Men With Bigger Penises Are More Likely to Get Cheated on, Study Says

A study of 545 straight married couples—which charted each partner’s estimate of the male partner’s penis size and interviewed each privately about their relationship—found that every inch of penis length “increased the likelihood of women being involved in extra-marital partnership by almost one-and-half times.” In other words, the bigger your dick is, the more likely your wife is to cheat.

Now, if this study had taken place in America, I might, at this point, go off on a speculative tangent about cultural socialization—that men with larger penises are taught to be more socially dominant, to think that they “deserve” a conspicuously “high-status” partner, and therefore to prioritize conventional physical beauty over genuine connection. Doesn’t sound like a recipe for a mutually fulfilling long-term partnership. Anyway, that’s what I’d guess if this data turned out to hold true in America (and who knows—maybe it will).

But the study was conducted in Kenya, and I certainly don’t know enough about Kenyan gender relations and cultural mores to responsibly hazard any guesses about them. But the explanation given by the female subjects themselves is simple:

“Women associated large penises with pain and discomfort during sex which precludes the enjoyment and sexual satisfaction that women are supposed to feel.”

In fact, one woman interviewed for the study told the researchers the following: “Some penis may be large yet my vagina is small, when he tries to insert it inside, it hurts so much that I will have to look for another man who has a smaller one [penis] and can do it in a way I can enjoy.”

According to the study, 6.2 percent of the 545 females had affairs during the six-month study. Other factors that increased the likelihood of women straying outside the marriage included domestic violence, being denied sex or denied preferred sexual position, being under age of 25 and a lack of sexual satisfaction.

Well, there you go! Women don’t like it when you hurt them with your penises.

Go ahead and toss that on the size-doesn’t-matter pile. I know we’ll never really get to put that discussion to bed, because all people are people and all people have different opinions about penises, but I assume some men, somewhere, might take some comfort in this study.

And one last thing. There seems to be a significant overlap—on the internet, at least—between men who scorn the body positivity movement (because fat ladies are oppressing their boners) and men who are very upset about evil women rejecting their small penises. It’s mind-boggling to me. I’ve never understood how body positivity isn’t an obvious boon to the under-endowed. Confidence is attractive. Happiness is attractive. People who love themselves are more attractive than people who hate themselves. And encouraging people to break out of the rigid constraints of conventional attractiveness—to select mates based on actual compatibility (which includes physical attraction, by the way!) rather than a prescriptive, two-dimensional 1-10 rating scale, or which lady-butt is going to most impress your buddies—is the most proactive, effective thing we can do to foster healthy relationships. When two people actually like each other, they can work around anything. Penises are not the be-all and end-all of sex. But that only works if you’ve built a relationship where both partners WANT to make it work.

So if you’re stressed out about your crotch size, dudes, you should be crying body positivity from the mountaintop. Because women fall in love with people, not penises.