More than 10 percent of our spouses are currently being, or have been in the past, unfaithful – assuming Locks Heath complies with the average for Hampshire.

A story in The Daily Mail this week reports that an independent survey has been conducted by OnePoll on behalf of IllicitEncounters.com - a dating website aimed at married people. The resulting ‘cheating map’ of Britain reveals that Hampshire is fourth in the list of top 10 cheating counties, with 10.5 percent of spouses admitting cheating on their partner!

The worst county for cheating is rural Devon where almost half of the population have admitted to being unfaithful. (Sounds rather a lot - perhaps they didn’t understand the question?) Second and third on the list are Avon with 19.0 percent and Lincolnshire with12.5 percent. The most faithful county is Surrey, where less than 1 percent of marrieds are unfaithful.

In the survey Nationally three per cent of spouses disclosed that they are currently cheating, and a further seven per cent admitted to that they had previously cheated on their current spouse.

According to the survey, five per cent of spouses would cheat 'if they thought they could get away with it'.

If you knew you would get away with it would you cheat?!!

And yet interestingly according to the Office for National Statistics the number of divorces in England and Wales is falling. The number fell by 5.0 per cent in 2008 to 121,779 compared to 128,232 in 2007. This was the fifth consecutive year that the number of divorces fell, from a peak of 153,176 in 2003, and is the lowest number since 1975 when there were 120,522 divorces.

The number of divorces was highest amongst men and women aged 40 to 44. Makes sense - mid-life crisis time.

Do you think we value the institution of marriage as much now as we used to?

What surprises me is the fact that ‘extra-marital dating’ websites exist!

Be interested to know what others think!??

KennyC