Why do women go outside of the marriage?

[Charlie Harper]

You can cook it anyway you like but bottom line some people are just immature and/or crazy.

 

My wife was having a 18 month affair when we bought our home, I bought her a new car, remodeled some parts of said house, traveled with her every 4 months like honeymoons, and treated her like a queen, all at the same time she had her affair, sex was good, I always initiated and everything looked fine.

 

8 years later she told me about it... not because we were n problems but because I was hospitalized and scared and she confessed after I asked why she was so cold all these years...

 

So I dropped my extra 15 pounds, got new clothes and got into shape, because of my medical condition....she reacted like crazy ... she grew jealous, controlling and cranky all the time, then began doing stupid stuff like taking money and some of my things to "keep me"...

 

Now we are separated and in the process of divorce, and I feel sorry for her because she is suffering and miserable, but I tried 3 long years to make things work, but I finally gave up when she began getting violent towards me.... just because someone called me, was a surefire way of getting the silent treatment for 2 days.... pity because I really loved her.... but she is really a very insecure person...

[janedoe67]

Let me qualify this by saying THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION for an affair. Ever. period.

 

Now, let me address this:

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by littlemermaid View Post

I can only reply for me, and my answer is that my husband pays about as much attention to me as he would some wallpaper. We've been married 10 years, have 2 kids, he never initiates sex, and when I do, he will do it, but it's over in 20 seconds anyway. He has low testosterone and blames everything on that. I wanted to feel wanted, desired, like there is someone who can't keep his hands off me, who wanted me so much he couldn't stop thinking about me. and I found that, in someone that I wanted in the same way.

I paid a lot of attention to my WS, married 16 years with child. I initiated sex, she almost NEVER did, and even when I did, she wanted it quick, her way, and I mean EXACTLY the same way EVERY SINGLE TIME, like clockwork, speaking of which ONLY at NIGHT and in bed. I am a very physical husband and always enjoyed my wife, loved midmorning sex, early morning sex, in the study right before lunch sex.. . She refused me for years, to explore sex in different ways, variety, different kinds of foreplay, nothing. Always the same. Bored me but I thought okay, she wants her guaranteed orgasm, who am I to change things...

 

So when she told me I "didn't meet her needs" was the excuse, I felt a bit confused, because she also told me, after DDAY that her AP had testosterone problems and couldn't get it up! And on top of that, she let him make love to her as he wished - things I was not allowed to do were suddenly okay.

 

Later the "needs" excuse fell to the wayside and she laid it out real simple:

I liked him, he made me feel good. He gave me affirmation, and I enjoyed it and wanted more and more of it. Since she trickle truthed me for about 8 months I have several other reasons (I hated our marriage, we never connected, you never really loved me, I was leaving you for him, I wanted to see if I still had it... mid life crises. I felt I deserved it...on and on we went)

 

This is what happens on forums frequently. Poster A gives an assessment of their marriage. Then poster B comes in and essentially says, "My wife said the same thing and she was wrong, so you must be wrong too."

 

That is why I said there is no answer to this question.

 

Yes, every A follows a script in that it is wrong, it is a betrayal, and - at least until the fog clears - most WS try to justify.

 

BUT...just because Bob's WW did X and never did Y does not mean ALL WW's are that way. Believe it or not....it IS possible for a WW to be telling the truth about her crappy pre-A marriage AND it IS possible that the crappy marriage wasn't HER fault.

 

Still does not justify cheating - EVER.

 

But the bottom line is, answering this question is like saying "I'm gonna bare my soul. Now use it as a club to bash me and call me a liar."

[janedoe67]

I'm sorry. It really wasn't my intention to be personal. And I admit that I just put all of it a quote because I couldn't figure out how to make it a quote within a quote.

 

After being on forums for a lot of years, the general thing I have found is that when a WS posts "In my marriage such and such," and then a BS comes in and says "My WS SAID such and such but they were wrong," the implication is that the first WS to post must be wrong too because "all WS's are alike." However, I should not have just assumed that was the case with your post.

 

You are correct in that no one justifies affairs (as they shouldn't). The thing is, for a FWS, trying to explain what they were feeling when they cheated is a catch 22. If you quote the script "I was entitled and had poor boundaries," then you haven't gone deep enough. If you DO get really honest about being lonely or invisible or starved for affection, then it is assumed you are saying that it "made" you cheat. If you say your affair was wrong and then use the word "but" or "however" anywhere in the post, you have cancelled out your declaration that the A was wrong. if you lay out exactly what was missing in your marriage, then you are asked why you didn't work on it (because of course we would never have thought of that), given examples of how some other WS said that but it wasn't true, or we are told that if we were healthy we wouldn't expect our spouse to be everything to us.

 

I never expected my H to be everything for me or to meet every need I had. That is unhealthy, unfair, and dependent. I did expect to matter to him and to be touched and wanted. And no matter how many other WS's of great spouses rewrote their history...I did NOT rewrite mine, and I suspect their are other WS's who did not rewrite theirs either.

 

Cheating is always a bad, selfish, hurtful, deceptive choice.

 

However, if one is going to argue with another person's life experience, then they shouldn't be surprised when no one wants to share their life experiences. To be fair, you did NOT come out and argue about someone's life experience. But it does happen a lot. And look at the threads of this topic. In another one (or maybe this one), the questions was something like "WS's why did you stray?" and the first WS to post at all was me saying I must have read the thread wrong. It is clear at times that people think they already know the answer to the question, so I sometimes do not understand why it is even asked....it feels almost like a trap at times.

[janedoe67]

Cheating is always bad: This is not exactly true. As much for the BS, as for the WS. Depending on the meaning the WS had for stepping out, it can in fact, have a therapeutic effect on the WS. It's not THE RECOMMENDED way to do it, but to dismiss that some WS's do not benefit from an AP however controlled, is debatable. I think it's not so difficult too imagine that an affair is BAD PERIOD is a bit limiting considering the experience even of some BS's who say "my S's affair was the best thing that happened to us."

 

Cheating is always selfish. Okay. So are a lot of other things that go on in a marriage. I can live with selfish. My WS was selfish before she found an AP, and even if she never cheats again, she will still be somewhat selfish. It's in her nature. But really, you cannot imagine a WS who stays in the marriage because she does not want to destroy the nuclear family to which she belongs? I know I know I know all about how SOME WS's say they didn't want to hurt BS, etc., but surely when a WS is in huge pain over not being able to leave their spouse because of the kids, for example, it is a plausable reason to stay, the opposite of selfish. Selfish in that case would be "Adios partner, Im loving it over here..."

 

Hurtful. No argument there. Deceptive, no argument there, choice, no argument there.

 

I do like this post. Though I admit it is VERY hard for me to "emotionally agree with it." In my mind, "cheating is always bad" will always be true. And the jump from that to "I am always bad" will always probably be something I will need to remind myself not to continually make. Not because of any outside poster or person. But, because of my A, the fallout, the methods used to deal with it, and my prolonged inability to really GET to it instead of band-aid it...well, let's just say that it will take me a long time not to, deep inside, think that I will always be "tainted by badness" and "damaged goods" and "less" than anyone and everyone who did not cheat. Even in your very very excellent post above, do you know what struck me? The part about your FWS still being somewhat selfish because "it's in her nature." I picked up on that because I am still bludgeoning myself in some ways about MY nature. Something has to be fundamentally wrong with me. I know in my head that nothing healthy for me or my family can come of such thinking, and the bottom line is that humans in general ALL have an element of selfishness. But that secret fear of being more selfish and less human is the "secret sadness" of a lot of FWS's that never really goes away.

 

When I think of that, I wish there was some way to impart a KNOWING of that feeling before one cheats; I wish I could let a woman who is toying with the idea of cheating get inside my head and heart and KNOW what will never go away BEFORE she jumps off the cliff, so to speak. If he knew, she'd never do it. No one would do it if they knew how it would change everything forever.

[Friskyone4u]

This is happening more and more. Here are the reasons i think why:

(1) OPPORTUNITY- just common sense tells us more women working means more interaction with men other then their spouse or partner, so the workplace dynamic plays a major role for these things to start

(2) CHANGING SEXUAL NORMS- if your female partner is under 25 or 30, she has grown up in the "hook up" generation, where no strings sex is not only approved of but encouraged at every turn. Don't know why anyone would be surprised that more ladies as a percentage of the population are having affairs just because they utter "I DO" at the alter of the church. When the inevitable difficulties of committment rear their head, the easiest outlet for validation is a "hook up" if that is what you have learned in teen years. For those with partners older, they are constantly bombarded in magazines, TV shows, and reality TV, that the new sexuality says that it is OK to have an affair, your marraige may get better, and you are entitled to the pleasure as a liberated woman, using the line that men do it also so it is ok and equal.

(3) WOMEN ARE SMARTER- I am a man, but it never ceases to amaze me how dumb we are. When we have "boys night out", we either get together in a beer frenzy and play poker or something, or go to a strip club or somewhere else where we just make a lot of noise, get loud, and proclaim our masculinity in a childish way. At the strip clubs for boys night out, we are surrounded by other fools throwing money at women who cannot stand the sight of us. At the same time, we sit there on the couch watching sports while our female partners get dressed in their sexiest outfits and head to a bar filled with guys just looking to get laid. We let this go on and get out of hand out of fear of being called controlling. Add alcohol to all the testosterone that our wives and girlfriends run into at the places they are going and bingo, here comes your affair started by a ONS in many cases. In addition, this behavior is probably being encouraged by her "friends" who will egg her on at the club to flirt, dance, and be receptive to advances from other men. meanwhile, back at the ranch we are clueless. There is nothing wrong with a "ladies night out" but if your wife or girlfiend has this as a regular must do, look out buddy because you are in for a rude shock at some point. The percentages say that if it gets out of hand.

Obviously, the above are generalities. A woman can start an affair any time she wants to because she controls if any flirting or sex becomes a thing that happens. So there is no simple answer. Everyone has their own abilities to do certain things and resist the temptations that are out there. But if you believe the more times you are exposed to potential bad things happening that the greater the chance you will eventually make a mistake, then i think the above statements are relavent. Sorry for the long post.

[HomanWater]

Cheating is always bad: This is not exactly true. As much for the BS, as for the WS. Depending on the meaning the WS had for stepping out, it can in fact, have a therapeutic effect on the WS. It's not THE RECOMMENDED way to do it, but to dismiss that some WS's do not benefit from an AP however controlled, is debatable. I think it's not so difficult too imagine that an affair is BAD PERIOD is a bit limiting considering the experience even of some BS's who say "my S's affair was the best thing that happened to us."

 

Just because there may be some good aspects coming out of it, doesn't mean it was good overall.

 

Black Death gave us end of feudal system and improved situation of peasant workers by reducing their supply, forcing their lords to treat them better. Wars gave us numerous technological advancements, not only related to killing and destroying.

 

Does it mean Black Death and wars were good, with, you know, millions of people dying?

 

Same for affairs: do some positives automatically mean it was a good thing to happen?

[janedoe67]

you are surely going to end up with something more than stick figure 2 dimensional GOOD BS:BAD WS, Victim BS: Victimizer WS, Innocent BS :GUILTY AS **** WS, Position-of-power BS:Own it and it's all on you WS.

 

I think one of the key things, seaviews, is that although you are willing to take the discussion father than this, most people are not. For most people, the topic both begins and ends with the above information. In fact, there are entire sites that basically center their advice (especially to a WS) around that piece of information - no other discussion needed.

[SteveC80]

Estimating around 50 something married women ive messed around with in my younger days there were usually two answers:

 

The first is the most obvious:ATTENTION these women felt neglected at home and wanted attention and to be wanted and desired,while im sure that was the case in some of these relationships ive also come to the conclusion women can be self absorbed and need attention and affirmation to the point of naricisism with the level of attention they need from people

 

Secondly: ATTRACTION these women just thought i was very good looking and showed me pics of their short balding blah looking hsuabnd that they lost attraction too.Ive learned over the years looks arent any less important to women, a well put together man can make them lose their senses just like us looking at a pretty women we arent wired all that differnetly

[Grizzly101]

Estimating around 50 something married women ive messed around with in my younger days there were usually two answers:

 

 

Secondly: ATTRACTION these women just thought i was very good looking and showed me pics of their short balding blah looking hsuabnd that they lost attraction too.Ive learned over the years looks arent any less important to women, a well put together man can make them lose their senses just like us looking at a pretty women we arent wired all that differnetly

 

I try to better myself for my H. Pluck, shave, cover the grey, don't wear granny panties, etc. I bring up his overgrown eyebrows and hair in his ears, shirts with hole and always wearing a hat (in a non-b#*!@y manner) and it doesn't matter. Sometimes I feel like I have to keep it up for him, but he doesn't care about keeping it up for me. You can only suggest for so long, then you are picking on them. No wonder women look at guys that take care of themselves and fantasize about them. I love my husband, but he would be much more appealing to me it he did a few little things...on a regular basis, not only when he wants sex.

[SteveC80]

I try to better myself for my H. Pluck, shave, cover the grey, don't wear granny panties, etc. I bring up his overgrown eyebrows and hair in his ears, shirts with hole and always wearing a hat (in a non-b#*!@y manner) and it doesn't matter. Sometimes I feel like I have to keep it up for him, but he doesn't care about keeping it up for me. You can only suggest for so long, then you are picking on them. No wonder women look at guys that take care of themselves and fantasize about them. I love my husband, but he would be much more appealing to me it he did a few little things...on a regular basis, not only when he wants sex.

 

I think maybe its because men get fed that women arent as shallow or visual as men which couldnt be further from the truth women notice everything

[janedoe67]

They push men for commitment - nope. I didn't mention anything about it. he said the L word first. He said the M word first. I did not push anything.

 

They get what they want - I did love him very much and did want to spend my life with him, so yeah

 

They lose interest in sex - Nope. I loved and desired him very much. He wasn't interested no matter what I did/learned/begged/cried/read/tried to earn

 

They become attracted to someone else - Yes I did. It was wrong. I allowed flattery to sway me and was resentful and hard and selfish

 

They start cheating - yes, very very wrong and unhealthy and NOT the way to deal with crushing loneliness

 

They begin telling their partners that they need time apart - I didn't do this the first time. I did this way before the next time, but I was too weak to stick to my guns. I had already seen a lawyer, but I felt terrible when he cried and begged and promised things would change - they didn't

 

They blame their partners for their behavior…and eventually, after a long time of vacillating back and forth, they end their relationships or marriages. - I make zero apology for blaming my H for not touching me, not being intimate with me, playing games during months of unemployment while our savings dried up, spending thousands of dollars on games, secretly looking at gay and straight porn while I lay in bed wishing he wanted me...Yep, I DO blame him for that.

 

I blame MYSELF for not living by my values and staying faithful. I blame myself for being too weak to end our marriage before I strayed. I blame myself for being too cowardly to find another coping mechanism and lying to him and our family. I blame myself for all of that.

 

Michelle Langley sounds neat. Even SHE doesn't know everything about every woman.

[HomanWater]

So Im not keen on analogies about "these things happen" (plagues and holocausts and hurricanes) over "things that WE MAKE HAPPEN".

Someone made those things happen too. Multiple people in fact. Except maybe hurricanes, they can and do happen even outside of humanity's control. What is the point?

 

Trauma of betrayal is itself NOT a totalising effect. NOT EVERYONE who has a DDAY experiences trauma, nor do we all experience trauma the same way or to the same extent. So I stand by my opinion that based on what I have seen in LS, what I have read about personal stories online, and in various self-help websites, in other forums on infidelity, and in the VAST literature out there, of which I have spent the last 10 months reading prolifically, there are other views about this subject.

 

What good does that do for someone who is knee-deep in trauma? Oh, this guy was cheated on and he didn't experience trauma/got over it fairly quick, it must not be so bad after all? Hey, it went away just as I read that? Yeah, don't think so...

 

The whole point of the discussion is that "affairs are bad, period" negates everything EXCEPT the trauma of betrayal POV of affairs. PERIOD.

No it doesn't.

 

If someone says "affairs are bad", it means that amount of damage caused outweighs other good sides that could come out of it. Net evaluation is it was overall bad, period.

 

And as for those "good sides": you have to decouple correlation and causation. You can say "something good happened because of A". There are questions. How do you know it happened because of A? How do you know it wouldn't happen otherwise? Can you turn back time and replay entire life scenario only taking out the A? I'm afraid not. And wouldn't a lack of A itself change interactions between a couple in very different ways?

 

Therefore I postualate you can never say "sth good happened because of A" and be sure of it because you have no way knowing if it wouldn't happen without an affair. And if you suggest it wouldn't, you kind of give a low opinion of someone - that they can't learn until sth bad happens. Is it so?

Edited March 2, 2014 by HomanWater

[janedoe67]

It is my view that nothing good happens "because" of an A.

 

IF there is hard work and introspection done, something good might happen IN SPITE of an A. But it was still wrong to have an A.

[HomanWater]

If you want to deny any and all the literature on how an A turns around a lifeless, dead or nearly dead marriage, that's your business. Obviously you are not going to read anything which doesn't already agree with your opinion.

 

How does said literature address issue of correlation vs causation I raised earlier? Do they directly say "Those two would never be able to work on their own on their marriage, affair was only possible way to turn their marriage around."? How in the world could they know that?

 

They must have pretty low opinion of their subjects like I said.

 

The analogy is wrong and continues to be wrong. I am not in direct control of the "multiple people" who decide to collapse an entire economy and throw my country into recession, and thus unemployment and my job security. But I am in charge of getting myself to work on time, behaving properly and doing my job. As long as I do those things I am in control. I decide or not to be faithful and not have an EA or a PA. Using an analogy of something that is NOT in your hands to decide as a way of understanding something you ALONE decide, is not an adequate analogy.

 

That most Affairs turn out badly. Probably.

That ALL affairs are BAD, period? Doubtful.

No, you do not decide whether YOUR SPOUSE has an affair. How are you still missing that? I thought it's pretty obvious, especially since you were talking about trauma of affair yourself and are BS too.

 

As a BS you decide how you deal with consequences of affair. Regardless, as a BS, affair happening was completely outside of your control (unless you nagged your partner to have an open relationship or something, then suddenly changed your mind). You could be responsible for problems earlier in a relationship, and that problems could make consider WS to have an affair, still actually making a decision to have an affair is completely on WS and nobody else. Not even their AP, as WS could actually reject them.

That most Affairs turn out badly. Probably.

That ALL affairs are BAD, period? Doubtful.

I have explained my reasoning behind above in last post and feel no need to repeat myself.

 

It is my view that nothing good happens "because" of an A.

 

IF there is hard work and introspection done, something good might happen IN SPITE of an A. But it was still wrong to have an A.

Pretty much.

 

If someone says "Sth good happens because of A", I'd take it to imply that it couldn't possibly happen without an A. So wait, they say they couldn't work on their marriage otherwise and have it thrive and flourish, something bad had to happen to suddenly start work on their M? Really?

Edited March 2, 2014 by HomanWater

[carhill]

Why do most men, or people for that matter think that women go outside of the marriage?

 

What I've heard directly from MW's, and confirmed from interactions with their spouses in some instances, most commonly is either emotional distancing, emotional abandonment, or abuse by their spouse. The common factor amongst all these anecdotes has been children.

 

To a far lesser degree, but still relevant, have been 'bedroom issues'. Trust me, in some cases I wish I had stopped them. Didn't want to know or even suspect, since verification of that is impossible unless a threesome was involved.

 

The last commonality worth mentioning is more personal than marital and that's the psychology of, and impetuses to, substance abuse, most commonly alcohol.

 

That's what I've seen so far.

[keepontruckin]

Women are sloots. So are men.

 

Self control and respect are lacking.

 

No view towards future success... Only instant gratification.

 

Same reason we buy cheap Chinese crap at Wal Mart, but then pretend we are "patriotic"...

 

Human nature, yo!~

[2.50 a gallon]

As noted in a previous post, I had sex with several of my married co-workers. All claimed to be sex starved by their H's. Five minutes of sex once a week for years, had them totally frustrated as they had gone for years without a proper big O.

 

Their H's took zero interest in their lives.

 

One of them was into raising prize winning orchids. He never once so much as stopped by any of the orchid shows she attended. Was too busy playing his 36 rounds of golf each weekend.

 

Another was into keeping rare and almost impossible to breed tropical fish. For some unknown reason, with no prior training, she was having great luck getting them to breed while the experts were failing. It was she who was collecting and shipping her eggs to the experts with advice as to how she was having luck to experts as far away as Europe. Lots of work on her part combined with lots of pride. To her husband they were only guppys

 

Years of talking to their H's about their marriage problems was a waste of breath.

 

 

They were then in their late 20's and early 30's, and it was going to be another decade before their children were out of their homes and they could file for D. was a good decade away.

 

At a party, my brassy Ex, had let it slip, that not only did I enjoy going down town, but was good at it. Something that they wanted to experience, and their H's refused to do for them.

 

As they put it, you only live once, life was too short for them to wait another 10 years for some good O's.

 

Call them selfish for not wanting to wait for another dozen years, I don't think so. To me it was their husbands who were the selfish ones. They unknowingly handed me their wives on golden platters.