Exploring The Wild World Of Cheaters On The Adultery Subreddit

So out of all the topics that I have covered over the years in Dad Starting Over and now Help for Men, there are two that get the most attention. Number one by a long shot is the topic of sexless marriages or just sex in marriage in general, or more specifically, the topic that I wrote a book on, the topic of dead bedrooms. And you could read my book, by the way, The Dead Bedroom Fix. The third edition just came out July of 2024. But the second most popular topic is infidelity. More specifically, infidelity or cheating or affairs by women. I get a lot of emails by guys who discover that their wife or long-term girlfriend, fiancée is cheating on them. And it is a very, very traumatic experience for these guys, understandably. And what a lot of guys do during this process of, oh, recovery, if you will, from the trauma of discovering their spouse's infidelity, is that they will research and research and research some more. They're attempting to understand what the hell happened, what they did to cause this, what they did to quote unquote deserve this, and how to avoid this in the future, how to repair the relationship and potentially bring them back together. A lot of guys go down that road, unfortunately, and how to avoid it in the future. Well, what better way to understand the psyche of cheating, of infidelity, than to go directly to the source itself? Wouldn't it be nice if there was a place on the internet where we could go to see a bunch of cheaters getting together in a room, so to speak, and comparing notes and talking about the wonderful world of cheating on their spouse? Well, guess what? Such a place exists. Go to Reddit. I've mentioned Reddit numerous times because it is just such a goldmine of conversation on whatever topic you want to talk about. I mean, we could go to cars, guitars, working out, everything in between. And in fact, yes, there are lots of subreddits. That's what they call their little sub-forums on the topic of adultery, cheating. Most of the subreddits are from the victim's perspective. There's one called Surviving Infidelity, for example. But there is one called adultery. If you go to reddit.com/r/adultery, you will find a forum that is very, very active with people from all over the world talking about cheating on their spouse. Yes, cheaters comparing notes and talking about what it is they do, how to do it successfully, talking about the emotional turmoil that they experience, you know, sharing their war stories together. And it is extremely interesting to read. Here are some interesting things that I learned after hours on the adultery subreddit. Number 1, and a lot of you guys will be pleased or not so pleased to hear this, is that women rule the adultery subreddit. No kidding. If you go on there, men are seen as kind of a lower-class cheater. Women are the more altruistic, top of the food chain cheaters. Meaning if you look at the posts by a lot of the women on the subreddit, the men that they cheat with are solely there in their minds, in the woman's mind, there for the sexual gratification, not so much for the emotional connection. And a lot of these women are what they call ghosted or ignored after a certain period of time, and they will often point to the fact that their men are still somewhat attached to their wife, the woman that they are cheating on. And this really, really pisses off a lot of women, which brings me to point number 2. Uh, there is a lot of shame involved in cheating, and what the people on this forum will note is that the men tend to feel more shame about their cheating than the women do. And that is not necessarily a result of a lack of morals or character or whatever the case may be on the part of the woman. In fact, this shame discrepancy has been pointed out on the forum, and how it is explained by the women on there is when we are engaged in affairs as women, that is indicative of the fact that our relationship with our spouse is so extremely broken that we have emotionally disconnected from our spouse And now we are free to form sexual relationships, or sexual and emotional relationships, with other human beings with very little shame, guilt, because in the mind of the women, our spouse deserves this. They have emotionally neglected me, sexually neglected me, hear that often, or just the passion between the two of them has died out. Understandably been together for some of these people for decades, and they're seeking out the passion elsewhere. They've disconnected that portion of their life from spouse. Now they're seeking to connect it with somebody else. While with the men, it seems that they're seeking the sexual connection while still retaining some sexual connection and the majority of the emotional connection with their spouse. So in other words, the guys are just in it for the sex and the women are in it for a more holistic connection. That's their case anyway. And there are some scientific studies to back this up. We've done surveys on people who have cheated. There's something like 56% of men engaged in affairs say that they are very, very happy with their marriage. Kind of surprising. While women, on the other hand, over 70% of the women surveyed who are cheating say that they are very unhappy with their marriage. So you can see there's a big discrepancy there. So the women may have a point, but the case could be made that all the women are doing is just attempting to justify what in the end is the exact same thing that the men in this world are doing. They're getting naked and rubbing dirty bits with people outside of their marriage. However we want to frame the situation and explain away why it is happening, and again, the end result is the same. And it would seem that the men are much more blunt about me want sex, and women are much more vague, more nebulous. You know, they don't want to drop the relationship or marriage with husband, maybe financial reasons, maybe for reasons of the kids, but they want to get their jollies elsewhere. And in their mind, they're much more morally aware their pursuit. Kind of silly, but that's how they see it. It's interesting just how much disdain the women in that group have for the men that are committing adultery with them. Not because, you know, the man is cheating necessarily, but because the man still feels guilt over it. Men hearing this say, well, of course he feels guilt over it. What kind of monster would he be not to feel guilt? Well, for the women engaged with these men in these affairs, It is showing them that she is with a monster who is only there for the sexual gratification and not for her as a person, and not there to form a genuine relationship with her. In my mind, kind of naive of the women engaged in affairs, but it is what it is. This whole theme of the women really, really checking out of their marriage, which allows them to emotionally, mentally engage in affairs, that may go to prove or be further evidence of this whole notion by a lot of men that once your wife, spouse cheats, dude, it's over. In other words, she is so disconnected from you that in order for her to come back basically requires that you two start all over again. You got to go through that whole courtship phase all over again and getting to know each other all over again and falling in love all over again because she has basically disconnected you and hit the restart button with new guy. And if for whatever reason it doesn't work out with new guy and she comes back, you gotta go through the whole process all over again. Extremely difficult. And for a lot of these people, they have a lot of emotional and mental baggage that they're much more apt to, again, take the energy because they've disconnected from you and apply it to others. Repeat affairs is not an uncommon thing in that world. Just read some of the examples on the adultery subreddit. This may also help explain the, uh, mindset that when a man cheats, it is not as nefarious an act. It is explained by a lot of evolutionary psychologists such as David Buss, for example, anthropologists such as Helen Fisher, that men tend to engage in affairs. Why? Because they're able to. They have options. An extreme example that I often give is a guy who is, let's say, a handsome billionaire businessman who flies all over the world in his private jet. Weeks at a time he's away from his family. He is much more apt to cheat than the guy who is a 9-to-5 blue-collar worker who comes home every night because billionaire dude on the private jet has a lot more options to do so. I've often said how I talk to men who tell me that they've been in a dead bedroom relationship for years and years and I say, and you've never, you know, snuck outside of the relationship all these years? And the men say, no, I am not wired that way. I will never ever in a million years do that. People always ask me that, but no, I'm— that's just not me. And I say, let's play pretend for a moment. Let's say you're home alone. The wife and kids are gone. They're gone for a while, maybe to see the in-laws, whatever it may be. And you're home alone and you're miserable and sexless after so many years of nothing. And there's a knock at the door and it's a 25-year-old knockout gorgeous holy crap looking woman who says, um, I'm about to head out of town. I was next door and I saw you. Just wondered if you would like to hang out. I'm going to leave and you'll never ever see me again. Let's get it on. And what a lot of men say in that, they chuckle because it's kind of a ridiculous, you know, scenario, but they will chuckle and say, well, I mean, if you put it that way. It's like, dude, that is a life for a lot of people. Some men live in that world. Where the opportunity is presented to them consistently over and over again. Maybe they work in the nightclub industry, maybe they're a bartender, maybe they're a personal trainer, maybe they're the super rich multimillionaire businessman flying around on his private jet. Those men tend to have a lot more affairs than the average Joe simply because they have a lot more opportunity. Guys, We're no angels in all this. I know a lot of you have been cheated on, and I know a lot of you swear up and down you will never ever in a million years do that, and you are not wired to do that. But let's, you know, let's not throw stones at the guys who do do that. A lot of them do that simply because they have the opportunity to do so. And as the stats show, the majority of them, if you polled them, they would say they are very happy with their marriage. So maybe again, this whole notion of when men cheat, it's not that big of a deal. It is a big deal, but if you're wanting to work on the marriage, the case could be made that when man cheats and decides to come back to wife and work on marriage, the chances of that working, the stats seem to show, are higher than if the wife is the one doing the cheating. Just interesting food for thought, guys.