1696. Sexual Fidelity: They Are Different — Who Cheats First?

Everybody accepts that infidelity and unfaithfulness mean sexual relations with other than one’s mate. Why the same for both, when the sexes are so very different?

This flow of thoughts infiltrates the minds of many females: Husband cheats and wife strikes back by cheating. When I finish below, I hope to show that it merely hides who really cheats first.

As described in post 1693 and elsewhere, women more highly value emotional fidelity than physical fidelity. It doesn’t make a man’s cheating tolerable, but it blesses women with a way to handle and recover from it. I believe that men also have a way to handle and recover from cheating. I share it with you ladies for whatever worth you can make of it.

I posted this at #418 in 2008: “Marriage provides frequent and convenient access to sex in exchange for his independence.” At the altar, men vow to give up something of great value to themselves, specifically their sexual independence. They expect something of equal value in return, namely exclusive access to wife’s sexual assets. View it as ownership, if you care to understand how the male nature works subconsciously.

However, wives don’t vow and obligate themselves to guard and sustain the value of their sexual assets at the level that husbands expect, at the level that matches yielding their independence. If husbands cheat when they break their vows, doesn’t this follow? Unfaithfulness arises in bits and pieces if wives devalue, deny, or discredit their sexual assets! That is the logical conclusion the male nature expects.

We know physical cheating is a particular event. Cheapening a wife’s sexual assets accumulate from much less. They also cause husband’s respect to dwindle and weaken his attachment to her: (I know, it shouldn’t be that way. But I describe how their primal natures work together and how a couple needs female influences that bond tightly in spite of natural pulling apart.)

So, how do wives reduce the value of their sexual assets? They ignore the tremendous value that men place on that greatest of husbandly investments. Instead, wives relegate husbandly investment in her exclusivity to the back burner of life. They view masculine interest in sex as just gettin’ it and gettin’ on with life. Wives can’t accept that men can be more complex than just having enough sex. So focused on the penis, they ignore the male mind. Consequently, far too easily and often, wives cheat husbands in mind and heart when:

• She flirts with other men. The more assertively and often he sees or suspects it, the more her exclusiveness wanes. (In this case, exclusiveness and value are synonymous.)
• She disregards sustaining her daily appeal as husband’s sex object. Husbands feast with their eyes. A daily regimen that foregoes his expectations of her attractiveness reduces the value of her sexual assets, which unintentionally and unfortunately elevates the apparent value of other women.
• She manipulates husband with mind games about sexual availability, and the importance of sex with her dwindles.
• She uses sex as reward and punishment, and her value waxes and wanes with her emotional ups and downs.
• She can’t or doesn’t enable and compliment him by letting him seduce her out of the doldrums or worse. His ability to provide and uplift her spirits thus deteriorates, and her exclusive attachment to him weakens.
• She pesters him for sex when he’s busy and discourages his pestering her when she’s busy or doesn’t feel like it.
• She endlessly demeans men in such ways that husband takes it personally and attaches it to his manliness. Her exclusivity gets swallowed up by her ego.
• She accuses husband of being victim of the male ego, as if she has none.

None of the bullets above constitutes cheating as we commonly think of it. However, the accumulation of many and other subtle offenses over time eat away at wife’s value in husband’s mind and heart. I choose to call that unfaithfulness, because it diminishes ideal fidelity.

By this time, every woman reader will be aghast at such thoughts. How can Guy convert loyal playfulness, faithful innocence, and good intentions into signs of unfaithfulness? Perception is reality. Whatever appears to be, is. If husband perceives wife’s sexual asset value to be less than he bargained for, he’s not morally justified but can easily be naturally inspired to seek action elsewhere.

Husband’s perception of wife’s great value fades away as she betrays, misuses, or fails to sustain her value as also being great to her. His respect declines, because she doesn’t take care to guard the return he expects on his investment. If women ‘kill’ that natural male perception that sexual assets should also be of great value to women, such as demonstrating generally that sex with a female is cheap and easy, then men have reason to feel cheated. The great independence they give up becomes a farce ready for exploitation contrary to avowed obligations.

Thus, a wife displays unfaithfulness without having sexual relations with a man not her husband. If she also physically cheats and husband finds out, it kills his interest in their marriage. His recovery takes the form of moving on. Minor incidents of unfaithfulness build until the physical goes too far. Then with almost religious fervor, husbands dump wives and pass them to someone else.

Without being aware, women effectively send many messages to reduce their sexual asset value, and it promotes if not inspires masculine infidelity. Simply put, if her sexual asset value appears less then he expects at the altar, his obligation weakens for his own fidelity. So, who really triggers whom to cheat first?

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