According to the 1992 Life and Social Science Survey, UK, it is harder to point out the exact reasons why women engage in infidelity. Women often have affairs for fun, revenge or excitement.
What is Infidelity?
Infidelity cannot be defined precisely. Even a stolen kiss, a lap dance and a sexual encounter fall in the range of infidelity. Psychologists state that the intention of such behaviour defines its course. The 1992 survey describes infidelity as the secret violation of monogamy and commitment to a single person.
This is an inclusive definition. Precisely, infidelity can be described as an affair conducted for various reasons by a member of the opposite sex for romantic and sexual love or lust. Usually, it has been found that 50% of women engage in infidelity.
Reasons:Women do not see this kind of behaviour as solely stemming from their personalities. For them, infidelity is a culmination of various external forces. They perceive infidelity as fun, casual, getting acquainted or a chance to know someone. Women often perceive infidelity as a chance to meet, flirt, converse, and engage in intimate behaviour with a third party outside the marriage. Usually three forces culminate forcing or pushing the individual towards such behaviour:
Forces within the Individual that Pull Them toward Affairs:
- Attraction: sex, companionship, admiration, power
- Novelty
- Excitement, risk, or challenge
- Curiosity
- Enhanced self-image
- Falling in love
Forces within the Individual that Push Them toward Affairs:
- Desire to escape or find relief from a painful relationship
- Boredom
- Desire to fill gaps in an existing relationship
- Desire to punish one's partner
- Need to prove one's attractiveness or worth
- Desire for attention
Societal Factors:Media plays a huge influence in shaping human desires and wants. A greatest impact has been the incidence of infidelity in women. Media has a direct connection to the high rate of infidelity amongst women. Women are often influenced by soap operas, magazines and TV shows where extramarital affairs are galmourised. Women are highly social and communicative human beings. This is the primary reason why more than 89% of TV shows including romance novels are targeted towards women.
Public disclosure of public figures having affairs is headline news because women are fascinated and titillated by hearing of others' affairs. They perceive that a good and secure life can be cultivated by getting sexually involved with a man. It does not matter if they are married with familial responsibilities. Media teaches and propels women to ignore all obligations in the individual pleasure pursuit.
Lack of proper sex education including the existence of sexual taboos makes it difficult for partners to talk honestly about sex. Secrecy in sexual matters makes women usually curious. Affairs are simply a way to discover their own sexuality and boost their importance.
The primary reasons for engaging in infidelity are:
Improving and Enhancing Self-esteem Levels:Women often get bored after years in a monogamous relationship. They feel that they are being taken for granted. They don’t feel appreciated. They often seek third party male company outside the marriage merely to seek compliments about themselves. It boosts their importance and self-esteem. The liaison starts out as fun and becomes intimate with time.
New and Varied Sexual and Emotional Experience:The female spouse often has to forgo her own emotional and sexual fulfilment within the confines of marriage. She has to make compromises and adjust. She fulfils her emotional and sexual wants and needs by seeking affairs outside the marriage. She finally gets a chance to freely express herself sexually and emotionally. She does not have to make compromises anymore.
Emotional Connection and Loneliness:Usually, the woman gets so caught up in marital and family affairs that she has no time to emotionally connect and talk with her partner. Her life is repetitive and structured. She becomes lonely and yearns for emotional closeness and intimacy. Affairs usually start as friendships where the woman is able to converse freely with another man. She is able to achieve the emotional intimacy and closeness lacking in the marriage.
Women are not "swept off their feet" when they become involved in an affair. They are rational and thoughtful. Women consider romance to be important in both marriage and affairs. More than 80% of women argue that they consider their lover as a friend. Thus, communication forms an important feature of all their affairs.
Infidelity is a means of self-discovery for them. Women observe and discover their untapped potential and behaviour including emotional capacity.
