Researchers widely agree that the rate of female infidelity is rising - that women are increasingly willing and able to risk their marriage and step out on their husbands. The National Post looks at recent data from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, & Reproduction in the U.S., and with the help of Forum…
Benjamin Le, Haverford College
Most people believe that they are moral and good. They also believe cheating on a partner is wrong. So how do cheaters live with themselves after their infidelity? Understanding how they reconcile their indiscretions with their beliefs about themselves can help us figure out why “good people” cheat.
Dissonance theory predicts that when individuals’ thoughts and behaviours are inconsistent, something has to give. Have you ever wondered why anyone would be a smoker these days, given what we know about the link between “cancer sticks” and cancer? A smoker knows that smoking causes cancer, but might rationalise it by saying “I don’t smoke very much” or “My grandma smoked two packs a day and lived to be 90 years old!” By coming up with these rationalisations, people are able to preserve the impression that their behaviours and attitudes are consistent.
Similarly, cheaters might minimise the significance of their infidelity as a way to cope with knowing they did something wrong. The authors of a new study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships propose that cheaters feel bad about their indiscretions, but try to feel better by reframing their past infidelities as uncharacteristic or out-of-the-ordinary behaviour.
To test this idea, the researchers randomly assigned people to be either “faithful” or “unfaithful” in four different lab experiments. Now, you are probably wondering how you make someone cheat on their partner (or not) in a psychology study. Even if researchers could create such groups in the lab, you may think that they probably should not do it anyway (you know, for ethical reasons). The researchers got around these problems by ingeniously banking on the fact that when you are in a relationship, you might still interact with other people you find attractive, and the degree to which you interact with attractive others could count as a mild form of infidelity.
A good man? Former president Bill Clinton.
PA
Participants were instructed to think about a past romantic relationship and then to think about someone, other than their past partner, whom they were attracted to while they were in that relationship. For example, if Ted from “How I Met Your Mother” was a participant in this study, he would have been asked to think back on his (now terminated) relationship with Victoria, and reflect on how much he thought about Robin, interacted with her, and flirted with her while he was with Victoria by answering questions on an “infidelity scale”.
Here is the really clever part: Participants were given “false feedback” (or inaccurate information) to make them think that they were higher or lower than average regarding past infidelity compared to other participants. So, if Ted was assigned to the “unfaithful” condition in this study, he would have been made to believe that his past interactions with Robin were especially frequent and intimate – essentially, that he was relatively unfaithful to Victoria compared to other people who completed the infidelity scale.
The results showed that participants who were made to feel unfaithful had more negative emotions than those in the “faithful” condition. Those made to feel unfaithful were also more likely to report that they did not like themselves. In short, they experienced discomfort about their infidelity. They also tended to downplay their infidelity, reporting that it was not important and did not represent them (“It’s not who I typically am”).
In short, people know that infidelity is wrong, but some still do it. And when they do, they usually feel pretty bad about it. But through various forms of cognitive gymnastics, cheaters are able to discount their past indiscretions to feel better about themselves. Since the negative consequences, at least in terms of how they feel about themselves, are diminished, maybe they do not learn from their mistakes – and might be susceptible to cheating again in the future.
This is an edited version of an article that appeared on the Science of Relationships.
Benjamin Le, Associate Professor of Psychology & Department Chair, Haverford College
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Zoe Strimpel, University of Sussex
When in 2010 I interviewed Noel Biderman, founder of infidelity website Ashley Madison, he said: “It’s easy to vilify me. But I’m not doing anything wrong. I didn’t invent infidelity.” He had a point, though at the time the moral outrage generated by the site suggested that Biderman had not only invented adultery, but all the evil in the internet too.
Five years on, and his website – and attitude – has spectacularly backfired following a hack that has outed personal details of its members and corporate emails. The outrage value of unprincipled web businesses has certainly dwindled – and within the internet’s wild west of trolling, pornography, cyberbullying, celebrity promotion, ungrammatical communication and hook-up apps, Ashley Madison seems positively tame. Who cares about some largely North American adulterers and their kinks? Arranging an affair through a dating site is pretty vanilla compared to a lot of what goes on. And mainstream dating sites like OkCupid and Match are perfectly good for cheaters too.
And yet Ashley Madison has never stopped being deeply contentious. Failed attempts to float on the New York and London stock exchanges suggested moral recoil on the part of bankers, a group hardly known for their disdain of smut. And so it fell to a group calling themselves Impact Team to reveal the site’s secrets with the moralising zeal of the righteous. Or the wronged – it’s suggested that the hackers had assistance from a disgruntled ex-Ashley Madison employee.
“Time’s up!” the hackers announced when Ashley Madison and its two sister companies remained in business after a warning. “We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data.” Data, the new private parts, was duly exposed, with women told: “Chances are your man signed up on the world’s biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters.”
Marital infidelity brings people including, apparently, hackers, to the very highest pitches of moral indignation – even today, in a world where teenage daughters and sons may well make contributions to amateur pornography websites. So outrageous is the idea of being cheated on – and so staunchly moral – that adultery would seem a universal, timeless evil. But a look at 20th-century history, at least in Britain, suggests that infidelity was not always the worst thing that could happen to a marriage.
In fact, as leading social and cultural historian Professor Claire Langhamer makes clear, perceptions of the wrongness of affairs are linked to changes in attitudes to relationships in the post-war period. The more marriage became tethered to love, with sex its crowning glory, the more fidelity mattered. At the same time, the arrival of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s and no-fault divorce led to a more sexually-oriented, exploratory approach to relationships. Yet as Langhamer argues, even as attitudes grew more permissive, with experimentation before and during marriage becoming more common, attitudes towards infidelity hardened.
So does the tsunami of personal and marital nightmares unleashed by the data from a site like Ashley Madison being made public mean that modern relationships are too close, or endowed with too much importance? Would it be better for cheaters and their spouses if relationships were more economic and pragmatic, and less territorial and sexualised? Perhaps.
It might also be better if we saw a renewal of the art of discretion – itself a kind of pragmatism in a digitised age where commercial promises of security can be so quickly overturned. Here the hackers of Ashley Madison make a good point: the site said all its user information was deleted – and it wasn’t.
Looking back to mid-20th-century Britain, a female volunteer from the sociolological Mass Observer project (as quoted by Claire Langhamer) put the central, and perhaps distinctly British, role of keeping schtum instead of open censorship (or open admission) when she said:
I would never have foreseen … that I would be involved in a significant number of extra-marital affairs or that they would prove part of the life experience of most (not all) of my family and friends … Such relationships were still spoken about in a whisper, behind closed doors, shocking. Yet my own family was quite considerably rattled by a quasi-affair of my father’s: muttered about, hinted about, never pronounced openly.
Adultery is not likely to stop because people say it’s bad. Internet dating sites must learn to guarantee that private actions are “never pronounced openly” – in failing to do so, Ashley Madison has got its comeuppance. As for its customers’ best-laid plans, I’ll leave that to you to judge.
Zoe Strimpel, Doctoral researcher, University of Sussex
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
If you watch Real Housewives of Orange County, you know that one of the women on the show has suffered her husband's infidelity. I love how she is on the show telling everyone how hard it is to deal with an affair. I also love how she shows people that a marriage can be saved after infidelity.
What I don't like is how she continuously says that she is healed only after a year. Let me tell you - it takes much longer to heal from an affair. Sure, you can tell yourself that you are over it. However, if you are true to yourself, you will know that you really aren't healed.
It's been FIVE years for me. I still think about it and I still suffer from it. Am I devastated anymore? NO! I am really okay with it. And yes, I'm so okay that I can say that I forgive my husband knowing that this means that I am okay with it. That's my definition of forgiveness, even though it's not other people's definition.
I don't think I'll ever be completely over it. It was the hardest thing I went through in my life. It's one of those things that has become a part of our marriage. It's never not going to be part of our marriage, so why should I forget it happened.
With that being said, I love my husband. I am proud of my husband. This is something I never thought I would ever say about him again. It's crazy. How far I have come.... I am sooooo glad that I stayed and went through everything.
When I look at my kids, I know they are better with mommy and daddy. I am so glad that we were able to work through it, so we can be parents that truly love each other.
For all the haters out there, you have no idea what it's like to go through infidelity until you go through it. You have no idea what you would do, even if you want to say you know you would leave and never trust your husband again.
Shannon Beador and I would have said the same thing 10 years ago. However, we have joined the Cheated On and Stay Married Club. I'm pretty proud of that actually.
Infidelity and the threat of it are the largest threats to a marriage. However, it is not necessarily fatal. It is possible to heal the marriage and even become closer than before this happened. This article explores ways of dealing with infidelity and looks at some of the things that cause it to take place.
Infidelity and the threat of it, is the largest single issue that threatens marriages. A basis of all healthy marriage is the ability to trust. It is not only the sexual betrayal but the lies that accompany infidelity that are so devastating. This break of trust need not be fatal; if both parties truly wish to do so it can be repaired. It takes time, patience, wisdom and true dedication for this process to work.
First, it is absolutely necessary to acknowledge what has happened. No step forward can be taken without honesty. The individual who has strayed must be clear about what has gone on. This does not mean they are to be punished or blamed, but must be accountable, taking responsibility for their actions. Next it is crucial to find out the deeper reasons in the relationship that caused this to take place. What has been lacking? Have there been hidden resentments? What does the marriage need, right now?
If both individuals are willing to confront the issues, to open communication, be honest, respectful and patient, then the marriage can emerge even stronger than before.
Emotional Infidelity
The question of infidelity has become much broader as individuals have obtained easier access to others through the internet. Many often satisfy their wish for other relationships or for fantasy and adventure through activities online. When we do not see or have to interact with another in person, there is comfortable distance, which leads one to believe that nothing is going on. Individuals often feel they can easily exchange intimacies. Demands made upon one another and can be handled easily through a few words. This stimulates a hotbed of fantasy and it becomes easy to feel one has someone in their life who cares and is there for them. Before they know it, excitement, attachment or dependency arises, and interferes with feelings towards the spouse.
This is a dangerous arena to go into. To protect the well-being of your marriage, stay away from it. Realize that online relationships, or other relationships where you feelings and fantasies become stirred up are a temptation to enter into fantasy. Inevitably, they make your primary relationship at home seem less important to you.
There is a thin line here and it is crossed easily. Define and set boundaries for your emotions and needs. If there is a reason why they are not being fulfilled at home, talk it out as soon as possible, create quality time together, explore new ways of enjoying each other and breaking a possibly deadening routine.
Addictions crop up in marriages and are often hidden from a spouse. The addiction to porn is one of them, and closely allied to infidelity. When spouses find out they are often devastated by it. Many wives feel utterly betrayed, threatened and as though they have not been good enough and are not attractive to their husbands. Often they discover the addiction because their husband's sexual desire for them has decreased. Addictions can be much harder to break than one first realizes. Usually it requires professional help.
The addict must not make light of the situation, but fully realize that he/she is caught in the grip of an illness and needs professional help. These addictions can provide all kinds of highs and excitement that a real flesh and blood relationship may not able to offer. For some men, after being addicted to online porn it is boring or difficult to have that much sexual interest in their wives any longer. Awareness must be brought to this situation. Even though the man minimizes it, the woman must hold onto her own reality and need for respect. She must not deny the way you she is feeling, but see to it that professional help is sought.
It is always better to do this sooner than later. The longer an addiction grows the harder it can be to let go of. It is important to recognize these threats to your marriage for what they are, not blame yourself for them or brush them under the table, but to face the issues directly in a constructive and hopeful way. Let your partner know that together you can find a solution that works for both of you. Blaming the self or blaming the other is never helpful and leads nowhere. Acceptance, communication and understanding, however, always go a long way. Needless to say, both must be willing to work on this together. If the partner is not willing to deal with it, then the woman should seek help for herself in making constructive choices for her own life.
All marriages go through challenges. Whether these challenges destroy your relationship or make it stronger, is up to both of you. It takes two to make this commitmentFree Web Content, however. One person cannot do it alone.
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Discover surprising truths about love in top selling program Save Your Relationship (21 Basic Laws to Successful Relationships). Get copy at http://www.truthaboutlove.com , Top psychologist, family and divorce mediator, speaker, author has helped thousands.Get free ezine and articles at http://www.brendashoshanna.com , topspeaker@yahoo.com. (212) 288-0028