It is estimated that 65% of divorces occur ?because of an extra-marital affair. And, despite the sexual revolution and the reduction of the “double standard,” more men still cheat than women. Now science shows us why this gender imbalance might exist.
First, there could be a genetic link. Swedish researchers recently identified an “infidelity gene,” which is present in four of 10 men. This gene can explain why some men are more prone to stormy relationships and bond less to their wives or girlfriends. However, it’s important to remember that biology is not destiny. People born with genetic predispositions to say, heart disease or obesity, make lifestyle adjustments that compensate for the negative gene.
The shape of our families is changing. People are marrying for the first time later in life, and the divorce rate is soaring, giving way to many single parent households. Single life is no longer a short rite of passage; it’s an important consumer demographic. For the first time in history (since the immigration of mostly male, early settlers), almost half of adult Americans are now unmarried. There’s even a magazine devoted to the lifestyles of those who have made a commitment to be single. It includes ads for commitment rings to purchase for oneself.
But has love changed? Has committed love been replaced by a revolving door of dates? Is long-term monogamy even necessary for our species’ survival? The answers are complicated. Marriage may be changing, but it will never go out of style. In case you’ve been living under a rock, there’s a fight going on right now in America to allow more people to be granted marital rights.
Marriage may not be going away, but its purpose has shifted. Historically, marriage was a place for women and children to have economic protection. It was a place where religious values could be taught and extended to the next generation, and a place where family fortunes could remain intact. More recently, marriage became a place for a relatively new invention: romantic love. But since dating and hooking up have morphed into America’s favorite pastime, full of hopeful highs and disappointing lows, even romantic love is losing its luster.
So why choose marriage today? Because it is an intellectual decision that leads to survival of the species. Anthropologists have always said that it was human’s sophisticated social structures, including the adoption of long-term monogamy, that help our species procreate and thrive.
Humans are the animals that require a huge amount of nurturing for our psychological and physical survival, more than virtually any other animal on earth. While most newborns are up on four legs and running with the herd just hours after birth, we Homo sapiens have a vulnerable in-arms (or stroller) phase that lasts almost four years. And it’s really, really hard to nurse and carry a baby while extracting resources from the environment. Just ask any single mother. Doable, yes, but very difficult. Remember the mission: to grow up healthy and create offspring that are also healthy and ready for careers and parenthood.
Family therapists know that dysfunctional family systems eventually fall out of evolution’s chain. Each generation has fewer and fewer offspring that survive through the next procreation, until the family line finally dies off. Apparently, neglectful parenting can create drunk drivers, criminals caught in crossfire, hermits, drug addicts, and narcissists too selfish for parenting — all people with lower chances of reproducing. But let me make one thing clear before I get inundated with e-mails about this: I am IN NO WAY SAYING that all single mothers create dysfunctional families. What I am saying is that every time one factor is removed from a system that has been selected through evolution, the chances for dysfunction increase. Plenty of single mothers are raising healthy kids with the help of extended family, surrogate male role models, and friendship villages that act as a de facto family. And this is part of our changing family structure.
Evolution has shown that our best chances for survival and for the survival of our offspring’s offspring is a team approach to raising humans. And the best team captains are people who have a biological interest in the child. And to create that, we need to sometimes put the notion of romantic love aside and make an intellectual decision to do what’s best for our genes, ahem, I mean kids.
I’m looking forward to helping you finally get the love you deserve! I hope you’ll join my new online workshop on popexpert.com, 10 Secrets of Mindful Relationships. Registration is open now: http://bit.ly/1GOwq3v
There’s no way around it, when someone has wronged us, it hurts. It often hurts a lot for a very long time. The injury could be minor, though profound, like a betrayal by a friend, or it could be major, like a physical assault. The point of the saying is that, no matter the injury, we can’t truly move on until we learn to forgive. And that’s a very tough walk. Here are a few thoughts on the art of forgiveness and how we can all learn to cultivate it.
First of all, think of forgiveness as a gift to yourself, not a gift to your offender. When a deep injury is done to us, we’ll never recover until we forgive. It is a way to clear a blockage in our minds and move forward with new knowledge and new growth. We are a more evolved person after we forgive, and that’s our gift to ourselves.
Forgiveness requires empathy. It is essential that you begin the forgiveness process by putting yourself in the shoes of your offender. Imagine that pain and fear are behind his or her anger. Imagine a small child inside your enemy who is as confused as you are about the injury. Imagine what it must feel like to walk with the guilt of having hurt someone. It doesn’t matter if your offender will ever actually get to the conscious place of feeling guilt and remorse. He or she need not seek your forgiveness in order for you to have a transformation. This process is about you. But it is helpful to come up with some explanation for your offender’s heinous action that feels rational to you. This is your mental journey. So, whether you imagine their bad childhood, their feelings of racial or gender persecution, or their feelings of envy toward you, find a reason for their bad behavior.
I’m looking forward to helping you finally get the love you deserve! I hope you’ll join my new online workshop on popexpert.com, 10 Secrets of Mindful Relationships. Registration is open now: http://bit.ly/1GOwq3v
Now, from that place of understanding, make a conscious decision to forgive that person. Create a private action that supports your decision. Write an unsent letter to them, light a candle and say a prayer in their name, or simply stick a post-it on your bathroom mirror that says “I forgive (insert name) I have feelings of love for (insert name).” This is a secret act but it’s a powerful action for brain change. For a few weeks, return daily to these private actions of forgiveness. Reread that letter. Relight that candle. Say the words on the post-it out loud. This is a way to rewire your brain.
The biggest step toward forgiveness is to express it to your offender. Whether you do it in an email (easiest) on the phone or in person (best, if possible) it must be done so that you can move on. And the tricky part of forgiveness is this: to express forgiveness without expressing blame. Your words should focus on your own feelings of hurt rather than the act that caused the injury. So, instead of saying, “I forgive you for stealing from me, you jerk,” you might say something like, “I felt so betrayed when I lost that money. But now I am letting go of those feelings. I want the best for you.” This is your journey and this higher level communication will speak to the highest level of your offender’s personality.
And, be reminded that forgiveness in not a magic trick to change someone else. Even if you change, the other person may not. And that’s okay. And finally, know that forgiveness takes maintenance. During future life stresses, old feelings about this injury may bubble up again. Each time they do, quietly walk those feelings back to bed with the same techniques. Eventually enough time will pass that those memories will lose their emotional punch. Forgiveness is the most mentally freeing experience. I encourage you to try it.
Have you been blindsided by a divorce? If so, you are not alone. According to divorce attorneys, women are more likely to initiate divorce than men. Plenty of men are happy to stay in good enough relationships because, frankly, they don’t believe their emotional needs are important to survival. But not women. Women put more emotional demands on men than ever before.
So what do you do? If you’re like most men who have been blinded by divorce, your first instinct is to tell yourself, “I’ve got to find a way to stop my divorce. I need to save my marriage.” This is an especially good idea if there are kids in your nest. But if you’re like most men, you’re probably going about it in the wrong way.
I’ll bet the first things you are trying, are all the things that worked in the past. The things that worked when you courted her originally. You’re showering her with affection and gifts to remind her how valuable she is to you. You tell her you love her. You take her on date nights. Or, you give her all the freedom she desires — more girls nights out, yoga retreats to go “find herself” or even a housekeeper so she doesn’t feel so burdened. When that doesn’t work, you try to give her the emotional attention she says she’s craving. You spend a ton of time in couples therapy while she hashes out all the reasons she wants to leave and you tell her what a great wife she is, and then you pay the therapy bills. While all this makes sense from a logical point of view, the truth is, SHE KNOWS HOW VALUABLE SHE IS. That’s why she is ready to head to the mating market.
Showering her with affection and love may have worked when you were initially courting your wife, but now it underscores her suspicion that she is a valuable partner asset — to someone else! I think you see where I am going with this. Being the nice guy just doesn’t work.
But there’s another problem here. Being the bad guy is even less effective. Changing the locks, blocking bank accounts, or giving her your rages or the silent treatment, only serve to remind her why she wants to leave the relationship. It’s way easier to leave an angry man than a groveling man. That’s why, if your goal is “stop my divorce,” there’s an even better man who must emerge. The strong backbone guy.
Think of a spine. It is flexible but firm. It supports the entire body and controls everything through a balancing act that never bends too far. Growing a back bone in an impending divorce means you must do three things:
1. Raise your own self esteem. Go to the gym. Flirt with women (don’t let your wife know about this harmless flirting or she will perceive you as the bad guy.) If you have kids, win the best Dad award in their eyes. Discover that you are a valuable man in the eyes of the world, your children, and most importantly, your own eyes.
2. Agree with her. She’s not expecting this. She wants you to grovel or be mean. When you do neither, and you calmly make plans to go on with your life, she may second guess her decision.
3. See a therapist — alone. You need to get in touch with your feelings. And if you’ve been sleeping with the enemy, she’s not the person to bleed on. Tell her you’re going to therapy. That you need some support in processing all that’s happening. She’ll beg you to go to couples therapy because she doesn’t want to feel excluded. In fact, if your therapist is a woman, she might even feel a little jealous. These feelings will confuse her, but let her sit with them.
4. Stare into her eyes and use platonic touch – I know you think that sex will cure everything. If you could just get her into bed, she’ll melt and forget about all her crazy ideas of breaking up. But sadly, there’s a pretty good chance she’s already having rocking sex with someone else and exposure to old pheromones will generally not stir her juices. And when women have an affair, they have a 79% chance of falling in love with their paramour. This is a battle for love not sex. That’s where eye contact is important. In a lab, strangers have been known to fall in love simply by staring into each others eyes for four minutes straight. The eyes are the window to the soul. So, while you are having all the calm conversations about the break up, use plenty of eye contact and touch only in a protective, brotherly way. If she sexually comes on to you, tell her you do desire her but feel it’s not the right time. The world’s biggest aphrodisiac is the word no.
Will all this work to stop your divorce? It depends, of course, on the degree of marital discord, if there is substance abuse involved, if she has already made a commitment to someone else. But I’ll tell you this, FOR SURE, playing the nice guy or flipping out like a bad guy will only seal the deal.
DR. WENDY WALSH IS AVAILABLE FOR TELEPHONE RELATIONSHIP COACHING. TO SCHEDULE, PLEASE CLICK HERE AND COMPLETE THE BOX ON THE LEFT. SHE’LL PERSONALLY RESPOND.
WATCH ME ON CNN TALKING TO DON LEMON ABOUT HOW DIVORCE IS CONTEGIOUS.
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT LOVE AND SEX? GET 50% OF MY ONLINE WORKSHOP “THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HUMAN MATING” USE PROMO CODE “LOVE 50” CLICK HERE
It’s the age old battle of the sexes. In marriage, often husbands want more sex than wives. (But not always!) Men are anthropologically wired to spread their seed and women are wired to be selective of who they have sex with. Let’s face it, if our hunter/gatherer men had risked things that females risk — a higher STD rate, more likelihood of a broken heart, or an 18 year case of parenthood — every time they had sex, they would have evolved to not want sex so much either. Clearly sex is a high risk hobby for women, hormonal changes, and dead-tired fatigue after having babies means that plenty of marriages suffer from a high-desire meets low-desire dead lock.
But new research from Science of Relationships shows that couples who survive the high-desire-verses-low-desire deadlock are those who have high “sexual communal strength.” Simply put, in these couples obligatory sex is reframed as an investment in the sexual community that both partners hold a stake in. Sex isn’t something that is given or taken, but something that is seen as an investment in the relationship.
And here are two other sexual facts and that can go a long way to beating this common problem:
• Wives Need Novelty More Than Men – Research shows that women in longterm sexual relationships get bored way before men. And when women become bored sexually, they aren’t as likely to cheat as they are to shut down. Tip for men: novelty for women means stimulating all her senses. She might be inspired by a different room, a different scented candle, a different position, different lingerie, different music and more important: a sex schedule complete with childcare, so she can plan ahead.
• Husbands Are Fine with Quantity Over Quality – Now I’m not saying that men don’t want a deeply connected, wild bedroom romp complete with massage oil, whispered fantasies, and olympian moves. But if the choice is no sex, plenty of husbands are happy with the frequent hand-job/blow-job combo, (with or without a side of fries.) Wives might pay heed to the notion of those couple with “sexual communal strength” and understand that a regular “pipe cleaning” can go a long way to keeping a relationship happy.
The bottom line is that men and women would both benefit from understanding their different sexualities. In terms of arousal, women are crock pots and men are microwave ovens. Begging for sex isn’t sexy. But helping a woman feel beautiful and relaxed is a turn on.
(P.S. Not all couples fall into the “husbands want more sex” dynamic. Sometimes it’s the husband with the low desire and that is sometimes linked to stress, a medical problem, or normal aging.)
It is estimated that 65% of divorces occur ?because of an extra-marital affair. And, despite the sexual revolution and the reduction of the “double standard,” more men still cheat than women. Now science shows us why this gender imbalance might exist.
I’m looking forward to helping you finally get the love you deserve! I hope you’ll join my new online workshop on popexpert.com, 10 Secrets of Mindful Relationships. Registration is open now: 
