Why So Many Women Cheat on Their Husbands

New York Magazine ^

[nickcarraway]

One of the more interesting facts in Esther Perel’s new book, State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, comes near the beginning. Since 1990, notes the psychoanalyst and writer, the rate of married women who report they’ve been unfaithful has increased by 40 percent, while the rate among men has remained the same. More women than ever are cheating, she tells us, or are willing to admit that they are cheating — and while Perel spends much of her book examining the psychological meaning, motivation, and impact of these affairs, she offers little insight into the significance of the rise itself. So what exactly is happening inside marriages to shift the numbers? What has changed about monogamy or family life in the past 27 years to account for the closing gap? And why have so many women begun to feel entitled to the kind of behavior long accepted (albeit disapprovingly) as a male prerogative?

These questions first occurred to me a few years ago when I began to wonder how many of my friends were actually faithful to their husbands. From a distance, they seemed happy enough, or at least content. Like me, they were doing the family thing. They had cute kids, mortgages, busy social lives, matching sets of dishes. On the surface, their husbands were reasonable, the marriages modern and equitable. If these women friends were angry unfulfilled or resentful, they didn’t show it.

Then one day, one of them confided in me she’d been having two overlapping affairs over the course of five years. Almost before I’d finished processing this, another friend told me she was 100 percent faithful to her husband, except when she was out of town for work each month. Not long after, another told me that while she’d never had sex with another man, she’d had so many emotional affairs and inappropriate email correspondences over the years that she’d had to buy a separate hard drive to store them all.

These women were turning to infidelity not as a way to explode a marriage, but as a way to stay in it. What surprised me most about these conversations was not that my friends were cheating, but that many of them were so nonchalant in the way they described their extramarital adventures. There was deception but little secrecy or shame. Often, they loved their husbands, but felt in some fundamental way that their needs (sexual, emotional, psychological) were not being met inside the marriage. Some even wondered if their husbands knew about their infidelity, choosing to look away. “The fact is,” one of these friends told me, “I’m nicer to my husband when I have something special going on that’s just for me.” She found that she was kinder, more patient, less resentful, “less of a bitch.” It occurred to me as I listened that these women were describing infidelity not as a transgression but a creative or even subversive act, a protest against an institution they’d come to experience as suffocating or oppressive. In an earlier generation, this might have taken the form of separation or divorce, but now, it seemed, more and more women were unwilling to abandon the marriages and families they’d built over years or decades. They were also unwilling to bear the stigma of a publicly open marriage or to go through the effort of negotiating such a complex arrangement. These women were turning to infidelity not as a way to explode a marriage, but as a way to stay in it. Whereas conventional narratives of female infidelity so often posit the unfaithful woman as a passive party, the women I talked to seemed in control of their own transgressions. There seemed to be something new about this approach.

In The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife: Power, Pragmatism, and Pleasure in Women’s Infidelity, another book on infidelity to be published this November, the sociologist Alicia Walker elaborates on the concept of female infidelity as a subversion of traditional gender roles. To do so, she interviews 40 women who sought or participated in extramarital relationships through the Ashley Madison dating site. Like The State of Affairs, Walker’s text offers valuable insight simply by way of approaching its subject from a position of curiosity as opposed to prevention or recovery, and she investigates which factors led the women in her study to go outside their marriages. Surely, one might think, a woman who would do such a thing must be acting out of a desire to escape a miserable marriage. And yet it turns out, this isn’t always the case: Many of the women Walker interviewed were in marriages that were functional. Like the women I knew who cheated, many of the interviewees said they liked their husbands well enough. They had property together. They had friendships together. They had children that they were working together to raise. But at the same time, they found married life incredibly dull and constraining and resented the fact that as women, they felt they consistently did a disproportionate amount of the invisible labor that went into maintaining their lifestyle. One woman in Walker’s book told her, “The inequality of it all is such an annoying factor that I am usually in a bad mood when my spouse is in my presence,” and another said that while her husband was a competent adult in the world, at home he felt like “another child to clean up after.”

Many of the friends I spoke to expressed similar feelings. “I shop and cook, my husband does dishes and empties the trash,” one told me. “We each do our own laundry. But I’ve always been in charge of the ‘calendar,’ and what I didn’t realize until recently is that in some way I’m in charge of managing many of our relationships. My husband is a homebody and I initiate/plan almost all of our social endeavors. My mom got this phrase from her therapist: ‘keeping the pulse of the household’ — this idea that someone has to be managing the emotional heart of your tiny community. I think women do that a lot.” And as Perel repeats frequently in this book, and in her previous one, little does as much to muffle erotic desire as this kind of caretaking and enmeshment.

There is a correlation between equal division of labor and better sex. “I think there’s an incredible amount of deep resentment for women in America about divisions of labor,” said sociologist Lisa Wade when I asked her to comment on this contradiction. “And what social scientists are finding now is that there is a correlation between equal division of labor and better sex.” No matter how much attention is paid to these issues, she told me, “these kind of cultural beliefs hang on a long time after they’re relevant. They hang on in ways that are often invisible. A lot of women have tried to address these problems and have faced a lot of stubbornness from husbands. They feel there’s no way to win this battle. So maybe now what women are deciding is that infidelity is a third way.”

Of course, it’s a “third way” that is not feasible for everyone, even if more women are taking it up, usually women who feel financially secure and independent enough to risk potential fallout. These women seem to be finding that no amount of sensitivity or goodwill on the part of their husbands can save them from the fact that in every arena, from work to marriage to parenthood, they’re always doing more for less. As Wade put it, “It’s such a precarious balance keeping everyone happy, that for many women, to start a long conversation about her own sexual satisfaction seems like a bad idea. We now tell women that they can have it all, that they can work and have a family and deserve to be sexually satisfied. And then when having it all is miserable and overwhelming or they realize marriage isn’t all it’s cracked it up to be, maybe having affairs is the new plan B.”

I tested this idea out on a few of the friends who had confided in me about their affairs, and most of them agreed. Twenty or thirty years ago they might have opted for divorce, because surely there was another man out there who could do better in this role, who could satisfy them completely. But a lot of these women are children of divorce. They lived through the difficulties divorce can create. “Even now,” all these years later, one told me, “Do you know what my most vivid memory of Christmas is? Driving through a blizzard up I-95 in the back of one of their cars, and then they’d pull over on the side of the highway and hand off me and my brother without speaking. That was our Christmas. Why did these people marry in the first place?”

Maybe that’s the essential question, the question preceding those Perel explores in her book. Why do women still marry when, if statistics are to be believed, marriage doesn’t make them very happy?

I confided in a friend once that, after 15 years of marriage, the institution and the relationship itself continued to mystify me. At the time I married, marriage had felt like a panacea; it was a bond that would provide security, love, friendship, stability, and romance — the chance to have children and nice dishes, to be introduced as someone’s wife. It promised to expand my circle of family and improve my credit score, to tether me to something wholesome and give my life meaning.

Could any single relationship not fall short of such expectations? Maybe these women were on to something — valuing their marriages for the things it could offer and outsourcing the rest, accepting the distance between the idealization and the actual thing, seeing marriage clearly for what it is and not what we’re all told and promised it will be.

My friend told me she felt this way of thinking was the only answer, and the way she’d come to reconcile her feelings about the relationship. She said that she used to compare her marriage to her parents’, who always seemed totally in love. “Until the end of my mom’s life they were spooning together every night in a double bed … not even a queen. But,” she added, “they were awful and narcissistic, with very little to give to their children.” My friend felt she and her husband were much better parents, more involved and attuned to their kids. “But often,” she went on, “it can feel like my husband and I are running a family corporation together and that our emotional intimacy consists of gossiping about our friends and watching Game of Thrones. Sometimes I wonder if when the kids leave I should either (a) have a passionate affair or (b) find another husband. I may do neither, but it seems like (a) is more likely than (b). I don’t have any illusions that marrying someone else will make me happy, not anymore.”

[mountn man]

Some women are ruled by their emotions and change like the wind, and then blame the man, that he didn't meet her emotional needs.

There are 2 people involved in a marriage relationship.
2 people are required to work at it.

When I see the largest reason for divorce is "basic incompatibility", and that by far the largest pursuers of divorce are those who change THEIR rules regularly, then I don't see 2 people working at it.

There are memes for a reason. If they weren't based in a semblance of truth, then they wouldn't be funny (or memes).

The first is

We all laugh at these. But let's be honest. That is often how people act and treat the other.

When one demographic files predominantly more than the other, for "compatibility", this is what they are saying "YOU'RE wrong".

We ALWAYS hear about a womans nature and how a man needs to... blah, blah, blah.

How often do we hear about a mans nature, and how a woman needs to...?

Next is this:

What is sad is, that while men say this, their wives or other women will agree, or state it themselves.

We have women today who think life revolves around them and their wants, desires and "needs".

Memes are a good snapshot into the psyche of a society.
They are a generalization,
Not a specific.

Beware of any woman who displays this attitude.

[IamConservative]

...and if Momma ain't happy for long enough, you gonna be unhappy with half your stuff.

[Architect of Avalon]

“Happy husband” rhymes with “ironclad premarital contract”.

[rb22982]

Less than half, if you have to pay alimony.

[Architect of Avalon]

The wife often gets more than half of marital assets based on the husband being able to earn more money after the divorce.

That, like alimony, is ownership by an ex-wife of their ex-husband’s labor.

It is slavery.

[mountn man]

“Happy husband” rhymes with “ironclad premarital contract”.

In divorce court, there is no such thing as an ironclad premarital contract...
Unless of course it's the womans.

[Crusher138]

I have a brother in Christ going through a divorce right now because of an unfaithful wife. He found out about her infidelity months ago and confronted her. She claimed to have regretted the “mistake” and promised to break it off. He later finds out that she had no intention of ending the affair and used the time to rack up debt and empty some joint accounts.

He is devastated. They have three teenage children who are torn in their feelings towards their parents. As far as I know he did all the right things - made his family a priority in his time, worked out and kept in shape, made a lot of money and attended church and bible study regularly. She was a stay at home mom who didn’t stay at home. She claims she got bored.

Very sad.

[Yaelle]

It is so stupid. Feminism is stupid. Gender roles were important once. I notice that transgenders often LOVE the traditional gender roles, have you? They DREAM of being that kind of masculine or feminine. And no one has a problem with transgender women looking like Col Klinger. What is wrong with us that we have turned from nature?

(Not that I don’t think men can be nurses and women doctors or whatever.)

[rb22982]

I’ve heard of a NUMBER of similar stories to yours from my parents that go to one of the most popular churches in their town (~10-15k ppl go there)

[rollo tomasi]

There are no excuses for adultery, period by men or women. Get a divorce, but don't expose another person to potential STDs, emotional abuse, lies, manipulation, and soul rape.

[Ted Grant]

It’s not feminism, folks. And morality isn’t probative as much as we like to think.

I think it’s a combination of having an opportunity with someone a person finds attractive & sexually appealing, the calculated probability of success without exposure, and the calculated probability of minimizing it & winning forgiveness without life-altering incident.

I think in many instances, the truthful answer to “why” is “it seemed like a good idea at the time.” He or she will be wrong, but it probaby did seem like a good idea at the time.

I think establishing & holding on to strong boundaries is the best defense against these situations.

I know my analysis is unpopular, but I’m sticking with it.

[Ted Grant]

A very difficult situation, but his best play upon discovery is to send her packing.

It’s all fun & games until real consequences are enforced. His first (and last) mistake was accepting her initial excuses.

They might have had a chance if she was served with divorce papers at work or at home (or at Church). As for me, it’s not worth the hard work to put a relationship back together with a cheater. It’s just a bad decision.

[rollo tomasi]

Dave the polygamists lost his first son with Bathsheba (Payment for Uriah), kingdom went to hell, one of his sons named Absalom pulled a train through David’s concubine along with his wives, one other son became an abomination of desolation, his people lived in misery etc...This was a condition sent forth by God as a punishment. The only reason David remained alive was due to the fact that Uriah was dead. Only the prophet Nathan knew what David did. God allowed David to live, but at a heavy price and David was miserable for the rest of his life.

[wgmalabama]

Having 2 adult 20 something sons is a window into how 20 something girls have been raised. Too many RAP ( redneck American princesses ) in this part of the world. If these girls’ daddies wanted them to never marry and be happy, they couldn’t have done a better job. It’s absolutely amazing these young women can’t cook can’t do house work can’t earn their own spending requirements can’t be bothered to even be nice. Heads stuck in their phones living off the opiates of online drama and connections (notice I didn’t say friends). It’s really quite pathetic and if I was in my sons shoes as a man in my 20s I would have nothing to do with them either

[Architect of Avalon]

Will he pursue custody?

Will he get the home?

[Architect of Avalon]

I’m of the view that adultery, as with other ways of causing direct harm, ends the marriage immediately even if the legal divorce takes a while.

[rb22982]

Fits the description of my 30 year old single SIL to the T.

[minnesota_bound]

We logically need at least 1,000 interviews to learn something about adultery.

And their phone numbers and if they like walks in the park, fireplaces and rain etc.

[Bodleian_Girl]

Yes, he was.

[Celerity]

“I judge you. I look down upon you, since I am superior to you in every way.”

There is actually an FR Ping list for this !

A lot of people behave this way.