1558. Betrayal—The Serial Conqueror

Another kind of husband lacks respect for wife and she ‘returns the favor’ or vice versa. He’s the serial conqueror.

• Once they get by with cheating, some men repeat it either accidentally or purposely. They become almost addicted but more to cheating than sex. They find they can and so they do. They also develop a different mindset from other cheaters. As if still single, they seek notches for an imagined bedpost.
• Such a husband enters the cheating foray in one or both of two ways. First, he cheats accidentally. He finds adventure and self-admiration in doing it so he repeats again and again. Second, disappointed or resentful of how he’s treated by wife, he reaches out to something else (restoration of being respected plus the ever-driving pride of conquest) rather than someone else (mistress and “Wife doesn’t understand me.”).
• Desire to score again and again steers him toward promiscuity; return episodes with the same woman suffice when a new woman is not available. Cheating and getting by with it promotes greater self-admiration, greater ambition, and more varied missions outside the home.
• Effectively, he builds an auxiliary sex life that may become primary and preferred over that at home. Business trips and similar opportunities propel him onward and upward in the search of more self-admiration and self-respect.
• A conquered woman loses her value, although return episodes may keep him sexually involved outside the home. When it becomes routine, respect for wife has deteriorated to a level she can detect. He lacks so much respect for wife that he frequently insults her.
• With second and subsequent infidelities and deviations from his self-image, he relies on his past successful method of recovery rather than trying to restore the integrity of his original self-image. Wife detects it as weakened emotional fidelity and perhaps lack of devotion to her.
• As he revises his self-image to find approval in what he does, three things occur: As with women, promiscuity weakens his emotional connection with anyone but Self. His self-image changes to include sexual expertise. His self-centeredness intensifies. All three push him further toward further adventurous habits outside the home.
• Serial conquers have a weak sense of guilt to begin with, so it’s easily assuaged out of existence. As his self-image fails to match his behavior, he alters it. He sees a new Self. He visualizes himself as great lover rather than faithful husband, as ‘scoring master’ rather than disappointed homebody, as defender of his deceptions rather than man of integrity with primary responsibility for others.

The serial conqueror’s cheating may start with an accidental episode, but the primary justification in his mind is lack of fulfillment in the home. His wife doesn’t respect him for who he is, isn’t grateful for what he does, or fails to provide sexual fulfillment and probably more than one of those masculine expectations.

I know. It sounds as if I blame the wife. But not so! He’s to blame, because he chose her. He ‘inherited’ whatever she is long before she absorbed the knowledge and understanding that those three factors are critical to keeping a man at home.

Tomorrow’s post (1559) completes the series with the hopeless trickster.