How to Keep Your Spouse from Cheating

You wouldn’t expect this kind of article in the Economist, a highbrow British publication, edited by a bunch of Oxford and Cambridge types, intended for the movers and shakers (and those who like to imagine they are) around the business world. Inflation rates and the competitive advantages of lower marginal tax rates seem far afield from marital infidelity, and even farther from the relation of infidelity to prayer.

But the publication routinely reports scientific investigation and now they report that new research from a university in Florida, a state not exactly known for denying pleasures of the flesh, suggests a remarkable relationship between praying for your spouse and keeping him or her faithful.

Infidelity is rampant in nature and among human beings. Genetic studies have long suggested that monogamy is the exception rather than the rule in primate behavior. Over an extended study working with many couples, however, the researchers found how important it is to pray for and with your spouse or significant other if you wish him or her to remain faithful.

Positive feelings are helpful, all the roster of usual suggestions for enhancing relationships are worth considering, they found, but few compare to the simple act of regularly praying for and with your partner. General prayer is useful for purging one’s soul of the toxins that build up over time. But it was specific, intentional prayer for spouses that caught their attention.

Moreover, they dug deeper than simply accepting reports and self characterizations of how people understood their own behavior. Suspicious of the tendency of religious people to overstate the significance of religion, they did the correlations and background statistical work. This more objective work confirmed what they had found through surveys and interviews: people who pray for their spouses routinely, and pray with them regularly in a house of worship, simply are more faithful by a significant margin than those who don’t. This largely secular, agnostic periodical reports:

Thus, whereas other animal species must resort to constant vigilance to reduce the risks of infidelity, humans (or at least those who have a faith) have an extra tool in the box: religion. Indeed, people worried about potentially cheating spouses may find praying together a better safeguard against adultery than checking mobile-phone bills and scrutinizing credit-card receipts.

Several times each day, pray for your spouse, asking God’s blessings upon him or her and do so with a generous heart. Pray that you will be more understanding and better able to see all the positive attributes your partner has. Gladly sing together the hymns and liturgy of the church. I am always delighted to see spouses holding hands in church—if you’re moved to fuller expression of your affection, however, wait until you get home!

The reasons for keeping a marital relationship thriving are many indeed. Faith helps us do that.

Fr. Larry Crockett