The figures on the Redbook wives who had had extramarital sex by different ages are somewhat different, as one would expect, given the nature of the sample. Twenty-nine percent of the total sample had had extramarital sex, the accumulative incidence rising from 20% of the under-twenty-five wives to 40% by age forty and over. A very important variable not mentioned in the other studies was employment of the wife. Full-time employed wives were far more likely to have had extramarital relations than were stay-at-home wives. Among wives in their late thirties, for example, 53% of those employed had had extramarital sex, compared to only 24% of the housewives. Religion was also a factor, with more than twice as many non-religious women as devout women reporting such activity.
Other findings in these studies, which we will briefly summarize, relate to number of partners, frequency of orgasm, and overall pleasure of extramarital sex compared to marital sex, reported by those with both kinds of experience.
Kinsey did not report on any of these variables for his male sample. The data for the number of extramarital partners for both the Kinsey and the Hunt females are almost identical: about 40% in each had had only one partner, and more than 80% had had five or fewer. For the Redbook women, the corresponding percents are 50% and 40%.
The only data comparing marital and extramarital frequency of orgasm are from the Hunt female sample. These women who had had extramarital sex reported that they had orgasm all or almost all the time in 53% of their marital coitus, compared to only 39% of their extramarital coitus, and that they had orgasm almost none or none of the time in 7% of their marital coitus but in 35% of their extramarital coitus. These data suggest that extramarital intercourse is considerably less satisfying than marital intercourse. It is likely that factors such as guilt, haste, anxiety, and inexperience with the partner enter to some extent in these findings.
Related to the figures on orgasm are some data from Hunt’s survey on overall pleasure of marital and extramarital relations. Males rated both marital and extramarital sex more pleasurable than females did, and both sexes gave their marital sex higher ratings than their extramarital experiences.
While adultery seems to be an enduring and intimate aspect of marriage, the data are skimpy, indeed, to support a conclusion that it is increasing, compared to other forms of sexual experience such as premarital or postmarital sex. The exception is its rather dramatic rise among young married women, and this may portend a trend for future observations. As for the other parameters, though one must be very cautious in generalizing from the research, it appears that women, at least, who have extramarital experiences, tend to have few partners rather than many and share with men the experience of being less orgasmic and getting less pleasure from their extramarital encounters than from their sexual relations at home.
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