Only 27% of Filipinos experienced infidelity, but 43% ready to forgive
Only 27 percent of adult Filipinos have experienced cheating by their partners, while almost half, or 43 percent, believe trust can still be restored in a relationship despite infidelity, according to a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey released Feb. 12, two days before Valentine’s Day.
According to that poll conducted late last year among 1,200 adults, the 27 percent who dealt with unfaithfulness constituted one in every four Filipinos who “personally witnessed or experienced some form of cheating in a relationship.”
In contrast, 72 percent said they had not experienced infidelity, the survey said.
Ways to cheat on your partner
Physical and emotional cheating were the most common forms of cheating confronting the respondents, SWS said.
The polling group referred to physical cheating as “engaging in sexual and intimate activities with someone else,” and emotional cheating as “talking with another person about a problem instead of with one’s own partner, or having romantic feelings for another person even though there is no physical relationship.”
For the respondents, the two forms of cheating were the predominant violations of trust, at 11 percent each.
These were followed by cyber cheating and object cheating, both at 6 percent.
SWS defined cyber cheating as “having other social media account[s] without the partner’s knowledge, or secretly chatting with other people.”
Object cheating is “giving too much attention to games, cell phone, or other material objects that one no longer has time for their partner.”
The least common forms of infidelity are financial cheating at 5 percent and microcheating at 4 percent.
Financial cheating is defined as “hiding luxury purchases or debts from one’s own partner.”
SWS explained microcheating as “using of affectionate terms, such as ‘baby,’ ‘honey’ or ‘love’ with someone other than one’s partner or hiding one’s own relationship status.”
The survey said respondents were allowed to give multiple answers, with 8 percent saying they experienced combined cheating, or a combination of various forms of infidelity.
Lack of trust, undecided
Even while almost half of respondents still said trust can be “restored in a relationship after someone cheats,” SWS also noted that 36 percent said they believed otherwise while 19 percent were undecided.
The survey, conducted Nov. 24 to Nov. 30, 2025, had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percent for national percentages and plus-or-minus 6 percent each for Metro Manila, Luzon outside Manila, the Visayas and Mindanao.
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