Men and monogamy: Fighting the urge to have an extramarital affair
By Sean Elder
WebMD Feature
Reviewed by Amal Chakraburtty, MD
Why can’t you just be faithful? Any man who has ever been on the receiving end of that question, whether dodging crockery or wiping away his wife’s tears, knows that some women would really like an answer. Do men who cheat really outnumber their female counterparts? Does infidelity in marriage come more naturally to men than women? And do some husbands think that “monogamy” is a board game?
“There’s no question that men cheat more than women,” says Steven Nock, PhD, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, who has followed the marriages of more than 6,000 men since 1979. “In the bad old days, when we had to prove why we were getting divorced, that was the leading cause.” This was mostly because husbands were guiltier of infidelity in marriage than their wives, but also because “society is more tolerant of men’s misdeeds,” says Nock. It was OK for a marriage to end because the husband had been unfaithful l— you know how men are — while a faithless wife was a true pariah. As you may remember from your American literature class, it was Hester Prynne who wore the scarlet letter, not the man with whom she had the affair.
“Men and women cheat in different ways,” says Mark Epstein, MD, a psychiatrist in private practice in Manhattan and author of Open To Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life. “It’s more like an appetite thing for men, more oral in a way. Their partners are more disposable. And the experiences are more disposable.”
Infidelity in men: Does the biological argument hold up?
Wives often find their husbands disposable when they discover they’ve cheated on them, though still they wonder why they did it. Could it be a biological imperative, as some scientists have allowed? Cole Porter may have thought that the birds and bees who “do it” were falling in love, but if love is what you’re calling it, there is plenty of evidence that the animal kingdom pretty much falls in love
indiscriminately. And even Homo sapiens have spent more evolutionary time seeking multiple partners than in pursuit of romantic matrimony and monogamy.
“There is a natural tendency that is pretty hardwired in us as a species that suggests putting your seed in as many places as possible. It’s what got humanity to this point in history,” says Louanne Cole Weston, PhD, a marriage and family therapist and board-certified sex therapist in Fair Oaks, California. “That non-monogamous urge persists in many men — though many manage serial monogamy despite that urge.”
This would seem to argue for a behavioral cure to what may be only partially a biological problem. (Besides, the evolutionary argument will only get you so far. One could argue that men also used to beat each other with clubs, but this practice is generally frowned upon today — at least in most places. And there are no country songs about it.) Can counseling, for instance, get a man to stop cheating?
“I don’t think anyone can be made to do anything,” says Epstein, “but self-awareness is really powerful. More choices are apparent when you are aware of what is motivating you.” A lot of men, he has found in practice, cheat in the same way an alcoholic relapses.
“People turn to strategies that gave them pleasure when they were younger, that worked to give meaning and pleasure to their lives. There is a whole pattern that [non-monogamous men] know how to kindle — coming on to someone and having that first experience — the same way some people turn to a drink when they are feeling out of sorts. Except these men are frustrated with their wives, who aren’t orienting their lives around them anymore.” Addictive tendencies can be worked with, he says, if the patient is willing. “But you might want to stop and not want to stop at the same time. That’s difficult,” Epstein says.
Marriage counselors say that more and more couples embrace an “open marriage,” with sexual freedom as a way to avoid divorce. But this only succeeds when both partners agree, which is often not the case.
Infidelity as a way out of marriage
Since many divorces still arise from an act of infidelity, cheating can be man’s way of pulling the plug on a marriage he’s lost interest in. “There can be a deadening of the relationship,” says Weston, “and then the husband accidentally runs across a person who seems to have a certain energy in living and casts that energy his way. A man may feel tempted to respond to that energy; it may feel complimentary and sexy to him. Or sometimes there is a little dysfunction at home, and he feels like he is checking his equipment out in another place.”
Weston says that she is always interested in what led a man to cross the line — when that no suddenly became a yes. “Each answer is a bit different,” she says. “Sometimes a man will say it was a moment of conviction in which he felt that things would never get better between him and his wife, a sense of hopelessness.”
Marriage after adultery
Can an unfaithful husband who wants to save his marriage change his ways? “It depends on how his wife takes it,” says Weston. “It depends on whether they get counseling. And it depends on his level of sincerity about how he will treat her in the future. I’ve seen marriages get to a really good place when an affair has been exposed because a whole lot of truth is revealed and conversation that should have happened before does.”
Too often married couples stop seeing marriage as an arena for the truth. They hide aspects of their lives from each other and the one relationship that should be the most grounded in honesty becomes the most corrupt. And when a man starts seeing his marriage as corrupted or complicated — even if he’s the one who’s done the corrupting and complicating — he can stop seeing the value in it. Or he can become bored.
Since many divorces still arise from an act of infidelity, cheating can be man’s way of pulling the plug on a marriage he’s lost interest in. “There can be a deadening of the relationship,” says Weston, “and then the husband accidentally runs across a person who seems to have a certain energy in living and casts that energy his way. A man may feel tempted to respond to that energy; it may feel complimentary and sexy to him. Or sometimes there is a little dysfunction at home, and he feels like he is checking his equipment out in another place.”
Weston says that she is always interested in what led a man to cross the line — when that no suddenly became a yes. “Each answer is a bit different,” she says. “Sometimes a man will say it was a moment of conviction in which he felt that things would never get better between him and his wife, a sense of hopelessness.”
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