What is it about a married man that is so irresistible?
It must be something because so many women fall for it. Just this week I encountered two women who have slipped into the trap of fatal attraction for a married man. It is dangerous territory and I do not recommend that anyone go there. I speak from experience having invested part of my life in a relationship with a married man. Iam not writing about this subject to lecture or be judicialal or even to speak from my soapbox about what I know that you do not. My intent is to expose the underhanded tactics, even if unintentional, of men and the naiveté of women that permits these relations to flower.
What is it about women that make them intolerable to the charm and attraction of an unavailable man?
The unavailable man is very attractive to women who do not want to be controlled by a man. He can provide sporadic attention, sex, usually at regular intervals, definitely advice even when you do not ask for it and gifts. You do not have to live with him, which means no snoring, picking up after him, and usually freedom to comeand go as you please. The disadvantages include limited spontaneity, lack of availability on weekends and holidays and never being his number one priority.
This is not to say that men do not fall for married women. I am
certain that the statistics will support that almost as many single men fall for married women but the dynamic between themis much different than that of the single woman and the married man. Obviously, I have more experience with the married man syndrome.
Women in general are used to getting seconds.
What I mean by that is that women choose to set for less than
what they want. Okay, I expect outrage from most of you who are
reading this but hear me out, please. In this country, men have the power. Look around you, how many women president's do we have? How many in the Senate, Congress, CEO's of Fortune 500 companies? How many women make as much money as men do? Considering teaching and nursing, two professions primarily occupied by women, what percentage of men are in the profession and what percentage ofthose are in charge? How many men choose to stay home with children while their wives work and support the family? You get the idea. Granted there are many more women in positions of authority, in medicine, the law, entrepreneurs, real estate, finance, business than ever before, but if you are going to be honest with yourself, it's still a man's world. This is okay.
We can live with the fact that men run the world, because women run relations.
Women, you really are in charge of relationship even if you do not know it. You just need to raise the bar a little on what youexpect from your relationship. What I mean by women being used to settling is they do not ask. Let me give you an example. A woman friend of mine works for a big company; she uses her own computer and pays for her own Internet access even though the major of her computer usage is for her work activities. She has asked the men who run the company to be reimbursed for the cost of her computer andInternet access and has been denied. Her first inclining was to accept this, until she realized: How many men who use a computer in their job, use their own computer let alone pay for their Internet access? Men expect to be provided with the tools that they need to do their job, women provide their own tools and accept it when they are denied reimbursements. Where does this willingness to be used originate? I think that it originated when women first began to invade the workplace. Women were not greeted with open arms when they first arrived in the workplace. In order to be accepted, they worked twice as hard, longer hours, tolerated abuse in many ways that a man never would and were eager to please, seeking approval and acceptance by over responding. (Actually, women were welcomed in the workplace during World War II but only because men were not available.
Much of women's acceptance of second-class treatment is their own fault, because they do not even ask for it to be different.
Okay, I am a little off the subject of married men, but let me
Follow this through to the connection. Let's look at a wife. The
majority of wives work these days, they also are the primary
childcare provider, and most of them do most of the housework and laundry and cooking and shopping as well. They are also expected by their husbands to be sexy and ready for a quickie at the drop of his pants. Women do all this because they put these standards on themselves. They still expect that they have to do more and do it better because they are women. So where does a woman cut back? Usually it is in paying attention to her husband's primary needs. A man needs sex and most married men will tell you that the amount of sex that they get dwindles after marriage and especially after children. In addition, the amount of time that a woman has to devote to the nurturing, acceptance, approval and attention to her husband decrees proportionately with the addition of children, job responsibilities and a larger house.
So this leads us to the straight of the married man.
Who is the married man? First of all he is a man. Men are results oriented. Men have a lot of testosterone. They are not good at deciphering what women want, especially their own wives.The married man used to run his own life. He came and went as he pleased; he watched or played baseball whenever he wanted. He lived his own lifestyle. He could have his wife withhim whenever hewanted and she would pay all of her attention to him. Now he married married a couple of kids, a mortgage, a job he has because it pays themmost, not because he loves it so much and a wife who used to cater to him exclusively who now has to divide her time between him, the kids , the house and usually her job. There was a commercial on TV not too long ago that shows a man thinking about his studly single days and how sexy he was in those days, with a child in a stroller. He is playing with his child and shopping in the grocery store and a woman is talking to her friend who comments he does not even know how much more attractive he is now than he was when he was a stud.
Men are pretty unconscious about what makes them attractive.
According to most women it is not their looks that make them
attractive, it is who they are and how they produce in the world. So this married man goes to work and comes home and goes back to work the next day. At work there is this woman. She is single, attractive, smart, capable, speaks his language andsomeone who has time to pay attention to him. It starts as an innocent flirtation. What goes through his mind is something like "Let's see if I still have it!" so he starts flirting just to see what happens. Not a surprise, she responds to the flirting by flirting back.
This is the beginning of the affair.
In his mind he is flattered, it is fun, and exciting and just a
little bit naughty. What could be more harmless? I'm married.I'm
safe. I can just have a little fun with this. So it lasts.He
thinks he can just experiment a little. Let's see how charming and creative I can be. Let's see if I can get this woman to fall for me. In his mind it is not cheating. He has not done anything wrong. In the beginning, he even tells his wife about this woman. He tells her about how smart she is about some accomplishment, usuallywhat made him notice her in the firstplace. Wives usually miss the first clues. The thought of the effect of his harmless flirtation onthe single woman does not even enter his consciousness. So the harmless flirtation continues. It makes the married man feel good. He is happier at home and everything seems hunky dory. He tells the woman his wife does not understand him, she does not have time for him, or she just is cruel to him and the other woman becomes his confidant and starts to believe that he really has no choice in the matter. He needs her because his wife is so … whatever.
He now has both a wife and family and a woman on the side.
Recognize that this process may take several years and several
different women before anything actually happens in the way of an
affair. After several years of living a separate life from his wife while they live under the same roof, a married man is ready for a real affair. The reality is that an affair will occur whether it is an emotional or physical affair or even a cyber affair. No matter which way it goes, what takes takes away from the married relationship.
What is true about the woman who gets involved with a married man is that she is looking for attention and affection.
Most likely she is not looking for a married man with what she is dropping to have an affair. There are a few predatory women out there who do just that but the priority of affairs start out
naively. She is likely to have been previously hurt in a
relationship. She may or may not know that the man is married. What happens first is she recognizes that he is paying attention to her. He may just listen to her. It may just be a momentary encounter where their eyes meet and a connection is made. They may be working together on a project and either of them may distinguishthemselves in some way. What essentially happens is likely to be chemistry. What happens after that varies, however, it usually follows this pattern.
When the woman discovers that he is married, she will make it clear that she does not have relationships with married men.
That is the signal for the man to go into contract mode.
He will pursue her possibly for years because he enjoys the chase. She will continue to refine his advances as long as she cantolerate it or until he catches her at a weak and vulnerable moment. If she has a good relationship in her life, chances areshe can outlast him, but if she is single, available or married and unhappy, she will ever succumb. Why? Because the man is so charming, heis wonderful, he is a knight in shining armor, he is a hero, he is this wonderful dedicated family man who is wonderful with his children and attentive to his wife. So the woman asks herself what is she doing?
She continues to say no and the more she says no, the more
aggressive and charming and attentive he gets. This is the ultimate male challenge, to win over a woman who is saying no even though he knows she really is attracted to him.
A married man will work harder than any available man to make a
woman fall in love with him.
He will be more charming, loving, attentive and wonderful than a
woman can imagine that any man can be. So what happens next is this woman who finally surrenders to her feelings for this man, asks him to leave his wife for her. The response from him will almost inevitably be one of two, but I'm married and I'll neverleave my wife or yes, I'll leave my wife, but not yet (she's not ready, my children are too young, I can 't afford it yet, my mother will not approve etc.) Initially the woman will respond with anger. "If you love your wife what are you doing with me?" Here is the clincher that finally hooks the woman, he is committed to his wife and the woman buys into his honorable dedication to his wife and thinks if only I could have a man who loves me like that.
It is at this point in their relationship that the woman's final act of settling may occur.
Either she will end it and go off to nurse her broken heart,
wondering how he could have been so wonderful and such a heel atthe same time, or she will continue the affair and settle forbeing the other woman in his life. Either way the woman is damaged. The man will go back to his wife who was either completely unaware of the romantic drama or who also chooses to settle by living in denial of his infidelity. Then life goes on.
The other woman plays a significant part in the perpetuation of this man's marriage.
She makes it tolerable for him to remain in an intolerable
situation. She makes it possible for him to remain in a marriage
that does not satisfy him. That marriage situation can range from
boredom to outright pretempt, but a man will not leave his marriage
until his wife has dismissed him, either consciously or
unconsciously. She makes it possible for him to deny that there is anything missing in his relationship with his wife. Therefore, the wife wins, if you can call it winning to stay ina relationship with a cheating man.
The purpose in discussing this at all is to emphasize the fact that women settle and men will cheat because they can. So, women, if you want your man to be faithful, you must pay attention and never settle for less than what you want no matter what the cost.
The essence of marriage is commitment. Why get married if you are not willing to commit to loving someone exclusively? The way that I see it, you do not have to get married to be together, so why do it if you do not mean it? I was married for 23 years and was consistently in favor of the concept of a renewable marriage license, similar tohow one renews a driver's license. The point of that beingthat at least very 3 or 4 years people who were married to each other would have to take a look at wherever they still wanted to be with their spouse. If people were honest about their feelings, it certainly would take a chunk out of the 50% divorce rate.
On a more serious note, however, I really do not see any point in
getting married married without you are marry someone with whatever youhave sexual chemistry that you love totally, that you trust implicitely, and that you would rather be with than anyone else whosofeels the same about you. That feeling of total trust is rare and itneeds to be nurtured. It's also good if you have similar values and goals in life. If and when you find someone that meets all ofthe above standards, you probably could not imagine wanting to bewith anyone else. That spiritual bond can be so strong andso valid that it would be out of the realm of possibility to violate it.
It is impossible to ever have that kind of trust if you enter a
relationship that originated with someone cheating.
So what happens to destroy that original bond? It is the woman'sjob to provide the appetite for pleasure and the direction for therelationship. This does not tie men of any responsibility for it is their job to surrender to their woman's power and to produce results for her based on what she requests. So, in a relationship that is working the woman must continue to raise the bar for her man and believe in him. What does that mean? That she wants a bigger house, more expensive car, more children? Not necessarily although thosethings may be part of the picture. What it does mean is that she raises the standards of paying attention even when life is busy. It means that they make time for sex even when they do not have time. It means that each one of them stay permeable with each other even whenhe / she has done something that embarrasses them or is wrong.
In my marriage, I did it all wrong. I doubted his production,
thought I could do things better than him and lost my ability to
believe in him. When that happened, he quit producing for me and we spiraled down into total mistrust of each other and
unwillingness to be vulnerable. I kept settling for less than what I asked for and he kept producing only what I believed he could produce. I just did not know any better.
It's a fragile bond that must be protected and as far as I can see what will protect the bond of love is a woman expressing her
appetite that requests more than the man thinks he can produce and then even more vital is that she approves of him and believes in him until he produces it. The most important element of maintaining a love relationship that works is that both parties must pay attention to each other and to what is happening in the relationship. Going to doubt or settling for less than what she wants is the beginning of the destruction of the delicate balance of the man / woman relationship. In this model of relationship, men and women are regarded as different entities with different needs. It treats on using the sex act as the metaphor for relationship, symbolizing men as producers and women as receivers.
There are no victims.