{"id":875478,"date":"2026-06-18T08:51:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T08:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/875478\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T08:51:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T08:51:17","slug":"the-most-common-affair-partner-for-married-women-may-surprise-you-says-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/875478\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Common Affair Partner For Married Women May Surprise You, Says Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do some women leave their husbands for other … women?<\/p>\n

Yes, you read that right: Women are more likely to leave their husbands for other women because their sexual fluidity comes with fewer consequences.<\/p>\n

According to research, your wife is most likely to cheat with a same-sex partner<\/p>\n

\"two Rachel McDermott \/ Unsplash<\/p>\n

Women are more likely than men to\u00a0cheat\u00a0on their spouses with a same-sex partner, studies suggest<\/a>. It\u2019s not that women are more likely to be homosexual or\u00a0bisexual \u2014 it\u2019s that women appear more willing than men to change their minds about what turns them on, throughout their lives.<\/p>\n

Men tend to choose a sexuality and stick with it, experts agree. Women are\u00a0wildcards. And it’s this\u00a0fluidity that can sometimes complicate relationships, contributing to divorce.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think data are sufficient to suggest that more women are likely to change their reported sexual orientation depending on their circumstance, whereas men are more resistant to changing their identity from intimate behavior alone,\u201d psychophysiologist and neuroscientist\u00a0Nicole Prause<\/a> explained.<\/p>\n

The phrase \u201csexual fluidity\u201d was originally coined by psychologist\u00a0Lisa Diamond<\/a> in 2008. After following the same 100 women for a decade, she found that there were crucial differences between bisexuality and the sexual fluidity that otherwise heterosexual women experienced.<\/p>\n

Bisexuality is defined as<\/a> being attracted to men and women. Many women, Diamond found, identified as gay or straight, but accepted the fact that they might change their minds at some point. When experts say that women are more likely to be fluid, they mean that they\u2019re more likely to make an exception to, or even update, their identities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, this does not mean that women are more likely than men to cheat on their spouses, and fluidity is seldom the main cause of a relationship souring. As with any relationship problem, there are usually other, deeper relationship issues at play.<\/p>\n

RELATED: People Who Can Get Into Anyone’s Head Usually Possess These 6 People-Reading Skills<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

But now, more than ever, married women are stepping away from problematic heterosexual marriages and into same-sex ones<\/p>\n

\u201cI have seen a mild increase in my practice of women in their 30s over the last decade,\u201d\u00a0Sheryl Kingsberg<\/a>, a professor and division chief of behavioral medicine in the OB\/GYN unit at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, told\u00a0In Style. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s hormonal, maybe it\u2019s neuroendocrine \u2014 an epigenetic shift in brain chemistry that is hormone-based. But it\u2019s certainly a shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

One hormonal explanation may be that women\u2019s testosterone levels increase with age, and higher testosterone levels have also been\u00a0linked<\/a>\u00a0with an increased incidence of homosexuality and bisexuality in women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to psychological theories,<\/a> this might help explain why women may be more fluid in their thirties and forties, after having kids. Evolutionary psychologists have offered several\u00a0theories\u00a0as to why women may be more fluid as well, such as an adaptive way to decrease conflict in polygamous cultures.<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0popular explanation<\/a>\u00a0is that, because saying yes to intimacy\u00a0comes at a higher risk and reproductive cost to women, they tend to make\u00a0decisions more cautiously on a case-by-case basis, which could potentially allow for more deviation.<\/p>\n

Still, likely, increased rates of fluidity among women are primarily a social (rather than biological) phenomenon. Indeed, there is\u00a0emerging evidence that men have the same potential as women to be fluid, but that stigma prevents them from acting upon it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In most Western societies, women still face fewer social costs for same-sex relationships than men. \u201cI don\u2019t know if one gender is more fluid than the other,\u201d clinical social worker Alisha Powell explained. \u201cBut I think that one is much more widely accepted than the other.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: If A Man Expects His Wife To Give Up 8 Seemingly Small Things, He’s Likely Not A Very Good Person<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Lauren Vinopal is a freelance journalist who writes about health and science. She is a staff writer for MEL Magazine and has appeared in MTV News, Vice, GQ, and more.<\/p>\n

Related Stories From YourTango:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why do some women leave their husbands for other … women? Yes, you read that right: Women are…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":875479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11],"tags":[258132,156591,151148,355841,49870,23424,210,355842,127518,355843,67,132,68,355840,18913],"class_list":["post-875478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-affair","tag-betrayal","tag-bisexual","tag-bisexuality","tag-cheating","tag-divorce","tag-health","tag-sexual-fluidity","tag-sexuality","tag-unfaithful","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-why-women-cheat","tag-wife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116770262707061223","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}