- A new survey found 1 in 7 partnered Americans have feelings for someone else.
- People have different ideas about what counts as cheating in a romantic relationship.
- Digital deception is a major concern when it comes to fidelity.
A new survey says that 1 in 7 Americans who are married or in a relationship have feelings for someone who isn’t their partner. But it isn’t just whether or not that outside interest turns into a fling that decides whether there’s infidelity, according to the findings.
Talker Research took a deep dive into a not-so-simple question: What counts as cheating in a romantic relationship?
Said Rick Maughan, head of content at the company, “The research pinpoints the complex nature of attraction, examines the notion of fidelity and explores whether definitions of cheating are evolving in modern times. The term ‘microcheating’ — small acts of unfaithfulness — has been popularized and it was interesting to see where people feel those boundaries lie.”
The data and polling company found that Gen Zers were the most likely to be smitten by someone outside their relationship, at 31%. Next were millennials at 21% in the survey of 2,000 people nationwide. Twelve percent of women admitted being attracted to someone outside their relationship, while for men the number was 19%.
As the pollsters described the survey results, “Getting physical with someone other than your partner is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ways to cheat.”
Some of the examples of cheating are pretty obvious, but others might be a surprise. On the list:
- An ongoing flirtation by text with someone besides your partner is considered unfaithful by 41% of respondents.
- Having a dating app profile “just to look” or for validation is a top-ranked no-no (37%).
- Equally bad is putting a fake name for someone in your phone (37%).
- Deleting or hiding messages to avoid a partner seeing them is cheating, per 36% of respondents, on par with “secretly keeping in touch with an ex.”
- One third of Americans surveyed said that having a “work spouse” is a form of cheating on one’s romantic relationship.
- And having a “close friends” Instagram list that excludes the current partner falls in the cheating category for 27% of respondents.
- Fantasy messaging — “What if we were single?” — and sending heart emojis or compliments or jokes in a romantic way were each considered infidelity by 33% of those questioned.
Artificial intelligence and role-play chatbots that are part of romantic scenarios earned a hard no for 14% of those surveyed.
And by email a company spokesman said, “Broadly, Gen Z was far more forgiving of those microcheating acts, whereas older people like boomers and Gen X were far more likely to come out and say those actions would result in a breakup for them.”
The survey was conducted online between July 1 and July 6, 2026.
So who’s cheating?
Recognizing behavior that could be a relationship killer is not always enough to deter that behavior. The survey showed that 1 in 10 Americans said they’ve deleted messages so their partner wouldn’t see them, while 1 in 12 have “secretly met up with someone one-on-one.”
The numbers get smaller, but there are still a lot of people engaging in risky relationship behavior, per the findings. For instance 1 in 12 people admitted to having had a “secret friendship” they kept from their partner, while the same number have kept an ongoing flirtatious text thread alive.
And 6% said they do keep someone in their phone under a pseudonym so their partner won’t know.
Walking away
People leave relationships for lots of reasons, some of them quite odd, based on the survey’s findings: “Eating pizza with a fork, having bad breath and chewing cereal too loudly were all cited reasons Americans have ended things with a romantic interest.”
One person said the relationship ended after the romantic partner left a $1 tip for an expensive meal out, while another left because of the partner’s mother.
When people leave over something as basic as how someone chews gum or a debate over what goes on pizza — real responses in the survey — there’s something else going on, according to Sal Raichbach, chief clinical officer at The Haven Detox Group, which has addiction treatment centers in multiple states.
The reason given for ending a relationship may not accurately reflect the reality, Raichbach said, noting there are more likely reasons like differences in etiquette, values, lifestyle, attraction or perceived mutual respect. The odd reason may be the trigger that leads to pulling the plug on the relationship.
Other infidelity research
In August 2025, the Institute for Family Studies took a close look at infidelity among working-age adults, as Deseret News reported. The institute’s director of research, Wendy Wang, used data on adults 25 to 54 from the General Social Survey, then wrote a blog post about it.
Wang chose the age range because it’s prime labor force participation time.
That survey’s data found that infidelity among men in that age range (11%) had been dropping, while for women it was stable at around 14%. But the difference in those numbers wasn’t statistically significant.
Cheating was about equally likely between the sexes. The men most likely to cheat were those with great, prestigious jobs (18%) or those with no jobs (20%). For women, infidelity was highest among those with “low-prestige occupations” at 21%. Women with much better jobs were the least apt to cheat, at 9%.
Just 10% of college graduates cheated, compared to 15% of those with less education. And those who attend religious services were significantly less likely to cheat than those who didn’t, 8% vs. 18%.
And the bottom line in Wang’s research? Infidelity increases the risk of divorce or separation.
Per the Deseret News article, “Among those who are divorced or separated, Wang found that over half (52%) had cheated on a spouse, compared to 15% who never cheated. Among women, 58% of those who are divorced or separated had cheated, while it was 45% of men. Wrote Wang, ‘Previous research based on a sample of undergraduate students suggests that men find it more difficult to forgive sexual infidelity, and they are more likely than women to end a relationship following a partner’s cheating. If this holds true within marriage, then when a woman cheats, the marriage is less likely to survive.’”