Gender and Extramarital Affairs

There's nothing like a politician admitting that he got it on with a woman who is not his (powerful) wife to provide an opportunity to explore gender roles and sexuality. Many of us thought that the Elliot Spitzer debacle was a ripe opening to talk about the suffocating Madonna/whore dichotomy that women (and men) suffer through. That was a fun and educational discussion, so let's use the John Edwards Affair to explore gender issues in faithfulness, shall we?

Two posts at Feministe - John Edwards by Octogalore and The Thing About Edwards by Lauren brought up discussions about how it is not surprising that Edwards had an affair because, you know, that's what men do. Ocotogalore raised many issues, including the fact that Rielle Hunter 17 years younger than Elizabeth Edwards and reminds readers that "are still expected to dominate the decorative role." She also notes that "women may not be as likely to stray when spouses are ill." Lauren's post really had nothing to do with the nature of adultery, but much of the ensuing conversation has to do with marriage, trust, and the nature of monogamy. After one comment asserted, "Infidelity, mostly a male problem (though women can be guilty of this as well) hurts women," Renee from Womanist Musings responded (in two comments I am combining):

No infidelity is not mostly a male problem. Not only do women cheat they do so in high numbers. I further believe that monogamy may not be how we were meant to be and we have been moralized into living a life like this. The idea that we “own” our loved ones is a huge part of the problem...

Many [people] live polyamourous lives and are happy with it. Perhaps if people were not pushed into choosing the picket fence and 1.2 kids situations like this would not happen in the first place. Love and sex are two very different animals we have only conflated the two in order to control and discipline it. Remember that the notion of romantic love itself is historically speaking a new concept.

My personal interest in whether men are really biologically hardwired to cheat (the whole "sowing their seeds" theory) and thus more likely to have affairs led me to my favorite source of non-partisan information about sexuality, The Guttmacher Institute. A paper from 2000, The Odds of Spousal Infidelity are Influenced by Social and Demographic Factors was very revealing:

Overall, 11% of respondents reported infidelity. Among the 1,717 adults who had been married only once, 16% reported having engaged in extramarital sex; of the 2,010 respondents who had been in a cohabiting or marital relationship in the 12 months prior to the survey, 5% reported unfaithful behavior during that period... When demographic and control variables alone were examined, being male... highly associated with the risk of infidelity (odds ratios, 2.2..). In addition, for each year couples lived together, respondents became 1% more likely to be unfaithful (odds ratio, 1.1)...

The last set of estimates included factors measuring respondents' opportunities for meeting additional sex partners. The more sex partners a respondent had had between age 18 and the time of first marriage or cohabitation, the more likely he or she was to be unfaithful (1.01). Men and women who lived in a central city had elevated odds of infidelity (1.5), while those who shared social networks with their partner had decreased odds of being unfaithful (0.7).

Commenting on the study's findings, one of the researchers observes that sexual behavior is social behavior, and suggests that interventions aimed at reducing risky sexual behavior should take into account the social contexts in which individuals make decisions related to sexual partnerships, as well as demographic risk factors.

Interesting, isn't it? If social context and demographic factors are primary reasons for the slightly higher numbers of men who cheat on their spouses (according to a review of infidelity in committed relationships in The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 25% of married men and 15% of married women admitted to engaging in extramarital sex "at least once," hardly a huge difference between the sexes), than men are probably not any more hardwired to sleep with more than one woman than women are innately drawn to sleeping with only one man. It brings me back to Renee's point that marriage may be failing everyone in denying that humans have sexual urges that extend beyond their life partners.

I'm intrigued by all of this because clearly, marriage between two individuals is how our society is set up. Most people seem to be able to live within these boundaries, whether it satisfies them or not, but what would the world look like if we acknowledge that people in general have varied sexual desires? As natural as it is to desire more than one person, it seems to me that jealousy is also a human response. If love and sex are different, how do we reconcile the two? The sense of betrayal that women feel on behalf of Elizabeth Edwards is overwhelming, partly as women identify her situation with how they would feel if they found out a partner cheated on them.

Relationships, sexuality, and human emotion are complicated. Sex and gender only determine how we act and respond to our desires as social context allows. If people don't like the results, we should consider changing the social context.

Suzanne also blogs about life at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants. She is currently seeking submissions for an anthology of period stories at Congratulations, You're a Woman Now!