Infidelity and A Biology Lesson

Infidelity is fairly common.  Studies estimate that between 50-60% of married men and 40-50% of married women, have at least one extramarital affair. The majority of those men have more than one affair.

As you might expect, I read a lot about infidelity and I listen to what people have to say about it. What perplexes me is how men who have multiple affairs are characterized.  The author of one famous sex study speculates that men who have  multiple sexual extramarital affairs throughout their life probably suffer from "deep emotional pain and dysfunction."  

Seriously? That's just crazy.

Let's back up a bit and take a look at biology.  Men have a biological need for regular sex. It has been scientifically validated.  It's not a myth, it's not speculation, and it's not just something the teenage boys say in the back seats of cars (right after, "I love you" and "Of course I'll respect you tomorrow") to get their girlfriends to put out. There are many sources that document this, but here's a decidedly unscientific one that explains the biological process in layman's terms from a Christian perspective. I picked this one so my Christian friends will understand that faith does not exempt you from the demands of biology.  Yes, this is how God made you. On purpose.

Why? It's about preservation of the species. It's much more complicated than I have space to explain here, but if men had the same sex drive as most women, the species would likely have become extinct long before now.

That's not all.  Men are drawn to healthy, young women because of a reproductive instinct, whether or not they intend on reproducing. Men in their 40's or 50's who go nuts over women in the 20's are biologically predisposed to this.  It's not a failing of society or due to the ugliness of their wives or due to the fact that they are sexually deviant perverts.

Women don't want to believe these things.  We want to believe that if our husbands want or (gasp!) have sex with another woman (god forbid a younger woman) that there must be something wrong with them or with us (no, not us, it's them). If they have multiple sexual affairs, they must have a sex addiction and they need treatment to cure them of this abnormality. 

That thinking is completely and totally off base.  I'm not saying that there is no such thing as sex addition, and I'm not saying that men are incapable of controlling themselves.  What I am saying is that men who are monogamous are fighting against their own biology to stay that way. Those who don't get their sexual needs met at home will probably try hard to hang in there, but the odds are very high that they won't be able to fight the urge to get sex somewhere.

Women think, "If he has sex with another women, that means he doesn't love me." Bullshit. When we're teenagers, the message that "sex isn't love" is forced into us as a technique to try to keep us from having sex as teenagers, but when we're married, suddenly sex is love?  Nope.  Last year around this time, I wrote a post called 10 Tips for Wives To Keep Your Husband from Cheating. For the most part (except for tips 9 and 10) it's about sex.  Why? Because for the most part, the reason he stepped out was about sex.  For most of the others, it's about tip #9. 

Not only do we women tend to make men feel like perverts because of their natural sex drive, but we work hard to "tame" them, then we complain that they are not "real men."  We want to be in control at home, then we complain that he won't take charge. We swoon over their aggressiveness in the pursuit of us when we're courting, then we spend decades trying to squelch that aggressiveness. In our early years of marriage, we complain that "all he wants is sex" and we push him away repeatedly and then in the later years of our marriage we complain that "he doesn't want me anymore." 

We fall in love with and marry a man, then we spend the rest of our lives doing our best to make him as much like a woman as possible.

And then, after all that, we expect him to stay faithful when everything in him (biologically and emotionally) is screaming at him to go out and fuck the shit out of a young honey who treats him like a man and who lets him behave like a man (and likes it).

Wake up, Ladies.

And as for you men.... Stop letting your wife beat you into submission.  Educate her. Love her enough to push back and not let her be fooled by what the women's movement and the media have told her for years. Taking charge is not abuse.  Whoever got women believing that should be publicly flogged for it.  

We are all paying for it.

10 Simple Truths about Marriage and Infidelity

I was reading a blog today that got me thinking about some simple truths about marriage and affairs that people often get wrong. Okay, I'll admit that I was inspired because so many things I read today on that blog were just flat wrong, and I felt the need to set the record straight.

So here they are.  10 Simple Truths about Marriage and Infidelity:

1. It takes two.  If there are problems in your marriage after many years, it's not just your spouse's fault. It takes two to build a strong relationship and it takes two to let one deteriorate. I completely understand that after a while you just get tired of pushing a boulder uphill when it seems like your spouse is pushing it downhill, but if you quit you are just as responsible for the state of things as s/he is.
2. Infidelity doesn't automatically mean the marriage is over. If it does end the marriage, it's because one or both of you doesn't want to be married anymore. Many marriages survive infidelity.
3. You either take "for better or worse, until death do us part" seriously or you don't. If you have a list of conditions that you won't tolerate, you are hedging your bet against "the worse" part and you're not all in. If your spouse has an affair and is sorry for it and has asked your forgiveness and you  choose divorce, the divorce is not your spouse's fault. She may have cheated (probably a violation of the vows), but you chose to cut and run (also a violation of the vows). Remember your mom saying that "two wrongs don't make a right?"
4. No one has an affair because everything is fabulous at home. This goes along with the "it takes two" truth. If your spouse has an affair, you are not an innocent victim.  I'm not saying that it was right for her to cheat, but if she was getting her needs met at home, she probably would have stayed there. It's easy for the non-cheating spouse to feel like, and thus play, a victim, but there are no victims here -just two people trying to lead a fulfilling life while dealing with the challenges of life and marriage.
5. It is possible to love two people at once. I'll hear people say, "Well, if you love your mistress, you must not really love your wife."  Bullshit. We have a huge capacity for love. There is no doubt that I love my husband. I also love JJ. 
6. Having an affair does not necessarily mean that a person wants out of the marriage. To the contrary, it is usually a way of trying get some needs met so he doesn't have to leave the marriage. How do you know that a person wants out of the marriage? It's when they either say they want out of the marriage or they leave.
7. Affairs almost never end well. There really isn't a "happily ever after" in the world of infidelity. It is extremely rare for affair partners to stay together in the long run, whether or not they get caught. This reminds me of a joke I like to tell about marriage. Well, it's sort of a joke, but not very funny. While affairs almost never end well, marriage never ends well. Why? Because marriage always ends in divorce or death.Get it? Death or divorce are the only choices....haha....Of course, there is nothing funny about either death or divorce.  Moving on...
8. A wife who is "frigid" does not want to be that way. Women want to please their husbands. They either want to have a vibrant and passionate sex life or they want to want to. For a woman, desire is about hormonal balance, emotions, energy, and many other things. Sexuality is a much simpler formula for men. Daunt reminded me recently that "women need to feel loved to have sex; men need to have sex to feel loved." Okay, it's not a perfect statement because I have no problem having sex without feeling loved and I know men in sexless marriages who are certain they are loved, but the point is that most women can't just have sex without dealing with other conditions - most in her own body. A woman may act like she doesn't need or miss sex, but there is sadness and an awareness of something important missing brewing under the surface. She probably needs help, but is too embarrassed to ask because she doesn't know what is wrong.
9. In a long term relationship, talking about sex will lead to better sex. I didn't say "arguing about not having sex," but talking about sex itself. In the beginning, you don't need to talk about it much because it is new and hot and exciting, but as the years fly by, talking about it is how you'll keep it fresh. I know. Talking about sex isn't easy.  I'll give you some suggestions in one of my upcoming posts. Here are some things to consider - most women who give lousy head and most men who suck at giving oral sex will say they don't like it. Researchers who went further learned that most don't like it because they don't know what to do or how to do it, and they are too embarrassed to ask. Talking about it and learning more would make all the difference.
10. Marriage isn't easy. The payoff comes in day-to-day victories and in looking at the person across the table from you decades after you were married and realizing that there is someone in this world who knows you better and loves you more than anyone else on the planet. Those who advocate for giving your spouse an ultimatum over sex just don't understand that marriage is not supposed to be easy. Hormones fluctuate wildly through a woman's body over the course of her life. There will be good times for sex, and bad times for sex. Children require different levels of care at different times of their lives.  This affects sex, too. While building their careers, many men (and sometimes women) work longer hours than are best for a marriage. Family members die.  Depression or other mental illness strikes. Stress and advancing age make it harder for a man to perform sexually. So?  Life happens. We don't get married so we can avoid dealing with life.  We marry so we can have a partner to go through life with us.  If we're lucky, it's our best friend.