Double Standards About Infidelity.

• Position: Brief Article

Sexual infidelity is not restricted to the husband or wife with a seven-year itch or experiencing a midlife crisis. More than 60% of college-aged students from northern California have experienced sexual betrayal, according to S. Shirley Feldman, senior research scientist in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Child Development and associate director in the Program in Human Biology, Stanford (Calif.) University. She says that sexual betrayal, which she defines as petting or intercourse with a non-partner in the face of an agreement to be monogamous, may affect scripts about trust and commitment that young adults take into later life and marriage. Her studies show that, though young men and women behave the same when it comes to sexual infidelity, they are playing by different sets of rules.

"A majority of late-adolescent relationships have been characterized by betrayal on the part of somebody in the ... relationship. Those numbers are high, very high. They come very close to the estimates of marital infidelity." It has been estimated that approximately 50% of married men and almost 40% of married women commit adultery.

Late adolescence (18-21) is a period of exploration, when individuals are discovering who they are and what they like and dislike. Over the last 20 years, Feldman explains, adolescents have accelerated...