See, ladies, we men have, uh, needs. And not just the ones you think we have. We need to feel affirmed. Emotionally validated. Appreciated. If you don't fulfill these needs, we'll find somebody who will. And then we'll have sex with her.
Huh?
About half of male cheaters report "emotional dissatifaction" as the primary reason they cheated. Emotional dissatisfaction supposedly doesn't involve a lack of sex or even a lack of good sex...but the remedy for it is lots of presumably good sex? I'm confused.
Speaking as a man who has cheated on past girlfriends not once but twice, "emotional dissatisfaction" is just fancy guy-talk for "I'm not to blame for sticking my dick where it didn't belong." It's a pretty poor excuse to try and justify something that can have no justification.
When I cheated, I would have used "emotional (and sexual) dissatifaction" as not an excuse but an ironclad reason for my actions. It sounds ridiculous, but one night I found I had seized a sudden opportunity to cheat that, in hindsight, I'd been orchestrating for months. Both times. Because I didn't feel appreciated, validated, respect, what have you. That I didn't appreciate myself simply didn't occur to me.
Only twelve percent of men, according to that Redbook article, rate their mistresses more physically attractive than their partners; on both occasions, the woman I was cheating with was a pale imitation of the one I was cheating on. Redbook suggests that obviously my woman at home wasn't taking care of my emotional needs. Wow. I guess cheating's okay, then.
Not.
Here's something that runs contrary to pretty much everything you're ever likely to hear out of the field of psychiatry:
MEN DON'T HAVE "EMOTIONAL NEEDS".
NEITHER DO WOMEN.
Let me qualify that a little. Of course, everyone wants to be loved, appreciated, repected, adored, blah, blah, blah. That's universal. But needs to be? I get really ansty whenever I read the n-word applied to relationships. Because when you start treating a relationship as an exercise in needs fulfillment, sooner or later you're not going to be fulfilled. If you need your partner to act in a certain way, resentment's going to build in your relationship from both sides: from you, because she can't act the same way all the time, and from her, because she's being expected to act in a certain way. Your love thus becomes conditional--which makes it a counterfeit love. A fake. Shakespeare put it best in that sonnet which is quoted at nearly every wedding I've ever been to, yet which still remains the most profound verse I've ever read on the subject:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove;
O no! It is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Who's worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
All the emotional fulfillment you "need" comes from within you, not from someone else. In fact, I'd argue you're not ready for a lifelong relationship until you recognize this on some level.
Would I prefer my love loves me, stays with me, fills my days and my nights with her presence? Of course I would. Do I require it? Hell, no. Our marriage is not a prison. When marriages become prisons--due in large part to unmet expectations--that's when the cheating happens.
It's only human to look around at members of the appropriate sex, every now and again, and imagine. Should those imaginings become an insurmountable urge to cheat, you have two options. Two and a half, actually.
The first is to break up. Simple like that. You made a promise: now keep it. If you haven't got to that promise stage yet, try to imagine your significant other's reaction to your having cheated. (Here's a hint: you might want to wear a jock when you tell her.) Better yet, put the shoe on the other foot and imagine what you'd do if she came to you and said she'd cheated. Your course of action (break up!) thus becomes crystal clear.
(Oh, and if you're labouring under the misconception that she won't find out...she will. You'll slip up, sooner or later. Even if you can keep it a secret, odds are pretty good that at some point your mistress is going to demand more of you, and use telling your wife as a hammer over your head to get it. Amazing how many men never even consider that scenario.)
The second option is to talk about it with your partner. It takes real strength to even think about this, because most people won't respond to a stated urge to cheat calmly. But better you tell her ahead of time than she finds out after the fact. If your relationship is strong (and even strong relationships can be betrayed; Redbook has that right, at least), you'll be able to probe the insecurity you're feeling and maybe resolve it. At worst, you'll break up...and be free to "cheat". If the affair's worth the relationship, that is. Word from one who's been there: few are.
Option two and a half isn't really an option by this point, but I'll throw it out there anyway: Get permission.
Odds are she won't grant it, of course...if you have this insurmountable need to cheat, she's going to feel just a tad threatened. Again, wouldn't you? Open relationships come about gradually, after a ton of communication. A weak marriage won't survive for long; a strong one, couples report, can get stronger.
If you want to take this option--which, I stress, must be put on the table gradually, and which really isn't something to just spring on your partner, as it seems too much like a license to cheat, brought up all at once--you must be prepared to grant her the same freedom you're requesting. If you're not, don't even bother: break up/talk it out instead.
If you choose to ignore all this and go dip your wick, whatever Redbook has to say on the matter, don't blame her. She's not the one cheating.
4 comments:
Well said. Excellent insight into the false belief in needs.
I'm 100% with you. I have three ex-friends that cheated on their wives. I don't respect them or associate with them anymore.
However, I will say that there may not be emotional needs as you say. But that assumes the need is something the woman has to give. The need could be a preference for the absence. I'll use one personal example to explain. One of those ex-friends had a girl friend that was (and remains) a bitch. She belittled his manhood and insulted his abilities, skills, choice of friends, work ethic everything. And that was in public. Apparently in private she was even worse.
All of us encouraged him to leave her, that it wasn't worth it. He stayed with her because of her "earning potential" (and this was the beginning of the end of my friendship with him, social status meant everything to him). They got married, had three kids and then he cheated on her and left her.
That I could not abide. He knew what he was getting into, but then brought kids into the picture before he reached his breaking point. That was completely irresponsible.
However, taking the foreknowledge aspect out of the equation. Some people do change, or you only get to know them after some time. Or you are blinded by puppy love. A man can be the subject of verbal (and physical) abuse from a woman, and it will have the same toll.
For different reasons, but with the same result, men find it difficult to just walk away from the abuse and instead stay in relationships they should not. So they find solace (physical and emotional) in an extra-marital relationship. These men do need emotional support, even if its only the absence of abuse.
I have no idea what percentage of men that cheat are being abused, but in some circumstances it is a symptom of a deeper relationship problem, and is not solely the man's fault.
Ditto to what Russell said.
Catelli: point taken. I think 'abuse' is a special case: everyone deserves to be free of it. While having a great deal of understanding and a titch more sympathy for a cheating partner who is abused, I still think it's better to just flee the relationship.
Kids complicate things, of course. I don't believe kids should either be brought into, or kept in, a relationship that's abusive in any way.
As for the "change" aspect, you're right. People do change: if you don't change, you're dead. That still doesn't condone cheating, in my view, anyway.
Speaking only for myself, I see marriage as a continuing choice. I didn't just make one promise eight years ago; I renew it every so often in my head. Daily, whenever I'm going through a rough patch. ("This is a condition", I tell myself. "And I promised to love her without conditions...do I still feel that way? Yes, I do.")
That keeps "change" from blindsiding me, because people don't generally change overnight.
Puppy-love--every love I had up to my wife was some species of puppy love. Each iteration was slightly more mature--I see that now, of course, and didn't then. Even so, when I met my wife, I just knew. It was a different feeling I had with her. I've heard similar things from many friends and have come to the conclusion that marriage is too big to walk into blind.
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