Recently, I was asked why my former husband cheated on me. I hadn’t really been asked that before although I certainly have talked openly about his affair — how it impacted me, our kids, our marriage, etc., etc. But why he had an affair? That was a new one, so I had to think, all these years later, well, why indeed?
That’s a question that mattered a lot after the discovery but was never satisfactorily answered. At some point, why didn’t really matter to me anymore. But the affair (potentially affairs) did, thankfully, force me to look deeper into us as a couple and as individuals, and that’s what led to us divorcing.
Knowing why he chose to cheat would not have changed anything for us; we are fundamentally different people with different values, and that would be hard, if not impossible, to overcome.
But that isn’t so for everyone, which I was reminded of as I read an excerpt from Tammy Nelson’s newest book, When You’re the One Who Cheats.
What cheaters are seeking
Nelson set up profiles on Ashley Madison, a website for married people to meet others to have an affair, as a man and a woman, to explore what people were seeking.
As a woman, she heard from a lot of men, and what they wrote surprised her:
They didn’t want to break up their marriages. But they wanted a connected relationship, they didn’t just want sex. … what was most surprising is that all of the men seemed to have this same craving — someone to connect with. … This seems to go against the popular idea that men cheat for sex and women cheat for emotional connection and relationship. The men that contacted me were clear that they were seeking what they no longer had at home: “passion, desire, lust, kink, romance.” But they wanted it to build up over time. Some of the men were clear that they didn’t want to rush into sex.
And the women? Well, they were not seeking that! They were all about sex — right away.
They wanted oral sex and threesomes and sex toys, and they wanted it steamy and quick and they wanted it when the kids were off at school and they did not want a relationship. They wanted a one-time thing. They wanted a stranger. They wanted parking lots and hotel rooms and anonymity. The women who responded were clear that they were not looking for a committed partner.
Yes, women want sex
Maybe that’s surprising. It certainly flies in the face of what we think men are seeking in an affair — hot sex — and what women are seeking in an affair — love and connection.
And yet, over and over, in Daniel Bergner’s book, What Do Women Want?, Esther Perel’s The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity and Wednesday Martin’s Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, we learn that there are a lot of lusty women in the world despite societal messages that tell us otherwise.
When I cheated, it was an exit affair — I wanted out and didn’t really know how to leave someone I genuinely cared about but no longer wanted to be married to. Having hot sex was great, it just wasn’t my No. 1 reason.
Affairs are complicated
Affairs are complicated things. And, as anyone who has ever been on an online dating website knows all too well, people aren’t always honest about who they are and what they’re seeking. You have to read what people say with a somewhat critical eye. That said, research shows that many men actually are seeking emotional connection — many are lonely and hurting, and have no one to talk to. If it involves sex, too, well, great!
As Nelson writes:
My takeaway from my experiment as a cheater online is that we are wrong about why men and women cheat. Married men want passion and relationships. And women want sex; hot and sometimes kinky sex. This says that we cannot explain affairs by antiquated ideas, or biased beliefs about gender. Our stereotyped narratives of female and male cheating don’t explain individualized experiences, wants and desires.
So was that why my former husband cheated? An emotional connection? Sex? We actually had both, or so I truly believed. We also had young kids at the time, however, and all the complications and drudgery that that brings. Some people don’t handle that well. Plus he was an alcoholic, which never helps any situation.
I have my thoughts about why he cheated, and they don’t fit neatly into Nelson’s “antiquated ideas, or biased beliefs about gender.” But it doesn’t really matter anymore: I forgave him, we have moved on.
Does knowing why matter?
I’m not sure we can always know why a partner has an affair and I’m not sure it’s important to know why unless you’re hoping to salvage the relationship. You can be the best person you can be in a relationship, and still be cheated on; you can’t control another person’s behavior.
That said, if you’re the one who’s cheating or is thinking about it, exploring why you’re choosing to go that route would offer valuable insight about yourself.
Interested in exploring an open marriage? (Of course you are!) Read The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press). You can support your local indie bookstore (please do) or order it on Amazon.
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