Women who cheat on their partners now have the perfect excuse – my genes made me do it.
New research reveals that female infidelity and the number of sexual partners women have are partially influenced by genetic makeup.
British scientists quizzed 1,600 pairs of identical and non-identical twins about their sexual behavior, how many people they’d slept with and their feelings about two-timing their partners.
The average age of the women was 50, the average number of sexual partners was four or five, about 20 percent admitted to infidelity, 25 percent were divorced and 98 percent were heterosexual.
“[Of those], we found that around 40 percent of the influence on the number of sexual partners and infidelity were due to genetic factors,” said Professor Tim Spector of the Twin Research Unit of St. Thomas’ Hospital in London.
Issues like a shared family environment and individual life events account for the other 60 percent.
Women who had been faithful had about four sexual partners, compared to eight in the infidelity group.
“More than 90 percent of the women admitted to having had thoughts of infidelity at some time,” Spector said in his findings, which are published in the medical journal Twin Research.