Why Do Women Cheat?

Of all relationship issues, nothing is more emotionally charged than cheating. Why do women cheat?

Check this story out:

A story in the news revealed that a woman who was apparently cheating on her husband was busted at a baseball game in Atlanta, Georgia.

A pair of, let’s just say, watchful women who were sitting right behind her, caught her texting some suggestive messages.

When they saw that she was texting - I don’t know if they used the zoom on their phone, but the women caught several texts on her phone as she’s texting her lover right next to her husband.

It’s a very interesting catch by these women. One of the messages apparently reads, “I will be naked… laying on the ground.”

Another one says, “Mark Allen, I love much,” or something like that because it was partially obscured by her hand, and the name at the top of the screen was Nancy.

Well, there’s, of course, this chance that this could be yet another one of these internet hoaxes, but the story itself is making headlines around the world and the two women have actually offered images and videos they say is compelling evidence of what happened in that stadium.

At one point, one of the sisters even wrote a warning message on what appears to be from the team’s rosters. It says, “Your wife is cheating on you. Look at the messages under Nancy.”

It says, “It’s a man named Mark Allen,” and then the woman included the phone number and even offered to send images of the text in case they were deleted. “Sorry, I just thought you should know,” the message concluded.

Then the two wrote what they said on Twitter that they actually handed the sheet to the guy after the game who looked at it and gave them a thumbs up and then asked them for a text or sent a text rather asking them for the photo, and there’s a picture of that too.

The message itself says, “This is the guy you gave the message to at the ballgame. Please send me that pic please.”

Apparently, after that message, the women didn’t have any more conversation with him and I guess a similar incident happened last year in a ballgame.

In that one, a pregnant woman was allegedly texting a lover while her boyfriend or a husband was actually watching the game.

Now, there are a lot of people that are sending messages of both support and skepticisms, but they basically are saying that the woman should have minded her own business.

What do you think? Should they have not stepped in?

Should they have not looked at what was going on with this woman and said, “Hey, you know what, this isn’t cool”?

Well, it is a very controversial topic, especially today because very often the topic of cheating is treated differently from the woman’s side than it is from the man’s side.

There is an understood kind of silence that is kept when it comes to the topic of women cheating, whereas with men it’s something that’s constantly talked about, constantly brought up on all those daytime TV shows.

And yes, I realize it’s not completely ignored with the fact that women do cheat, but there is a certain amount of, let’s just say, news discrimination when it comes to the topic.

Now, I think it has something to do with the fact that, first of all, most men don’t really want to know.

There’s something so horrible, so damaging to a man’s psyche about the thought of his woman cheating on him that he honestly would rather just blot out the possibility than face it, at least on many levels.

Now, that of course is just as painful for a woman on her side.

For her, the threat is that she’s going to lose this guy that’s providing for her or that she’s invested all this emotional energy in the hopes to be with for many, many years, maybe to start a family with.

So for her, it’s just as traumatic, but the interesting thing is there is just this slight nuance on how we treat it. But may I ask you again, what do you think?

Do you think the woman should have kept her nose out of it and not said anything, and what would happen then?

So when the topic comes up of why do women cheat and why do men cheat, andwe want to know WHY as if that will somehow make it better if we understood the reasons.

The problem is that it never does.

Very often we find out the reasons that men and women cheat and we ask even more, why, because that reasoning doesn’t make sense to us on a lot of levels.

Now, if you were to go to a professional resource and ask them why do women cheat, well, most women have affairs for different reasons than men do.

There are obviously many reasons for infidelity.

There’s revenge, boredom, the thrill of sexual novelty. There is the “sexual addiction,” which by the way has not been proven or even found to be a true affliction of any kind or a true addiction.

A large majority of the time motivations differ depending on whether it’s a man or a woman with the men typically searching for more sex or getting more attention and the woman are looking to fill an emotional void in their relationship.

Women will tell guys, “I was lonely, I wasn’t feeling connected, I didn’t feel close to my partner, or I was taken for granted,” and of course, it comes down to on many levels women feeling sexy and desired within the relationship.

If you don’t feel that you’re connected, if you don’t feel like he feels that you’re sexy, you’re going to want to look for that feeling.

You’re going to want to get that feeling, and the first guy that comes along that gives it to you, you’re very likely to find yourself becoming involved with. It’s the way our emotions work unfortunately.

Men are more likely to say that sexual motivations for infidelity were their reasoning, and they’re less likely to actually fall in love with an extramarital partner.

Women on the other hand tend to have an emotional connection with their new lover and they’re actually more likely to have an affair because of being lonely.

Women tend to be more unhappy with the relationship that they’re in while men can be actually a lot happier in their primary relationship and still cheat.

Women are more interested in supplementing their marriage or actually possibly jumping to a new relationship than men are.

For men, it seems to be a secondary strategy as opposed to just an alternate.

34% of women who had affairs were actually happy or very happy in their marriage, whereas 56% of men who had affairs were quoted as saying they were happy in their marriage.

So there’s a difference there in terms of the emotional drive, obviously.

There’s a theory though that says that adultery or cheating going outside of the relationship is natural for men, and in some way it fulfills their Darwinian need to have many offspring, and it’s been around since time began.

But the connection that women look for when they’re having affairs may also have evolutionary roots as well - and again, this is from Helen Fisher who has done extensive research on these things as well.

The theory goes that from the earliest days women paired up with a primary mate to have her children, but as women went out to gather food, they tend to sleep with other men creating an insurance policy or have a backup plan.

In case they lost their primary mate, they would have someone who would help rear their children and give them resources should that mate die, which unfortunately was probably pretty common back then.

So women who slept around collected more meat, protection and resources from their lovers, and she may even have had an extra child to create more genetic variety in her lineage.

If some children didn’t make it, which again was often the case way early on, then others could possibly survive.

Now, again, these theories are controversial. They can’t be proven or disproven since time has gone on and marched on since those days, but again, experts say that the motivations we have to have affairs are typically much more than sexual on many levels.

That’s not to say that some women don’t have affairs just for the sex or that the sex wasn’t an important part of it, but the sex was more connected to the other motivations.

I don’t think women are doing it because they want to have more sex, but I don’t think they mind if they actually get it as a part of the process. It’s not actually about the sex as much as it is about the experience of being with another man.

Another very common reason that women cheat is to transition themselves out of a bad marriage.

There’s the old sinking ship metaphor where they use this new relationship as a life raft, an escape vessel if you will, because they just don’t want to jump into the cold water of being single and not having any support.

Many women also have affairs during periods of being vulnerable or through their life changes like when a kid goes off to college or after they lose a job or a major upheaval in their life, they see it as a form of comfort.

Another reason is that it’s a cry for help within the marriage.

One woman I know of had an affair and then ended it and then told her husband as a way to point out that they’re in much more trouble than he thought.

Now, of course, that’s not exactly the best way to point that out. She probably should have made a much more concerted effort to put her hand up and say, “Hey, we need to attend to this.”

But if he’s not listening, you can often see why a woman might have to take some drastic measures.

Again, many affairs are simply caused by problems within the marriage. They have affairs because they’re looking for something they’re not getting there.

Interestingly enough, a lot of these problems could be alleviated and even avoided if there is good communication within the relationship, an opportunity for her to express what’s going on inside her.

But again, we form patterns where we close ourselves off from our partners and we don’t tell them what’s really going on.

Another difference between men and women when it comes to affairs and cheating is that women are also much less likely than guys are to have an affair that "just happened."

In other words, it was spontaneous because women tend to think longer and harder about the situation.

They are also less likely to have a spontaneous affair because they need to warm up to the thought as well as going in and leaving quickly.

It just isn’t something that women typically do.

Men can walk away more easily because their emotions are not as connected or tied into the sexual act as it is for women. It’s actually unusual for a woman to want to have sex and then just forget about it.

Now, in both cases, cheating is looked at as deception, and that’s something we have to really address. Of course, it’s not a positive step for any relationship and it does involve being deceptive.

It’s a violation of trust and it really does cause a rift within a relationship even if you’re able to return to it.

Now, I want to point out some other reasons that have been quoted for women stepping outside of a relationship - or even their own marriage.

These reasons are pretty controversial because not a lot studies have been done, not a lot of proof has been generated to justify them, but I thought you should hear what some of them might be and you can see if they relate to you or possibly a situation you’ve been in.

One reason is that women get too close to other people too fast.

In other words, women build strong emotional connections very fast, and it can be very easy for them to get close to a guy and confuse that bond they’re setting up.

The connection they have with love is related to this, and women very often fall in love very fast, often too fast. They fall in love too soon with anybody that shows them the right amount of affection.

Now, again, I’m quoting here, so don’t confuse this as being my opinion. These are reasons that have been given outside of the more popular dating advice circles.

They give you an idea of some of the reasoning that people believe are behind women’s cheating.

Another reason is that women are very much into the emotional ups and downs of a relationship. In other words, they “love” the drama and gossip that’s in their lives.

So, women get very easily bored of her relationship, at least early on when they're much younger, and they need the attention and drama to keep things moving.

Now, once a man settles down in a relationship, typically the woman begins unsettling and feeling like she needs to stir things up.

Another reason that was given, and this one is shocking, is that women are suckers for affection and compliments.

They say women tend to fall for compliments and are very easily “gamed” by other guys.

So when another guy flirts with a woman, she might think she’s just having fun, but in reality, she might actually be falling for him even if she’s just playing along.

Another reason that they quote is that it can be very easy to make a girl doubt her own boyfriend. All another guy has to do is point out a few of his flaws, maybe compliment her.

Again, touch her in a few places and she’ll start to think her other boyfriend is a loser and this guy is a sex god who will provide for her and give her the Disney romance she’s always dreamed of.

Another reason is that women tend to think that they’re always in some kind of relationship crisis.

This is of course related back to that statement about women needing drama and that they need to have a certain amount of emotional volatility.

When a woman’s life is not sparking with romantic and sexual electricity, well, they might think that the relationship is not what it should be - and this can very often appear true simply because we are very programmed by media these days.

We tend to have false and distorted beliefs about what a relationship should be based on romantic comedies, romantic novels and other stories in the media that make us believe that it should just be this Hollywood way.

I don't want to distract you with some of those latter reasonings for women straying in their relationships, but I did want to bring up some of the ideas behind what could be going on.

Now, of course, the psychology is very complicated and it’s something that you just can’t pin down to some easy answers.

But if you do want to go further in this topic and you want to read more about why women have affairs or why women even just have sex in general, a very educational book to read is called "Why Women Have Sex." It’s by Cindy Meston and David Buss.

You can get it on Amazon. I believe they’ve got it on Kindle. They have an audiobook format and I think they have a variety of reprintings of it.

You can get in paperback and in hard cover now very inexpensively. I highly recommend you read it.

Well, it doesn’t actually answer the question, it does bring up a lot of the reasons that we’re studied for why women actually do have sex and their motivations which can range from anything from adventure to revenge, and of course, everything in between.

So tell me, what do YOU think about this?

What do you make of the woman who was caught cheating by her texting at a baseball game? She was obviously pretty flagrant about it if she did it while she was sitting right next to her husband.

Do you think the story is real? Do you think she should have been more careful?

What do you think about women cheating in general? Share your thoughts with me.

I’d love to hear your questions and comments about this topic because it’s such a controversial and highly charged one.

And if you want to learn more about men’s motivations and what men are thinking, I definitely encourage you to check this out...

You'll learn ALL the things you need to look for in his behavior to tell you everything you need to know about the guy.

More importantly, you'll learn everything that’s motivating him even on that all-important first date, so you don’t have to waste your time and you’ll know whether or not you’ve got a good man.

Go find out how to avoid this happening to you...

 

UPDATED 10/2/2021