I have a generally poor relationship with my SO/wife of five years (and partner of about eight years). We have mediocre sex no more than seven or eight times a year and she often declaires (usually during monthly arguments in a matter of fact tone) that she intends to leave me when our son is grown. However, I cannot imagine her ever cheating on me. Furthermore, I’m in nursing school and although I can’t imagine anyone finding my obese, balding frame attractive I’ve had seven or eight women express an interest in liasons with me at school, which I have rejected outright (although admittedly in part because I fear losing the little that I have if my wife ever found out). However, I have three highschool buddies who’s marriages I thought were far better than mine end in divorce (or extended seperation) after they found out their wives were cheating (to my knowledge they were not doing the same although I suppose they probably wouldn’t tell me if they were). Am I fooling myself will most women cheat or simply leave there current SO given the right circumstances?
I think everyone would cheat given the right circumstances. But if you are asking if everyone would cheat as a long-term thing, or as a coldly planned thing and not a spur-of-the-moment thing, then no, not everyone would.
What percentage? That depends on how you define “the right circumstances”. A lesbian girl with a strong sex drive in a country where women’s lib hasn’t come very far, who was forced to marry an abusive alcoholic man and is then several years later hit upon by the extremely attractive housemaid… well, pretty big chance, I’d say, no matter who’s put in that situation. But if “the right circumstances” only covers things like love of your husband (or lack of it) and risk of getting found out, then the percentage is much lower.
Yep, that’s precise enough for me. Hits Submit Reply and wanders into the sunset.
I would not cheat on my husband ever, at all, no way… it would just never happen.
I believe in monogamy too strongly to cheat. Yes, I suppose it’s always possible that I might end up leaving my (theoretical) husband at some point, but I would indeed END my relationship with him before I would be willing to start anything new.
Given Zero Risk of being found out… I would venture that the women who would “cheat” the most would be those unhappy about their husbands naturally.
Unhappy with husband (relationship) 90%
Bored with husband (sex): 60%
Bored with sex but likes husband: 40%
Naturally curious or enjoy sex a lot: 60-65%
Younger women would probably be higher…
Women who don’t enjoy sex much: 20%
Married their first and only boyfriend:20-30%
A lot of it depends on the womans self confidence too... but women value sex less than the relationship aspect. YMMV
I’m curious about this view.
I cannot imagine a set of circumstances that would lead me to cheat on my wife, no matter how remote the chance that she’d find out, or how gorgeous/sexy/willing the prospective partner was (Helen Hunt, sorry, but you lost your chance!)
I can’t find a good cite at the moment, but I’ve read about studies that seem to indicate up to 10-15% of children in Britain are not fathered by the “official” father.
If there’s any truth to that, then I’d guess at least a slightly higher percentage of women are looking elsewhere for the their children’s DNA.
Of course you’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s the opposite of mine. I think that people are basically ‘good’, and if they have made a committment, will stick to it.
There are no “right” circumstances in which I would cheat on my husband. It could be Brad Pitt, naked, in bed, with roses and chocolate, with my husband absolutely unaware, with the perfect alibi, and I wouldn’t be able to do it because I would know. And I’m smart enough to know that however great the sex was it would never compare to the wonderful feeling of knowing that I am honest, true and pure to my husband. I would turn him down flat, and then call up Mr. Elysian to say, “You’ll never believe who was trying to seduce me just now…” because it’s much better to laugh with my sweetie then hide things from him.
I think that people are people, and women are too.
I don’t buy that women are all goodness and into commitment–I think they don’t cheat b/c until recently (and even today) cheating was alot more risky for the female. Risk of pregnancy is out now(if one has a brain), but STD and HIV aren’t (men share the same risk, but IMO women are more vulnerable–men may have a homosexual encounter, get infected and pass HIV along. I don’t know the stats for women having a homosexual encounter and then passing HIV to their husbands–it may be the same percentage, but I doubt it).
But to me, it’s the financial risks that stop a woman. Hey, I’m not saying that there aren’t alot of decent, principled people out there who would never cheat–because there are alot of those. And thank goodness!
I just don’t think that women are exempt from temptation–and as more opps open up for them, perhaps the pattern will change.
Roland : nursing school is brutal on all relationships. It doesn’t sound to me like you want to work on this with your wife/SO. You say that a few classmates have sent signals, yet you are wondering if your wife would cheat.
I am not trying to do you down here or elevate her–just curious as to the thought process here.
Sorry, don’t mean to pry.
The “right circumstances” phrase is what makes this one tough to answer for me.
If by “right circumstances” you mean that for any one specific person, a situation specific to their own insecurities/weaknesses/unhappiness would lead them to go behind the one to whom they are with and commit adultry, then unfortunately, yes, I would say the chances are easily over 50%.
I know that theory alone this plays a factor in how I view potential relationships (and perhaps how I inadvertantly avoid them).
I know a girl who was cheated on once by some guy, and the entire subject of cheating is more sensitive to her than anything else on the planet. She is constantly aware of her current mate and what he’s doing because monogomy is the most important thing to her and his potential cheating on her (even though he’d never do it) worries her way more than it should. But you know what else? If the circustances were right, she’d cheat on him easily, not because she’s a bitch, but because she’s insecure and it would give her a false sense of self-confidence (and she’s pre-occupied with sex to begin with). It’s a shame, I tell you.
It sounds like you’re less likely to cheat on your wife simply because you feel that you have more to lose (which may or may not even be true)… Sorry, my answer really sucks, I know, but I don’t claim to know much about what I’m saying. It’s just my opinion based on observation and experiences (my mother left my father and two little brothers behind for seemingly no reason whatsoever to be with a much more handsome guy 10 who is years younger than her). Not sure she ever loved my dad to begin with. Fucking shame.
Change the guy in bed to Naveen Andrews:
see here
and you’ve got me as well, aside from the married part. I would know, and it’d be wrong. Simple as that.
In a good, healthy marriage, I think very few people - women or men - would cheat, even when tempted by a very attractive potential mate.
On the other hand, in a marriage with problems, I’ve heard and seen a lot of people who swear they’d never cheat end up cheating. Why? My less-than-scientific guess is that people get starved for attention, whether it be sexual attention or just companionship with a sympathetic person of the opposite sex (or same sex, I guess, in the case of gay/lesbian people.)
It’s one thing to say that you’d never cheat when your partner is loving and a more-or-less good companion. It’s quite another when you’ve spent months or even years feeling like you’re being ignored, not getting the sexual attention you need, or are otherwise starved for attention. Put it like this: when you’re healthy, eating right, and getting exercise, the chance of getting sick even when exposed to a nasty virus or bacteria are slim. On the other hand, if you haven’t been taking care of yourself, it’s easy to catch cold or the flu from contact with other people.
In the same way, people who are not in healthy relationships are most susceptible when that handsome, kind stranger comes along. Face it: an attractive person who offers a shoulder to cry on when you’re feeling really down and out is a tempting offer.
I’m not condoning this behavior, I’m just saying that when things ain’t right at home, it’s easy for even the most moral person to be drawn in to something they would normally never do if they their primary relationship wasn’t shaky.
Bingo. Fantasies are one thing (supermodel pornstar dogpile on stonebow!), but I cannot conceive of any situation in which I would cheat on my Lady, and while she is very attractive (certainly out of my league) I don’t spend a lot of sleepless nights worrying about her straying…mostly because we spend a lot of sleepless nights making love. If our relationship were chronically on the rocks…well, I can’t say that I’d blame her for straying.
I’d put it this way: The question is moot. I can’t fathom cheating on the man I’m dating (and intend to marry.) I’m happy with him and he’s happy with me. I can’t think of a more sure way to devastate him or the relationship than cheating, ergo, I won’t do it. As I don’t currently foresee an end to the relationship, all speculations on different circumstances are purely hypothetical.
You can ask the question “well, what if things were different between you two?” i.e. a relationship along the lines described in the OP; in that case, knowing him and knowing myself, we wouldn’t have started dating in the first place. We are not the OP and his wife, we are who we are and the events that helped shape our relationship are our own; speculating whether we might cheat or leave if we had different personalities or different life circumstances is not a terribly useful exercise.
What the OP needs to be concerned with is not “what most women would do,” it’s what his wife would do. No one woman is “most women”, and individual circumstances need to be dealt with as such.
LOL. Sorry but all I kept thinking about was the Ray Romano joke, which goes like this:
"My wife and I, before we got married, we agreed with each other that we’d both be faithful, but each of us could have one ‘ultimate fantasy’ where if we got an opportunity, we could have a one night stand. So before we got married we each picked out our ultimate fantasy. She picked Mel Gibson and I picked Bo Derek.
“Well we had our 10 year anniversary recently and we both agreed maybe we needed to update our listing. We’re different people now. So she picked Russell Crowe, and I picked our babysitter. Now she’s mad at me and I don’t know why…”
This article seems to suggest we men should be more happy about the prospect of our partners straying sexually – http://www.alternet.org/story/13648
God, I hope I don’t get strung up on a pole for this again, but if you’d like an opinion of someone who has “been there, done that,” then I’m in that group. A different perspective, perhaps.
For those that don’t know, I am female. I used to be in the camp of most women in this thread. It was inconceivable that I would ever cheat on my husband and, if the turn-a-bout applied to him, I’d kick his butt to the curb immediately. No ifs or ands, and no second chances. Explanations would be seen as nothing but excuses. That’s what I used to think.
However, just like no one plans to be homeless, nay even considers it because, to their mind, it doesn’t even touch their world, nor is it a remote possibility. But it does happen. A lot. And you can bet it wasn’t their goal in life. That applies to many things. Like addiction, mental illness, you name it.
And this is where I come in. After 8 years of me being nuts/agoraphobic/suicidal/depressed/anxious/yadda yadda yadda, I had run our finances into bankruptcy, alienated all our friends and what little family we had, didn’t honor other commitments or be a contributing member of our household, let alone society. Plus little things were involved too. I would go days where I couldn’t get out of bed. More times, I’m greatly embarrassed to say, when I wouldn’t bathe. I didn’t even feel capable of the simplest task within a week’s time. Sex was non-existent and had been for a while. Can you blame him?
I offered him a divorce probably less than two years into it and repeatedly afterwards. I suggested he get a mistress if he wanted one, for companionship and intimacy that I wasn’t supplying. By the time we hit half way and he still showed no actual interest in the problems that were effecting both of us, I assumed he didn’t love me anymore and was only staying out of a great sense of obligation. Futhermore, I got that drift from various things said and not just in arguments. The final straw between us came when he refused to leave the place we currently lived, because it would mean he’d have to partially sacrifice his career, due to issues being worse for me there than ever before. (Hard to believe, huh?)
Fast forward to the present. We became like roommates and when I finally had a ‘remission’ of sorts, our togetherness was spent quibbling over finances, me not being ‘normal’ enough to keep it up and my fear that regression at that point would be hugely more awful. I ended up being right. Then I proposed an open marriage, again to get him someone to confide in, etc. because he wasn’t interested in any of my other approaches besides him having an affair (he wouldn’t hear of separating, thinks counseling is bunk and, as previously stated, poo-pooed the whole concept of divorce while I was still ‘off the deep end’). However, he very flippantly agreed to it. I questioned him on that. Simply due to the fact that it sounded like a kid, whose parent says; “Fine. Go out and play in traffic.” and the next thing you know, you hear the door slamming as the kid runs outside.
This went on for about a solid 6 weeks, in addition to the previous suggestion roughly 2 years before that. He said it was fine. Over and over again, with me trying to clarify that he’d truly take me up on it.
Enter my high school sweetheart via Classmates. We became friends and he started helping me beat some of my problems. In hindsight, he didn’t really do anything special except not really understand and behave the same way in regards to anything he deemed similar. But he listened and we didn’t fight. He possessed the same hope (or so I thought) for the world, and personally, that I do. My husband didn’t care how much time I spent with him. We broached the subject many times once more. We lived completely apart lives, me inside the house, him outside and with a job and some friends.
This new relationship was my only contact, my only encouragement, my only source of feeling a little self-esteem in almost a decade. So, it went from a tentative kiss to falling in love to something much more. In that order. I believed he wanted to marry me and save me from my self-destruction, which was the only thing I had left at that point.
What all have I learned from it? One item for sure, never, upon NEVER, say never. Therefore, I now grasp how, given the “right (or more accurately, the unfortunate) circumstances” anyone is capable of anything. Anyone. IMHO. And for myself, maybe I was more susceptible because of my “I will not ever!” stance. It made me never even consider the possibility and how I’d handle it. Which made that a VERY unfortunate choice. My decision(s) will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Obviously, there is no one answer. I think women (and men) sometimes do things they would never have thought they would do and I think it is very difficult to know exactly how one would react in every situation. A drink too many in an airport lounge, far from hearth and home, with an attractive person and who will ever know? I wouldn’t take any bets against it happening.
You sound JUST like me! And if i didn’t love my husband, I still wouldn’t cheat. If I was that unhappy, I’d leave, not cheat.