Analysis of Gender and Infidelity Research Paper

Infidelity is the act of being unfaithful to your partner, also referred to as adultery. Adultery is focused more on affairs that occur in marriages. There are many definitions as to what counts as having an affair. To some, emotional affairs fall under this umbrella, while others say it is only cheating when it is a physical act. The idea of what is considered cheating is constantly changing over time due to non-monogamous relationships becoming more normalized in the modern-day. It is a common-sense belief that it is mostly men that have extramarital affairs. Society has normalized the idea that men cheat more through the media. Men are more likely to cheat due to their biological nature, sense of power, and curiosity.

Regarding gender scripts, men are encouraged to have a lot of sexual partners and to become very experienced sexually. Men are expected to continue their family lineage by spreading their seed, while women are supposed to be nurturing and taking care of the kids. This leads to the modern-day expectations that still occur of women being private with their sex life to protect their image. Society pushes pressures onto men that to truly be a man they need to always want sex. This is a common excuse as to why society allows men to have many sexual partners while shaming women. This need to have sex leads to men having affairs more than women. Once men are in these strict monogamous marriages, they technically can only spread their seed with their wife which cuts off their ability to continue their lineage in many aspects. Some hardships come up where a woman may have struggled with getting pregnant and cannot have a kid. This leads to men outsourcing from their marriage so they can fulfill their need of having offspring. Infidelity is a part of human nature as it is deeply engraved in the biological makeup of men’s needs (Wróblewska-Skrzek 2021). This supports the common belief because it states that it is a part of a man to want to reproduce which leads to them having affairs. 

Power is another reason in which most men tend to have extramarital affairs. Power can come in many ways whether it is earning more money or having a higher position at a job. Since the Victorian Era in the U.S. women were expected to be frigid and be submissive to their husbands. Similarly in Vietnam, Confucianism beliefs supported the ideals that men could engage in affairs because they were spreading their family lineage, but women had to stay virginal and committed to their husbands (Nguyen, Shiu and Hardesty 2015). Historically, across cultures, women have been expected to let their husband’s shine. As society has become more progressive, women have gained more power in society. Many women have CEO positions, currently, there is the first woman as vice president, and while there is still a wage gap, women are less dependent on men financially than ever before. This new life of women being able to support themselves has led to men feeling like less than and not manly enough. Munsch’s (2015) findings show that men who are in marriages in which their wife is the breadwinner tend to engage most in infidelity due to a feeling of threat to their masculinity. His findings suggest that “economic dependency may affect relationship quality, and decreased relationship quality may lead married men to seek extramarital partnerships (Munsch 2015). The gender scripts set in place ages ago still directly impact marriages today as they put pressure on men to have to prove themselves as breadwinners leading them to cheat. Women have a sense of empowerment from gaining these new positions and feel confidence rather than a sense of needing to go run to another man. The research on power shows how men mostly cheat due to the societal effects on their gender expectations. 

Lastly, curiosity is another reason why men are mostly the ones that cheat. There has currently been more exposure to polygamous relationships and if monogamy is not real. There are many debates in which people argue that monogamy is just an idea set in place by religions to establish a perfect family ideal. Christianity throughout history has set in place many of the moral codes we follow now as a society. Growing up people are taught to wait till marriage, have kids with their spouses, and then continue the cycle with their kids and so on. The idea of sexual exploration has only been encouraged for men in society, but it is more common now for women to also explore. This has led to a society in which more people are having premarital sex, and more are exploring the idea of polygamy. Having a variety of sexual experiences is more accepted now and people aren’t super pressured into waiting till marriage. There are still many people though who feel society’s deeply engraved pressures and follow the traditional timeline of what is supposed to happen during sex. Many people skip having a phase in which they sleep around and instead have super long committed relationships, never experiencing sleeping around. Many people do not need to have this experience and they live a very fulfilled life. Men are very curious human beings and as previously stated they are biologically natured to want to have sex to be able to produce as much offspring as they can. This curiosity leads to many men feeling stuck in their marriages and wondering if there is something they are missing out on which leads to them having affairs. Through an audiotaped interview in a case study, there is a personal anecdote shared by a married man on why he cheated (Peoples et al. 2019). The man in the study named Ryan shares how he was bored in his marriage, leaning on pornography at first to meet his needs, but then later developing a sexual addiction constantly cheating on his wife. He felt religious pressure to keep these feelings forbidden and felt ashamed but continued the affairs over and over. He felt shame morally from his faith to not have these cravings and curiosities outside of his marriage but continued (Peoples et al. 2019). Men experience cravings and need to explore, but society promotes monogamous relationships which leads to them cheating. 

Cheating in society has become very normalized. We see it shown in social media platforms, movies and highlighted in songs. Men have extramarital affairs due to feeling like they’re losing power in relationships, which leads to them having to prove masculinity, curiosity, and their biological nature. Surprisingly, there is evidence that men’s biological makeup pushes them to crave spreading their seed and having affairs.  The consensus throughout the articles is that men do mostly have extramarital affairs.