by the person’s sex. And while there are some overlaps, the reasons men cheat are more of a “physical” nature, comparing to women, where psychology beats biology. Their disloyalty is often triggered by a lack of intimacy, loneliness, high expectations, and by a feeling of neglectance and underappreciation.
That way, nowadays, headed out to find some attention, women (and man) often end up on social media, making the Facebook one of the top “places” where do most affairs happen or at least began. Once they hit the road, the places cheaters go are usually coffee shops, restaurants, bars, etc.
So, for our research on the world’s cities with most unfaithful wives, the idea was to restrict to those women cheating in marriage, and as a consequence break the marriage contract by getting a divorce. Since data for each city can’t be traceable, first, we focused on countries. So, we breezed through some divorce rate statistics worldwide, using extensive OECD’s report, and a few other articles, such as Futurity’s article on divorce in African countries and a report on Australia’s divorce rates, only to single out those with the highest divorce rates. Speaking of Australia, according to our research on countries with most faithful husbands, Aussies are the world’s most loyal hubbies. For today’s list, we’ve also consulted our articles on countries with most unfaithful wives and countries that cheat the most in the world. Once we got a grip on countries where wife’s adultery is most possible we also checked for the level of happiness in these countries as well as how sexually active are its citizens. After all, those unhappiest countries with high sexual activity are probably those where people cheat more, right? So, after narrowing it down to 25 countries where the women (and man) are likely to cheat more, we put in use Quora and Reddit, in order to find out which are the cities with most unfaithful wives in those countries. So, let’s find out which are the best places to cheat on your spouse.
