PsychologyToday reveals the facts on Infidelity
We found an excellent article on psychologytoday.com called “The New Sex Scorecard”, authored by Hara Estroff Marano. The article provides some excellent insight in to the differences between men and woman. The following is an excerpt from her article about changes in infidelity called “The Incredible Shrinking Double Standard” .
Nothing unites men and women better than sex. Yet nothing divides us more either. Males and females differ most in mating psychology because our minds are shaped by and for our reproductive mandates. That sets up men for sex on the side and a more casual attitude toward it.
Twenty-five percent of wives and 44 percent of husbands have had extramarital intercourse, reports Baltimore psychologist Shirley Glass, Ph.D. Traditionally for men, love is one thing and sex is…well, sex.
In what may be a shift of epic proportions, sexual infidelity is mutating before our very eyes. Increasingly, men as well as women are forming deep emotional attachments before they even slip into an extramarital bed together. It often happens as they work long hours together in the office.
“The sex differences in infidelity are disappearing,” says Glass, the doyenne of infidelity research. “In my original 1980 study, there was a high proportion of men who had intercourse with almost no emotional involvement at all–nonrelational sex. Today, more men are getting emotionally involved.”
One consequence of the growing parity in affairs is greater devastation of the betrayed spouse. The old-style strictly sexual affair never impacted men’s marital satisfaction. “You could be in a good marriage and still cheat,” reports Glass.
