You may have heard about the man who caught—on camera!—his best friend’s wife in flagrante delicto with another man, then uploaded the video to YouTube. After that woman was done dying of embarrassment, she probably had a decision to make: Does she try to repair her marriage or simply throw in the towel?
Her husband would also have to ponder a thing or two, perhaps most important: Could I trust her to never cheat again?
While we should all cross our fingers, toes, and hearts that we never find ourselves in their situation—that is to say, our relationships, whatever their nature, exposed on YouTube for the world to see and judge—many of us will one day have to contemplate whether we’re willing to date someone who’s cheated in the past, even if it wasn’t on or with us. We'll ask ourselves if the cliche “once a cheater, always a cheater” is a universal, undeniable truth?
For the answer, I turned to science. And science says yes. According to a University of Denver study from earlier this year, those who cheated in their last relationship are 3.5 times more likely to cheat in their next relationship too. In a separate, even more recent study, researchers found that men and women who were "poached"—defined as having been seduced away from a previous relationship by their current partner—were also more likely stray from the new romance.
So science and common sense, it would seem, would warn us all away from dating someone who's cheated in the past, or taking back a boyfriend or husband after he's been unfaithful.
But what do you think? Should we be willing to take a chance on a cheater? Do cheaters always cheat again?