Quote:
Originally Posted by Rudyard K
I love facts like these. Just the nature of the question predetermines the outcome. 
How about asking...Do men who have money, acclaim and power have more opportunity with women than men who don't hold those attributes?
There is no doubt about it...men cheat...and they probably have more propensity to do so than women. The "Why" is a bit more difficult to ascertain.  |
Great thoughts. I am reminded that 70% of married man cheat at least once at some point -- which means that 30% don't.
But what if I gave that 30% unlimited funds, fame, acclaim, a near guarantee that they wouldn't be caught ... and some dream girls.
How many of those 30% cheat?
BUT -- I can also look at it the other way.
I am reasonably convinced that most men prefer to remain faithful provided their needs can be met within the marriage. I said "prefer" -- not necessarily do. How many of those 70% wouldn't cheat provided all of their needs were met within the marriage?
Likewise, I believe that some innovative techniques employed within marriage can have a beneficial effect on at least male fidelity. For example, role play where the wife assumes some other role or appearance every so often. For greater info on this, a Rabbi wrote an interesting book with variances on this theme called "Kosher Adultery" in which he describes how to have an affair with your spouse. The ideas are applicable to folks without regard to religious affiliation.
Of course, I should point out that recent data indicates that wives cheat every bit as much as husbands; and genetic surveys are showing that 10% of children born to American couples are the result of cuckoldry -- even in an era of ubiquitous birth control availability.
Women cheat, they simply aren't as flamboyant about it and don't have to pay. I wasn't always very cautious in checking out women I saw in the civie world while dating and on three occasions slept with married women without immediately realizing it, in one case for a few weeks. I'm absolutely certain I wasn't the first or last.
A while back I read a book I found very interesting called "his needs, her needs" that put forth the premise that infidelity is generally unintended and starts with unmet emotional needs being met by someone outside the marriage. Often people don't even realize they have such unmet needs. I think this idea has some merit.
But it certainly doesn't apply to an arena in which women are widely reviewed, charge a fee, and men go way out of their way to meet them. That's not an accident -- it is intentional -- and most assuredly falls to at least some degree outside the premises of that book.
On another track, we are not innately monogamous creatures, but are rather socially monogamous. Research on topics such as sperm competition should disabuse us of any notions of monogamy being an innate state of affairs for either sex.
Social monogamy, as it tends to oppose certain implicit tendencies, is a fragile thing in that it depends upon social disapproval of polygamy or infidelity and likely even punishment to be held together.
100 years ago, despite birth control being nowhere near as available as it is now, the rate of out of wedlock births (which can be used in that era to some extent as a proxy measurement for infidelity) were small. Like 2%-3%. Unless all the guys who were cheating were doing so with married women; there likely wasn't much cheating going on.
But, then, infidelity constituted fault grounds for divorce; would get you fired from your job, would subject you to massive amounts of public humiliation such that for all practical purposes its discovery meant that your social life was over.
Today, if infidelity is mentioned to a marital master in a divorce hearing; s/he just waves a hand dismissively. It is a total non-issue. Your boss looks at you sympathetically and just says "You too, huh? Be more careful next time." Prominent political figures and even sports heroes; though somewhat excoriated, provide an example showing that fulfilling libidinous impulses is entirely normal, etc. etc.
Of course, the whole game is about to change anyway because economics will, I think, deal marriage a death blow and have us hurtling headlong into polygamy (not polyamory -- polygamy) unless people learn how to re-create support networks with extended families.
New study finds men are more likely to cheat on women who earn more or less money than they do
