The Latin Lover is alive and well in Italy where an opinion poll released on Thursday found two out of three married men had cheated on their wives.
Half of the all-male respondents said marital indiscretions were a "natural tendency," and a large majority said adultery by men should never or almost never be a reason for divorce."Men, Incorrigible Cheaters," read a headline in the newspaper La Stampa.
Pollsters commissioned by the Federation of Italian Psychologists interviewed 960 married and single men.
They said 67.3 percent of the married men said they had committed adultery, 24.2 percent said they had not and 8.5 percent refused to answer.
Unmarried parliamentarian Vittorio Sgarbi hailed the findings, commenting to the Rome daily Il Messaggero: "Whoever has only one lifelong partner is mentally unbalanced. Cheating does you good; it cures boredom and unhappiness."
Nearly half of the married men said they did not reveal their trysts to their wives.
"For Italian men, only adultery by married women is a taboo," the psychologists' federation said in a statement.