A major survey of the religious affiliations and sex secrets of adulterers is released today by AshleyMadison.com - and if you think religious types never stray, prepare for a shock.

In case you're not familiar with AshleyMadison.com, it's the website for people who want to have affairs, offering 'discreet encounters' for all. Their subtle tagline is 'Life is short. Have an affair.'

Male and female members of the site responded to questions providing a snapshot of their behaviours; the results? Respondents were more than three times as likely to be Anglican or Roman Catholic than atheist and least likely to be Sikh, Jewish or Hindu.

Dr Eric Anderson, one of the world’s leading sexologists (yes, really) and Chief Science Officer at AshleyMadison.com said: "Atheists cheat at far lower than half the rates of their population. Catholic countries, by offering salvation via confession, inadvertently give more reason to have permissive sex.

"It’s no accident that threesomes are more common in the highly Catholic countries such as the Latin Americas compared to the UK, the US and Australia."

The survey also asked about favourite sex positions. Whilst oral sex was the preference for 22% of men and 20% of women, both groups reported performing the missionary position most frequently.

"The stigma around oral sex has died off in British culture and the pleasure of the tongue is more orgasm-inducing than straight sex for women. If a man is truly interested in pleasuring a woman, oral sex is the act of choice," says Dr Anderson.

"For men who are cheating on their partners, their worst fear is getting someone other than their wife pregnant. Oral sex represents safety, literally and also metaphorically, in the Bill Clinton, “I did not have sex with that woman,” sense. It’s an escape clause."

The second most popular position was anal sex. Anal sex was cited as the favourite sex position for 14% of British men and a surprising 17% of British women, beaten only by Chilean women of whom 19% prefer anal sex.

As for confessing infidelity to another person, only 10% of the British women say they have told anyone but men are more likely to confide in someone (19%). French women, perhaps practised in the art of adultery, are the least likely to confess (2%).

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