"
"If he could just be an adult man - not a child,
if he would consistently tell me the truth
if he would put his wife and children first
if he would clean up the terrible financial problems he had created
if he would resist the smear campaign with friends and family
if he would stop the constant pursuit of women
IF ONLY!" ~WoN member
Psychology Today
“The people who are running from bed to bed creating disasters for themselves and everyone else don't seem to know what they are doing. They just don't get it. But why should they? There is a mythology about infidelity that shows up in the popular press and even in the mental health literature that is guaranteed to mislead people and make dangerous situations even worse."
by Richard P. Fitzgibbons
(Selfishness Checklist on site)
“Narcissism is a leading cause of marital infidelity. Selfishness turns in a spouse so much upon himself or herself that this spouse fails to see and to appreciate the goodness, gifts and beauty in one's spouse. The narcissistic spouse then solely blames the husband and wife for difficulties in the marriage. This thinking often is used to portray oneself as a victim and, then, later to rationalize adultery and divorce. Other common emotional causes of marital infidelity are loneliness, weakness in confidence, excessive career stress with a lack of balance, a controlling spouse, and excessive anger with a desire to punish the spouse.”
"After an accidental infidelity, there is dearly the sense that one's life and marriage have changed. The choices are:
1. To decide that infidelity was a stupid thing to do, to confess it or not to do so, but to resolve to take better precautions in the future;
2. To decide you wouldn't have done such a thing unless your husband or wife had let you down, put the blame on your mate, and go home and pick your marriage to death;
3. To notice that lightning did not strike you dead, decide this would be a safe and inexpensive hobby to take up, and do it some more;
4. To decide that you would not have done such a thing if you were married to the right person, determine that this was meant to be," and declare yourself in love with the stranger in the bed."
By Peter Fox, couples therapist
by David Buss
“More than 100 measures of personality were examined, ranging from adventurousness to zaniness, but only three proved to be strong predictors of susceptibility to infidelity…The first was narcissism. Two other personality characteristics make it more likely that a spouse will stray; being low on conscientiousness and being high on a scale labeled psychoticism…
The psychoticism scale is something of a misnomer, since high scorers are not really psychotic. Rather, high scorers closely resemble the clinical picture of sociopathy. The personality disorder marked by a short-term sexual strategy, social conning, manipulativeness, and interpersonal exploitation."
The Emotional Cost of Infidelity
By Pam Gerhardt
By Pam Gerhardt
"Stage One: You develop a close emotional bond. This is the talking stage. For Shafer, it occurred on the Internet. For others, it happens at work or in the neighborhood. You get to know each other, about each other. There's a spark.
Stage Two: You keep it a secret. You don't tell your spouse or your friends that you are attracted emotionally to this person. "You know you're in deep when you decide to keep the relationship secret," says Florida psychologist Debbie Layton-Tholl. "Fantasy and secrets are very powerful. They fuel the fire."
Stage Three: You have lunch, play tennis. This is the dating phase, though you might not know it. You start seeing each other, doing things together. You might tell yourself this is just a colleague, just a friend.
Stage Four: Well. You know....."
Stage Two: You keep it a secret. You don't tell your spouse or your friends that you are attracted emotionally to this person. "You know you're in deep when you decide to keep the relationship secret," says Florida psychologist Debbie Layton-Tholl. "Fantasy and secrets are very powerful. They fuel the fire."
Stage Three: You have lunch, play tennis. This is the dating phase, though you might not know it. You start seeing each other, doing things together. You might tell yourself this is just a colleague, just a friend.
Stage Four: Well. You know....."
The Narcissistic Couple-What a Match
by Linda Martinez-Lewi
"Often the high level narcissist engages in myriad acts of infidelity (This is part of his lifestyle). As a concession to his lower level narcissistic spouse, he offers monetary and expensive acquisitions to keep her quiet and to retain the image of a perfect union. The narcissistic female spouse does not possess the high level of over-confidence and self-entitlement of her mate. As a result she gets her ego needs met through the rewards that flow through the narcissistic husband. This gender difference is reversed when we are dealing with a high level female narcissistic spouse. The ranks of high level female narcissists are growing.
The underside of the relationship of the narcissistic couple is ugly, ruthless, parasitic, often treacherous. The lower level narcissistic spouse in some cases demands large sums of money and platinum card life style access in exchange for ignoring her husband's countless affairs and peccadilloes."
by Ilam Aviram Yair, Amichai-Hamburger
“Based on what is known with respect to infidelity in "real life," we hypothesized that high expectations of online infidelity are based on both personality factors and factors related to the quality of the "real life" relationship. Among the personality factors that contribute to the development of a desire for an online affair, narcissism seems to play a pivotal role. Apart from its significant link to infidelity in "real life," narcissism has specific relevance to online communication. Seiden (2001) describes the Internet love story as a narcissistic accelerator, which enables people with narcissistic tendencies to meet online and create a mutual tale that flatters their grandiosity."
The Dark Triad: Facilitating a Short-Term Mating Strategy in Men
Peter Jonason, Norman Li, Gregory Webster, David Schmitt
Peter Jonason, Norman Li, Gregory Webster, David Schmitt
...In a mating context, those high on the Dark Triad traits may be especially well suited for an exploitative, short-term approach. For example, all three traits are correlated with low agreeableness (Bradlee & Emmons, 1992; Paulhus, 2001; Paulhus & Williams, 2002), which is associated with conflict in long-term relationships (Buss, 1991b) and marital dissatisfaction (Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997). Machiavellianism is associated with promiscuous, as well as, sexually coercive behaviour (McHoskey, 2001). Narcissists tend to have an unrestricted sociosexuality (Foster et al., 2006) and higher levels of infidelity (Campbell, Foster, Finkel, 2002a). Narcissist find it easy to start new relationships (Bradlee & Emmons, 1992), but are less committed to and interested in staying in existing relationships (Campbell & Foster, 2002; Foster et al., 2006), hence, they may pursue exploitative short-term matings to improve their own reproductive interests at the expense of their partners (Rowe, 1995). We predicted that the three individual measures associated with the Dark Triad—narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism—would be positively associated with behavioural and attitudinal measures of short-term mating..."
By Robert Wright
"...Natural selection was thought of almost as a benign deity, constantly "improving" our species for the greater good. But evolutionary psychology rests on a quite different world view: recognition that natural selection does not work toward overall social welfare, that much of human nature boils down to ruthless genetic self-interest, that people are naturally oblivious to their ruthlessness.
George Williams, whose 1966 book Adaptation and Natural Selection helped dispel the once popular idea that evolution often works for "the good of the group," has even taken to calling natural selection "evil" and "the enemy." The moral life, in his view, consists largely of battling human nature.
Darwin himself believed the human species to be a moral one--in fact, the only moral animal species. "A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them," he wrote.
In this sense, yes, we are moral. We have at least the technical capacity to lead an examined life: self-awareness, memory, foresight and judgment. Still, chronically subjecting ourselves to moral scrutiny and adjusting our behavior accordingly is hardly a reflex. We are potentially moral animals--which is more than any other animal can say--but we are not naturally moral animals. The first step to being moral is to realize how thoroughly we aren't..."
By Vivian Norris de Montaigu
"The stupidest comment I ever received was one a married wife of one of his best friend's said to me, "But you won! Those other women did not win!"...Win what? What exactly did I win? A Narcissistic Nightmare that took a long time to get rid of?!...His best friend told me to get pregnant, to slip up...I am lucky my good sense was still intact...that was what his then girlfriend now wife had done...you had to "trap" them...but I wanted true love...I wanted to be married and have a child together in a peaceful loving adult relationship...one in which spirituality and integrity had space as well. Most women want this...more than they want money or fame or anything so superficial...most human beings simply want to love and be loved and be happy."
Infidelity: Not a Pretty Picture
Kay Rutherford
Kay Rutherford
"Women are often controlled by men and very few societies exhibit an equalitarian relationship. One paramount way in which men control women is through sex and sexual power. Physician Bleier, a professor of neurophysiology and Women Studies (1984) emphasized, "It is precisely because sexuality is so charged for women with psychic and emotional significance…that it is so powerful a weapon for the social control of women." As slaves, concubines, and one of multiple wives, women are viewed as less than. This practice of viewing females as flawed or diseased is seen in childbirth, birth control, hormone replacement, abortion, or menopause. Often medicine (including the crooning brunette advertising Cialis on TV) is about women living and medicating to satisfy men's needs. It is much about control. Our courts and legal system place men at the head of the family and it is often the women’s job to stay within the family as the man sees fit, regardless of what he does. Bassoff (1991) tells us that “sexual exploitation of girls is a longstanding tradition” and so it is with infidelity…in American and in SubSaharan Africa…
Infidelity is a patriarchal way of controlling women. My work with infideled clients is very sad and thus, I share what I have professionally and personally learned: the basic premises of infidelity, the resultant trauma symptoms, infidelity’s abusive patterns, the societal acceptance of infidelity, and suggestions for counselors who work with infideled clients. My research is substantiated with interviews, an extensive bibliography selection, a trip to SubSaharan Africa and the results of a recent Women Studies class. In each section I compare the patriarchal control of women in America with that of SubSaharan Africa and the growing AIDS problems. As I tell my clients…there is almost always more to the story and it is usually not a pretty picture."
Infidelity is a patriarchal way of controlling women. My work with infideled clients is very sad and thus, I share what I have professionally and personally learned: the basic premises of infidelity, the resultant trauma symptoms, infidelity’s abusive patterns, the societal acceptance of infidelity, and suggestions for counselors who work with infideled clients. My research is substantiated with interviews, an extensive bibliography selection, a trip to SubSaharan Africa and the results of a recent Women Studies class. In each section I compare the patriarchal control of women in America with that of SubSaharan Africa and the growing AIDS problems. As I tell my clients…there is almost always more to the story and it is usually not a pretty picture."
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