If your spouse has been "sexting" or maintaining a relationship with someone else online, is that person just looking for an Internet ego-boost, or on the hunt for a real life affair? The answer appears to be the latter, according to a paper on infidelity and cyberspace published in the journal Sexuality & Culture. Authored by University of Nebraska at Kearny professor Diane Kholos Wysocki and Washburn University associate professor Cheryl Childers, the paper examines the behaviors of those who frequent an online dating site dedicated to extra-marital affairs. The authors find that, although many people do seem to enjoy maintaining online sexual relationships with those who are not their partners, most participants' main goal is indeed to hook up in real life.

The researchers posted a survey at AshleyMadison, a site dedicated to helping individuals hook up outside of their marriages. The goal was to discover what role the Internet plays when it comes to finding sex partners, and how common activities like "sexting" are. (The researchers defined sexting as sending sexually explicit texts or e-mails to another adult in order to increase the likelihood of a sexual relationship, either online or offline. This could include text or photos, or both.)

Of the 5,187 adults who answered the survey, women were more likely than men to engage in the researchers' definition of "sexting" with people outside their marriage—almost 83 percent compared to almost 67 percent—with the female 25-29 age group having the highest incidence of sexting. (After age 30, women seem to slow down on the sexting.) And, among those groups, women were 1.3 times more likely to send nude photos of themselves than men.

But does all this sexting mean that people are actually cheating? More than two-thirds of respondents said they had "cheated" with someone solely online, while three quarters confirmed that they successfully cheated in real life as a result. There appeared to be no gender differences when it came to real-life cheating rates, though the researchers found some age discrepancies in both genders.

"Unlike sending nude photos through email or on cell phone, cheating does not decrease by age. In fact, cheating in real-life appears to generally increase with age, especially for males," reads the paper. "Cheating in real-life also increases for females, but only through the 30s, then begins to decrease a bit." In a bit of a surprise, only 13 percent reported a negative impact on their primary relationships thanks to their infidelity, though 25 percent said they weren't sure of the impact.

For both men and women, however, the researchers note that the best predictors for developing an extramarital relationship was engaging in cybersex, which often followed on from sexting. For women, engaging in cybersex tripled their odds of straying online and doubled their odds of cheating offline, while for men, having cybersex quintupled the odds of developing an online extramarital relationship and slightly less than doubled the odds for cheating offline. Generally speaking, exchanging sexually explicit chat and photos with another person online was a major indicator that the person in question was about to or planned to cheat.

"While social networking sites are increasingly being used for social contact, people continue to be more interested in real-life partners, rather than online partners," the researchers said in a statement. "It seems that, at some point in a relationship, we need the physical, face-to-face contact. Part of the reason for this may be that, ultimately, humans are social creatures."

So if you happen to find your partner sending Anthony Weiner-esque photos to an online "friend," it sounds as if there's some likelihood that your partner is preparing to go beyond mere flirtatious texts. To be fair, however, the paper does note that the survey respondents were largely self-selected and were not random because of the nature of the dating site in question. Although 33 percent of males in the survey and 40 percent of females were unmarried, it's not unreasonable to expect that the majority of those who use AshleyMadison are already looking to have an affair, and are therefore more likely to already be in the cheating mindset.

Sexuality & Culture, 2011. DOI: 10.1007/s12119-011-9091-4 (About DOIs).

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