Ralph Brewer shares survey data showing 36% of men and 33% of women cheat. Men cite lack of sex or stupidity; women give more complex reasons. Strikingly, 56% of cheating men say they're happy in their marriage, versus a third of cheating women.
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Monogamy, which means you and me sexually together forever and ever, Everybody else, see you later. Well, as Dr. Helen Fisher said, monogamy doesn't necessarily imply fidelity. Adultery seems to go hand in hand with monogamy. That's the other not so nice branch of all this on the human behavior thing. The exact rate of infidelity is not known. We have all kinds of surveys that show men, anywhere from 20 to 40% of men say Yeah, I fooled around. Well, anywhere from 20 to 25% of hetero women say, yeah, I fooled around. What's interesting is I surveyed my Dad Starting Over followers on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and here's what I found. Around 33% of women said, yeah, I've cheated, and around 36% of men said, I cheated. Now, who's reading my stuff? People with relationship issues, so it's not necessarily I'm going out and, you know, interviewing tens of thousands of strangers off the street. Is basically, hey, people who read my material, how many of you have cheated? And there you go. Not an insignificant number. So what's interesting is when I asked those people, why did you do it? There we go. The men had two main reasons. One is, I wasn't getting any, and I got frustrated, so I seeked a source elsewhere for, you know, sexual needs. The other was, I was stupid. So many people said, "I don't know, I was stupid. I was on a business trip, one too many drinks, one thing led to another. It was a one thing. I was dumb. I was stupid." While women, on the other hand, paragraphs of stories of reasons. Yet the rate was still the same. Women tend to have lots of reasons and justification for doing so. A lot of men just said, "Not getting any. I was stupid." Interesting. Here is a really interesting factoid that makes you go, "Huh?" The majority of men that cheated, when surveyed, said, "Oh, I'm happy with my marriage." 56% of men said, "I'm happy." Well, around a third of the women said, "I'm happy." So most women say, "I'm not happy. That's in part why I cheated." Well, most men said, "No, I'm happy with my wife." That's an interesting little nugget of info. Another little interesting nugget: affairs are most common in men between the age of 55 and 65. And then women, 40 to 45. What are some major milestones, anyone want to say, for men 55 to 65 that may contribute to why they're looking elsewhere? Say again? Do you think a man would be affected by kids moving out and that's why he would step out at 55, 65? Hmm, interesting. So it's like, phew, so if I get caught doing this, it's not as big of a deal. That's one way of looking at it. Menopause. But they're with a partner who was on average, I think, around 6 years younger on average. So that corresponds to him. Maybe she's going through the old menopause. Maybe he's left behind. And so he starts seeking elsewhere. 55 to 65, a lot of men still got it going on physically, that they can get the act done. So there they go.
Chris.
Recapturing their youth. So some type of midlife crisis type of thing. I'm getting older, I see the end is coming, let's go and do it. Could very well be. You guys know this gentleman.
Anybody know who that is?
Dr. David Buss, B-U-S-S. He was on Joe Rogan's podcast and a lot of others. He is an evolutionary psychologist, talks a lot about, he's in Austin, Texas. Lots and lots of books, sold millions of books. I actually chatted with him via email once about being on the Dad Starting Over podcast, and he very politely told me, uh, no, not today. But, uh, he has something called the mate-switching hypothesis. The women that he has surveyed tend to have affairs because they're unhappy with their primary partner and they're seeking out a replacement. That's what he's seen. Um, well, men, on the other hand, Tend to have a higher desire for sexual variety. And what he famously said once was, "Men are only as faithful as their opportunity." That's kind of a kick in the balls, isn't it, as a dude, to hear that? So I often tell guys, like, you're in this sexist relationship, he's like, "I would never cheat, I would never cheat, I would never cheat." I'm like, "Okay, you're home alone, wife is gone with the kids somewhere, and some young something shows up at your front door and says, I have half an hour, whatever you want to do, no one will know, and I'm going to leave town. A lot of men go, "Well, you put it that way." Well, that's the life for some people. Not necessarily that exactly, but their business trips and whatever. Things are going to go wrong in relationships. Things are going to get bad. And you know, when I surveyed the women and said, "Why cheat?" and they gave reasons, what are all those reasons All that— what's the word— ruminating, if you will, on all the negatives and everything, that is an example of what personality trait? Anybody know? Personality trait. So we have the 5 traits. We have OCEAN, O-C-E-A-N, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion. Oh my gosh. AN, what's A? Agreeableness. And the last one, N? Neuroticism. Women tend to be, on average, higher in neuroticism, or negative thought, than what men are. So that goes towards the whole— the grand theme seems to be women cheat for reasons, men cheat because they can. And that's, as a dude, not a very nice thing to say. But the data seems to support that. Here's something that also works against us. Higher testosterone levels are associated with unfaithful behavior in men. So they famously did a study. They took a bunch of men and they said, "Who here has cheated?" They took those guys over here, took the others over here, and then they did the saliva test. And wouldn't you know it, the cheaters had higher rates of testosterone. So here we are, a bunch of us. I don't know who feels comfortable in saying who was on testosterone replacement therapy. Show of hands. Oh boy. Anybody's wife nervous when you started doing that? Wife or significant other, show of hands. Why is that? Maybe she innately knows the, quote, manlier you are, more masculine you are, the chances of you stepping out Raised precipitously. Interesting. Now here's an interesting little term. Polygyny. A pattern of mating in which a male animal has more than one female mate. Dum dum dum. Here's a— look at this nerdy engineer quote here. This is from anthropologist George Peter Murdock. An impartial observer employing the criterion of numerical preponderance would be compelled to characterize nearly every known human society as monogamous, despite the preference for and frequency of polygyny in the overwhelming majority. Translation: We men sure do seem to want to pair-bond with one gal, but our penises make us want to bang a lot of other women at the same time. And if given the chance, a lot of men would do exactly that. Those quotes sound the same. But here's the catch. Polygyny, one man has a lot of different women, is associated with rank and wealth over the history of mankind. Most people throughout history have not accumulated a great deal of rank and wealth. But sure enough, when we look back on the men who had all the power and money, They tended to have more than one woman. Had kids with more than one woman.
