Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (18 page)
Read Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love Online
Authors: Barbara Pease
Those who decide to pair up permanently with their affairees often make the decision to “get it right this time.” The chemical changes that happen in the brain fool many cheaters into believing they will always live in “happily-ever-after” land. Statistics show that this is the case for only 25% of those who marry a lover—75% eventually divorce—but most who get remarried believe that they will be in the 25%. People who are having an affair live in a druglike fantasy world, free from paying bills and cleaning the toilet. A new car always has an exciting smell to potential buyers, but after a year it still needs washing every week, requires regular servicing, and feels just like a normal car.
Most people are oblivious to a straying mate for some time because they are living in the relationship based on the trust that their partner will remain faithful, so they don’t look for clues. When philandering signals do become evident, some people prefer to go into denial rather than face the upset of uncovering the affair. Women are better at spotting the signals, which is why over 80% of relationships are ended by women. In
The Definitive Book of Body Language
we showed why men are not as perceptive as women: The male brain does not have the same ability at matching the contradictory signals between speech and action. This is why so many men are shocked when they discover their woman has been cheating.
When your relationship has problems and you don’t know how to fix it, you are a candidate for an affair and it may offer
a temporary escape from your problems. Below are the nine types of affairs that people have.
You may feel that your partner has lost interest in you or doesn’t spend much time with you, or maybe you married young and feel inexperienced. Either way, you wonder what rating you might still have on the mating market. You feel a part of you is incomplete, and you’re resentful that your partner ignores your needs. You no longer know if you are still attractive to the opposite sex or you feel you’ve missed out on something. You just want to have this affair because you feel you must satisfy your self-doubts or you just want to get it out of your system. If you are in one of these affairs, once you work out your market value, you’ll probably get over it. If you can contain the fallout, things usually get better at home.
You get to middle age and start to wonder what life is all about, what you may have missed out on, and whether you have wasted your life. Friends your age or younger are getting illnesses or dying, and you are losing your looks as gravity takes over. Your sex drive is diminishing. The end of your life is visible on the horizon, and you feel a sense of urgency to do something memorable or significant. Panic sets in, and you want to do “something crazy” to justify your existence. An affair is really not what you need—you need counseling about getting older, and you need to set new and exciting goals for your life.
This is a common type of affair in the early years of marriage or a new permanent relationship. The people who are candidates
for this affair have nagging doubts about whether they made the right choice. Would they be happier with someone else, or would their current relationship problems disappear if they were with another person? If you are in this affair, you need to identify what specific aspect of your relationship you are trying to shine a light on and develop an action to deal with it. You don’t really need an affair to do it. If you’ve found out what you need to know, get out of the affair and get on with real life.
This affair begins because you don’t want to face your partner and tell him or her you’ve had enough. You’re not even sure what you need or what’s missing in your marriage, and you think that by blowing it up you have a chance of putting it back together in a better way. You leave clues lying around so your partner will discover the affair and this will save you from summoning up the courage to sort it out. You don’t need this affair either—you need to face up to your partner and put it all on the table. This approach is less painful and less costly than the affair. A Time-Bomb Affair is seen as the easy way out, but it’s not.
Your partner has cheated on you, so you have a revenge affair to even the score or to show your partner how it feels. You don’t go into this affair for the emotional or sexual experience; you do it out of spite. This affair can fill you with feelings of guilt and self-loathing, and is a form of abuse, both to yourself and to your affairee (unless it’s a man—he’ll just be grateful for the sex). If you are in this affair, remember that your goal was revenge and don’t get wrapped up in the emotional side of what could be a rebounder. Get a counselor and learn how to deal with your anger over this.
You know you’re in one of these affairs when you spend more time opening up your heart to the person than having sex with him or her. In fact, the sex, however powerful it may be, seems almost incidental to the main benefit you are getting from the affair—free therapy. You feel understood by the other person; that person supports and encourages you. This is another affair you don’t need—you need professional therapy. It’s cheaper.
This affair happens when your market value has gone up because you’ve gotten a better job, lost weight, improved your appearance, or gotten a degree, or your partner’s rating has gone down because your partner has let himself or herself go or has become relationship lazy. When you got married, your partner was the best you could do at the time. Now you’re older and more experienced, have a wider perspective on relationships, and think you could do better. Talk to your partner about your unsettled feelings and set joint goals that will bring you both to the same market value. Whenever you upgrade anything in life, you usually pay a lot more for the new model and lose a lot on the old one. Maybe a good spring cleaning and renovation of your current relationship is what is required.
Your partner refuses to do something you say you really need—be it emotional connection, talking from the heart, oral sex, anal sex, sex on a roller coaster, or anything involving AAA batteries. So you risk your entire relationship by getting it elsewhere. A good sex therapist can help you develop strategies to deal with this, or maybe you feel your unmet need is bigger than the overall relationship. In that case, you might do better to leave.
As we said earlier, given the right time, place, and circumstances, almost anyone could become involved in an affair. You don’t really know how you got into this affair or why, but damn, it feels good! You don’t know how to end it, and you are ridden with anguish and guilt. You ask yourself, Why am I doing this? and you don’t have an answer. The Unintentional Affair highlights that something was missing from your relationship and you or your partner denied it was a problem. Work out what it is you need and end the affair.
There is no such thing as an ideal affair. Keeping an affair going involves covering up lies, explaining things away, and dealing with anger or guilt. The cheater often becomes consumed by guilt and sometimes lashes out verbally or physically at his or her partner. If you are having an affair, respect yourself and your partner and get couples counseling or get out of the relationship.
The relationship counselor sent the arguing couple into the back garden to review how to best deal with their problems, where they came upon a wishing well. The wife leaned over, made a wish, and threw in a coin
.
The husband decided to make a wish, too, but he leaned over too much, fell into the well, and drowned
.
The wife was stunned for a moment, but then smiled and whispered to herself, “It really works!”
Suspicion that a partner is carrying on with someone else can be worse to live with than the truth. Many women will practice denial, whereas most men will generally look for proof and want to know for certain.
It’s very rarely as it is on television: Few people discover their partners are having an affair by walking in on them in the act—even though a large proportion of men choose their own bed in their own home to throw the leg over. Sometimes the betrayed will hear about it through the grapevine. Friends often agonize over whether to tell someone that his or her partner is playing around—the fear of “shoot-the-messenger” syndrome is very real, and some friends have other than good intentions when they spill the beans. Most women will choose to tell, fearing they too could one day be the last to know and believing that they would want a friend to tell them.
The most common way most people find out is written evidence. It could be a hotel bill proving the cheater to be where he or she should not have been, receipts for gifts or flowers that can’t be explained, mobile-phone records, credit-card statements, e-mail history, or phone numbers on pieces of paper.
In the absence of hard evidence, a nosy friend, or the money to pay a private detective, however, there are universal telltale signs that may suggest it is worth asking questions. Be prepared for anger at the lack of trust if your partner manages to prove your suspicions wrong, but also be prepared for the consequences if the response is the one you really don’t want to hear.
A man came home to find his wife in bed with his best friend, so he shot his wife and gave the dog a reprieve
.
When a man or woman gets a new love interest on the side, the increased hormonal activity in the brain causes behavioral changes. These may be subtle changes to one’s daily habits or new habits that are designed to try to cover up normal daily routines.
Routine changes
—any change in behaviors that have been part of your life as a couple can indicate a driving force outside the home: A man starts doing his own washing; an armchair TV addict joins a gym; your partner stops wearing a wedding ring or starts locking drawers….Sex changes
—there may be subtle changes in the regularity or style of doing the horizontal hula, but they should not be ignored. If they want to try things they’ve never done before, there may be someone else coaching or influencing a newfound passion, sensitivity, or expertise. There may also be a sudden lack of wanting to have sex at all.Appearance changes
—dieting, new clothes, showers the minute they walk in the door, him shaving twice a day, her getting a new hairstyle or cutting her hair.Business trips
—increased trips away, more than the usual number of overnighters, failure to invite you to business events, secrecy or vagueness about schedules, failure to share flight or hotel information, not being where one is supposed to be. Alternatively, he might start working late into the evening, or you may notice that her workmates are uncomfortable around you.Nervous reactions
—when the phone rings or when you mention a certain person at his work. Also look out for talking in her sleep, erratic mood swings, and increased criticism of you.Conversation changes
—in the case of cheating at work, someone who was mentioned in passing as part of her news of the day either figures more prominently—“Had lunch with …” or “Was chatting to … today”—or
disappears from discussion completely. A man will often repeat the same stories because he’s forgotten who’s been told what.Technology changes
—you start to notice that your partner prefers to e-mail you rather than call you. When he calls you, conversations are kept short, end abruptly, or are whispered, all signs that someone else may be present. She has constant excuses to go for a walk with her mobile phone—for example, there’s bad phone reception where you are sitting—or she goes to the toilet too often and for too long. When you are together, he doesn’t want to pick up certain incoming calls in your presence. She is constantly online, even when with you, checking e-mails, and if you approach, the window on the computer is suddenly closed. His BlackBerry is never left lying around where you might see it. Her computer and phone suddenly have passwords.New friends
—he has new work buddies you never get to meet. They call from time to time, but the calls are always short—she says she’ll call them back or that she doesn’t have the information right now. If you find out that his friends are cheaters, it may be a cheaters’ support group. Like attracts like.
These clues are more often seen in men than in women. Women are more subtle in concealment, and men are generally worse when it comes to spotting clues (as detailed in
The Definitive Book of Body Language
). Often there are clues a blind dog could spot, but you would be amazed how many men will still fail to notice—for example, a complete withdrawal of her affection, suggestions that he go away for the weekend, condoms in the travel bag, emotional distance, and her preoccupation with everything but him. Women who are having an affair are likely to withdraw intimacy and sex in the marriage because duplicity comes much harder for them—most have evolved to be one-man women at heart.