There’s been a lot of philandering in the news lately, what with Tiger Woods and Jesse James out pussy marauding while sweet, unsuspecting Sandra and Elin stood by blissfully unaware.
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The media has been all over this, prompting weird public apologies. Why is Tiger apologizing to me for cheating on his wife? He doesn’t owe me anything.
But all the attention has raised important questions like “If Sandra Bullock can’t keep a man, what hope is there for the rest of us?” and “How the hell could these women not have known what was going on?” Guess Jesse got around Sandra’s “blind side.” Ha. See what I did there?
But seriously, folks, the devastation to these relationships is real, and the same thing happens to ordinary people all the time. Can such betrayals be avoided? And is there any such thing as forgive and forget?
What the experts say
“For couples trying to reconcile, there will be a grieving process. The cheater will long for the third party. The victim must be in reconciliation mode, not revenge mode. You cannot bring the affair up every time you have an argument. When a woman cheats, it’s usually very difficult for a man to forgive it’s an affront to his manhood. It takes at least two years for a relationship to recover. Many attempt it and don’t make it. Happy husbands cheat, too. I found in my early research that such men will cheat because they feel their relationship is so good that nothing they do will have a negative impact.”
RUTH HOUSTON, author, Is He Cheating On You? 829 Telltale Signs, New York City
“When men cheat, it’s to meet a physical need. Men usually cheat down. The women they cheat with are usually not as established career-wise, as attractive or as emotionally stable as their partners. Women cheat for the real deal. They’re looking for companionship and a better mate. Women typically cheat across, with a man who is as financially sound, attractive and emotionally available, or more of all these things, than the one they’re with. How do you achieve the happily ever after? You start off by being totally transparent with each another, saying, ‘These are the things I need in order to feel happy and secure.'”
ISH MAJOR, psychiatrist, author, Little White Whys: A Woman’s Guide Through The Lies Men Tell And Why, Greenville, North Carolina
“Thirty per cent of the women who come to my support group are married women having affairs. The ‘other man’ doesn’t have the same stigma as the ‘other woman.’ When a man has an affair, there’s something wrong in his marriage. Women don’t want to look at themselves and the part they played in the fact that their husbands did step out on them. When people are having affairs, what they don’t realize is that they can usually get what they need from their partner if they know how to sit down and talk to them.”
SARAH SYMONDS, author, Having An Affair?, founder, Mistresses Anonymous, UK
“Adultery is extremely common around the world. I’ve come to believe we have evolved a dual reproductive strategy, a tremendous drive to pair up and rear our children as a team, and a restlessness and tendency toward adultery, divorce, remarrying and trying all over again. There are many cultural and biological circumstances [involved in] adultery. But biology is not destiny. Some people are prone to alcoholism and stop drinking. In one study, 56 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women said they were in a happy marriage but were adulterous anyway, which suggests there is some biology to this.”
HELEN FISHER, department of anthropology, Rutgers University, author, Why Him? Why Her? How To Find And Keep Lasting Love, New York
“[Major histocompatibilty complex is a gene family the diversity of MHC in a couple could be important for the immune system of offspring]. We found that women who share a high number of MHC alleles with their partners reported less sexual satisfaction and having cheated on their partner more often than women who did not share this. The idea is that if you choose somebody dissimilar to yourself, your children might be better protected. Previous research shows tgat women prefer the scent of men dissimilar to themselves in the MHC complex. Men’s sexual satisfaction was not affected to the same degree. Women are choosier in all sorts of regards.”
CHRISTINE GARVER-APGAR, author, Major Histocompatibility Complex Alleles, Sexual Responsivity, And Unfaithfulness In Romantic Couples, U of Colorado at Boulder
