Matthew Titus, a relationship expert and dating coach, did not cheat on his first wife because she was not pretty or smart or loving. Titus, of New York City, says he cheated because he could. “Monogamy is a morality case a man cannot fit into,” he says. “The institute of marriage does not fit. It’s flawed.”
Although
Titus, now happily married and the author of "Why Hasn’t He Called?", has put his years of adultery behind him, he also understands that
cheating is a part of many marriages. According to a few recent studies, somewhere close to half of all married people will be unfaithful at some point during the course of their married relationships. For men, that number is slightly higher, anywhere from 50 to 60 percent. And, of course, the statistics may be even higher because, as Titus says, “people lie.” They lie especially about these kinds of issues.
Many experts may not agree with Titus’ assertion that men are not able to fit into the monogamy box. But many do agree that monogamy is more uniquely challenging for men and that there are huge gulfs between the reasons men cheat as opposed to women. “The biological differences between men and women do not get us very far in terms of understanding affairs,” says
Framingham State College sociology professor
Virginia Rutter, who specializes in marital relations and sexuality. “Both men and women have different levels of societal permission.”
Tina Pittman-Wagers, a psychology professor at the
University of Colorado at Boulder who studies infidelity and has written many articles and papers on treating it, agrees. “There are many different reasons why people cheat,” she says. “Women are more likely to connect with loneliness, they are more likely to enter into affairs when they are already done with their marriage.”
Many men who talk about infidelity, on the other hand, report coming from marriages that were mostly happy. “Men are much more likely to say their marriages were fine,” says Pittman-Wagers, who says that often it is the affair itself that places the stress on the relationship. “Clearly, once an affair is entered into, some dissatisfaction starts,” she says.
For men, once the excitement of new love fades, they are less likely to get the same validation that women get from a long-term relationship. There are hormonal as well as social reasons for this, explains Pittman-Wagers. In the heady days of new love, our bodies are filled with the adrenaline and testosterone that make it hard to focus on much of anything else. But as that fades and we settle into long-term relationships, “it is back to regular programming,” Pittman-Wagers says.
Scientists have shown that women secrete more Oxytocin — the so-called “feel good” hormone — as they move through the stages of life and of a long-term relationship. Oxytocin is the same hormone that mothers release when breastfeeding that helps with bonding with the infant. It relaxes the body and allows women to feel settled and content.
Further, women also receive much social validation for their family-oriented choices, says Pittman-Wagers. Meanwhile, men sometimes flounder and miss the old days more than their spouses, making them slightly more vulnerable to affairs. “Men don’t have the same opportunities for validation,” she says. “They report feeling off track and that they miss admiration and appreciation, especially. Sometimes they can get involved with a woman who will be all about them and give them back some of those old feelings.”
Look no further than the Internet to see just how prevalent infidelity has become. With social networking sites like
Myspace,
Friendster and
Facebook, infidelity is as simple as clicking on a profile of an attractive person. Many “single” men and women on these sites are actually married. But
Ashleymadison.com is
a dating Web site specifically for those seeking affairs. “When Monogamy becomes monotony,” is their tagline and many people are buying into the idea. The Toronto-based site has 1.95 million users in the U.S. and Canada.
“One-third of people in the singles dating scene were attached and lying about it,” says Ashley Madison’s Chief Operating Officer Noel Biderman. According to Biderman, there are three types of women who join the site. “We have the neglected housewife, the woman who likes married men and the woman who believes all the best guys are taken.”
Asked if he thinks the site contributes to the high divorce rate, Biderman says he thinks the opposite. “We are saving marriages, believe it or not,” he says, citing some of the same neglect that Pittman-Wagers says can often be at the root of affairs. “Sometimes this is a solution to the problems.”
Pittman-Wagers would agree that
affairs can save marriages — but only if the cheating spouse is able to come to terms with what he or she did wrong and if both members of the couple want to change. “A lot of marriages do stay together and are more connected and intimate following an affair,” she says. But keeping secrets and never coming clean is not the road to greater spousal intimacy, she says.
