{"id":33313,"date":"2019-07-17T10:40:07","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T09:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalwire.com.ng\/?p=33313"},"modified":"2019-07-17T10:43:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T09:43:12","slug":"the-reasons-why-married-women-cheat-on-their-husbands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalwire.com.ng\/sub\/the-reasons-why-married-women-cheat-on-their-husbands\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reasons Why Married Women Cheat On Their Husbands"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeremy Brown<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not something most people want to face, let alone talk about or even consider. But the truth is, even in the happiest marriages, affairs can happen. Maybe a close relationship with a colleague goes too far during a long night at the office. Or an unexpected dalliance occurs on a vacation with friends. Or maybe, it\u2019s a longer-running situation, where a husband or wife 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, however, is who\u2019s doing the cheating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this idea socially that men are cheaters, all men are susceptible to cheating, men are dogs, right?\u201d says Alicia M. Walker, an associate professor of sociology at Missouri State University. \u201cBut the data tells a very different story\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker is the author of The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife: Power, Pragmatism, and Pleasure in Women\u2019s Infidelity. She was inspired to write the book after coming across a number of stories on infidelity. \u201cI saw a study that said some 90 percent of people who cheat never leave their spouse,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I feel like, that\u2019s not what we hear about. We hear about people cheating and then the marriage breaking up. Then I saw another study that some high 80 percent of folks never get caught cheating and that number is even higher if you\u2019re a woman. So that really got me thinking, like, something is going on here besides what I think is going on here. Because we sort of have this social idea that if you\u2019re cheating you\u2019re always going to get caught eventually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

After reading a study that said most women are vulnerable to infidelity in their 40s, the idea became lodged in her mind. \u201cThose three pieces of information together kind of got me thinking,\u201d Walker says. \u201cAnd, over the course of the next few months, it seemed like every movie I saw, every conversation I had, this topic just kept coming up. So, in looking to answer my own questions about this, I realized there was really not much research out there about infidelity. We just kind of act like it doesn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

What she noticed from her work, is that women are cheating at at least the same rates as men. And, depending on the age group you\u2019re looking at and the behavior that you\u2019re looking at, sometimes they\u2019re outpacing men.<\/p>\n

\u201cWay more women are cheating than we think,\u201d she says. \u201cWe just don\u2019t like to talk about it and we don\u2019t like to think about it. You don\u2019t want to think that your neighbor, your Sunday school teacher, or your friend is doing this. But the reality is, you know a woman who\u2019s cheating, you just don\u2019t know that she is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Walker makes clear, there\u2019s no one specific reason for infidelity. Some women cheat to avoid boredom; other women cheat because they feel neglected. Still others say it\u2019s because they fucking want to.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the time the reasons are physical, sometimes they\u2019re emotional, and, sometimes, as much as we don\u2019t want to admit this or know this, sometimes it\u2019s just a matter of somebody having an opportunity,\u201d says Walker. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of data showing that a woman will have an affair with a coworker and are more likely to report that \u2018My marriage is great and I\u2019m super satisfied. I literally saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should really start looking at your own behavior in the bedroom and really make sure that you\u2019re holding up your end of the table. Because, if you\u2019re not, there\u2019s somebody out there who\u2019s more than willing to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The notion of the cheating wife is something that tends to be swept under the rug, per Walker, mostly because it goes against everything that we as a culture have been conditioned to think about women.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to think of women as not particularly sexual unless they\u2019re deeply in love or they\u2019re married or in some monogamous relationship of some kind. We just don\u2019t want to think that women are just as sexual and just as interested in having sex with multiple partners or a variety of partners or they get bored with marital sex.\u201d<\/p>

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Advertisement<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\r\n \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n

However, if we want things to change, it\u2019s time to not only start thinking about the idea of female infidelity, but also to figure out what we can do to improve things. Walker says that begins with having honest conversations about sex, preferably before marriage.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething 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,\u201d says Walker. \u201cWhen I got married, I never had any of these conversations, and I started thinking, \u2018You know, that\u2019s true, we don\u2019t have those conversations.\u2019 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\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really pretty sobering, to be honest with you,\u201d Walker says. \u201cThis is a person who\u2019s pledged to love you for all time and you say to them, \u2018Hey, I want to try role-playing,\u2019 or whatever it is, and then think about having the person that you love and trust the most say, \u2018That\u2019s disgusting. What\u2019s wrong with you?\u2019 If you listen to that for years, and then in walks somebody who\u2019s not only like, \u2018That\u2019s not disgusting,\u2019 but they\u2019re into it, you can see how attractive that would be.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want to leave their husband, they love their husband, they\u2019ve got a great life, but what they really want is variety in their sexual partners,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just, \u2018Oh, I want my husband, and I want this one affair,\u2019 it\u2019s: \u2018I want my husband and I want to taste all the parts of the menu!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey always felt like they had been chosen, rather than choosing themselves,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then they go online to Ashley Madison, or any other site, and there\u2019s all these men, and now they\u2019re choosing rather than being chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, attentiveness is the key. When you\u2019re with your spouse, Walker says it\u2019s vital to make sure you\u2019re thinking of her needs as well as your own.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny man who is concerned about this,\u201d she says, \u201cyou should really start looking at your own behavior in the bedroom and really make sure that you\u2019re holding up your end of the table. Because, if you\u2019re not, there\u2019s somebody out there who\u2019s more than willing to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not something most people want to face, let alone talk about or even consider. But the truth is, even in the happiest marriages, affairs can happen. Maybe a close relationship with a colleague goes too far during a long night at the office. Or an unexpected dalliance occurs on a vacation with friends. Or maybe, it\u2019s a longer-running situation, where a husband or wife 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, however, is who\u2019s doing the cheating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":33314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,18,19,1593,17,624],"tags":[5854],"coauthors":[2391],"class_list":["post-33313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-business","category-crime","category-faith","category-metro","category-news","category-politics","tag-why-married-women-cheat-on-their-husbands"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Reasons Why Married Women Cheat On Their Husbands - National Wire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationalwire.com.ng\/sub\/the-reasons-why-married-women-cheat-on-their-husbands\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Reasons Why Married Women Cheat On Their Husbands - National Wire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s not something most people want to face, let alone talk about or even consider. But the truth is, even in the happiest marriages, affairs can happen. Maybe a close relationship with a colleague goes too far during a long night at the office. Or an unexpected dalliance occurs on a vacation with friends. Or maybe, it\u2019s a longer-running situation, where a husband or wife 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. 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