Why Do Women Cheat?

We have this idea socially that men are cheaters, all men are susceptible to cheating, right? But the data tells a very different story Athens Escorts Babes tell us. Women are cheating at least the same rates as men. The cheating wife is not an anomaly. And, depending on the age group and behaviour, sometimes cheating women outpace cheating men.

It’s not something most people want to face, talk about, or even consider. But the truth is that even in the happiest marriages, infidelity can take place, affairs can happen. Loneliness plays a role. So do boredom and alcohol. Maybe a close relationship with a colleague goes too far during a long night at the office. Or an unexpected fling occurs on a vacation with friends. Maybe, it’s a longer-running situation, where a spouse turns to someone to fill a physical or emotional void left unfilled by their spouses. The fact of the matter is that infidelity is not surprising. What is surprising is that more women are doing the cheating.

The reasons why men and women cheat are narrowing.

It’s easy to fall back on old assumptions that men are more likely to cheat, with the usually list of justifications. That’s becoming more and more untrue as time goes on. Traditionally, it’s been argued that women are more likely than men to cheat because they’re unhappy with the existing relationships, while men are more likely than women to cheat because they’re looking for sexual variety or an opportunity presented itself. That’s still true to some extent today, but the gender gap in infidelity is closing among the newer generations.

In older generations, men were much more likely to cheat than women, whereas in the current generation women and men are cheating at similar rates and the current generation of men and women are more similar in their reasons for cheating than older generations. Of course, there are some variations between men and women. A recent study showed men were more likely than women to cheat for reasons related to sexual desire and variety, and due to situational factors like being drunk. However, the top three reasons for cheating by both women and men were exactly the same: lack of love for primary partner, desire for sexual variety, and situational factors.

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What to Do About Cheating in Marriage?

Given the emotional and financial tolls of cheating (not to even mention their impact on children which is bigger still), rethinking our preconceptions about female infidelity is only the beginning. Open minds are important, but communication is paramount. All relationships need to begin with honest conversations about sex, preferably before marriage.

“Something that some of the women in my study brought up that I never thought about was that when they were searching for an affair partner, they were having these candid, frank discussions about sexual compatibility and sexual preferences,” says Alicia M. Walker, an associate professor of sociology at Missouri State University. “When I got married, I never had any of these conversations, and I started thinking, ‘You know, that’s true, we don’t have those conversations.’ We kind of wander into these romantic pairings and we fall in love and we kind of think that the sex is going to take care of itself. But, according to the data, that’s not true.”

Part of those frank discussions is being open to what your spouse is interested in. A lot of the women Walker interviewed said that when they talked openly about their fantasies or desires to their husbands, they were met with disgust and made to feel ashamed. “It was really pretty sobering, to be honest with you,” Walker says. “This is a person who’s pledged to love you for all time and you say to them, ‘Hey, I want to try role-playing,’ or whatever it is, and then think about having the person that you love and trust the most say, ‘That’s disgusting. What’s wrong with you?’ If you listen to that for years, and then in walks somebody who’s not only like, ‘That’s not disgusting,’ but they’re into it, you can see how attractive that would be.”

Infidelity Versus Open Marriages

In conducting her research, Walker was surprised to learn that a lot of the women that she interviewed were interested in the prospect of an open marriage. “They don’t want to leave their husband, they love their husband, they’ve got a great life, but what they really want is variety in their sexual partners,” she says. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, I want my husband, and I want this one affair,’ it’s: ‘I want my husband and I want to taste all the parts of the menu!’”

Additionally, she discovered that women who cheat see it as an exercise in power. The socially accepted norm when it comes to coupling is that the man asks the woman out, the man pays for dinner, the man proposes marriage. While the ideas behind these traditions may be chivalrous, Walker says that the women she spoke to eventually felt confined by them.

“They always felt like they had been chosen, rather than choosing themselves,” she says. “And then they go online to Ashley Madison, or any other site, and there are all these men, and now they’re choosing rather than being chosen.”In the end, attentiveness is the key. When you’re with your spouse, Walker says it’s vital to make sure you’re thinking of her needs as well as your own.

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