The group percentages vary widely, ranging from 31 to 84 per cent. Usually duration of marriage is an inconsequential factor: groups very similar in this respect are scattered widely in the rank-order of those who had extramarital coitus. For example, both the aggressors vs. adults and the exhibitionists married in their early twenties, both were in their thirties when interviewed, and both had spent 30 per cent of their adult lives outside institutions as married men, yet the aggressors rank high in incidence of extramarital coitus while the exhibitionists rank low.2
The lower part of the rank-order poses no problems and meets one’s logical expectations; it contains the groups characterized by difficulties in heterosexual adjustment. Lowest are the three homosexual-offender groups (31 to 42 per cent). Next lowest are the control group (47 per cent), the peepers (48 per cent), and exhibitionists (52 per cent). The peepers owe their position in part to the ineptitude in obtaining coitus which they displayed before marriage and which indubitably carried over into marital life; moral considerations, insofar as we can determine, were not serious deterrents. The exhibitionists’ position is more difficult to explain. However, we do know that their urge to exhibit does not appear to be one that can be gratified by coitus; note that they usually avoid exhibiting to females with whom they could have coitus (e.g., their wives or female friends). Consequently it may be that exhibition tends to reduce extramarital coitus by replacing it or by competing with it. To put it bluntly, a peeper might be deterred from peeping by providing him with numerous sexual partners, but this therapy would be less effective in the case or the exhibitionists. The position of the control group may be attributed chiefly to their relatively stringent mores.
The central part of the rank-order presents many problems since it contains some of the previously most sexually active groups—the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults and the prison group. The men in these groups demonstrably had the savoir faire to find sexual partners, and their premarital histories scarcely suggest any predilection toward monogamy. Neither have we any inkling that they suddenly adopted a more stringent moral code when they marched to the altar. However, one possibility comes to mind. Perhaps the 30 to 40 per cent who did not have extramarital coitus had sowed their wild oats and were content to lapse into a comfortable monogamy. This phenomenon is by no means rare and is sometimes explicitly expressed— for example, “I played the field until I got tired of it and decided to settle down and get married.”
The incest offenders vs. adults fall in this central area with 62 per cent of their members having had extramarital coitus. At first one may wonder why this seemingly inhibited and conservative group ranks this high, but one must remember that by definition some of them had extramarital coitus with a daughter or stepdaughter, and that they had been married longer than most groups. If we were to use the official records rather than the interview data, the incest offenders vs. adults would head the rank-order with about nine out of ten of diem having had extramarital coitus, this being the percentage judged to have had coital incest.
The upper portion of the rank-order (above 70 per cent) is also difficult to interpret. It contains the heterosexual aggressors vs. minors and adults; this is logical, since sexual aggressiveness coupled with an above-average amount of premarital experience and little moral restraint (remember that both had extremely few members deterred from premarital coitus by moral considerations) is almost certain to result in extramarital coitus. Marital fidelity arising from premarital promiscuity evidently does not significantly apply to those with pronounced aggressive traits. Moreover, these aggressors did not have so much premarital coitus that they became sated and blas? and inclined toward monogamy—which is what seems to have happened to the offenders vs. minors and adults and the prison group. The occupancy of first and second ranks by the incest offenders vs. children and minors cannot be explained on the basis of their offenses, since only a few had actual coitus with their daughters or stepdaughters. Nor does duration of marriage seem to play any great role. One can only surmise that the unfulfilled sexual desires that ultimately drove them to incest also drove them into other extramarital activity.
The age-specific incidences of extramarital coitus with companions are amazingly uniform for some groups. Between age twenty-one and age forty-five the prison group had 46 to 36 per cent of its constituent members with such coitus in any five-year age-period. The control group was even more stable, with from 23 to 27 per cent involved. Such uniformity is also seen in some sex-offender groups— e.g., the exhibitionists (31 to 37 per cent between ages twenty-one and forty-five). While other groups fluctuate, it is interesting to note that they rarely show sudden marked increases at any time and never after age thirty, though sudden, marked decreases are not uncommon and occur chiefly in the thirties. The twenties appear to be the decade of life during which the most men in any group had extramarital coitus with companions; the largest figure is the 63 per cent. By the early forties the largest percentage is but 36. In premarital coitus with companions we saw that the range among groups of age-specific incidence tended to increase with age, but in extramarital coitus it decreases from a 47-percentage-point spread (age-period 16-20) to a range of 13 (age-period 41—45). This contraction of range is probably the result of the fact that the older male finds less time and inclination to pursue extramarital affairs. He now has children, heavier financial obligations, his military service (a fertile field for extramarital activity) is behind him, and his sexual drive has lessened.
Unlike premarital coitus for which every homosexual offender is eligible and hence is used in the calculations, extramarital coitus presupposes marriage, and only the more heterosexually inclined marry. This requisite heterosexual interest scatters the three homosexual-offender groups widely in die rank-orders and they do not regroup (at the lower end of the rank-orders as anticipated) until the late thirties and early forties. The homosexual offenders are unique among our comparative groups in that their age-specific incidence figures sometimes approximate, or even surpass, those of ever-never incidence. For example, 31 per cent of the married homosexual offenders vs. adults had extramarital coitus, yet in age-period 26-30 some 41 per cent engaged in this activity. The answer to the seeming paradox is that many of the homosexual offenders (and especially the homosexual offenders vs. adults) had one brief marriage; the brevity reduces the ever-never incidence of extramarital coitus. However, of those who remained married longer a large number engaged in extramarital coitus, which raised die age-specific incidence to or beyond the level of the ever-never incidence.
Aside from the tendency for the homosexual offenders to have had relatively little extramarital coitus later in life, the only other trend may be that heterosexual aggression links with high age-specific incidence. On the basis of the aggressors vs. adults (too few of the other aggressors married), this appears to be the case.
Turning now to extramarital coitus with prostitutes, one finds the age-specific incidence range much more uniform, and the range does not tend to increase with age as it does for coitus with prostitutes before marriage. In all age-periods between 16 and 45 no more than one quarter to one third of the men in the various groups had commercial extramarital coitus. Moreover, the percentages remain more stable than for extramarital coitus with companions. For instance, from age sixteen to age forty the prison group varies only from 22 to 28 per cent and the exhibitionists from 14 to 17 per cent.
The scattering of the homosexual-offender groups throughout the rank-orders caused by the heterosexual interest inherent in marriage is even more pronounced in extramarital coitus with prostitutes. Indeed, between thirty-one and thirty-five the homosexual offenders vs. adults head the rank-order with 29 per cent of their members involved, while the homosexual offenders vs. children are at the bottom of the rank-order with zero.
While extramarital coitus with companions flourished chiefly between ages twenty-one and thirty, that with prostitutes is not linked to youth. The percentages of husbands involved in their thirties is quite like the percentages involved in their twenties, and two groups actually reach their age-specific maximum in their forties.
*317\161\2*
