January 20, 2010 • 23 mins
In this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You, Molly and Cristen discuss what studies and anecdotal evidence suggest about male and female cheating.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House to works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Hey listeners. If you
(00:21):
guys ever read our blog how to Stuff, which is should,
and you may notice that Kristin and I have sort
of a little ongoing competition, which is to mention the
show mad Men as many times as possible. Yes, it's frequently.
If you'll read my post one day features some some
Don Draper, you know, reference, then Kristen will do it
(00:41):
the next day. Yeah, it's not really just mentioning mad Men.
It's specifically mentioning Don Draper, the lead character in mad Men.
Slash Mine and Molly's uh could I say dream crush? Yeah,
I mean I think we're both fairly obsessed with this show. Yeah,
it's a great show if you don't watch it. Some
people say it's just sort of a good looking soap
opera though I mean it kind of visitiveitely has some
(01:04):
soap opera elements, But you know what, um I will
I'm fine with that if I get to watch John
Hamm on screen in well fitting suits for forty minutes, right.
And so I was telling one of my good friends
about my dream crushes. Kristen put it on Don Draper
and she started watching this show and she was like,
I just cannot watch this show because that guy makes
me so mad. He cheats on his wife all the time.
(01:26):
He's not a good guy. I'm just so sick of
watching him full around. And I don't know if it's
just I don't know. I can put that aside because
I'm willing to think that maybe if I had been
around during that time period, I would have had an
affair with Don Draper. But it doesn't bother me as much.
But you can't deny that adultery is everywhere. Oh yeah,
these days. I mean we go at the Tiger Wood scandal,
we have this, uh all this new kerfuffle about John Edwards,
(01:50):
John Elizabeth Edwards, and it's everywhere, everybody cheating hearts. Um.
So we thought we'd talked about adultery because men's got
to be good for something, and this lets us both
get a point in the competition for talking about it well.
And I think Madman is a good place to start
with us because it does sort of play on the
stereotype of men and women sort of cheating for different reasons. Um,
(02:15):
spoiler alert, I guess a little bit. You know, Don
has sex with a lot of women who are not
his wife in the show, and it seems like, for
the most part, he rarely gets emotionally attached to them
at all. In cases where it's portrayed from the other end,
where women are cheating, there does seem to be um
a bit more romantic attachment in their minds right there
(02:37):
looking for something that's missing from their nineteen fifties, only
perfect from the outside marriage. And I think that that's
sort of the stereotype that we've been led to believe
that men will cheat because they just have to have
sex with anything that moves, to put it frankly, and
women are always gonna be looking for, you know, that
dream attachment, that dream relationship, the romance, the romance must
(03:00):
never end. Yeah. Um, But this, and this also goes
back to uh an earlier episode entitled why does the
Sizzle Fizzle? But monogamy in general is not exactly in
our biological natures, as you point out in this article
that you wrote Molley for how stuff works. Um. There
are very few completely sexually monogamous species. Um. One of
(03:23):
which is a flatworm that fuses to its partner until
its death. Yeah, basically a parasite. Yeah, that's the only
thing they can think of that's completely monogamous. Um. And
even an animal species that get together like human stew
to raise their young together, um, so called social monogamy.
Sexual monogamy is usually not part of the deal. They'll
do genetic testing on let's say, baby birds, and they'll
(03:44):
find that one male bird is stuck raising a brood
that ten of is not his. So if you look
at it from just monogamy and nature, we're not built
for it. However, in the US, adultery in cheating in
general is a huge social taboo, and it's become even
more taboo in recent years. Um. This is according to
(04:07):
the General Social Survey. In the seventies, sixty of men
and seventy three of women believe that marital infidelity was
always wrong. In the two thousands, however, that is up
to seventy percent of men and eighty four percent of women,
which is pretty which is a pretty big jump, right.
And you know, they did a survey where they ranked
(04:28):
things they found morally abhorrent, and um, adultery ranked more
morally disturbing than polygamy and human cloning. Oh, so, clearly
this is something. Adultery is something that almost everyone in
the US has a problem with, and yet, um, it happens.
I mean, look at tire, what's it obviously happens, It
does happen, and the statistics that you point out shows
(04:49):
that it happens a lot. Yeah, this was probably the
most depressing article I've ever written for how Stuffworks dot com,
and I've written about things like death and disease. But basically, um,
it's hard to get good statistics on this because obviously
it's not something you really want to admit just till
a stranger, well is that I've committed adultery. And um,
(05:11):
it's also hard to tell what is adultery. I'm sure
everyone goes back to the Bill Clinton moment where he
goes it depends how you define sexual relations, and uh,
that's a problem today. Like if you're having sort of
an emotional affair online and considered cheating, Um, if you
just kiss someone's that infidelity is a sex which is worse. Yeah,
So it's it's very hard to get people to admit
(05:33):
what they actually did. But if if we're talking about
just sex, then UM, the American Association from Marriage and
Family Therapy thinks that percent of wives and percent of
husbands have had sex with someone who is not their spouse.
And actually, if you look at those numbers of people
who think it's always wrong, seventy percent of men think
it's always wrong and eight percent of women, and then
(05:53):
there's that other twenty five percent roughly adds up to
about a hundred interesting point, Molly, So we've got all
these people um running around on their significant others spouses
specifically because I guess this article really has to do
with marital infidelity. Well, that's mainly what people have studied. Again,
it's just really hard to study. Sometimes they'll do studies
(06:14):
where they get a bunch of college students together and
they'll say, you know, which will be worse if this happened,
this happened. But by and large, right now they've studied
heterosexual relationships between married people. And when we look into
the reasons of why men and women cheat it, it
usually goes back to UM this sort of kind of
evolutionarily biology idea that women are you know, seeking out,
(06:38):
you know, kind of a quality soulmate who will provide
resources for her offspring, whereas men just want to spread
their seed as far and wide as humanly possible. But
the interesting thing is you found that, um, according to
this research or Gary Newman, of cheating, men say that
it's not just about the sex, it's about feeling I
guess underappreciated by their spouse is. And in addition to that,
(07:02):
eight percent of men claimed that the person they're cheating
on was not as attractive as their wife. Now here's
the thing. When I saw these statistics, I tried to
bear in mind that the person they're telling this too
is a marriage counselor that's Gary Newman's primary role. So like,
let's say you're a marriage counseling and you're a husband
and a wife. It probably, um, if you're trying to
keep your marriage together, probably serves your case a little
(07:23):
bit better to say I was underappreciated and she wasn't
as good looking as you. So I don't know if
it's just a rise in sensitive males and we just
had that alpha male thing kind of wrong all along,
or if these are people who are legitimately trying to
keep their marriage together, or if that's really why they cheat,
if they really do feel underappreciated. And um, I think that,
(07:46):
you know, it's probably untrue that women, you know, must
be in love to have sex. I think a woman
can just as easily go out and have it be
just about the sex and not because she feels un fulfilled.
But that's that's not as well studied. Yeah, well, let's
also let's also not get to ahead of ourselves. You know,
if he's feeling supposedly underappreciated, then you would assume that maybe, um,
(08:08):
their marriage is just kind of on rocky ground at
that point, you know, if someone's looking for an out,
bliss is gone. That's what Dr Laura said. That's what
Dr Laura said. Uh, maybe we shouldn't always listen to
Dr Laura's side note, Um, but she said, I mean,
if you don't make your man feel like a superhero
stud if you're not propriding for him emotionally, then can
(08:30):
you blame him if he goes to a high class booker.
She said this in relationship to Eliot Spitzer case, so, um,
you know, take it with a grain of salt. Now.
She later brapped off and said if the man is narcissistic, um,
then all bets are off. A good side note, Darctor Laura.
Thanks Dr Laura. Well, the interesting thing is, though, the
(08:50):
how you define your marriage, your marital happiness, whether or
not you're pretty happy, very happy, whatever, uh, isn't necessarily
going to safeguard your I guess fidelity. Yeah, if you're
that wife that Dr Laura wants, who has been making
the man feel like everything is great, and both of
you think your marriage is pretty happy, um, According to
(09:11):
a study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, still
not going to help. Yeah. Um. This compared couples who
define their marriage as either very happy, pretty happy, or
not too happy. And obviously, the people who said that
their marriages were not too happy were the most likely
to cheat on their spouses. But surprisingly, molly couples who
(09:31):
said that they were pretty happy were still twice as
likely to cheat as the couples who said that they
were very happy. And like all the research that we
have done, um, you know on relationships, at some point
the honeymoon phase does end. Yeah. This led some researchers
to wonder if we just have two high expectations of marriage.
I mean, how happy is happy enough? It's not always
gonna be um chocolate and flowers or whatever you're I
(09:54):
don't know, bar is for very happy. You know, there
will be times when you have kids, when things get rough,
and they wonder if these couples, because they've been trained
by pop culture to think, you know, that affairs are
okay and that constant romance is a norm, that these
people are throwing away what would have been, you know,
just a fairly happy marriage. Well, and to complicate matters
(10:15):
even more though, Molly, it's not really marital discord um.
That's going to lead to your cheating heart too. According
to yet another study, two thousand and eight study that
found that half of women reported marital problems before an affair,
which means the other half, you know, no big deal,
whereas only a quarter of the men reported marital problems.
(10:35):
So that's three quarters of the guys. You know, I
think that everything's great. They're not too bad, or they're
not paying attention on their eye. Yeah, maybe they don't
realize they have a problem in their marriage, and they
really do because apparently you know more and the men
are are thinking, yeah, this relationships over and uh time
to time to find someone new. Yeah, because um, according
(10:56):
to UH this is another study in the Journal of
Sex Roles, men usually cite they quote saw an opportunity
and took it as their reason for cheating, and women
are more likely to say, oh, this relationship is already ending,
I'm bored with this person. And they're more likely too,
if they do take a new lover to continue relationship
(11:16):
with him after they in the previous relationship. So do
you think, then, based on this pile of studies, that
that we are discussing that this is confirming the stereotype
of men cheating for sex and women cheating for love
so far, but it does look like that. But things
are starting to change a little bit with all this research,
because the rates of women committing adultery are starting to
(11:39):
climb sort of correlated to the rise of women in
the workforce. And I think that, you know, because women
might have more jobs where they travel, I do think
that there are more women having affairs just to have
the sex than maybe these numbers are these studies we've
discussed so far would indicate Yeah, And women are also
kind of increasing in status professionally and that is therefore
(12:03):
making them, you know, more attractive and more luring perhaps
to other potential partners, right, because some people think that,
you know, we mentioned Dr Laura's exception for narcissistic partners,
and one theory that's been brought up is that if
someone is a politician, they have to have some level
of narcissism to constantly promote themselves and think that they're
good enough to be voted by America to perform a task.
(12:27):
So they're saying that some careers, like politicians or like
let's say an airline pilot, has to have a certain
amount of confidence in himself. They're saying that some jobs
will always kind of be um magnets for adultery, and
as more women maybe get into these careers. Um, the
apparently the infidelar magnet careers are athlete, pilot, lawyer, doctor,
and anything that brings fame. What about internet podcast and writer?
(12:51):
I couldn't find your research on that, Kristen. But um,
here's one study that does affect both of us because
we are currently single. And I found one study that
found that single women, all the single ladies. Um, sorry,
I got distracted by Beyonce there in my head. Um,
single women are likely to give married men that opportunity
to cheat that is so important to them because one
(13:13):
study that was reported in the New York Times found
that women single women are more likely to mate poach
to see a married man and think, hey, give me
a piece of that. Wow, mate, coach, I've just stuck
on that right now. Yeah. They did this study where
they showed single women a picture of a man um
and the two groups there were two groups. One was
set one was told this man is single, ready to mingle,
(13:37):
and one group was told this man is in a
committed relationship and was a picture of the same man
in both cases. Um. So, when the single woman were
told that he was single, of them were like, let's go.
And in the group where they were told that he
was committed, of the single woman were like, let's go.
I won't tell if you won't deal. So, um, there's
some sort of evolutionary thing they think, where you know,
(14:00):
the man has proved to society that he's worth marrying,
and thus he is a better partner than someone who's
still a lonely fish in the sea. We are telling
up all these points in favor of evolutionary biology, and
I gotta say I'm not entirely comfortable with it, Molly,
I don't like everything just being boiled down to women, babies,
and resources. You're not the only one. Let's just let's
(14:21):
go evolution head on, because that is sort of the
next phase in terms of how they have studied cheating. Yeah,
some researchers have taken issue with the way that a
lot of these cheating studies have been set up if
they think skew the results in favor of the sort
of knee jerk evolutionary biology results right, and it comes
(14:43):
down to something called forced choice. A lot of these
studies will will pose a question to men and women say, um,
which is worse to you? Sexual infidelity or emotional infidelity?
And um. Usually there's a big gender difference in this
that men will say it's sexual infidelity bothers me more
and when, and will say the emotional infidelity brothershy moore.
And this makes perfect sense to evolutionary psychologists because they're like,
(15:05):
the man doesn't want to be stuck raising a kid
who's not his, and the woman doesn't want to have
her resources threatened by another woman that the man feels
strongly about. But um, like you said, these critics are questioning,
asking a question, and a forced choice method because it
might allow people to think and make rational, complex decisions
rather than having, like you said, a knee jerk reaction
(15:27):
to infidelity. Yeah, I think one of the researchers compare.
He calls it the Sophie's choice method. So in order
to test this hypothesis, instead of just having them, you know,
just choose between oh, emotional or social cheating while they
were having to answer the question, they also had these
participants have to remember and recall a series of numbers.
(15:49):
So they were thinking that this would kind of jumble
their thinking process so they wouldn't be able to really
really go through the gun rationalized as the word. They found.
The gap closed, the gender gap closed. Both sexes said
that they were more disturbed by sexual infidelity. So basically,
if you want to um, not have your lady think
(16:10):
too hard, according to the study, just have her remember
numbers and then she'll only be upset about the sex
and not the emotional betrayal, like, hey, I cheated on you,
what do you provide? You know? But I mean, these
these people are trying to say that evolution probably can't
account for all of it, that a knee jerk reaction.
Everyone's upset if any sort of physical infidelity takes place. Yeah,
(16:32):
and then they've also noted that there are like cultural
differences as well among um, you know, like American, European
and Chinese men, like they will find like different forms
of cheating, um, more upsetting. Right, Apparently Chinese men are
more upset by the emotional betrayal has posed the sexual one. Um.
(16:52):
But Molly, one thing though that we we haven't come
around to. This was the most compelling finding from this
article that you wrote to me, little something called sperm wars.
Let's talk about sperm wars because we really haven't talked
that much about you know, like women, the physical act
(17:13):
of women cheating. Right, And you know, like you said,
you're you're not fully on board with the evolutionary viewpoint.
But if you do take an evolutionary viewpoint, and let's
say that the old stereotype about wanting an emotional connection,
if that's the reason for cheating holds up, then why
would women cheat if they do have all of that
that they need? Oh, our favorite answer for everything here
(17:36):
on mom and stuff, Molly hor hormones and babies. Because
there was a study in appropriately enough hormones and behavior
that shows that women tend to cheat at the most
fertile part of their menstrual cycle, even if they're not
trying to get pregnant. And the men they cheat with
our men who are more attractive than their spouse, even
(17:57):
if the spouse represents everything you would really want in
a father in terms of being emotionally stable, financially stable,
and so forth, if you find a man that you
deem more attractive, these researchers are saying that some evolutionary
urge will kick in and tell you that good genes
come from handsome men, and you therefore wage a sperm
war and you cheat. So you cheat to get these
(18:20):
good looking genes. And if you're in your most fertile
part of your cycle, then let's say you know and
you have sex with several men best sperm wins. So,
according to these researchers, women are waging these so called
sperm wars in order to get the most genetic bang
for her buck because she has to carry around a
baby for nine months, right, She's always gonna be looking
for the best deal. Now, men, men are not going
(18:43):
to want to evolutionary speaking, want to racial darn their
art room because they've got resources to give, and they've
only got so much to give, so they want to
boil the sperm wars and researchers at Florida Atlantic University
have been studying how a man in a relationship can
boil foil his partner sperm wars. Yeah, and I think
that um there is it does have a woman who
(19:08):
has been separated from a man who has possibly had
sex with someone else, This does have some kind of
effect on her on her partner because they have noticed
that if a couple has been separated for a long time,
regardless of whether or not he knows if she has
um had sex with someone else, the next if she's
had the opportunity, and she's had the opportunity, the next
(19:28):
time that couple has intercourse, the man will produce more sperm,
which therefore gives him better odds of impregnating his partner. Right,
And it's possible that the actual act of sex itself,
once a couple has been separated, or if there have
been allegations of infidelity, can foil sperm wars. Because there's
thinking that some sex positions allow the man to pull
(19:50):
sperm from the woman's vagina. Yeah, so they think that
subconsciously women are waging sperm wars and men are fighting
back by producing more sperm and using certain positions. Okay,
that's why some people don't like evolutionary psychology. Yeah, but
that's research. That's why you're expressing discomfortable. I'd like to
read that grant proposal for sperm wors Um, I'd not
(20:14):
like to read that screenplay. Um. But if you want
to know more about any of these studies, just head
on over to house Stuff Works. Um. I wrote an
article called do Men and Women Cheat For Different Reasons?
And all of the studies are cited there, So if
you want to read more about any of those, that
would be the place to do it. Yes, but I
have to say it was probably the most depressing article
I've ever written, Like I said, and I'm glad it's
done well. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a problematic
(20:36):
question because there are there has to be more to
cheating sometimes than just you know, men being sexual opportunists
and women looking for soulmates. It's kind of sad that
a lot of the research sort of boils it down
to that. But but that's why we have listeners to
write in and share their own experiences. Yes, please share
your thoughts because, like you, Molly, I am a little
a little troubled by some of all these studies. So,
(20:59):
speaking of wit, let's turn to our wonderful listeners for
a little bit of email, some levity in the midst
of all this dark sadness. Yeah, let's go from adultery
to Disney princesses. What if there have been a Disney
princess that it committed adultery, that would have grown a
(21:19):
mention to things? So you want to start? Sure, I've
got an email here from Kate and she says that
Cinderella is her least favorite of all princess movies. Prince
Charming has four lines in the entire movie, and he
has no distinct facial features, and always seems to me
that it was the worst example of the prince. Even
as a child, I was confused as to why any
princess with great wardrobe and a magic couch would waste
(21:39):
her time when a man with no voice, no personality,
and who takes no initiative in finding her. I've always
felt its simply by choosing such a bland and boring
individual Cinderella immediately dropped at the bottom of all princesses.
She instead prefers movies that combine strong women, a man
with a strong personality, and villains capable of being dangerous,
which is why Sleeping Beauty is the greatest of all
Disney movies. Aurora is great, Philip has pizzazz, and Maleficent
(22:03):
is scary as heck. It also has a fight with
an enormous fire breathing dragon, not to mention amazing art.
Truly the greatest of all things, So thank you, Kate. Now,
Abby has a little bit of a different take on
Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty. She writes, I received a
copy of Sleeping Beauty from my sixteenth birthday and was
surprised to watch it as me to my life and
realize then how small a role in the film the
(22:24):
Prince actually has. This is something that is stuck with me,
and whenever my friends are not gown the sept Jissy movies,
I tend to comment on how Prince Philip is really
quite useless. He's just there to kiss the princess to
wake her up and actually does very little else, even
during the in battle against Maleificent. Is actually the fairy
godmothers who do most of the work and chain the
Batty's weapons are charming the sword so it finds her heart.
(22:44):
So the two moral eyeverciety is the people you should
count on the most are the ones who have raised
you and taking care of you. From sewer Baby taken
from this angle, Sleeping Beauty is a very positive story. Sure,
it's nice to have a man your life well case
you so you wake up. It's also important to have
strong woman who will always have your back. All that's
from having Yeah. So, guys, if you have any thoughts
about cheating, hearts or whatever else is on your mind,
(23:06):
you should send me a molly and email at mom
stuff and how stuff works dot com. And it's always
during the week. You should check out our blog how
to stuff and look out for those dull and draper references.
Give yourself, give yourself points when you find them. Do
and uh if you again want to read Molly's excellent
article do Men and Women Cheat for Different Reasons, where
(23:28):
you can find all of the study references that we
have mentioned, because there were a lot of them, you
should head on over to how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
that how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
(23:54):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House to works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Hey listeners. If you
(00:21):
guys ever read our blog how to Stuff, which is should,
and you may notice that Kristin and I have sort
of a little ongoing competition, which is to mention the
show mad Men as many times as possible. Yes, it's frequently.
If you'll read my post one day features some some
Don Draper, you know, reference, then Kristen will do it
(00:41):
the next day. Yeah, it's not really just mentioning mad Men.
It's specifically mentioning Don Draper, the lead character in mad Men.
Slash Mine and Molly's uh could I say dream crush? Yeah,
I mean I think we're both fairly obsessed with this show. Yeah,
it's a great show if you don't watch it. Some
people say it's just sort of a good looking soap
opera though I mean it kind of visitiveitely has some
(01:04):
soap opera elements, But you know what, um I will
I'm fine with that if I get to watch John
Hamm on screen in well fitting suits for forty minutes, right.
And so I was telling one of my good friends
about my dream crushes. Kristen put it on Don Draper
and she started watching this show and she was like,
I just cannot watch this show because that guy makes
me so mad. He cheats on his wife all the time.
(01:26):
He's not a good guy. I'm just so sick of
watching him full around. And I don't know if it's
just I don't know. I can put that aside because
I'm willing to think that maybe if I had been
around during that time period, I would have had an
affair with Don Draper. But it doesn't bother me as much.
But you can't deny that adultery is everywhere. Oh yeah,
these days. I mean we go at the Tiger Wood scandal,
we have this, uh all this new kerfuffle about John Edwards,
(01:50):
John Elizabeth Edwards, and it's everywhere, everybody cheating hearts. Um.
So we thought we'd talked about adultery because men's got
to be good for something, and this lets us both
get a point in the competition for talking about it well.
And I think Madman is a good place to start
with us because it does sort of play on the
stereotype of men and women sort of cheating for different reasons. Um,
(02:15):
spoiler alert, I guess a little bit. You know, Don
has sex with a lot of women who are not
his wife in the show, and it seems like, for
the most part, he rarely gets emotionally attached to them
at all. In cases where it's portrayed from the other end,
where women are cheating, there does seem to be um
a bit more romantic attachment in their minds right there
(02:37):
looking for something that's missing from their nineteen fifties, only
perfect from the outside marriage. And I think that that's
sort of the stereotype that we've been led to believe
that men will cheat because they just have to have
sex with anything that moves, to put it frankly, and
women are always gonna be looking for, you know, that
dream attachment, that dream relationship, the romance, the romance must
(03:00):
never end. Yeah. Um, But this, and this also goes
back to uh an earlier episode entitled why does the
Sizzle Fizzle? But monogamy in general is not exactly in
our biological natures, as you point out in this article
that you wrote Molley for how stuff works. Um. There
are very few completely sexually monogamous species. Um. One of
(03:23):
which is a flatworm that fuses to its partner until
its death. Yeah, basically a parasite. Yeah, that's the only
thing they can think of that's completely monogamous. Um. And
even an animal species that get together like human stew
to raise their young together, um, so called social monogamy.
Sexual monogamy is usually not part of the deal. They'll
do genetic testing on let's say, baby birds, and they'll
(03:44):
find that one male bird is stuck raising a brood
that ten of is not his. So if you look
at it from just monogamy and nature, we're not built
for it. However, in the US, adultery in cheating in
general is a huge social taboo, and it's become even
more taboo in recent years. Um. This is according to
(04:07):
the General Social Survey. In the seventies, sixty of men
and seventy three of women believe that marital infidelity was
always wrong. In the two thousands, however, that is up
to seventy percent of men and eighty four percent of women,
which is pretty which is a pretty big jump, right.
And you know, they did a survey where they ranked
(04:28):
things they found morally abhorrent, and um, adultery ranked more
morally disturbing than polygamy and human cloning. Oh, so, clearly
this is something. Adultery is something that almost everyone in
the US has a problem with, and yet, um, it happens.
I mean, look at tire, what's it obviously happens, It
does happen, and the statistics that you point out shows
(04:49):
that it happens a lot. Yeah, this was probably the
most depressing article I've ever written for how Stuffworks dot com,
and I've written about things like death and disease. But basically, um,
it's hard to get good statistics on this because obviously
it's not something you really want to admit just till
a stranger, well is that I've committed adultery. And um,
(05:11):
it's also hard to tell what is adultery. I'm sure
everyone goes back to the Bill Clinton moment where he
goes it depends how you define sexual relations, and uh,
that's a problem today. Like if you're having sort of
an emotional affair online and considered cheating, Um, if you
just kiss someone's that infidelity is a sex which is worse. Yeah,
So it's it's very hard to get people to admit
(05:33):
what they actually did. But if if we're talking about
just sex, then UM, the American Association from Marriage and
Family Therapy thinks that percent of wives and percent of
husbands have had sex with someone who is not their spouse.
And actually, if you look at those numbers of people
who think it's always wrong, seventy percent of men think
it's always wrong and eight percent of women, and then
(05:53):
there's that other twenty five percent roughly adds up to
about a hundred interesting point, Molly, So we've got all
these people um running around on their significant others spouses
specifically because I guess this article really has to do
with marital infidelity. Well, that's mainly what people have studied. Again,
it's just really hard to study. Sometimes they'll do studies
(06:14):
where they get a bunch of college students together and
they'll say, you know, which will be worse if this happened,
this happened. But by and large, right now they've studied
heterosexual relationships between married people. And when we look into
the reasons of why men and women cheat it, it
usually goes back to UM this sort of kind of
evolutionarily biology idea that women are you know, seeking out,
(06:38):
you know, kind of a quality soulmate who will provide
resources for her offspring, whereas men just want to spread
their seed as far and wide as humanly possible. But
the interesting thing is you found that, um, according to
this research or Gary Newman, of cheating, men say that
it's not just about the sex, it's about feeling I
guess underappreciated by their spouse is. And in addition to that,
(07:02):
eight percent of men claimed that the person they're cheating
on was not as attractive as their wife. Now here's
the thing. When I saw these statistics, I tried to
bear in mind that the person they're telling this too
is a marriage counselor that's Gary Newman's primary role. So like,
let's say you're a marriage counseling and you're a husband
and a wife. It probably, um, if you're trying to
keep your marriage together, probably serves your case a little
(07:23):
bit better to say I was underappreciated and she wasn't
as good looking as you. So I don't know if
it's just a rise in sensitive males and we just
had that alpha male thing kind of wrong all along,
or if these are people who are legitimately trying to
keep their marriage together, or if that's really why they cheat,
if they really do feel underappreciated. And um, I think that,
(07:46):
you know, it's probably untrue that women, you know, must
be in love to have sex. I think a woman
can just as easily go out and have it be
just about the sex and not because she feels un fulfilled.
But that's that's not as well studied. Yeah, well, let's
also let's also not get to ahead of ourselves. You know,
if he's feeling supposedly underappreciated, then you would assume that maybe, um,
(08:08):
their marriage is just kind of on rocky ground at
that point, you know, if someone's looking for an out,
bliss is gone. That's what Dr Laura said. That's what
Dr Laura said. Uh, maybe we shouldn't always listen to
Dr Laura's side note, Um, but she said, I mean,
if you don't make your man feel like a superhero
stud if you're not propriding for him emotionally, then can
(08:30):
you blame him if he goes to a high class booker.
She said this in relationship to Eliot Spitzer case, so, um,
you know, take it with a grain of salt. Now.
She later brapped off and said if the man is narcissistic, um,
then all bets are off. A good side note, Darctor Laura.
Thanks Dr Laura. Well, the interesting thing is, though, the
(08:50):
how you define your marriage, your marital happiness, whether or
not you're pretty happy, very happy, whatever, uh, isn't necessarily
going to safeguard your I guess fidelity. Yeah, if you're
that wife that Dr Laura wants, who has been making
the man feel like everything is great, and both of
you think your marriage is pretty happy, um, According to
(09:11):
a study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, still
not going to help. Yeah. Um. This compared couples who
define their marriage as either very happy, pretty happy, or
not too happy. And obviously, the people who said that
their marriages were not too happy were the most likely
to cheat on their spouses. But surprisingly, molly couples who
(09:31):
said that they were pretty happy were still twice as
likely to cheat as the couples who said that they
were very happy. And like all the research that we
have done, um, you know on relationships, at some point
the honeymoon phase does end. Yeah. This led some researchers
to wonder if we just have two high expectations of marriage.
I mean, how happy is happy enough? It's not always
gonna be um chocolate and flowers or whatever you're I
(09:54):
don't know, bar is for very happy. You know, there
will be times when you have kids, when things get rough,
and they wonder if these couples, because they've been trained
by pop culture to think, you know, that affairs are
okay and that constant romance is a norm, that these
people are throwing away what would have been, you know,
just a fairly happy marriage. Well, and to complicate matters
(10:15):
even more though, Molly, it's not really marital discord um.
That's going to lead to your cheating heart too. According
to yet another study, two thousand and eight study that
found that half of women reported marital problems before an affair,
which means the other half, you know, no big deal,
whereas only a quarter of the men reported marital problems.
(10:35):
So that's three quarters of the guys. You know, I
think that everything's great. They're not too bad, or they're
not paying attention on their eye. Yeah, maybe they don't
realize they have a problem in their marriage, and they
really do because apparently you know more and the men
are are thinking, yeah, this relationships over and uh time
to time to find someone new. Yeah, because um, according
(10:56):
to UH this is another study in the Journal of
Sex Roles, men usually cite they quote saw an opportunity
and took it as their reason for cheating, and women
are more likely to say, oh, this relationship is already ending,
I'm bored with this person. And they're more likely too,
if they do take a new lover to continue relationship
(11:16):
with him after they in the previous relationship. So do
you think, then, based on this pile of studies, that
that we are discussing that this is confirming the stereotype
of men cheating for sex and women cheating for love
so far, but it does look like that. But things
are starting to change a little bit with all this research,
because the rates of women committing adultery are starting to
(11:39):
climb sort of correlated to the rise of women in
the workforce. And I think that, you know, because women
might have more jobs where they travel, I do think
that there are more women having affairs just to have
the sex than maybe these numbers are these studies we've
discussed so far would indicate Yeah, And women are also
kind of increasing in status professionally and that is therefore
(12:03):
making them, you know, more attractive and more luring perhaps
to other potential partners, right, because some people think that,
you know, we mentioned Dr Laura's exception for narcissistic partners,
and one theory that's been brought up is that if
someone is a politician, they have to have some level
of narcissism to constantly promote themselves and think that they're
good enough to be voted by America to perform a task.
(12:27):
So they're saying that some careers, like politicians or like
let's say an airline pilot, has to have a certain
amount of confidence in himself. They're saying that some jobs
will always kind of be um magnets for adultery, and
as more women maybe get into these careers. Um, the
apparently the infidelar magnet careers are athlete, pilot, lawyer, doctor,
and anything that brings fame. What about internet podcast and writer?
(12:51):
I couldn't find your research on that, Kristen. But um,
here's one study that does affect both of us because
we are currently single. And I found one study that
found that single women, all the single ladies. Um, sorry,
I got distracted by Beyonce there in my head. Um,
single women are likely to give married men that opportunity
to cheat that is so important to them because one
(13:13):
study that was reported in the New York Times found
that women single women are more likely to mate poach
to see a married man and think, hey, give me
a piece of that. Wow, mate, coach, I've just stuck
on that right now. Yeah. They did this study where
they showed single women a picture of a man um
and the two groups there were two groups. One was
set one was told this man is single, ready to mingle,
(13:37):
and one group was told this man is in a
committed relationship and was a picture of the same man
in both cases. Um. So, when the single woman were
told that he was single, of them were like, let's go.
And in the group where they were told that he
was committed, of the single woman were like, let's go.
I won't tell if you won't deal. So, um, there's
some sort of evolutionary thing they think, where you know,
(14:00):
the man has proved to society that he's worth marrying,
and thus he is a better partner than someone who's
still a lonely fish in the sea. We are telling
up all these points in favor of evolutionary biology, and
I gotta say I'm not entirely comfortable with it, Molly,
I don't like everything just being boiled down to women, babies,
and resources. You're not the only one. Let's just let's
(14:21):
go evolution head on, because that is sort of the
next phase in terms of how they have studied cheating. Yeah,
some researchers have taken issue with the way that a
lot of these cheating studies have been set up if
they think skew the results in favor of the sort
of knee jerk evolutionary biology results right, and it comes
(14:43):
down to something called forced choice. A lot of these
studies will will pose a question to men and women say, um,
which is worse to you? Sexual infidelity or emotional infidelity?
And um. Usually there's a big gender difference in this
that men will say it's sexual infidelity bothers me more
and when, and will say the emotional infidelity brothershy moore.
And this makes perfect sense to evolutionary psychologists because they're like,
(15:05):
the man doesn't want to be stuck raising a kid
who's not his, and the woman doesn't want to have
her resources threatened by another woman that the man feels
strongly about. But um, like you said, these critics are questioning,
asking a question, and a forced choice method because it
might allow people to think and make rational, complex decisions
rather than having, like you said, a knee jerk reaction
(15:27):
to infidelity. Yeah, I think one of the researchers compare.
He calls it the Sophie's choice method. So in order
to test this hypothesis, instead of just having them, you know,
just choose between oh, emotional or social cheating while they
were having to answer the question, they also had these
participants have to remember and recall a series of numbers.
(15:49):
So they were thinking that this would kind of jumble
their thinking process so they wouldn't be able to really
really go through the gun rationalized as the word. They found.
The gap closed, the gender gap closed. Both sexes said
that they were more disturbed by sexual infidelity. So basically,
if you want to um, not have your lady think
(16:10):
too hard, according to the study, just have her remember
numbers and then she'll only be upset about the sex
and not the emotional betrayal, like, hey, I cheated on you,
what do you provide? You know? But I mean, these
these people are trying to say that evolution probably can't
account for all of it, that a knee jerk reaction.
Everyone's upset if any sort of physical infidelity takes place. Yeah,
(16:32):
and then they've also noted that there are like cultural
differences as well among um, you know, like American, European
and Chinese men, like they will find like different forms
of cheating, um, more upsetting. Right, Apparently Chinese men are
more upset by the emotional betrayal has posed the sexual one. Um.
(16:52):
But Molly, one thing though that we we haven't come
around to. This was the most compelling finding from this
article that you wrote to me, little something called sperm wars.
Let's talk about sperm wars because we really haven't talked
that much about you know, like women, the physical act
(17:13):
of women cheating. Right, And you know, like you said,
you're you're not fully on board with the evolutionary viewpoint.
But if you do take an evolutionary viewpoint, and let's
say that the old stereotype about wanting an emotional connection,
if that's the reason for cheating holds up, then why
would women cheat if they do have all of that
that they need? Oh, our favorite answer for everything here
(17:36):
on mom and stuff, Molly hor hormones and babies. Because
there was a study in appropriately enough hormones and behavior
that shows that women tend to cheat at the most
fertile part of their menstrual cycle, even if they're not
trying to get pregnant. And the men they cheat with
our men who are more attractive than their spouse, even
(17:57):
if the spouse represents everything you would really want in
a father in terms of being emotionally stable, financially stable,
and so forth, if you find a man that you
deem more attractive, these researchers are saying that some evolutionary
urge will kick in and tell you that good genes
come from handsome men, and you therefore wage a sperm
war and you cheat. So you cheat to get these
(18:20):
good looking genes. And if you're in your most fertile
part of your cycle, then let's say you know and
you have sex with several men best sperm wins. So,
according to these researchers, women are waging these so called
sperm wars in order to get the most genetic bang
for her buck because she has to carry around a
baby for nine months, right, She's always gonna be looking
for the best deal. Now, men, men are not going
(18:43):
to want to evolutionary speaking, want to racial darn their
art room because they've got resources to give, and they've
only got so much to give, so they want to
boil the sperm wars and researchers at Florida Atlantic University
have been studying how a man in a relationship can
boil foil his partner sperm wars. Yeah, and I think
that um there is it does have a woman who
(19:08):
has been separated from a man who has possibly had
sex with someone else, This does have some kind of
effect on her on her partner because they have noticed
that if a couple has been separated for a long time,
regardless of whether or not he knows if she has
um had sex with someone else, the next if she's
had the opportunity, and she's had the opportunity, the next
(19:28):
time that couple has intercourse, the man will produce more sperm,
which therefore gives him better odds of impregnating his partner. Right,
And it's possible that the actual act of sex itself,
once a couple has been separated, or if there have
been allegations of infidelity, can foil sperm wars. Because there's
thinking that some sex positions allow the man to pull
(19:50):
sperm from the woman's vagina. Yeah, so they think that
subconsciously women are waging sperm wars and men are fighting
back by producing more sperm and using certain positions. Okay,
that's why some people don't like evolutionary psychology. Yeah, but
that's research. That's why you're expressing discomfortable. I'd like to
read that grant proposal for sperm wors Um, I'd not
(20:14):
like to read that screenplay. Um. But if you want
to know more about any of these studies, just head
on over to house Stuff Works. Um. I wrote an
article called do Men and Women Cheat For Different Reasons?
And all of the studies are cited there, So if
you want to read more about any of those, that
would be the place to do it. Yes, but I
have to say it was probably the most depressing article
I've ever written, Like I said, and I'm glad it's
done well. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a problematic
(20:36):
question because there are there has to be more to
cheating sometimes than just you know, men being sexual opportunists
and women looking for soulmates. It's kind of sad that
a lot of the research sort of boils it down
to that. But but that's why we have listeners to
write in and share their own experiences. Yes, please share
your thoughts because, like you, Molly, I am a little
a little troubled by some of all these studies. So,
(20:59):
speaking of wit, let's turn to our wonderful listeners for
a little bit of email, some levity in the midst
of all this dark sadness. Yeah, let's go from adultery
to Disney princesses. What if there have been a Disney
princess that it committed adultery, that would have grown a
(21:19):
mention to things? So you want to start? Sure, I've
got an email here from Kate and she says that
Cinderella is her least favorite of all princess movies. Prince
Charming has four lines in the entire movie, and he
has no distinct facial features, and always seems to me
that it was the worst example of the prince. Even
as a child, I was confused as to why any
princess with great wardrobe and a magic couch would waste
(21:39):
her time when a man with no voice, no personality,
and who takes no initiative in finding her. I've always
felt its simply by choosing such a bland and boring
individual Cinderella immediately dropped at the bottom of all princesses.
She instead prefers movies that combine strong women, a man
with a strong personality, and villains capable of being dangerous,
which is why Sleeping Beauty is the greatest of all
Disney movies. Aurora is great, Philip has pizzazz, and Maleficent
(22:03):
is scary as heck. It also has a fight with
an enormous fire breathing dragon, not to mention amazing art.
Truly the greatest of all things, So thank you, Kate. Now,
Abby has a little bit of a different take on
Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty. She writes, I received a
copy of Sleeping Beauty from my sixteenth birthday and was
surprised to watch it as me to my life and
realize then how small a role in the film the
(22:24):
Prince actually has. This is something that is stuck with me,
and whenever my friends are not gown the sept Jissy movies,
I tend to comment on how Prince Philip is really
quite useless. He's just there to kiss the princess to
wake her up and actually does very little else, even
during the in battle against Maleificent. Is actually the fairy
godmothers who do most of the work and chain the
Batty's weapons are charming the sword so it finds her heart.
(22:44):
So the two moral eyeverciety is the people you should
count on the most are the ones who have raised
you and taking care of you. From sewer Baby taken
from this angle, Sleeping Beauty is a very positive story. Sure,
it's nice to have a man your life well case
you so you wake up. It's also important to have
strong woman who will always have your back. All that's
from having Yeah. So, guys, if you have any thoughts
about cheating, hearts or whatever else is on your mind,
(23:06):
you should send me a molly and email at mom
stuff and how stuff works dot com. And it's always
during the week. You should check out our blog how
to stuff and look out for those dull and draper references.
Give yourself, give yourself points when you find them. Do
and uh if you again want to read Molly's excellent
article do Men and Women Cheat for Different Reasons, where
(23:28):
you can find all of the study references that we
have mentioned, because there were a lot of them, you
should head on over to how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics because
that how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
(23:54):
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