PexelsIn a relationship and trust your partner? Yes? Are you absolutely sure?
Of course you are, most people would think it’s necessary and healthy to trust your partner. After all, it’s doesn’t look great when you demand to see their messages every time their phone goes off.
But scientists are saying we may all be a bit too trusting in our relationships. Apparently, we all seem to think our own partners are highly unlikely to stray, but everyone else’s is.
In a recent study, researchers looked at what couples thought about cheating in both their own and other people’s relationships.
Around 200 people between the ages of 17-32 who had been in a relationship for nearly two years were surveyed, and what the psychologists from the University of Calgary and McMaster Children’s Hospital found was pretty interesting.
By answering questions on trust, commitment, and infidelity, the psychologists used the participant’s answers to assess their expectations on the likelihood of their partners cheating on them.
Participants estimated that the average person has around a 40 per cent chance of cheating on a partner – and 9 per cent of them said they had cheated in the past.
What’s interesting though, is that only 5 per cent of participants believed that their own partners had cheated or will cheat on them at some point. So in other words, they reported cheating at twice the rate that they thought their own partners would cheat. And that didn’t really change in dating or married couples, either.
A total of 90 per cent of participants said they’d want to know if their partner cheated on them, but 70 per cent had never openly spoken about what counts as cheating or what they expected from one another.
Basically, we all think everyone else will cheat but us.
