A cheating wife – in fact, cheating housewives all over – probably get more of a bum rap than they deserve. It’s usually as subtle as dropping a truck on a man’s head, but hey! How could she!
It’s not even a question any more.
Fidelity, infidelity, what are they? Really?
I came across someone the other day who started out saying, “In a marriage of the kind we all yearn to have, fidelity is vital.” They then went on to say that “People sometimes lead married lives together with infidelity between them… If you want more, you have to sacrifice something.” ‘Something’ unspecified.
Hmmm. Pollyanna is alive and well.
Statistics show that you’re likely to hear 10 times as much about a [tag]cheating wife[/tag] as you will about a cheating husband. Now, why is that?
Could it possibly be as simple as definitions that differ?
What does cheating in marriage mean to you? Penetrative sex with someone else? Probably. And that could be what gets men stirred up.
And why women tend to get far more riled by stuff that doesn’t make it onto the wide screen.
Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, recently responded to an interviewer: “Are we talking about sexual exclusivity — or emotional loyalty? People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn’t begin to describe the ways that people let each other down.”
Wow! What a can of worms! And what a difference.
Stereotypical redneck males or oversexed college boys who haven’t quite grown up will see – or search for – examples of horny housewives cheating, but woe betide them if the cheating housewives turn out to be theirs.
Yet daily, they impose the emotional loyalty patterns Perel identifies. And probably hotly deny that they’ve ever even thought of cheating.
As far as wives go, stats show that things are far more likely reversed.
Now, I know a bit of tension is supposed to go a long way towards keeping an edge in a relationship, but a great many people also rely heavily on trust and safety as the linchpins of acceptable relationships.
Bring it back to the definition of cheating. What is yours? And what could you do – right now – to stop cheating. Yourself and your partner.
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