As the cheating scandal between former CIA director General David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, breaks wide open, writer Arianne Cohen, who has combed through 3,500 sex diaries for her website and book, The Sex Diaries Project, writes for Bloomberg Businessweek that Gen. Petraeus is no special unicorn.
Real talk from Cohen:
Petraeus has been married for 38 years. Very few human beings sleep with just one person in a 38-year period. Most people simply aren’t married that long. According to the Census, the majority of marriages end long before the 38th anniversary mark (the average divorce occurs eight years after the wedding), and of the marriages that stay intact for 38 years, approximately half involve at least one other sexual partner.
And even though Petraeus and Broadwell thought they were being really clever, using the drafts folder of a shared e-mail account to communicate, even that tactic (which terrorists are famous for using) backfired. Cohen elaborates:
[T]here’s one thing I find to be an absolute certainty: If you communicated evidence of your lovemaking by e-mail or text message—like Petraeus apparently did—my research shows that you will likely be found out. All cheating affairs I encountered were discovered because of a digital paper trail. Remember, people: Don’t put it in writing.
Solid advice that we’ll bet Petraeus now wishes he’d heeded.
Follow Sexcerpts on Twitter!: @Sexcerpts_SK
