Increasing Number of Women Having Affairs

Increasing Number of Women Having Affairs

I’ve noticed the trend of more women having affairs, and have been wondering about whether others had also noticed it, and what the reasons may be.

I had a look around at the research and found a Bloomberg article from July 2013 that reported research from the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey which shows the percentage of wives cheating has increased 40% over the last two decades to 14.7%.

The article also pointed out that based on the people signed up on the Ashley Madison website for married people to find someone to have sex with, women in their 40s are one in three with men on the site, and women in their 30s are about equal.

Daniel Bergner, author of “What Do Women Want?” stated  in the Bloomberg article that “An increasing body of science suggests that women’s sex drives are as powerful as men’s libidos, though they’ve been repressed by thousands of years of male-dominated culture.” Bergner goes on to say, “Once you strip away the stigma from the equation, interest in casual sex is about equal for women and men,” he said. “So we men may have a lot to worry about.”

Many ideas were proposed as to the possible reasons why more women are cheating: economic, better mate, etc.

Yet I think about the culture of Silicon Valley, the pressure, the amount of time people spend working. I think about the varied reasons people have affairs, from wanting to blow up the marriage to wanting to save the marriage, and everything in between. I think about the Marriage Interview “He Works 24 Hours a Day.” I wonder if sex is good, healthy, fun, playful, assertive, exploratory, fantasy-filled, or if it’s boring? I wonder if your kids are in your bed, either literally or figuratively?

Men still cheat more than women, percentage-wise. But that gap is closing.

If you want a happy, monogamous marriage, then get to work (and fun). Monogamy is after all, an issue of integrity, chosen by each partner each day, no matter what shiny new object comes along. It is most often decided when our partner doesn’t even know that we have done so.

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Photo by Penywise @morgueFile