Student writes: “In both of these short stories, female characters are the ones who cheat on their husbands. This is strange because normally men cheat while women remain faithful.”
I comment: “Who do these men cheat with, then? Other men? What if they are heterosexual?”
This is, of course, a male student.
Oh youth, oh innocence.
I think the traditional idea is that married men cheat on their wives with single women.
In reality, of course, people who want to cheat do so with whoever they can find that’s willing and that’s just as likely to be someone who’s married.
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Some cheaters especially search for other married people, because of secrecy concerns. An unmarried cheating partner doesn’t have much to lose out of revelation, and may in some cases (hopes for marriage / relationship, revenge, etc) reveal on purpose to the other’s spouse.
– el
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That’s certainly what my ex-h did. He was obviously keeping traditions alive and well.
However, there are a number of websites now where you can find ‘bored married women’ who want some extra-marriage nooky, making infidelity even easier, which the student above obviously has yet to discover…
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With unmarried women, whose acute suffering of being single overrides the natural morality of not being involved with a taken man, of course.
There really are some such women, who delusionaly wait for years for a married man to leave his wife and children. I’ve seen them f.e. in Russian “Let’s get married” TV program. For some reason, such men don’t seem to exist.
– el
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“For some reason, such men don’t seem to exist.”
– Oh yes, they exist. I’ve seen them both in real life and on the show you mention.
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I’ve never cheated on my partner and have put up with the consequences of not doing it whenever I felt induced. I don’t regret it in spite of some heavy lonely times.
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Funny — almost all the people I know personally who have cheated have been women. Most of them were stay-at-home moms with nothing else in their lives, which led to boredom and depression. The couple of men I’ve known who cheated did so because they were bored and depressed. I think that boredom (which leads to depression frequently) is probably the greatest catalyst of cheating. That doesn’t make it right. It just explains how/why it happens.
I used to be very judgmental of people who cheated until I met some people who had done it or were doing it. They were pretty unhappy and were looking for something else to make them happy. It didn’t help, but it was something the people had to work out on their own. No amount of counseling against cheating could show them how they were hurting themselves. I have never been cheated on (that I know of), but I would like to think that I be compassionate about it if it happened. At least try to be.
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Uh – should say “I would like to think that I *would* be compassionate…” Sorry for the typo.
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That’s interesting. I never thought that depression could lead to wanting more sexual activity.
I agree with you on the need to be compassionate in the face of people’s difficulties. At times it is difficult though. Life is tough and cheating is/might be a way of surviving. People cheat on their work, their taxes, their relationships and so on and so forth….’cause they need to survive and none of us are immune to making unfortunate decisions.
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// I never thought that depression could lead to wanting more sexual activity.
Not more sexual activity (mainly) for sex itself, but to create some change in one’s life to escape the intolerable situation of boredom and depression.
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Betty Friedan writes about it a lot in Feminine Mystique. This is, indeed, one of the ways in which housewives often alleviate the intolerable boredom.
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“Life is tough and cheating is/might be a way of surviving.”
– Like if you are kidnapped by terrorists and have to have sex with them to save your life? I can’t think of any other situations of survival.
Of course, there are people who see themselves as survivors because they broke a fingernail and dealt with the situation bravely.
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I don’t think depression leads to wanting more sex. I think that it leads to wanting something different. It’s just easy to manifest that “difference” in a sexual way. I don’t care what someone looks like — another person will always be willing to have sex, especially without strings attached. Of course, strings are always attached, but if there is a perception of no strings, then it’s a go.
I agree that people cheat on other things — taxes, etc. — as a survival mechanism. What’s funny to me is that I never really thought these things happened in real life. I thought they were just in books. Now, I know that cheating in ALL ways (plagiarism, infidelity, etc.) happens all the time. What a world!
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Oh, I’ve cheated. It’s a prelude to leaving, a way to get out on the doorstep. It’s: would spending time with someone else really be more pleasant, as I strongly suspect it would be? Answer: affirmative. Therefore: go (which doesn’t mean leaving for that person).
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When it is a prelude to leaving, it is understandable. What I don;t get is people who exist in these triangular situations for decades. Just the stress of it would kill me.
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If you’re a woman (I think you are, but I might be wrong) you’re expousing a frequent PUA talking point:
Men will cheat on a partner they’re generally satisfied with and have no plans on leaving,
Women cheat when they’re dissatisfied with a partner and want out.
IME (which is, rather suprisingly to me, not the be all and end all of human knowledge), both types of cheating occur with both men and women and I have no idea of the relative frequency of both types.
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Triangular relationships are very stressful, for sure. I think that they are bound to implode eventually, and the question of whether or not to stay together becomes even more stressful. For the people I know who have kids, they have tried to stay together. It surprises me because I know the divorce rate is very high, so I’d expect these people to break up pretty much immediately. But they don’t always.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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