Break Free Couples Institute research library

U.S. Infidelity and Relationship Statistics

Ten sourced figures about marriage, divorce, infidelity, and relationship definitions. Each statistic includes its date, scope, and a direct link to the original source.

Last updated August 24, 2026

Read the numbers carefully

One question can produce very different answers.

Some sources ask about affairs during a current marriage. Others ask about any physical or emotional cheating across a person's life. Others measure public opinion. Those are not interchangeable measures, so this page keeps the original definition beside each number.

These figures describe broad U.S. patterns. They cannot explain what happened in any one relationship or determine what comes next for a particular couple.

Statistic 01

51%

of U.S. adults were married in 2023.

Pew Research Center's analysis of Census Bureau data also found that 7% of adults were living with an unmarried partner and 42% were unpartnered.

Source: Pew Research Center, published January 8, 2025. Data year: 2023.

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Statistic 02

2,041,926

marriages were recorded in the United States in 2023.

That is a marriage rate of 6.1 per 1,000 people, using provisional national vital-statistics data.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data year: 2023.

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Statistic 03

672,502

divorces were recorded in 2023 by 45 reporting states and Washington, D.C.

The reported divorce rate was 2.4 per 1,000 people. The total does not represent all 50 states, so it should not be treated as a complete national count.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data year: 2023.

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Statistic 04

1.4%

of married adults divorced in the prior year in 2023.

Pew describes this as a record-low share since its trend began in 2009. It is an annual measure, not a prediction of how many marriages will ever end in divorce.

Source: Pew Research Center, published January 8, 2025. Data year: 2023.

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Statistic 05

33%

of adults who had ever been in a monogamous relationship said they had cheated.

The survey counted physical cheating, emotional cheating, or both. It was conducted among 2,000 U.S. adult citizens in September 2022.

Source: YouGov, published October 4, 2022. Survey fieldwork: September 15-22, 2022.

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Statistic 06

54%

of adults who had ever been in a monogamous relationship said they had been cheated on.

This is self-reported awareness of having been cheated on, so it does not measure experiences a respondent never learned about.

Source: YouGov, published October 4, 2022. Survey fieldwork: September 15-22, 2022.

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Statistic 07

13%

of married adults in a current monogamous relationship said they had cheated on that partner.

The figure covers physical, emotional, or both forms of cheating, as defined by respondents in the same 2022 survey.

Source: YouGov, published October 4, 2022. Survey fieldwork: September 15-22, 2022.

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Statistic 08

18%

of adults in current monogamous relationships said their current partner had cheated.

This is a current-relationship measure, not a lifetime estimate.

Source: YouGov, published October 4, 2022. Survey fieldwork: September 15-22, 2022.

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Statistic 09

73%

of Americans said forming an intense emotional attachment to someone else counts as cheating.

Definitions matter. The same survey found that people do not all draw the boundary around infidelity in the same place.

Source: YouGov, published October 4, 2022. Survey fieldwork: September 15-22, 2022.

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Statistic 10

89%

of U.S. adults said extramarital affairs are morally wrong.

Gallup reported this result from its May 2025 Values and Beliefs poll. It measures moral opinion, not the frequency of affairs.

Source: Gallup, published July 22, 2025. Poll fieldwork: May 1-18, 2025.

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Sources and methodology

How this page is maintained.

Each figure comes from a named public source and links back to the original report. Government data, nationally fielded surveys, and established public-opinion research are used here because they make the underlying question and date available.

The page is reviewed monthly, or sooner when a source releases materially newer data. Statistics are replaced only when a newer source measures the same question or clearly improves the available evidence.

For citation, use: Break Free Couples Institute. U.S. Infidelity and Relationship Statistics. Updated August 24, 2026. https://breakfreecouples.com/research/infidelity-relationship-statistics

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