Why women cheat in May

A lack of affection, acknowledgement and appreciation from husbands leads more married women to cheat after Mother's Day.

Dating website AshleyMadison.com conducted research that found there was a spike in the number of married women signing up the day after Mother's Day.

Site founder and CEO Noel Biderman said another increase in subscribers was anticipated this year.

"Forty-eight percent of women sign up due to a lack of intimacy, and more than 70% of them feel previous infidelities have had a positive effect on their marriage.

"It's no wonder we see this spike after Mother's Day," said Biderman, who is internationally known as the "King of Infidelity".

A breakdown of married South African women who signed up to the dating site after Mother's Day last year was not available, but a 438% increase (15000 new subscribers) was recorded in the US.

There are currently more than 175000 South African AshleyMadison subscribers - and 38% of them are women.

The survey found a slight decrease in remorse from married women who have pursued affairs online compared with previously. Only 6.3% (7.5% last year) of women with children felt "guilty" about pursuing affairs online, compared with 12.7% (15.2% in 2013) of married women without children.

Sexologist Marlene Wasserman, also known as Dr Eve, said women who were about to cheat often left their husbands clues such as opened e-mails, or hinted that they would turn to other men.

She said: "They [wives] do this as some cry for help for their husbands to find out and somehow stop them from cheating."

Nearly 25% of married moms on the site would love sex as a Mother's Day gift from their husbands, while more than half would rather have sex with their lovers.

The average number of times married mothers had sex with their husbands dropped from twice a month last year to once a month this year. Those without children had sex with their husbands twice a month, compared with three times a year ago. The number of times married women have sex with their lovers increased by one, to five times a month for women with children and six times for women without children, respectively.