Republicans have an infidelity problem. If your only impression of Republican marriages was ripped from the latest headlines, this would seem to be a reasonable conclusion. But the picture appears different when we look beyond the headlines at the lives of ordinary Republican men. It turns out that Republican husbands, especially religious ones, are less likely to cheat on their wives than Democratic husbands.
The issue is important because, as I (Wilcox) argued in Get Married, infidelity “exacts a serious toll on marital quality,” adding that it is “because, regardless of the state of the marriage prior to the adultery, breaking the fidelity norm ushers in thoughts and feelings of betrayal, distrust, and anger—not to mention worries about abandonment.” Not surprisingly, infidelity is also one of the top predictors of divorce.
When it comes to infidelity, men are more likely to stray than women, according to the research. One studyfrom 2018 found that 20% of men (versus 13% of women) “reported that they’ve had sex with someone other than their spouse while married.”
But not all groups of men are the same. Contrary to what the headlines might suggest, Republican men are less likely to stray than other men. That might be partly because, when it comes to attitudes about cheating, it’s actually Democrats who have become more accepting of extra-marital sex in recent years. This trend has been especially pronounced among Democrats since what Matt Yglesias called the “Great Awokening” (circa 2014), when many Democrats lurched hard to the cultural Left.
Since this hard left turn, which included growing progressive support for polyamory, a large minority of Democrats, including Democratic husbands, have abandoned the classic fidelity norm. Just a decade ago, three quarters of ever-married Democratic men aged 18-55 believed that having sex with someone besides your spouse is “always wrong,” according to the General Social Survey (GSS). Today, only half do. By contrast, four-in-five ever-married Republican men (18-55) embrace the classic norm that extramarital sex is “always wrong,” with no signs of change over the same period.1
More importantly, when it comes to behavior, Republican ever-married men are less likely to report having strayed. In fact, 18% of Democratic ever-married men (18-55) report having ever had sex outside of marriage, compared to 13% of Republican ever-married men, according to the GSS. In other words, Democratic husbands are more likely to indicate they have had extramarital sex than Republican husbands.
But not all Republican men are the same when it comes to following the “forswearing all others” norm. Large numbers of men who identify with the Republican party have been “fiscally conservative but socially liberal,” and, more recently, anti-woke but not culturally conservative. One name for this loose coalition is the “Barstool conservatives,” a group that got their name from David Portnoy’s sports-focused media empire. Portnoy is famously anti-woke but not socially conservative—rejecting COVID lockdowns and gender ideology on the one hand, but also traditional conservative positions on abortion and marriage on the other. Portnoy and his minions have no patience for the nanny state, but not much regard either for classic conservative commitments to life, marriage, and family.
Standing in opposition to the Barstool Conservative is what we will call the ‘Religious Wife Guy.’ Religious Wife Guys are committed to classic marital values, including sexual fidelity. As the erosion in marital sexual norms among Democrats makes clear, the husbands today most committed to sexual fidelity tend to be Republican. They also tend to be the Republican husbands who are religious.
When we look at ever-married men by party and religious attendance, we find that religious Republican men are much more likely to always disapprove of extramarital sex. Specifically, 90% of Republican ever-married men (18-55) who attend religious services once a month or more say extramarital affairs are always wrong, whereas only 74% of non-religious ever-married Republicans endorse the classic fidelity norm, according to the GSS (2010-2022). Of Republican ever-married men, 46% reported attending religious services frequently.
Beliefs and actions do not always track. But they often tend to, and this holds true when it comes to marital infidelity. Not only do nominal or nonreligious Republicans disapprove of infidelity at lower rates, but they also engage in it more often. The GSS indicates that secular Republicans engage in extramarital sex at higher rates, with 15% reporting extramarital sex compared to 10% from their religious peers. In this way, secular Republican ever-married men are more like their Democratic peers, both religious and nonreligious.
The story here is straightforward: men who endorse extramarital sex, or simply don’t oppose it, are more likely to cheat on their spouse. It’s no wonder that secular Republicans have similar infidelity rates as their Democratic peers (religious or not). They share the same attitudes. By contrast, religious Republicans are markedly more likely to embrace the classic fidelity norm and, consequently, are the least likely to cheat on their wives.
The takeaways, then, are two-fold. First, headlines spotlighting the marital misbehavior of Republicans in the leadership class obscure the fidelity pattern among rank-and-file Republican husbands, which is much more marriage friendly. Second, it looks like religious Wife Guys, more so than Barstool Conservatives, are the Republican husbands most likely to forswear all others.
Brad Wilcox is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Family Studies. Grant Bailey is a Research Associate of the Institute for Family Studies.
1. Independents leaning Republican or Democrat are coded as Republicans and Democrats, respectively.