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Let’s face it, no matter how long you’re in a relationship for the honeymoon period just won’t last forever. In fact, getting past this stage helps test the strength of the relationship. But with every test also comes the risk of failing.
Now of course, when getting married, most people try to stick to their vows to stay loyal to each other, but the 7-year itch can prove to be quite a difficult task to overcome for many people in serious commitments. A term used by psychologists, it suggests the notion that around the 7-year mark of marriage individuals become a little distant with each other as their happiness and satisfaction with the relationship begins to decline, and the urge to stray gets stronger.
A research team from Israel looked into reasons why people who have been tempted to cheat have managed to resist. What they discovered, published in The Journal of Sex Research, was they were able to identify the most likely time men and women are most at risk of cheating in a marriage.
The researchers asked 423 participants to answer a questionnaire rating the importance of 29 different reasons to avoid and resist cheating, as well as state the likelihood of them cheating if the opportunity presented itself.
The research saw that there were numerous reasons why those who took part in the questionnaire resisted being unfaithful, mostly to do with their moral compass and the fear of being single. Their findings also revealed that, for women, the window of time when they were more likely to cheat on their partners was between the 6-10 years mark.
However, the study also showed that when it came to men cheating in heterosexual marriages, they were most likely to cheat after 11 years, showing they're no angels either.
Earlier this year Superdrug's Online Doctor ran a survey of over 2,000 Americans and Europeans to work out why men and women cheated. Interestingly, the number one reason for both heterosexual men and women both sides of the Atlantic were the same. For both American and European women, the top reason was down to feeling like they weren’t being given enough attention from their partner. For American and European men, their top reason was that the other person was "really hot".
