America's New Fad: Fidelity

By John Elson

Conventional wisdom in the thirtysomething era declares that the American marriage is in serious trouble: a sky-high divorce rate, new stresses and tensions in the sex wars and easy opportunities for extramarital adventures. Not so, according to a new survey conducted by Gallup for Psychology Today and two national TV programs, King World's Inside Edition and ABC's HOME. Although some experts question its accuracy, the poll indicates Americans are surprisingly and happily monogamous. In the survey, 90% of husbands and wives said they had never been unfaithful to their spouses, and most gave high approval ratings to their mates.

The poll's findings will appear in Psychology Today's March issue, along with an analysis written by the magazine's editor in chief, T. George Harris, and the orchestrator of the survey, Father Andrew Greeley. Greeley, a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, is probably best known as what Spy magazine might call an un-bosomy dirty-book writer; his lust-strewn pop novels (The Cardinal Sins; St. Valentine's Night) regularly make the best- seller charts. Considering the widespread publicity given to marital cheating, Greeley admits that the survey results were "something of a surprise." "People may talk more than they actually do," says the celibate Roman Catholic priest, who plans to expand his research into a book tentatively called Faithful Attraction. "Boasting about one's sexual achievement is nothing new. Not many people boast about being virtuous." Adds Harris: "The secret side of sex is faithfulness."

Nearly two-thirds of the poll's 657 randomly selected respondents, who were queried by telephone shortly before Christmas, said they were "very happy" in their marriage. Four of five said they would wed the same person again, given the chance. Three out of four described their spouses as physically attractive. According to the poll, the three key factors in making a marriage happy are communication, cooperation in child rearing and housework and having a romantic image of one's partner. Some 20% or more said they occasionally indulged in such erotic activities as taking showers with their spouses, making love outdoors and watching X-rated videos together. By modest statistical margins, Catholics appear to be more sexually adventurous than Protestants.

Harris and Greeley argue that the nation may be experiencing a negative backlash to the sexual revolution. They note, for example, that 51% of women under 35 regretted having had a premarital sexual encounter (though only 16% of men felt that way). Meanwhile, according to another poll, the percentage of Americans who disapproved of extramarital sex rose from 84% in 1973 to 91% in 1988.

There are some sharp challenges to the poll's roseate view of American wedlock. Says June Reinisch, director of the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Ind.: "We estimate that approximately 37% of married men and 29% of married women have at least one extramarital affair." A survey conducted by Lillian Rubin, a sociologist at Queens College in New York City, shows a 40% infidelity rate for spouses. Greeley and Harris have two explanations for the disparity between their poll's results and the conventional wisdom: 1) most sexual surveys are either obsolete or unscientific; 2) people are victims of what the authors call "pluralistic ignorance." Translation: erroneous beliefs shared by some individuals about other people. Even the enchanted spouses in the P.T. poll did not believe their commitment to fidelity was widely shared.

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York