Evidence shows the majority of MM's do NOT leave their wives for the OW.

[bentnotbroken]

Becker, word of advice. If you want to be around here any length of time...ease up. Just letting you know. I been there.

[D-Lish]

I am 100% in agreement that ultimately, we all are accountable to ourselves.

 

As a former BS, I initially focused on the OW as a target- why? It was the easiest and least painful method of getting over the shock. It was much easier to believe that my husband was tempted, lured, or tricked, than it was to believe he had actually solicited the relationship...

 

If I believed my H was soliciting sex on the side, I had to believe it was because something was wrong with me and he had to seek that shortcoming elsewhere. That's a much harder pill to swallow, and it's easier to focus hate on a third party.

 

I see so many women hating on women in these threads. One thing I have learned from being betrayed is that, as women, we all deserve to be the prize.

 

We can throw fits and fight for pole position- but ultimately who wins in a 3-way- besides the Married guy...

 

How many married men are posting here discussing their angst?

They are few and far between! Why is that, I wonder (well, I don't wonder, I am being sarcastic). Maybe because the arrangement suits them?

 

As I have said- honestly wow, it hurts to find out your H has cheated- but the H is responsible for that- he's the one that was fully repsonsible for saying no.

[pureinheart]

Are you for real?

 

Let's see......"bad women, low morals, no dignity, great in bed, loser, comparing OW's with hookers", I think that about sums up what you think of people who don't live to your moral code and judgement of wrong and right? A little self righteous aren't you? OH and you love this topic uh? Getting your jollies preaching about our low morality uh?

 

Excuse me while I go barf.......:sick:

 

Wouldn't be trolling would you?

 

Why don't you just go away.....I don't think you will be missed.

 

A troll or a very angry/hurting person...

 

Hey BB, while were at it...what is the exact definition of a troll...I know kind of....my definition of troll would be one that wants to start trouble and goes through web sites stirring the pot? BTW...BB you crack me up!

Edited February 15, 2010 by pureinheart

[pureinheart]

Sorry to triple post. I just want to add that I hope my comments aren't taken in the wrong manner. If women would stop the BS/OW competition, we'd be able to talk to each other reasonably and keep our discussions focused on the problems with the WS/MM instead of what we incorrectly see as failings in one another. It is the person who makes a betrayal who is accountable ultimately.

 

LOL , I do it all the time....

 

That would be soooo good if we could all come together....

[White Flower]

 

 

 

Being a citizen of one of these "older societies" and also being in frequent contact with US citizens, I can only agree. Very interesting to hear an American express the same outlook on this as I have.

My strength is in my self-awareness. As an American, I know I'm puritanical, as unpure as I am.

[OWoman]

The title of this thread is true. The MAJORITY of MM do NOT leave their marriages, be it for the OW or any other reason.

 

The stats also bear out that second and subsequent marriages fail far more often than first time marriages.

 

The moral of this story? If you want a MM to leave his marriage for you, make sure its his second, or third, or fourth....you get the picture, marriage.

 

Stats are not everything. They represent (either through direct measurement, or through sampling) entire populations and do not take into account local variability. Individuals live in smaller groups that may exhibit trends completely out of keeping with bigger trends because, in the larger picture, the subsection of population they belong to is not numerically significant enough to skew the overall results. For example, the average IQ is 100. If you and all your friends have IQs in the 150s, because of where you work, who you choose to socialise with, etc, that does not make the average IQ within your social circle more likely to be 100, just because that's the average "out there".

 

If I think about my own social and familial circle: my 1st H left his 1st M for his OW, after 7 years of M. My 2nd H left his 1st M for his OW, after 30 years of M. My father left his 1st M for his OW, after about 20 years of M - he's still with his 2nd W (fOW) after 25years of M. His 1st M lasted so long because of the kids - he Dd the instant the youngest was out of the house - and the 2nd has lasted so long because they love each other (there are no kids involved apart from his adult kids). I know only a few 1st Ms that have survived beyond a couple of years, but dozens and dozens of 2nd Ms that have survived decades (whether or not infidelity featured in the 1st M).

 

It may not be the universal norm - but if any researcher had to sample my social and familial circle, the outcomes would be very different and they'd conclude that 1st Ms were doomed, 2nd Ms far more likely to flourish, and that Ms which arose out of infidelity in previous Ms would have a longevity and a happiness quotient far greater than those original Ms they supplanted.

 

Perhaps it doesn't work every time, but when it works, it works better than anything else on the planet

[OWoman]

The so called 3% study doesn't seem to have been published in scientific journals. It is based upon interviews done for a book, Quiet Desperation: The Truth About Successful Men by dr Jan Halper. The paperback version was published in 1989 - more than 30 years ago. I presume these are the reasons it is difficult to find information about it online.

 

The business executives in this study were extremely unfaithful. 88% had affairs compared to 24% for the average man in 1998 and 60% for the average man of today. Could it be that many of them were having one night stands and shorter flings just because they could because of their status and their money?

 

Thank you Jen for bringing this up. The "study" on which those claims are based is anything but scientific. I could go on at length here about all its failings but I won't, as I and many others have already done so in countless other posts here on LS. In fact, every time this pathetic excuse for a study is mentioned, it's shot down in flames by anyone who knows anything about social research (whether OW, BW or interested other). It has no more reliability than Oprah polling the 5 guests on her show and producing "stats" from that.

 

If any of my students used a source like that in an assignment, I'd fail it (unless they used the source critically, as "bad science") - particularly if their argument relied only on a single source.

 

That kind of study might work for a Jerry Springer audience, but not for educated people.

[OWoman]

 

Yes, the resident 3%er.

 

For every one of you, there are 33 OW whose MM will never leave.

 

Where's the evidence to the contrary? YOU? One out of how many?

 

If you were REALLY interested, and not simply spoiling for a fight, you could look up the thread that lists OWs whose MMs have left for them - it's somewhere on this board. About 5 or 6 names spring immediately to my mind, but it's a bit of a moving target and many of those fOWs don't hang around here anymore as the toxic anti-OW sentiment gets too much for someone who's no longer an interested party.

[OWoman]

 

Well you can add ME to your database right now.

 

And it seems you suffer from Pot Meet Kettle Syndrome. You've argued this entire thread that MM do not leave M's for AP's and when faced with evidence to the contrary, you dismiss it or try to invalidate it.

 

I agree with OWoman's post.

 

GEL

 

...And I agree with GEL's post.

 

And you can add me to your "database" too....

[jwi71]

Stats are not everything.

 

Actuaries disagree. Lame joke buts its early and all I can come up with.

And oddly appropriate in the sense of a small group going against "the trend" as it suits their own interests.

 

They represent (either through direct measurement, or through sampling) entire populations and do not take into account local variability. Individuals live in smaller groups that may exhibit trends completely out of keeping with bigger trends because, in the larger picture, the subsection of population they belong to is not numerically significant enough to skew the overall results.

 

Wait...are you saying that OW/OM form a minority when measured against the larger population? If so, WHY would they be the minority?

 

And lets face it, stats are NOT everything like you said. They only highlight trends and generalities and even then with some error rate. Broad statements extracted to represent a population which are inherently NOT accurate. To make it worse, trends CHANGE. What is acceptable then is not now and what is acceptable now is not then. Like women wearing pants. Considered taboo even in the US not some 70 years ago.

 

Bonus question: who is often (?) credited for breaking that taboo in the US?

 

Double Bonus question: Where did pants for women originate? (interesting answer btw)

 

Ultimately, generalities do not apply to specifics.

It may not be the universal norm - but if any researcher had to sample my social and familial circle, the outcomes would be very different and they'd conclude that 1st Ms were doomed, 2nd Ms far more likely to flourish, and that Ms which arose out of infidelity in previous Ms would have a longevity and a happiness quotient far greater than those original Ms they supplanted.

 

Owoman, you do realize you just argued AGAINST your position here right?

Because if you are the result outside the norm...well, then you are outside the norm of the population. Again, begging the question, why?

[OWoman]

Actuaries disagree. Lame joke buts its early and all I can come up with.

And oddly appropriate in the sense of a small group going against "the trend" as it suits their own interests.

 

Even lamer, I found it funny...

 

 

Wait...are you saying that OW/OM form a minority when measured against the larger population? If so, WHY would they be the minority?

 

Nope, I wasn't speaking of OWs / OMs as a minority. I was speaking of any grouping which gathers together around a particular feature they have in common, which immediately makes them cease to be broadly representative of the population as a whole, since that feature is over-represented in that group compared to the population as a whole. IIRC, my post used the example of people with IQs in the 150s - who may cluster together around working contexts, socially and possibly familial groupings too. It's not stating that they're a minority - there are just as many people with IQs in the 150s as there are in the 50s, on average - but that one cannot generalise findings beyond that group since, by definition, average IQ is 100 and therefore someone with an IQ of 150 cannot be said to be representative of the entire population.

 

(If you want to extrapolate out of context from that, perhaps you can say I'm claiming that OWs are an elite )

 

And lets face it, stats are NOT everything like you said. They only highlight trends and generalities and even then with some error rate. Broad statements extracted to represent a population which are inherently NOT accurate. To make it worse, trends CHANGE. What is acceptable then is not now and what is acceptable now is not then. Like women wearing pants. Considered taboo even in the US not some 70 years ago.

 

Ultimately, generalities do not apply to specifics.

 

agree, completely.

 

Owoman, you do realize you just argued AGAINST your position here right?

Because if you are the result outside the norm...well, then you are outside the norm of the population. Again, begging the question, why?

 

again, I didn't argue against my position. My position was simply that statistics are not everything, and - in this particular context - can thus not be used to predict the likely outcome of an individual A, given the degrees of complexity involved.

 

(But if you want to know why my social circle falls outside the norm of the population, it might be more closely related to my hypothetical example than I'd intended. Because of where I work and who I socialise with, my social and familial circle is pretty much constrained to the more highly educated, more socially sophisticated, more open minded segment of society. When I draw on examples from people I know well enough to cite, it's people from that grouping. Perhaps the life experience of the yob who's never worked in his life apart from nicking a few things from the local store is rather different, but I wouldn't know because I don't hang out with him.)

[NoIDidn't]

Stats are not everything. They represent (either through direct measurement, or through sampling) entire populations and do not take into account local variability. Individuals live in smaller groups that may exhibit trends completely out of keeping with bigger trends because, in the larger picture, the subsection of population they belong to is not numerically significant enough to skew the overall results. For example, the average IQ is 100. If you and all your friends have IQs in the 150s, because of where you work, who you choose to socialise with, etc, that does not make the average IQ within your social circle more likely to be 100, just because that's the average "out there".

 

If I think about my own social and familial circle: my 1st H left his 1st M for his OW, after 7 years of M. My 2nd H left his 1st M for his OW, after 30 years of M. My father left his 1st M for his OW, after about 20 years of M - he's still with his 2nd W (fOW) after 25years of M. His 1st M lasted so long because of the kids - he Dd the instant the youngest was out of the house - and the 2nd has lasted so long because they love each other (there are no kids involved apart from his adult kids). I know only a few 1st Ms that have survived beyond a couple of years, but dozens and dozens of 2nd Ms that have survived decades (whether or not infidelity featured in the 1st M).

 

It may not be the universal norm - but if any researcher had to sample my social and familial circle, the outcomes would be very different and they'd conclude that 1st Ms were doomed, 2nd Ms far more likely to flourish, and that Ms which arose out of infidelity in previous Ms would have a longevity and a happiness quotient far greater than those original Ms they supplanted.

 

Perhaps it doesn't work every time, but when it works, it works better than anything else on the planet

 

OWoman, while I get your point, it does not refute what I stated. It only shows that some of us are surrounded by people that may or may not fit the stats, but it doesn't invalidate the stats at all.

 

A researcher would not sample your social and familial circle for broader trends, because I doubt you hang out with a large enough sample to be statistically significant.

 

I can use my own family and social history (more like people that used to be a part of my circle, though) and make the opposite argument.

 

My uncle-by-marriage left my aunt for another woman. Actually, he didn't leave, he was kicked out and not let back in. Their marriage has been stormy from Day One. And ultimately, she left him for a younger man, put their child into foster care (yes, she did), and cleared out ALL of his bank accounts and left him penniless. All within the last year. It could be argued that they've been together for 17 years and that's a successful second marriage. But that would negate the 17 years that he was also married to my aunt, and reveal hypocrisy among the posters here that would attempt to make the claim that the OW-now-W's 17 years were better than with my relative. And this is just one such story. I have many, MANY more.

 

Its been my experience that marriages that started via infidelity have a rocky history and even harder going from the "get-go" than marriages not instigated by infidelity. It has been my experience that the AP that leaves a marriage, almost ALWAYS wants back into it after leaving for an OP (male AND female), and that the former-OPs in those marriages are extremely insecure in their new position as spouse and not OP. (Actually, this could be another thread concerning worries about when OP becomes spouse).

 

I wouldn't tout my experience as the end all be all, but I certainly wouldn't take the extremely small amount of people on a message board's word for it that the stats are completely skewed, and only (strangely, at that), in their favor.

[OWoman]

OWoman' date=' while I get your point, it does not refute what I stated. It only shows that [b']some of us are surrounded by people that may or may not fit the stats, [/b]but it doesn't invalidate the stats at all.

 

Which was my point - more coherently argued by JWI. Stats are only good on a huge scale, they're not useful for predicting individual outcomes with any accuracy - because they operate at a level of generality. In order to have a greater accuracy for predictability, you'd need far more information - the kind you'd get from a case study, say - where you'd have the level of detail to be able to say, this applies to me, or this doesn't represent my situation at all.

 

A sweeping statement like, "go for a MM who's on his 2nd or subsequent M as those have a greater chance of failing" strips out a great number of highly pertinent factors that contribute to the likelihood of that M failing. Jen has cited the "long lost R" as being one such factor - so any MM happily married to his long lost love is only very, very, very slightly likely to D - as opposed to Joe Soap, recently married to his 1st W who has a 50% chance.

 

Trends are one thing. Prediction is another matter entirely.

[GreenEyedLady]

I can use my own family and social history (more like people that used to be a part of my circle, though) and make the opposite argument.

 

I wouldn't tout my experience as the end all be all, but I certainly wouldn't take the extremely small amount of people on a message board's word for it that the stats are completely skewed, and only (strangely, at that), in their favor.

 

It may also be related to ethnicity or religious affiliation. Some races are much less likely to D than others and those that have a strong religious background (especially certain religions) would also be less likely to D. The more diverse your social circle, the more diverse the results.

 

GEL

[NoIDidn't]

Which was my point - more coherently argued by JWI. Stats are only good on a huge scale, they're not useful for predicting individual outcomes with any accuracy - because they operate at a level of generality. In order to have a greater accuracy for predictability, you'd need far more information - the kind you'd get from a case study, say - where you'd have the level of detail to be able to say, this applies to me, or this doesn't represent my situation at all.

 

A sweeping statement like, "go for a MM who's on his 2nd or subsequent M as those have a greater chance of failing" strips out a great number of highly pertinent factors that contribute to the likelihood of that M failing. Jen has cited the "long lost R" as being one such factor - so any MM happily married to his long lost love is only very, very, very slightly likely to D - as opposed to Joe Soap, recently married to his 1st W who has a 50% chance.

 

Trends are one thing. Prediction is another matter entirely.

 

And I still stand by my statement, sweeping generality or not. It simply is not enough to put forth one's social circle as somehow being immune to being touched by the stats as you seem to be doing.

[OWoman]

And I still stand by my statement' date=' sweeping generality or not. It simply is not enough to put forth one's social circle as somehow being immune to being touched by the stats as you [b']seem[/b] to be doing.

 

in which case, appearances are deceptive.

 

I choose to live my life by evidence I can observe and triangulate. Stats, which are 99.9999999999999% based on people not remotely like me, have little bearing. I'm interested only in the 0.00000000000000000001% which is like me, which has some bearing on me or my situation. The rest has as much relevance to me as Planet of the Apes or Friends.

[NoIDidn't]

It may also be related to ethnicity or religious affiliation. Some races are much less likely to D than others and those that have a strong religious background (especially certain religions) would also be less likely to D. The more diverse your social circle, the more diverse the results.

 

GEL

 

I agree and disagree. My social circle is pretty diverse. I do have more acquaintances that are religious (not just Christian), but they span just about every economic class and ethnicity. And all of them have been touched by the infidelity stats in some way.

 

So, I agree that the stats depend on diversity. But

once you start separating out variables like religion, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and so on, you reduce that diversity and, of course, start to see trends that go against the stats that are meant generally across all and not limited to those other variables.

 

The argument being put forth by some, is that their social circle disproves the stats and therefore the stats are all wrong is faulty, especially as put forth. If everyone you associate with has high IQs and all the other qualifiers being bandied about, I doubt that makes for a very diverse sample. Certainly an educated and seemingly elite one, but not diverse, IMO.

 

And the same holds for my experiences with couples that started out as As too. That's why I said I wouldn't put that forth as the end all be all, as others seem to be doing but only in their own favor.

[NoIDidn't]

in which case, appearances are deceptive.

 

I choose to live my life by evidence I can observe and triangulate. Stats, which are 99.9999999999999% based on people not remotely like me, have little bearing. I'm interested only in the 0.00000000000000000001% which is like me, which has some bearing on me or my situation. The rest has as much relevance to me as Planet of the Apes or Friends.

 

JWI may disagree with me, but I think this is exactly what he meant by "arguing against your own argument".

 

I did see your response to him, but I still think I see where he was coming from.

 

Regardless, I'm happy to agree to disagree with you, OWoman.

[OWoman]

The argument being put forth by some' date=' is that [b']their social circle disproves the stats and therefore the stats are all wrong[/b] is faulty, especially as put forth. If everyone you associate with has high IQs and all the other qualifiers being bandied about, I doubt that makes for a very diverse sample. Certainly an educated and seemingly elite one, but not diverse, IMO.

 

Nowhere did I claim this (assuming you're referring to me). I merely said that the stats were not applicable, thus irrelevant, since the very vast majority of them referred to people who were nothing like me, whose situations were nothing like mine, and whose outcomes were likely to be nothing like mine, either.

 

I certainly did not claim they were wrong. They may or may not be, I've not looked into that sufficiently to have an opinion one way or another.

 

If you're going to misrepresent me then at least do so more provocatively, dammit!

[NoIDidn't]

Nowhere did I claim this (assuming you're referring to me). I merely said that the stats were not applicable, thus irrelevant, since the very vast majority of them referred to people who were nothing like me, whose situations were nothing like mine, and whose outcomes were likely to be nothing like mine, either.

 

I certainly did not claim they were wrong. They may or may not be, I've not looked into that sufficiently to have an opinion one way or another.

 

If you're going to misrepresent me then at least do so more provocatively, dammit!

 

Nice play on words.

 

Not applicable? Irrelevant because the general population is nothing like you? Are you not part of the general population? Stats apply to all of us, including you elite types. LOL. There is no way to arbitrarily take yourself *out* because you are "nothing like those people.

 

Like I said earlier, I am happy to agree to disagree with you. I think you are making a semantic argument that still doesn't hold water, but you do. Fine. We disagree.

 

(BTW, I'm right. :laugh: )