The spam email got right to the point: 4 Wives looking to Cheat, have been matched for you in your area: Sarah, 120 lbs, 5’6, 36c, 10 miles away; Morgan, 121 lbs, 5’9, 36d, 19 miles away; Kelsey, 124 lbs, 5’7, 34b, 14 miles away, available most nights (husband works midnights); Samantha, 125 lbs, 5’5, 36c, 25 miles away. All 4 women are waiting to speak with you live & have photos. Webcam’s are available for all 4.
The sad part about emails such as this is that there are married women who are looking for sexual partners and many of them are using online personals to find them.
Men aren’t the only ones who betray their marriage vows. A 2004 Newsweek article on female infidelity said women are gaining equality when it comes to adultery.
It’s not just the rich or famous who stray although they may have more opportunity. The woman living next door, sitting at the next desk, or in line at the grocery, may be cheating. It’s becoming common to read about wives who cheat or hear them discussing their betrayals on national television.
On a television talk show, a woman said she was cheating on her husband because she needed more attention than he gave her. Her husband’s job required that he do extensive traveling. She could deal with him being gone much of the time, but she couldn’t deal with his lack of attention when he returned home. Her identity was hidden from viewers because she didn’t want to risk her husband learning of her infidelity.
A second woman, whose identity wasn’t hidden, said her first husband divorced her due to her infidelity. She said his “lack of attention” caused her to cheat. She said if her current husband stopped being attentive she might cheat again.
In her book “A Passion for More: Women Reveal the Affairs That Make or Break Their Marriages” author Susan Shapiro Barash writes:
“Women of today, as a result of the women’s movement as well as the dynamic of women in the workplace, have a heightened self-awareness. Their exposure to men, their access to men, is different than in the past. The role and gender of the provider have been altered, bringing about changes in the nuclear family. A sense of entitlement prevails, touching not only educated, upper-class women as the initial women’s movement of the sixties did, but filtering to women of various walks of life, race, and social strata.”
When I was doing my own research on the reasons for adultery, I found women had many reasons for justifying their adultery.Rather than attempting to fix the relationship, some wives chose to find someone else to provide what they said their husbands lacked. Some wives cheated because their husbands cheated on them. They were getting even. Some wives wanted their husbands to suffer the pain of betrayal they felt. They flaunted their affairs.
Some betrayed wives took their husband’s cheating personally. By taking a lover, they reaffirmed their sexual desirability. Despite the pain of betrayal they had suffered, some betrayed wives saw nothing wrong with cheating with another woman’s husband. Some women felt guilty and said they loved their husbands. Despite what they said, they would rather risk their marriage than give up their lover.
Are women equal when it comes to adultery? Is their betrayal worse than their husband’s or the same? Society has generally turned a blind eye to male infidelity. Not so women who betray their vows. A man who cheats is virile. A woman who cheats is “loose” or worse. One is given an “attaboy!” and the other is branded with a scarlet “A.”
Decades past, women held the marriage together, waiting at home for their straying husbands to return. Some of their daughters and granddaughters are taking a different approach. I can’t help but wonder if subsequent generations will learn more respect for their marriage vows or disregard them altogether.
© 2006 Pat Gaudette. All rights reserved.
Order Pat’s books from Amazon.com: How to Survive Your Husband’s Midlife Crisis: Strategies and Stories from the Midlife Wives Club and Midnight Confessions: True Stories of Adultery.