Are Men or Women More Prone to Unfaithfulness?
May 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Unfaithfulness in a relationship has been a hot topic discussed in many settings, probably since the beginning of time. The basketball court, the beauty salon, and the barber shop, are some of the likely places in which people have been compelled to put their two cents in. We’ve all huddled up in a group or at least witnessed people gather to debate over the roles men and women play in their unfaithfulness. Some debates are heated, and some are even humorous, while others allow women and men to learn more about each other in the process of exchanging ideas, feelings, and attitudes about the impact of cheating and being cheated on. Yet the age-old question still remains: Who cheats more, women or men?
Some men seem to follow a common route when developing an answer to this question. Their initial thoughts are somewhat obscured by their resistance to admit their own unfaithfulness in their relationships. But when probed further into discussion, they’re more willing to confess it as long as they’re given the chance to explain why. When asked if women or men cheat the most, transportation manager Lee Greene replied: “I believe men cheat the most because we can. For me, it was easy. Being away from home a lot made it easy and my cockiness made it easy. But I got a conscience about hurting the woman I was with. I felt like a snake, so I stopped.”
“Women do cheat, but men cheat the most. Women have to think about certain risks if the man decides to walk away, like pregnancy, emotional attachment, and STDs,” said salon owner Alta Haralson. “Men don’t seem to consider all the same risks as much as women do, which would make women less inclined to cheat.” She went on to say that the reason a man goes outside of his relationship to have an affair is due to ego and selfishness. “If he feels he’s not sexually fulfilled by his partner, he goes elsewhere. Sometimes it’s just about being bored with one person.”
Unfaithfulness in relationships can result from numerous issues such as lack of intimacy, feeling neglected or ignored, and emotional withdrawal. Unfaithfulness can also lead to irreversible distrust, revenge, divorce and, in some extreme cases, murder. As vehement as we may be about our opinions on this subject, we must be as diligent in remembering the outcome of some of the most infamous cases of unfaithfulness. To name a few: Joey Buttafuoco and his under-aged sidepiece, Amy Fisher, who shot Mrs. Buttafuoco in the face in the heat of a jealous rage; Basketball star Kobe Bryant, who stepped out on his wife, Vanessa, when he had a sexual encounter with a woman in a Colorado hotel room, after which he was charged with rape; and let’s not forget about one of our nation’s most revered presidents, Bill Clinton, who faced impeachment after lying about his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. The media had a field day with these cases, crowning men the kings of unfaithfulness.
However, according to Michelle Langley, author of Women’s Infidelity, women are cheating just as much as men and the media have just begun to acknowledge, to a limited extent, the pervasive crisis associated with female unfaithfulness. On her website, Womensinfidelity.com, she asserts that after researching women’s sexuality for more than ten years, she concluded that most of society’s beliefs about females are extremely distorted and invalid. She further claims that after an average of four years of marriage, women in their twenties and thirties experience a pre-midlife crisis similar to the male midlife crisis, which makes women more likely to cheat. She also states that women – under this profile at Stage 3 – have lost interest in sex with their husbands who often have no knowledge of their wives’ affairs.
Finding the answer to the battle of the sexes in the cheating department may go down in history books as having more complex questions and no finite solution. At the end of the day, we’ll never establish the absolute winner of this never-ending contest. And maybe it would help if the question were posed differently by asking “Who gets hurt the most from unfaithfulness in a relationship?” Then we’d all agree – hands down –that nobody ever wins.
About the Author: Mel Bancroft is a contributing writer for ; Regal Black Mens Magazine For more information on this subject visit our ; Lifestyle Section To read about ; unfaithfulness.
How Do You Know If You Married The Right Person?
April 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
During one of my live seminars, a woman asked me a common question. She said, “How do I know if I married the right person?”
I noticed that there was a large man sitting next to her so I said, “It depends. Is that your husband?”
In all seriousness, how do you know?
Hi. I’m Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness, and here’s the answer.
EVERY relationship has a cycle. In the beginning, you fell in love with your spouse. You anticipated their call, wanted their touch, and liked their idiosyncrasies.
Falling in love with your spouse wasn’t hard. In fact, it was a completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn’t have to DO anything. That’s why it’s called “falling” in love…because it’s happening TO YOU.
People in love sometimes say, “I was swept of my feet.” Think about the imagery of that expression. It implies that you were just standing there; doing nothing, and then something came along and happened TO YOU.
Falling is love is easy. It’s a passive and spontaneous experience.
But after a few years of marriage, the euphoria of love fades. It’s the natural cycle of EVERY relationship. Slowly but surely, phone calls become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse’s idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts.
The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship, but if you think about your marriage, you will notice a dramatic difference between the initial stage when you were in love and a much duller or even angry subsequent stage.
At this point, you and/or your spouse might start asking, “Did I marry the right person?” And as you and your spouse reflect on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that experience with someone else. This is when marriages breakdown. People blame their spouse for their unhappiness and look outside their marriage for fulfillment.
Extramarital fulfillment comes in all shapes and sizes. Infidelity is the most obvious. But sometimes people turn to work, church, a hobby, a friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances.
But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your marriage. It lies within it.
I’m not saying that you couldn’t fall in love with someone else. You could. And TEMPORARILY you’d feel better. But you’d be in the same situation a few years later. Because (listen carefully) THE KEY TO SUCCEEDING IN MARRIAGE IS NOT FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON; IT’S LEARNING TO LOVE THE PERSON YOU FOUND.
SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. It’ll NEVER just happen to you. You can’t “find” LASTING love. You have to “make” it day in and day out. That’s why we have the expression “the labor of love.” Because it takes time, effort, and energy. And most importantly, it takes WISDOM. You have to know WHAT TO DO to make your marriage work.
And make no mistake about it. Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific things you can do (with or without your spouse) to succeed with your marriage.
Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. Just as the right diet and exercise program makes you physically stronger, certain habits in your relationship WILL make your marriage stronger. It’s a direct cause and effect. If you know and apply the laws, the results are predictable—you can “make” love.
That’s why I created the Marriage Fitness system. So you would have a step-by-step system for making and maintaining love in your marriage. And the program works for any marriage even if only one spouse does it. If you’d like to explore Marriage Fitness risk-free, then subscribe to my FREE breakthrough report “7 Secrets to a Stronger Marriage” and get a FREE marriage assessment too. To subscribe, CLICK HERE. It’s FREE.
About the Author: Mort Fertel, Marriage Coach & Author of Marriage Fitness
How To Get Your Spouse To Hear You
April 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Recently I had a series of private phone sessions with a person who was very frustrated. Listen to how this person described their situation. I bet you’ll be able to relate to it.
This person said they felt trapped in their basement trying to communicate with their spouse via Morse Code. They said they were banging on the pipes trying desperately to be heard. They would bang on the pipes and wait for a response. Bang and wait…bang and wait…bang and wait. But each time they finished banging, there was silence. No matter how hard they banged and no matter how long they waited; their spouse never heard them.
Are you trying to get heard? Do you feel ignored? Is your spouse not responding to your communication?
We live in an interesting time. With one click, you can communicate with anyone in the world. It’s easy, quick, and free. You even have options. If you don’t want to click, you could dial, beep, page, instant-message, or Fed Ex. It’s true. Your ability to communicate with the outside world has become increasingly easy. But my guess is that your ability to communicate with your spouse has become increasingly difficult.
The reason for this is that most people confuse INFORMATION communication with PERSONAL communication. Technological advancements give us all sorts of options to communicate information. But how do you feel the pulse of someone’s soul? How do you communicate the subtleties in your heart? You can’t text message that. You can have the latest and greatest in communication gadgets, but it won’t matter. PERSONAL communication is a whole different ball game. And it’s PERSONAL communication that determines the success or failure of your marriage.
I’m reminded of a scene from a Broadway play. A man and woman happen to meet on a train and engage in polite conversation. They were both headed home to New York after a day in New Haven, CT. After further discussion, they learned that they were going to the same building on Fifth Avenue. Lo and behold they discovered that they had the same daughter and lived in the same apartment. They finally discovered that they were husband and wife.
You know what’s killing marriages these days? EMAIL! More and more I’m seeing husbands and wives resort to email to communicate with each other. You want to do something tangible TODAY to improve your marriage? STOP EMAILING YOUR SPOUSE! Email is for INFORMATION. But in a marriage you’ve got to HEAR each other. And I don’t mean hear the sounds of each other’s words. You’ve got to be able to hear the silence between the sounds and interpret the unspoken meaning of a pressed lips or teary eyes. You’ve got to be able to hear the shapes and sounds in each other’s heart. You can NOT accomplish this via email.
And let me be clear about something; you can’t do it with communication techniques either. There’s no clinical communication therapy that can help you and your spouse think each other’s thoughts, feel each other joy, and cringe from each other’s pain. My 1-on-1 phone session schedule and the Marriage Fitness Tele Boot Camp are filled with casualties from traditional communication strategies and the usual marriage counseling approach. If you’re like most people with marriage trouble, you’ve been down that path and you know that it does NOT work.
Today my 4-year-old son came to me with a bruise on his leg. He was crying and I could see that it was black and blue. He said, “Daddy, I need a band-aide.”
I responded, “But it’s not bleeding.”
He said again, “Daddy, can you put a band-aide on it?”
I realized that my son’s perspective was that when something hurts a band-aide makes it better…even if it’s a bruise and not a cut.
So what does this have to do with communication in a marriage? Because most people think that if spouses aren’t hearing each other that communication techniques will solve the problem. But that’s like putting a band-aide on a bruise. It’s the wrong solution.
Communication techniques can help colleagues transmit INFORMATION clearly. Communication techniques belong in seminars that teach negotiation and sales. But you’re not trying to complete a transaction with your spouse; you’re trying to renew a relationship. I can almost guarantee you that your problem is not clarity; it’s concern. Ironically, communication techniques sometimes give people clarity that they don’t care what their spouse thinks or feels. They “got it,” but “it” doesn’t matter to them anymore.
How do you get back to the place where you and your spouse care again?
This is one of the things that’s unique about the Marriage Fitness approach to repairing a relationship versus traditional counseling. Most approaches to marriage success preach communication skills. But communicating effectively will NOT create love in your marriage. In fact, the correlation is the opposite. Creating love in your marriage paves the way for effective communication. I’ll prove it to you.
Think about when you fell in love. How was your communication? Good, right? In fact, when you’re in love, you communicate with the wink of an eye and you can finish each other’s sentences. And yet you haven’t known each other that long and you haven’t learned any communication techniques.
Then, years later, after getting to know each other inside and out, employing psychologically tested and proven communication strategies, and taking into account all the differences between Mars and Venus, you can’t get through to each other.
Listen carefully: Communication has very little to do with techniques or knowledge of each other. It has everything to do with the depth of connection between the communicators.
The question you should be asking is NOT, “How do I communicate effectively with my spouse.” The question you should be asking is, “How do I connect with my spouse again?” Once you reconnect, you won’t be sitting in silence in the basement. You’ll hear the sound of the pipes from above. It’ll be your spouse. You were heard.
About the Author: If you want to learn how to connect with your spouse again, subscribe to Mort Fertel’s FREE report, “7 Secrets for a Stronger Marriage” and get his FREE marriage assessment. CLICK HERE to subscribe. It’s FREE.