Sexual Behavior in the 1970s Part IV: Extramarital and Postmarital Sex

Part IV: Extramarital And Postmarital Sex

The Playboy Survey finds that, contrary to popular belief, sexual liberation has had little impact on traditional attitudes toward or adherence to the ideal of marital fidelity. In Kinsey's time, married people had only two alternatives to life-long sexual exclusivity: divorce and secret extramarital relations. Since then, we find, sexual liberation has made the divorced far freer in postmarital sexual behavior, but it has had little effect on secret extramarital sex. As for the new alternatives about which there is so much talk--open marriage, mate swapping, group sex, group marriage, etc. --the data suggest that they are mostly just talk.

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Kinsey's data combine the widowed with the separated and the divorced (here called simply the divorced). Later studies showed the widowed to be sexually less active than the divorced, but by omitting data for people over 55 (to exclude most of the widowed) and by reweighting Kinsey's figures, we can make reasonably sound comparisons of our sample with his.

Man, 41: "My marriage had been so rotten that I almost never felt any sexual desire. ... I lost all belief in myself as a man. After I left [my wife], I couldn't bring myself to try it for nearly a year, and then I was only half hard and just barely made it. ... Things slowly got better; with one girl, I was functioning marvelously. But for several years, my first time with any new woman was always a time of nervousness and worry."

Many forces have made it socially, economically and emotionally more feasible for men and women to quit unsatisfactory marriages; the divorce rate is now more than twice as high as it was in 1938, when Kinsey began his studies. Sexual liberation has played a major role, taking much of the onus off postmarital coitus and permitting the divorced to lead full and relatively normal sex lives. This was not the case a generation ago:

• Of Kinsey's under-56 postmarital males, from four percent to 18 percent were having no coitus at all, the figure being higher among older men. In our sample, no divorced man of any age was coitally inactive in the past year. (In all comparisons with Kinsey, whose sample was all-white, we use only the white portion of our own sample.) Even more striking is the change in coital frequency: The median is more than twice a week--more than double the median that Kinsey found.

• The contrasts are even more impressive for divorced women. Roughly a third of Kinsey's younger postmarital women and a majority of those beyond the mid-40s were having no coitus at all. Only a tenth of our sample is sexually inactive. The median frequency for the active is almost twice a week (nearly as high as for divorced men)--roughly four times greater than in Kinsey's era.

Woman, 31: "I had always thought that sex with my husband was very good. After we broke up, I began to find out what it was all about. One man taught me how to be really aware of my own body and my reactions. ... Another man was so sensuous that I became that way myself. ... But I have this fear of getting trapped again. I get into a panic whenever I think I'm too involved with someone."

While today's divorced people--females in particular--are far freer in their sexual behavior, they have not become notably indiscriminate. Yet, for various reasons--maturity, fear of premature entanglement, need for self-retesting--they are distinctly more casual and experimental than young singles. For instance:

• Divorced males have a median of eight coital partners a year; single men under 25 have 1.5; and single men 25 to 34 have four.

• Divorced women have a median of 3.5 coital partners a year; single women under 25 have one; and single women 25 to 34 have three.

Kinsey published no data on the numbers of postmarital coital partners, but it is reasonable to suppose that our findings reflect increases since his time that are similar to the increases in coital frequency of the divorced--that is, between twofold and fourfold.

Kinsey also published no data on techniques of foreplay and coital variations used by postmarital people. In-depth interviews with which we supplemented our study suggest that divorced people today are a good deal freer in both than were those of a generation ago, and our survey data show them to be as free as or freer than today's under-25 husbands and wives (who, aside from a handful of sexual radicals, are among our most liberated respondents). Item: Nine tenths of our divorced men and more than four fifths of our divorced women had at least some oral-genital experience in the past year--about the same number as under-25 married people. Item: Divorced men and women were more likely than under-25 husbands and wives to use positional variations in coitus. Item: Half of the divorced engaged in anal intercourse at least once in the past year--twice as many as in the under-25 married group. Item: Nine tenths of divorced women and even more divorced men rate sex as pleasurable or very pleasurable, and more than four fifths of the women reach orgasm at least three quarters of the time.

Postmarital life still involves many deep, complex problems--largely social and emotional--but sexual liberation enables the great majority of the divorced to lead healthy, constructive, satisfying sexual lives as they repair their egos, test out new relationships and work their way back into marriage--as, indeed, at least four out of five do.

Man, 45 (physician, married): "She was 20 years younger than I and very seductive, long-legged, high-breasted. She took the initiative, there on the waiting-room couch. At first, I was all torn up about it, but it made me feel younger and more attractive, completely reawakened inside. It went on for months. ... And now, listen to the funny part--she was no good at all, sexually ... she was frigid."

In contrast, sexual liberation has made little change in extramarital sexual behavior. Recent opinion polls have shown that general disapproval of extramarital sex persists in the United States, and 80 percent to 90 percent of the husbands and wives in the Playboy survey say that they and their mates would object to any such activity by each other. Significantly, most of the young are as unwilling as older people to tolerate such behavior in their mates.

Or in themselves. Most husbands and wives, at all ages, voluntarily refrain from extramarital sex. A few do so for practical reasons (fear of V.D. or pregnancy), but most do so for moral reasons. A very few of the latter rigidly follow religious edicts ("It's a sin to commit adultery," said one Roman Catholic housewife. "I couldn't do it if I wanted to."); more have nonreligious moral revulsion ("It's wrong to play around, once you've made your commitment," one blue-collar man said. "It's dishonest. If I did, I'd be miserable and disgusted with myself."); most restrain themselves out of moral concern for their partner's feelings and for the integrity of the married love relationship (a TV executive said: "My wife and I have a very good and rare kind of marriage, and I know it would hurt her badly and make her feel terribly insecure, so I simply don't let myself do it").

Man, 45 (married): "I was ripped up by it, but for months I couldn't break it off--I felt as if I were hooked on some drug."

Despite all the talk, the Playboy survey finds little increase in extramarital coitus in the past generation. Kinsey estimated that about half of all married men committed adultery. In our sample, only 41 percent have ever done so. To be sure, many of them still are fairly young; an eventual lifetime figure, we think, would be about the same as Kinsey's--but no higher. We do, however, find an unmistakable increase in one part of the sample: 32 percent of our under-25 married and divorced men have had at least one extramarital experience, as compared with 27 percent a generation ago.

Our data show no over-all increase for women from Kinsey's time. Indeed, they seem to show a drop, but this is because Kinsey's female sample was overweighted with divorced women, whose extramarital rates are higher than those of married women; if we reweight his data to correct the imbalance, we find no over-all decrease--but no over-all increase, either. By the age of 45, for instance, the adjusted figure for a (continued on page 286) Sexual Behavior (continued from page 61) generation ago is about 20 percent; our own, for today, is about 18 percent. Here, too, however, we find a notable increase in one part of the sample: A generation ago, only eight percent of married and divorced women under 26 had had any extramarital coitus, while today, in our 18-to-24 group, the figure is 24 percent. But this threefold increase does not signify a revolutionary change in basic values: It merely brings the rate for under-25 females close to that for under-25 males--which, as we have seen, is only moderately higher than it used to be. The change is not a break with sexual fidelity but with the double standard.

Woman, 37: "He had an effect on me like nothing I could have imagined, but I had my house, my family and a husband I loved. Sometimes, lying next to my husband in the dark, I'd have to put my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming."

Quantitatively, then, the change since Kinsey's time has been limited; but what about qualitatively? Is extramarital coitus easier, less conflicted, more sensuous, more gratifying? Not as far as we can see. For one thing, nearly all of it is still secret, which implies conflict, difficulty and guilt (only one fifth of our sample say their mates have known about their adultery, which is an even smaller percentage than was true of Kinsey's men, according to Kinsey's women). For another, extramarital experience has not become more casual and easy, to judge by the numbers of partners involved: Kinsey published no data on the matter in his male study, but he did in his female study--and the figures are virtually identical with our own. E.g., both then and now, two out of five women with extramarital experience had only one partner each and another two out of five had between two and five partners. Extramarital sex still is no lighthearted frolic; it is serious business, fraught with emotional meaning and with danger for marriage.

Man, 38 (married): "The sex wasn't overwhelming, but I was delighted by the idea of what I was doing. I felt bursting with life and full of juice instead of shriveled and withered. I knew that the whole thing was foolish and could come to no good, but, strangely enough, I felt proud of myself for having done it."

Advocates of marital swinging say that nonsecret alternatives such as mate swapping and group sex avoid emotional involvement and conflict with marriage. But many observers report that swingers are frequently plagued by jealousy, emotional conflict, impotence and frigidity, guilt feelings, fear of disease or disgrace and, worst of all, fear of the loss of love. All this is too much for most married people: Within our sample of 691 married men and 740 married women (whites and blacks combined), only about two percent of the men and a little less than two percent of the women have ever participated in mate swapping with their spouses, and many of the males and most of the females said they had done so only once. (There are no comparable data in Kinsey.) The figures are higher for under-25 males (five percent) and under-25 females (about two percent), but for most of these people there have been only a few episodes.

Group sex is also quite rare among the married. Eighteen percent of the men and six percent of the women had participated in sex in the presence of others, but for many it was premarital and three quarters had done so only once. The figures for under-25 married people were higher (males, 38 percent; females, 22 percent), but here again, some of this was premarital and most of it was one time only. Very few people--about two percent of the men and fewer than one percent of the women--have ever had sex with two or more partners at the same time with spouse present.

Woman, 30: "I'm married to the most sexy guy, technically, that I've ever known. He can always get it up, and he can keep screwing for hours, and he'll try anything at all. But I can never come, with him, because I hate him--because I want a divorce and he won't give it to me. But with the men I've been having affairs with, it's something else--I have orgasms right and left ... but only with men I have a real feeling for."

While some people in our survey report extramarital experiences that are more exciting and gratifying than their marital sex, they are exceptions. In general, extramarital sex is less free, less sensuous and less sexually gratifying than marital sex:

• About a tenth of our married men and married women limit their extramarital sex to petting. These and the following figures pertain to our white sample only.

• Most positional variations are used less freely in extramarital coitus than in marital coitus. The gap is widest among the young--the most liberated of our married people; they are at their most liberated within marriage, not outside it.

• Only 39 percent of women who have extramarital coitus reach orgasm all or almost all the time in it, while 53 percent of women do so in marital coitus; 35 percent never or almost never have orgasm in extramarital coitus, as against only seven percent in marital coitus.

But the ego boost, the excitement, the feeling of recaptured youth, the rediscovery of passion make extramarital sex intensely gratifying for many. Others find their experiences intensely rewarding but flawed by fear and guilt.

If we turn to an over-all assessment of the pleasure yielded by marital sex compared with extramarital sex, we find the latter distinctly the less rewarding. Two thirds of the married males in our total sample rated their marital coitus in the past year, in general, as "very pleasurable"; fewer than half of the men who had extramarital coitus in the past year rated it that highly. For females, the comparable figures were a little more than half for marital coitus, but only a little more than a third for extramarital coitus. Four percent of married men and ten percent of married women rate their marital coitus as lacking in pleasure or actually unpleasant--but nine percent of men and 27 percent of women who had extramarital coitus rate it unfavorably.

These findings hold true even among our younger married people. They talk about extramarital sex more openly and are more aware of their own desires and of the alternatives than were the young marrieds of a generation ago. But for many emotional and social reasons, they are not engaging freely and easily in such experiences and, by and large, those who do are finding the experiences less pleasurable than married people, in general, find their marital coitus. Sexual liberation has shattered the ascetic and antihedonistic tradition in our society but has not altered our central conviction that sex and married love are synergistic and are at their best when they are conjoined.

This is the fourth in a series of articles reporting the results of a comprehensive Playboy Foundation--funded survey of sex in America. Morton Hunt's full report will be published as a book, "Sexual Behavior in the 1970s," by Playboy Press.