The C-Word (Cheater): Infidelity as the Ultimate Threat
This book focuses on the meaning-making and experiences of men in the United States who purposefully sought out extramarital relationships online. These men did not fall into an affair due to opportunity. They created their own opportunities by logging on
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We all think we understand men’s infidelity. From casual exchanges about celebrity cheating scandals in public spaces to private conversations about the state of our friends’ unions to memes on social media, we position ourselves as adultery experts. A popular meme online likens men’s cheating to losing a $100 bill to pick up a $1 bill. The original poster, a man, explains that if you had $100 but saw a $1 bill on the floor, you’d pick it up, and then says, “There ya go. That’s why boys cheat.” A woman comments that in picking up the $1 bill they lost their $100 and ends with “There ya go. That’s why boys are stupid.” This is representative of our cultural understandings of men’s cheating. We see cheating as something inherent to most men (if not all); we see cheating as simply men being “greedy”; and we regard men who cheat as stupid. Once we know a man previously cheated, we believe we know all that matters. We brand him a “cheater” and villainize him. So pervasive is this belief that often when people learn the topic of this book, they exclaim, “Pfft, I can you tell you why men cheat!” Self-proclaimed experts abound. They all reason no need for such a book or a study exists because they believe the reasons for men’s cheating to be settled.
© The Author(s) 2020 A. M. Walker, Chasing Masculinity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49818-4_1
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A. M. Walker
The reality is that we likely know many men who participate in infidelity, men we like and admire and believe to be “good people.” We just don’t realize that they cheat. We may even look at their marriages from the outside with envy and admiration. These men are people we know, people whose company we enjoy. They are men who live next door, who work in the office two doors down, who take their kids to piano lessons, coach Little League, and open doors for their wives. The men we see doing all of those things are also the men who are logging on and hunting for a clandestine sexual partner to supplement their marriage. While we imagine affairs as something that happens between two people who played with fire by looking too long into one another’s eyes, the men in this study made a conscious choice to seek out an outside partner online. And they did so after years of muddling through marital dynamics that left them feeling unsatisfied, unsupported, downtrodden, and like “less of a man.” These men shared their unique perspectives and experiences, their feelings, their psyches, and their worlds. As much as you feel sure you know why men cheat, you likely don’t have the first clue. I conducted a yearlong investigation into extramarital experiences using a sample collected from Ashley Madison, a niche online dating site catering to married individuals seeking an outside partner. I collected rich interview data from 46 men between the ages of 27–70 located across the United States. Thirty-seven men (80%) in the study detailed dissatisfaction with the relational management in their primary partnerships. The men described emotionally unsatisfying primary partnership
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