Why cheaters thrive in dorps

South Africa's small towns are big on affairs.

Infidelity website Ashley Madison has even nicknamed Randfontein, on the West Rand, "Randyfontein" because it found that it is the country's most unfaithful town.

The website looked at how many members it had per town and then worked out which towns had the highest percentages of their married population using it to find new partners.

"Small towns have more unfaithfulness. It might be because there is less to do, less entertainment," said Ashley Madison spokesman Chantal Hanzen.

But psychologists have a warning: they say many of their clients later regret their affairs.

"It feels right at the time," said counsellor Anri van den Berg. "But after you get caught and see the destruction, it's horrible, horrible, horrible."

Psychologist Ivan de Klerk said: "When men become successful, they upgrade the car, the phone and then the wife. After success, they feel they deserve better sex or a better-looking woman.

"Men would choose to have multiple one-night stands but women who have affairs develop an emotional connection with a colleague and then it develops into a proper romance such as one reads about in a novel."

According to the Ashley Madison website, only 12% of cheating females and 36% of adulterous males felt guilty about their infidelity.

More than 70% of females and 66% of males say their affair benefited their marriage.

The website has 175000 active South African users. Most of them are in their mid-30s.

Gauteng is the out-and-out cheating centre of South Africa - the top seven cheating spots are all in the province.

Psychologist Doron Zar said that with today's emphasis on instant gratification people looked for the next-best thing instead of working through the difficulties in a relationship.

He said sites such as Ashley Madison increased the temptation to find a lover when a relationship went wrong.

Zar said affairs usually indicated that something was wrong in a relationship and needs, sexual or emotional, were not being met.

The 10 most adulterous spots in SA

• Randfontein
• Benoni
• Vereeniging
• Florida
• Johannesburg
• Pretoria
• Soweto
• Pietermaritzburg
• Nelspruit
• Kempton Park