Culture and Society
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"Once a cheater, always a cheater" sounds like a cliché dished out by a thoroughly unhelpful dating guru, but science suggests that claim may have genuine merit.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.In 2017, clinical psychologists at the University of Denver published a study that questioned whether cheating in a previous relationship was a risk factor for infidelity in a subsequent relationship. The team tracked 484 people – all English-speaking young adults in the US – through a series of questionnaires that pried into their relationships and examined their behaviors.
In a nutshell, patterns of behavior seem to repeat themselves; cheaters are more likely to cheat again, while those who are cheated on are even more likely to suffer similar experiences again in their following relationships.
The researchers found that a person is three times more likely to cheat if they have cheated in the past. Likewise, if a person had been cheated on (or had suspected cheating) in a prior relationship, that individual is two to four times more likely to be cheated on again.
“The past matters for relationships,” Kayla Knopp, who led the study as a PhD student in clinical psychology at the University of Denver, said in a 2018 statement. “What we do at every step along the way in our romantic histories ends up influencing what comes next – whether that’s infidelity or cohabitation or a bunch of other relationship behaviours. That history tends to come with them.”
Around 40 percent of unmarried couples reported infidelity in the study. However, no gender was more to blame than the other. The findings suggested that men and women were equally likely to cheat or be cheated on.
The results may sound a little disheartening if you’re currently in the trenches of dating, but the researchers were careful to frame them as statistical trends rather than foregone conclusions. While it’s possible to pick out certain patterns, many lovelorn romantics will manage to break the mold.
“Regardless of whether you are the perpetrator of the infidelity or whether your partner was, those experiences are substantially more likely to repeat themselves,” Knopp said. “However, there are lots of people who break those patterns.”
“I don't want to suggest that it’s someone’s fault that someone is cheating on them, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that we all play a role in our relationships. For people that find themselves having that experience, it may be worth taking a look at whether they could do something to prevent that from happening again.”
“Hopefully, by identifying risk factors, then that gives people a little more power and control in their own lives,” she concluded.
