Extramarital affairs have become common, and actually promoted, in today’s society. Television shows, motion pictures and magazine articles glorify cheating to immense proportions. Of course, such activities can lead to domestic strife, the end of a family and a pretty penny to your wallet – aside from legal costs in the future.
According to a new study by a United Kingdom-based retail company that looked at American spending habits, the average extramarital affair lasts about six months and costs $444 per month, or $2,664 in total. These totals consist of hotel rooms ($123), food and beverages ($162), gifts ($54), movie tickets ($69) and “other” dating activities ($36).
Despite the fact that this is a large sum of money, experts say that these estimates are extremely conservative and omit other costly expenses, such as airline tickets, secret mobile phones, clandestine credit cards and other expenditures. In fact, according to one expert, cheating husbands may treat their mistresses better than their own wives.
“We’ve created the ultimate cheating tools,” Ramani Durvasula, a licensed clinical psychologist, told CNBC in an interview. “Social media is an accelerant. It’s like giving children matches to play with. When you think about it, it’s downright quaint these days to imagine a mistress calling a man’s home and hanging up when his wife answers. Right? Now people can literally cheat on their spouses while lying right next to them in bed.”
Study authors say that it isn’t necessarily purchasing lucrative jewellery and lavishing a mistress with expensive gifts, restaurants and hotel rooms, it’s actually covering a person’s tracks to ensure their spouse doesn’t discover the affair.
For instance, some cheating partners will travel out of town and spend thousands of dollars on an apartment, shopping trips and other expenses that come with leading a double life. Since suspecting spouses will hire the services of a private detective, it will add to the cost of a cheating partner to avoid these experts, who often times are former CIA operatives that maintain high-tech surveillance equipment.
At the end of it all, husbands will spend an astronomical amount of money in legal fees and alimony – upwards of 75 percent to simply avoid the publicity and embarrassment.
Not only do extramarital affairs come with an emotional rollercoaster and a spurious lifestyle, they also lead to enormous costs that grow each passing day. Essentially, that thrill that one may initially garner in an affair will end up costing the married person thousands upon thousands of dollars.
The question that one must ask is: is it worth it? Besides love, there are an abundance of financial reasons why married couples should stick together: sharing costs, tax breaks, pooling long-term assets and investments and harmonize financial objectives.
