By Steph Barnes, HelloGiggles
Here’s something people don’t like to talk about: cheating. Many of
us have had some experience here, and whether you’ve cheated or been
cheated on — we can agree the act is less than great because someone
usually ends up hurt. However, it seems some women might actually be cheating on their husband for a good reason — depending on how you look at it.
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Growing up, we’re conditioned to believe that cheating will almost always bring the end
of a relationship. That’s understandable, because when you’ve made a
commitment to being in an exclusive partnership with someone, nothing
accomplishes the task of breaking trust and hurting feelings quite like cheating. However, as weird as it may sound, this isn’t always the case.
According to Esther Perel’s new book, State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity,
the rate of married women who have admitted to infidelity has gone up
by 40% since the ’90s, but these women have no intention of leaving
their spouses. Perel spends much of her book examining the psychological
meaning, motivation, and impact of these affairs but offers little
insight into the significance of the rise itself.
So, what’s the real reason behind this increase in lady cheaters?
It turns out, according to The Cut, that women who cheat often feel
loved by their husbands, but they don’t necessarily feel that all their
fundamental needs (sexual, emotional, psychological) are being met
inside their marriages. Perhaps these women thought it unfair to expect
one person (their husbands) to be and provide all the things they needed
at all times, and so they went looking elsewhere.
[post_ads]Throughout the book, the women described cheating not as a
transgression but as a creative act to “beat the system,” by having all
their needs thoroughly met while still maintaining the marriages they’d
spent years building. They were also unwilling to deal with the societal
criticism that often comes with having an open marriage, and did not
want to go through the process of negotiating such an arrangement.
At the end of the day, these women were not cheating with the
intention of ruining their relationships or ending their marriages, but
merely seeking a way to stay in without feeling suffocated by an
outdated institution.
We’re definitely not here to judge.
