The Adulteress Has The Answers

Tiger Woods, Jesse James, and a host of politicians and religious icons. It's so easy to identify right and wrong, good and bad, and never realize that the adulterers likely also harm themselves as much as they do others.

What does the adulteress know, though? In the media as sources of not only entertainment, but education, could it be that stories of wayward men so oversaturate, it isn't possible to speak of deep causes and solutions for widespread infidelity?

Maybe the adulteress not only has the answers, but the microphone with which to teach.

She knows that pair-bonded women stray nearly as much - approaching the 50 % of pair-bonded men who cheat. She knows that nobody wins in these stories, not even the cheater. Name-calling, blame and sensationalism offer nothing for anyone to learn from, except as an imperfect and temporary salve for the individual wounded.

She knows that whatever side of cheating an individual is on, there are likely to be pain and unmet needs, desires, and life goals, even long before the first temptations to cheat ever appear.

It may be a very old metaphor, but the puzzle as a symbol for a couple's romance, and lovers as "puzzle pieces" may very well still carry practical value when we look at courtship as an enquiry into compatibility, alignment, and synergy of the capacity to love.

Nobody Wins Until the Puzzle Is Solved

Our common sense is that adultery is wrong, it limits the adulteress in her social bonds, her character growth, self-esteem and self-concept as much as it hurts the sense of trust, masculine identity and self-esteem of her husband.

In the arena of sexual attraction, passion, and sexual betrayal, we are talking about a function of the mind, which operates by principles that are decidedly not logical.

Instead - in this "mating dance," whether smooth and right, or clumsy, stilted, and gone exceedingly wrong - we are talking about animal instincts at work, not higher, loftier features of being human such as ethics or honesty.

Was it mentioned that women cheat on their spouses with an almost equal frequency to that of males?

See these for more:

http://www.infidelityfacts.com/infidelity-statistics.html

What if there is a pattern to courtship - one which blends both the logical and the instinctual in a set of steps between a woman and a man in romance? And what if a critical mass of steps in this "dance" must be met for a couple to remain loyal in the long term?

Certainly we see mating rituals broken off and abandoned by animals in the wild - one wrong move and mating will not occur. At least for that moment.

Why Don't We Listen to Our Own Intuition?

The same missteps and miscues are seen in the early dating process among humans, - at which time the courtship may or often unlike other animals - may not end. The comments, "That was, uh, fun, thanks," or "Maybe we could do it again some time," or the worst - "It's not you. It's me" - mark a probable cause for the psychological end of the romantic dance. Why do we often backtrack and not heed them?

Something more than just animals, we have a sense of a relationship timeline in our species - that just being casual precedes a friendship bond, which precedes a full committed partnership. As I've heard author and Evolutionary Psychologist Geoffrey Miller say, "At some point, the mating dance went inside the head."

"In the head." Yet, it can be as common for two individuals to continue seeing each other due to the draw of other factors. The physical attractiveness, the friendliness, the charm, the resources, the social network size, and simple physical proximity can facilitate "second chances" and passive continuance of a relationship that our ironically wiser distant cousins in the wild manage to avoid.

Unlike them, we have a workplace we may share, joint bathrooms and bank accounts, shared friends and a love of the same music, and adherence to the same politics and religion. We find ourselves sometimes beyond a certain mark in time with a person these days - the one whom we now are expected to call "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" or "partner," "husband" or "wife" - with incomplete information about who they really are "inside the head."

Yes, even after engagement and marriage. We were too busy, or too caught up in the excitement, or simply not aware of a consistent, step by step process by which men and women have always naturally found their way into each other's loyal and lasting embrance.

Often we also have only half a dance played out in the sexual attraction too, but in a tough dating market and mixed-message culture when it comes to gender role - and with the extent of many courtships amounting to "hooking up" and "hanging out," we might figure the "compatibility data" is as good as it's going to get.

Whose Fault is It?

What if the adulterer and adulteress alike are living "puzzle-pieces" that need to fit another in just the right way, but in lieu of that rare discovery, settle for an imperfect fit, wedged into place, a gap filled by the features of the affair partner.

Of course in individual cases, the individual who breaks trust is at fault, but what about the large groups, and the statistics among the genders themselves?

One of Newton's laws of motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What if there is a principle in courtship by which for every lack of action in the mating dance, there is an equal and opposite reaction?

Conclusion: we need to screen more extensively in our dating, as well as earlier, and from a more informed place when it comes to courtship.

I've heard some women say they were married a number of years, even decades, before finding out their husband had sired children out of state or abroad.

I've also heard more than a handful of men say they were married for more than five years before they found the first vodka bottle under the bed - even though the alcoholism had been there long before they even met.

Whose "fault" was it that they all have secrets, and private mental lives, and that it takes time to get to truly know another person at more than just the physical, sexual chemistry level? That psychological health demands we do have at least some secrecy, solitude, and privacy to preserve a sense of individuality and freedom to determine our own identities and goals?

Sometimes, it's nobody's fault. It's then that the animal world can look exceedingly more efficient and satisfied in their mating than our own. They get to remain mostly physical in their courtship actions, unlike our own, often nebulous, psychological ones.

Whose "fault" was it that we all have unique personality styles, and that living in the real world it can take months or years for the right crisis or challenge to occur that tests our mettle, our character, our discipline, patience, empathy, collaboration and compromise.

Sometimes it's again nobody's fault when swept up in the romantic story's passage of time, the plot points of courtship pass, and only months or years later we awake from a vague intuition into full-blown alarm: our personality style simply is not compatible with that of our partner - long after the tentacles of shared everything have ensnared us in a web of daycare, soccer practice, joint taxes, and a shared, underwater mortgaged home.

My favorite quick look at personality is at www.kwml.com, as food for thought.

More decades ago than can be counted on one hand, women generally had no recourse in ending a failed relationship with a move to a new home, new friends, and a new, smooth transition from married to single. Today, that's just not true anymore, but the assumptions and stigmas seem to persist. If anyone could call Tiger Woods or Jesse James "bad" for being male, it would be that they had the financial means to get out of their relationships ethically, but didn't.

This "badness" isn't really then attributable to a specific gender, but to the lack of boundaries, courage, and self-knowledge - things that aren't unique to one gender or the other.

The Adulteress and Adulterer: Equal Lessons for Growth

Taking sides and placing blame in public discourse, as justifiable as they are, don't seem to do much to benefit society or individuals.

It's far more interesting and practical to look at the adulterer and adulteress on the same plane, and with a scientifically curious eye.

We might then ask why they do what they do, and get actionable answers for change in the culture, communication between the genders, and the lives of individuals.

Animals themselves, and the animal instincts of both genders - women too -inexorably seek to produce the fittest offspring via the fittest mate or mates. Yet we are more than "just animal instinct." We have emotional and intellectual lives too - both of which need to gel well with the overall life story, goals, beliefs and values of any mate who is going to durably last for life.

As pundits argue over how dastardly it is for male cheaters to do so with affair partners often much younger than their pledged mates, it's tempting to sum up the male psyche with the sheer comic wit and wisdom of entertainer, Bill Maher. He said something like, "With men chasing tail: it's not really a question of ‘old versus young,' but ‘old versus new'" - that men seek sexual novelty.

Which explains why we not only say, "Look how young she is. What a jerk he is!" We also say, "She's trashy. She has tattoos! I can't believe he would cheat on such a refined lady, in the company of such a tramp."

Men have emotions, beliefs, tastes and preferences too. These make life feel fulfilling, help them function in teamwork, collaboration and compromise - with minimal relationship conflict or competition. These prosper when they align with those of a woman of complementary personality style, character maturity, and the esoterica of that one most romantic feature that can't be quantified, sliced or diced by science: the "fit" of her life's story to his own.

Maybe just like women, there's more to a man (even a failed, foolish, low class one) than just the brutish and impulsive drives of the irrational animal nature of the primitive drive to procreate. Maybe for men, too, bad marriages, poor compatibility, and neglect of the skills and steps of courtship create a perfect storm. These unmet needs, cultural pressure saying, "Single is bad. Married is good," and the web of entanglement of joined resources and responsibilities might place both men and women between the Scylla of right, ethical, societal expectations, and the Charybdis of the resignation and quiet desperation of relationship incompatibility.

Gathering the Pieces

The courtship doesn't end at the first romp in the bedroom, nor in the profound promises of the marriage altar. Neither. It ebbs and flows all through the story of life together.

Which lead us to a possible practical item for us to wonder about: could it be that for males and females alike, the singular and most potent allure of affairs is the absence of a completed set of courtship compatibilities and skills?

The adulterer's wife is reliable, emotionally controlled, bright, but critical for the sake of efficiency in getting done with their joint duties of the day - the kids need to get checkups, the bills need paid, and she needs him to run a few errands to assist. They aren't his particular strong suit - lists, numbers, timeliness, but he's a natural at "winging it" in his job in sales.

His affair partner is younger and attractive - but that's not the greatest appeal to him. It's that she's humorous, the life of the party, and yet accepting and admiring of him - the things he's not finding in the marriage. Yet the affair partner is not the type to pay the bills on time either, is years away from wanting kids (and he loves his dearly.) She also would never fit into his friendship circles, and he would never fit in hers.

So neither woman alone satisfies a majority of the compatibilities in courtship that would have him sexually, emotionally, and intellectually attracted. But both women combined, would.

The adulteress' boyfriend is artistic, did a few art shows, but still finding his way to a stable income. He's soft and sensitive in a way that her prior mates were not, and this is refreshing. He seems loyal, and yet it's a point of discomfort that as she has barely started climbing the corporate ladder - and approaches the midpoint of childbearing years - there appears to be no end in sight to his process of discovering "what he wants to be when he grows up." He's handsome, but often doting, sometimes needy, and she feels confused and guilty at times that she doesn't feel fully sexually passionate about him.

Her affair partner is a few years older, a middle manager at the corporation and being groomed for top management. He doesn't call her often because he's so busy - which is a relief, but she also wonders about him. She never asked if he might actually be in a relationship already, or even married. The time was never right to ask. She can't stop thinking about him because he's such a mystery, and yet at the same time, seems so "together" as compared to her boyfriend. She values her morals, and wouldn't cross the line to intimacy, except that work has placed her on the same team as him with an urgent deadline, and often late office hours alone with him recently. When they lose control in the way she almost never experiences her boyfriend, it isn't really her "fault. "Job duties and perhaps fate, placed them too close, too often. Still, he is so married to his career, she couldn't see him settling down to raise a family anytime soon, even though his independence, confidence and stability would make him a great father.

Again, neither man alone would suffice for her needs, and neither one offers a full complement of all three "attractions": sexual chemistry, a friendship bond, and the maturity fit for a durable, loving commitment.

These are some of the kinds of anecdotes I receive hundreds of questions on per week at www.womenshappiness.com. People eventually get frustrated and fed up with mere blaming and venting about the inexplicable and illogical things men and women do in romance.

The common thread in these stories, regardless of gender, is the drive and instinct to cobble together a "complete courtship," the psychological experience of a romance built from more than one partner.

Piecing the Puzzle Together: A Three Act Play

If we were to step back from taking sides and the blame game in celebrity relationships - and see if this observation rings true, proves accurate, and makes a causal connection - we'd finally have some action steps with which to either prevent infidelity, or at least to harvest some major lessons likely to prevent it in future relationships we'll move on to after the hurt and grief.

Act One: The Sexual Attraction

Early in dating, women need a mystery to solve, questions to savor about what makes the man who is so enigmatic, so difficult to label like many men she encounters. She needs him to show his interest, display his masculine wares, but to do so as a gentleman. Finally, she must know that she knows he is reliable, stable, and if he can pass her subtle tests of character, he is a possible keeper - at least one worthy of befriending.

The man is driven in his fantasy life by the physical, the visual, the appearance, and in attending to not only her good looks, but the delicious nuances of body language, a long gaze, a smile as she runs her fingers through her hair, he will signal his approval. Her tests will come his way, and he does need that challenge - to feel like a winner, not out of egotism or narcissistic weakness, but because it is an encoded trigger in the masculine responsiveness to join her in mutual desire. Before this, though, he needs one of the most absent steps in the mating dance - the one suppressed by our current culture - an indication of her admiration. The most powerful phrase men in my seminars have ever heard from a woman are, "I believe in you."

If he hears this, he not only wants her body. He envisions being with her for the duration - marriage becomes an appealing prospect. And at the very least, he knows they can be friends for the indefinite future, a requirement for a stable marriage.

Act Two: Friendship

The simple definition of friendship I lay out in The Power of Female Friendship - and one mirroring Aristotle's definition - is "consistent, mutual, shared positive emotion." That friends are reliable, even if they are reliably late to meetings, that it is a two-way street of leaning on each other's shoulder, that the in-person bonding experience must be attended to even in the day of social media - that we are evolved for the nuances of in-person socializing for eons, while electronic technology is mere decades old.

And finally, friendship is based on positivity, not the negative. We need to be a source of happiness, and a boost of self-esteem for another. Fighting, being depressive, critical but not an advocate, fearful and anxious - these things, understandable in today's stressful world, nevertheless kill the friendship we share, and we instead become a source of stress to another instead of a source of strength.

We may even discover through courtship that we are best friends - a unique feature of opposite polarity of temperament I describe in the KWML model of www.kwml.com.

Friends are great, but it's best friends who are worthy of durable commitment. Opposites attract here.

Act Three: Commitment

Instead of "hookups" and "hangouts" we have been wise and patient with the process. We have a solid sexual attraction, an emotional attraction, and it is here that we come to the intellectual attraction of shared beliefs, values, tastes, and life's goals. We both want two children, a house in the suburbs, and activism in a shared political party and spiritual life. Birds of a feather flock together in this final phase of vetting as a lifelong, loyal couple.

One more feature though is that those of similar background and character development attract each other. We attract those who are similar in maturity to our own, and those who have commonalities in our life's stories.

In friendship, we like those who like us - reciprocal altruism - but in commitment, we like those who are like us. For this, we need to have worked on the constructiveness, patience, self-awareness, boundaries and mutual respect of mature character. This is where the disloyal - male and female alike - let us down.

Yet screening early for these similarities - that we can like the other person in addition to desiring and loving them, while patient for the story of our smoothly growing passion, love and friendship - gives us certainty in the person even if the world around us is not.

This is the system I lay out in The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, and the main thrust of www.womenshappiness.com.

If you follow celebrity relationships, review your own past scars, or are trying to make the best of a currently troubled relationship, it can change the whole outcome for you to document not only what a couple's areas of harmony and satisfaction are, but also what features of affair partners aren't the greatest strengths of the committed partner. Then one can wonder whether these are former skills that have been neglected of late, growth areas that one has always sought to build, or simply incompatibilities that ought to have been caught early on, before the relationship ever became exclusive.

The former areas are more important to cultivate or reinvigorate - because we can - rather than letting them die on the vine due to our hurt feelings or pride. Then the latter can be cause for resolve in getting out, items to screen for early in dating in the future, getting started on the right foot, and with assurance and equanimity.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," so our early dating can be wiser and more informed on what the natural courtship process is for the human animal. And since grief is not just a stationary emotion - but a dynamic learning process - we are practically guaranteed to get back all the value and effort we only thought we lost in failed relationships.

But only when we step back from the blame game and sensationalism. The adulteress knows that it isn't just a man problem, or a woman problem. It's a human problem begging a solution that guides our natural "animal instinct" toward the right goal: a Mr. or Mrs. Right who makes the cut in all three attraction types.

It may be that there is just as much to learn from infidelity and how we do relationships wrong, as we do from the thousands of manuals on how to do them right. Which is the major thrust of my book with Plume, called The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, and one of many teaching objectives in my role as director of www.womenshappiness.com.

In the end, we can strive to find most or all of what we need in just one person, not two or three. It takes more patience, self-knowledge, and plain more work, but that's what any "technology" or teaching is for - to more efficiently speed our way to our hearts' desires.