- Position‹2 of 2
- No, keep it to yourself
- Argument‹2 of 2
One night stands aren't cheating
Over the last few years, adultery surveys in the United States and the United Kingdom have found that not everyone believes one night stands should be considered cheating.
The argument
When No-strings hook-up site OneNightFling.com conducted a survey of what constitutes cheating, one in 10 British people did not consider a one-night stand to be cheating. The results represent the responses of 2,000 people between the ages of 18 and 40. 1,000 Americans took part in a similar adultery survey conducted by Y2 Analytics and Deseret News. Roughly 25% of respondents said that having a one night stand with someone other than your partner does not, or only sometimes, counts as cheating. If you break the survey results down into gender, 30% of men questioned felt that one night stands aren't cheating. This was only 5% more than the 25% of women who also voted the same way. In terms of age demographics, the results were also close; 21% of the Silent Generation, 23% of Baby Boomers, 32% of Generation X, and 31% of Millennials stated one night stands aren't cheating.
Premises
Counter-arguments
9 out of 10 of the 2,000 British people questioned for a OneNightFling.com poll classed one night stands as cheating. Around three-quarters of Americans who participated in the Y2 Analytics and Desert News survey believed one night stands are considered cheating.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The figures refute the premise as stated. In the same surveys, roughly nine in ten British respondents and about three-quarters of the American ones classed a one-night stand as cheating, so what the data show is a large majority holding the opposite view. One of the two surveys was also commissioned by a site selling casual encounters, a source with an interest in the answer. [Rejecting P2] Spread across genders and generations shows that the minority view is not confined to one group; it does not make the minority any larger. The deeper difficulty is that no version of these figures reaches the conclusion. What people in general classify as cheating has no bearing on what a particular partner would regard as a betrayal, and whether to disclose turns on that relationship — and on the risks and duties within it — rather than on a poll.