What makes a loyal partner?

How do you recognize and pick a faithful and loyal girlfriend material?

This article reviews a number of sources and statistics to answer that question.

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Contents

Traits of Loyal Partners

If you want to pick a loyal mate, statistics say that the following traits correlate with fidelity:

  • Religious
  • Traditional values that include family, housework, and supporting family and husband
  • Monogamous social circle
  • Lower partner count
  • Later first-time sex: Robert J. Levin and Amy Levin surveyed 100.000 women and found that only 16% of women reported extramarital sex when they lost their virginity after the age of 21. Compared to 48% of women who lost their virginity at 15 years old or younger.
  • Lives in a small town and likes living in a small town
  • Monogamous family
  • Present father
  • Personal values that include respect for monogamy, truth, and honesty
  • Secure attachment style
  • Empathy and altruism (as opposed to dark triad personality)
  • Conservative cultural background
  • Introverted
  • Serial dater until she commits to one, instead of “simultaneous dater”. Langlais et al.(2015) found that mothers who engaged in simultaneous dating drank more alcohol and had more unprotected sex even when they wanted a relationship
  • Neuroticism (but findings are not consistent across cultures)
  • Prioritizes character over looks: In numerous studies, Gangestad and his colleagues have shown that women who seek short-term mates place special importance on the physical attractiveness of their partners

I’m personally not convinced that having a “party phase” increases the risks.
Women who’ve never had “fun” in their younger years may grow very curious as older women (example from “Walk On The Moon”).

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Looks can give you many good hints. But the last word always comes down to character

Traits of Cheating Partners

As much as there are traits that increase the odds of finding a loyal man or woman, there are also traits that have been shown to correlate with infidelity.

Personality traits:

  • Extroversion (Altgelt et al. , 2018; Orzeck & Lung, 2005; Yeniceri & Kökdemir, 2006)
  • Sensation seeking (Lalasz & Weigel, 2011)
  • Poor impulse control (Brady et al. 2020)
  • Sexual excitation,albeit stronger for men (Mark et al., 2011)
  • High sexual permissiveness & Unrestricted sociosexuality (Barta & Kiene, 2005; Rodrigues et al. , 2017)
  • Avoidant attachment style (DeWall et al., 2011)
  • Dark triad (narcissism, sociopathy, Machiavellianism)
  • Antisocial/low agreeableness
  • Low religiosity: less religious people were more likely to be unfaithful (Whisman et al. , 2007)

Life History Risks:

  • Poaching history: poached you, you poached her, or poaching in the past
  • Right out of divorce/breakup (re-enters the “assessment phase”)
  • Family infidelity, albeit this can swing both ways with some children “swearing off” infidelity
  • Physical abuse as children (sorry to add insult to injury)
  • Positive past experiences with cheating, including not getting caught
  • Absent fathers sub-communicating that men can’t be trusted to stick around and provide
  • Harsh environments predispose for a “fast life strategy” of earlier sex and uncommitted sex

Cultural Risks:

  • Libertine cultures
  • Libertine workplaces or with common cheating
  • Lack of infidelity condemnation (ie.: France)
  • High female empowerment cultures may decrease the shame and stigma on female infidelity and high sexual partner count
  • Drinking and partying cultures, linked with hookup culture

Opportunity Risks:

  • Travels a lot for work or recreation
  • Attractive and freewheeling colleagues who provide opportunities
  • Lives in a large metropolitan area
  • Many attractive opportunities around

Relationship Risks:

Remember that the quality and direction of your relationship heavily impacts the odds of cheating.
Some of the risks include:

  • Relationship dissatisfaction/unhappiness, stronger predictor for women (Mark et al., 2011)
  • Declining sexual adjustment (Scott et al., 2017)
  • Cheating partner and revenge: Warach et al.(2018) found that sexual betrayal was the single best predictor of sexual infidelity of the personality dimensions they examined
  • Mate value mismatches: she may cheat if she thinks she’s higher mate value, but also if he’s much higher mate value and she cheats because she believes he will as well (Buss and Shackelford, 1997)

This is great news because it means that as long as you stay a great guy and maintain a great relationship, most women will be faithful.
And as relationship researcher Gottman said “women in love are wearing blinkers (to other men)”.

Shape Your Loyal Partner

This article is about the traits of loyal partners and not so much about what you should do to ensure loyalty.

So I won’t go much into the details, but here’s a primer for completeness’ sake:

Men: Be A Confident, Good Leader For Both

⚠️ Be careful of emotional infidelity
Men are more likely to underestimate emotional infidelity because it’s psychologically less threatening. But to women it’s important, and many breakup or sexual infidelity start as emotional infidelity.

Women: Be A Good, Loving Woman

  • Keep your financial independence
  • Keep your social circle of girlfriends (helps both you and the relationship)
  • Don’t move in into his place (find a new place)
  • Seek a balance of investment
  • Be the best woman she’s ever had
  • Make him feel important

Both Men and Women: Be The Partner You Wish to Have

Build Total Relationships

Research shows indeed that infidelity was rare in “total marriages”, such as marriages that had psychological, intellectual, and recreational compatibility.

That means that when you go strong on an emotional, intellectual, and interests level, then you have a total marriage and you have few reasons to cheat.

Gender Differences

Men on average cheat more, albeit the difference has been closing in the West and is much smaller in open culture and among younger individuals.

What’s also interesting is that men and women value different things when it comes to loyalty.
Such as:

  • Women care more about emotional fidelity
  • Men care more about sexual fidelity

SUMMARY

Infidelity is a widespread phenomenon.

How likely it is that your partner will cheat depends on a wide variety of factors.

Some of them are environmental, such as the availability of mates, society’s culture, and the subculture they ascribe to.
Some of them are more personal, ranging from genetic makeup, values, and family background.

This article gave you a broad overview of the traits you need to pay attention to if you want a loyal partner.