Do you personally think most adultery is not due to the marriage, but rather a yielding to the hardwired fragility of men?

no. That’s silly.

1) 100% of adultery takes place when one or the other participant is married or in a committed relationship. Otherwise, it’s fooling around or having and affair or something else. But a requirement for the definition of adultery is that someone is married.

Hardwired fragility of men? You have to explain that. Because it sounds like utter unsupported bullshit otherwise.

Yes I do. It happened to me. Our marriage was fine. I was sexy, I was beautiful, we had sex when ever he wanted, but he still went trolling. He has a frail ego. A great many men have frail egos, and think that muscle cars and toys and lots and lots and lots of sex will make them into a real man.

Fist of all, there is not a gender predisposition to adultery, both men and women step outside their marriages.

And secondly, it has more to do with an expectation of monogamy for years and years despite how people in a marriage change.

@zenvelo: What about your soulmate, true love?

@elbanditoroso: Like, when you say: “I didn’t go looking for this. But (s)he threw herself at me. What guy in my situation could resist?”

A person can choose to act on an urge or not.

Shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ve never stepped out on either of my husbands. Ever. I think men are more likely than women to step out, again, due to ego.

@elbanditoroso: Are you referring to “men”? I actually meant (wo)men.

@luigirovatti What about them? And I use the plural pronoun deliberately.

Most people do not find the “1”; they find someone who is approximately or close to 1, say .65 or .80, and they round that up to a 1. Yet that “missing” 0.2 or 0.35 can be vital to a person’s well being over the long term, and can be fulfilled by someone other than the individual’s primary partner.

I also take issue with ”hardwired fragility of men” That is such bullshit. It’s used to say “I couldn’t help myself! It wasn’t my fault!” As @lucillelucillelucille, you have a choice To sleep with someone else is a decision you make.

Bullshit.
Fragility of men…
I can see that being used as a half assed lame excuse by men how try to victimize themselves, knowing that they knowingly fucked (it up/outside of their marriage)?

@rebbel -Well said.

@rebbel: You know, it’s crazy, because when you love someone, it’s usual to say it’s not deliberate, right? While, if you commit adultery, it seems it’s knowingly deliberate. How do you explain that?

I’d like, also, to add, that husbands/wives don’t even forgive a moment of infatuation, put aside sleeping in bed.

Has any one see The Firm with Tom Cruise? He gets seduced on a beach in the Caribbean. He loves his wife, but he’d had some drinks and there was this beautiful, half dressed girl in distress and she came on to him…And the legal firm he’d just joined took pictures to use as blackmail him. He was deeply in love with his wife, but you know, just couldn’t help it.

Could you define a “moment of infatuation” for me @luigirovatti?

@Dutchess_III maybe I am a dull stick-in-the-mud. But in my 60+ years I have never been in a situation where “I just couldn’t help it” with regard to women and sex.

It’s a choice.

@luigirovatti -For me, love is not an involuntary reaction to a person.I always know my reasons and it is never a mystery as to why I feel love for someone. It is deliberate.

I would argue that it’s objectively more difficult for a man to turn down a gorgeous women trying to sleep with him than for a woman to do so to an attractive man. As evidence, I would submit the thousands of times I’ve seen women shut down good looking men.

I agree that there’s still a choice, and ultimately the result is the responsibility of the person making that choice. But there does appear to be a biological component that would be inaccurate to pretend doesn’t exist.

@elbanditoroso I agree. I’m saying that’s their excuse. Boys will be boys. Well, bullshit.

The difference is the basic difference between men and women @gorillapaws. Men are virtually assured an orgasm if they get to have sex with a women. If she happens to be good looking, well whoo hoo. Women aren’t, especially if it’s someone who doesn’t know them at all. So it’s not hard to shut down good looking men, and men in general, because we get nothing out of it. Good looking guys are worst than most because they’re more self centered than most.

I mean, a nice set of tits is always going to be a nice set of tits, trick is unless they’re attached to my gorgeous, wonderful wife, well they may as well be on a man coz I ain’t got no desire to go there.

Horse shit. Men and women cheat at about the same rates and for many, many different reasons. It’s not always about sex. Relationships are complicated.
@Dutchess_III You can shelve that ego thing you are obsessed with. This is more of a function of the men you have allowed into your life.

Apparently few things are less simple than inventing an excuse to creep on your partner. The thing I find most disturbing about this is that from what I’ve seen, apparently very few of us are guaranteed unflinching resistance to the tug.

I know you think that @ARE_you_kidding_me. I am not the only female on here to try and explain the differences to you. You don’t want to accept them.

I agree that men seem more prone toward cheating, and hormones ramp up their desires. Women seem swayed by less superficial motives than “gettin a little”, and are therefore much more likely to be emotionally committed to a relationship, monogamous or otherwise.

@Dutchess_III Yes, you are the only one. I fully accept the complexity male-female but you appear to be the one who cannot accept this and you paint men with a broad stroke. Your experiences have shaped a picture of men for you that is not reality. And…. I’m not the only person telling you this here either. Men and women both cheat and they both cheat for various reasons. Men even cheat sometimes because they lack emotional connection and sometimes even women cheat because they want some side action. Again, relationships are complicated. I will continue to call you out on that every single time I see it.

And my experiences talking with other women. And reading. Where you think the jokes like, “What the girlfriend says in bed, “Is it in yet?” What the prostitute says, “Are you done yet?” What the wife says, “I think we should paint the ceiling beige,” come from?
Also, Read this.
“While female orgasms were most commonly experienced during foreplay, copulatory vocalizations were reported to be made most often before and simultaneously with male ejaculation,” the researchers wrote. Women also reported making noise to relieve boredom, fatigue and pain/discomfort during sex.”

I think this subject should be off limits for you and me. I like you and I don’t want to mess that up.

@Dutchess_III Cheating rarely has anything to do with orgasm.

OK. So why do men cheat?

There are sooo many reasons. Perhaps their partner is distant and can’t express love. What if they can’t feel closeness with that person anymore. What if they have found someone who is a better fit and can share the type of life experiences that their other partner refuses to. and…and… and..on and on…
Yes there is the cheater who just cheats for a quick orgasm. There probably are more men that do this but it’s not some monolithic difference in numbers. Women do it too. Human nature is complicated and human relationships are incredibly complex.

I think men and women both can be in loving, committed relationships, not want to break up with their spouse/partner, and yet still, for a variety of reasons, cheat.

I’ve never been married but what I hear from many people is that after decades, the romantic, hot sex part may fade and the companionship part takes over.

@jca2 They become family and the hot sex part becomes rather unimportant in the context of the relationship. Issues can arise when that happens quicker for one party or the other does not mature though.

It takes two to tango. Are women without blame in the game??

From my talking with men who cheat, it comes down to sexual things. Like “my wife doesn’t give me oral anymore. My wife uses sex, as a weapon. My wife doesn’t have enough sex with me, anymore.” Etc…

We all can act like we’re “civilized” creatures and that when we make a promise in a relationship that “it’s supposed to be forever”, but bottom line: humans are not monogamous by nature, neither men NOR women. We simply aren’t. There are some who have crossed that evolutionary plain and have become monogamous, and still some who love their mate and are self aware enough to master their nature, so I’m not saying there are no monogamous humans, it’s just not yet our hard-wired instinct. That’s why women and men who “cheat” make up such poor excuses for their actions, or lie entirely about it: because it’s a base instinct and they really can’t connect with “why”. Many times, bottom line, it’s not the cheater nor a failure of the spouse, it’s simply base human nature and though promises were made, the cheater gave in to base instincts.
As for “Men’s innate fragility” or “Fragile egos”, that’s silly. Women have fragile egos as well depending upon the situation and what in their “value system” is threatened. Women will instantly “mark their territory” (usually a man, or to “their house”) in a second when someone younger, wittier, fascinating or pretty comes into the picture, and women are vicious to each other when threatened.
All one has to do is watch long enough, and you see both men and women are equally creatures of instinct and ego.
We should all strive, but in order to know where we’re going and master our actions, we must first accept our nature. That’s not to say “excuse” our nature, but to strip away the illusions we sometimes convince ourselves of.

So the wife has become a cum receptacle for the hubs. He wants sex 3 times a day. Wife is tired from working all day, coming home to cook, clean, and hubs is on the couch playing video games. Oh, he did empty the trash. He’s mentioned it 3 times apparently wanting a gold star. But he still wants sex because he’s not tired and the wife is. He tells himself it’s okay to cheat because his wife won’t put out the way she used to.
(This was not my situation. Just the perspective of other women I know.)

^I soppose there are many “justicicatons.” That does not mean that any are correct. I’m simply stating plausible reasons. Plausible, in the “cheaters” mind….

Oof. I think this is a heavy question with no single easy answer. I think there are dozens of factors that play into adultery.

There’s this whole paradigm that started ever since humans settled into agricultural society. It was okay for a man to cheat but offensive for a woman to cheat. It was this double standard that has persisted in agricultural societies for years and years.

I’ve heard some interesting theories that instead of trying to level the playing field by telling men not to cheat, it’s more that women should be accepted as having a sex life too and not be seen as delicate flowers waiting to be deflowered, because the ultimate “truth” is that all humans will always feel horny no matter what. Women can be just as horny as men. It’s just that societal standards suppressed the desires of women, and the idea of a woman being open about her sexual tastes was and still kind of is frowned upon.

Sex and love are really strange things. There are people you want to be with for the rest of your life and then there are people your body keeps telling you “Hey I want to screw that person because they naturally look like they’re perfectly capable of giving birth and I am attracted to them as demanded by millions of years of hard-wired evolution in my brain”. Then there are people who you find aesthetically pleasing but not necessarily want to have sex with. The list goes on. It’s a very complicated spectrum rather than “either love this person or not”.

I think the solution is to be as open as possible with your partner about all these things. You will ultimately find the right partner who would accept your personal feelings and views on sex and love. There ARE couples I know who go out screwing other people and they have a perfectly stable relationship because they openly embrace their tastes and are able to separate love and sex. I’m not saying that’s the only way to go – everybody is different. But we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it openly and dissect the double-standard and the monogamy paradigm.

There are two types of men.
1. Those that are players all of there life regardless of marriage or not.
2. Those that are seriously committed to their partner and sustains the marriage.

Interesting article

Everything I read suggests men are more likely to cheat. From this source, for example, “Men are more likely than women to cheat. Twenty percent of men and 13 percent of women reported they’ve had sex with someone other than their spouse, but the gap varies by age.”

@Dutchess_III
For every man that cheats he has a women who cheats too. I suppose that the percentage takes into account that some of those women were single?

That didn’t make any sense. My ex cheated on me. I did not cheat on him. Even after I knew he was cheating I did not cheat on him. I didn’t begin dating until a year after the divorce was final.

If it takes single women into account, then it takes single men into account too.

@Dutchess_III
I didn’t mean that his wife was the other women, but rather another married women was also cheating with him. ( considering that likelihood).

Well, that is interesting, actually.