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December 14, 2009 | 6:47 pm
Why Men Cheat and How to Stop Them
Posted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
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On a recent debate about marital infidelity on CNN a fellow panelist was adamant that Tiger Wood’s unfaithfulness was both predictable and unpreventable. ‘As a famous guy you meet a lot of beautiful women. You feel attracted to them, they feel attracted to you, and you end up in bed. It’s not more complicated than that and there’s no way to stop it.’ Men cheat. Get used to it. Case closed.
Such shallow drivel has been the level of discourse ever since the story broke that Woods may have had enough mistresses to staff a female softball team. Firstly, if there is no way to guarantee male faithfulness, why are we all scandalized by Tiger’s behavior? And second, a whole parade of powerful men – Eliot Spitzer, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, John Edwards – are destroying themselves and their families with acts of infidelity. And we can’t come with any cause other powerful men have a sense of entitlement?
What impedes any deep understanding of infidelity is the public’s natural assumption that husbands have affairs for sex. In fact, the vast majority of husband’s affairs have no physical component. They are cyber affairs that take place over the internet. They are conducted over the phone and are never consummated. And even when they do get physical it is often very bad and unsatisfying sex, as Monica Lewinsky shared in the Starr Report and as a multitude of JFK’s mistresses alleged as well.
In truth, men have affairs not for physical reasons but for emotional ones. They cheat not out of a sense of confidence but out of a state of brokenness. Not out of a sense of how desirable they are but out of a sense of what failures they are. And this is especially true of men like Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton who live in a hyper-competitive environments where they realize that they are only special to the extent that they keep on winning. Men like these are particularly broken, living as they do just one failure away from obscurity. They know that their value as human beings rests entirely in other people’s hands. And they live in permanent and painful insecurity. They constantly question their self-worth and they turn to women both to feel desirable and sexy and to comfort them from their pain.
Yes, I know. Men like Tiger Woods appear to the public as cool-as-a-cucumber. But beneath the calm veneer is a man who has been trained to believe that his value as a human being rests entirely on a never-ending game of human one-upmanship. Those who have made their names in sports and politics live with unimaginable insecurity. And rather than deal with these insecurities in a healthy way by having deep emotional conversations with their wives about their fears, it is easier to simply paper them over by turning to strangers who make them feel special. The attention of other women brings a momentary silencing of the inner demons who constantly taunt them with whispers of their own insignificance. And the more prized the woman is by other men, the greater the validation these men feel. Coupled with this is the intuitive gravitation by men to the healing powers of the feminine. Men who are in pain use the caress and the care of a woman as a salve to sooth their broken egos. Having a woman care for you and make herself available to you – not to mention tell you how wonderful you are – becomes a like a drug that makes you feel instantly better. Of course, the healing is ephemeral and unfulfilling based as it is on a highly artificial sense of intimacy.
The obvious question, now, is this. If a man who feels deeply insecure looks to a woman to make him feel special, then why doesn’t he turn to his own wife? Because any man who suspects deep down that he is a loser is going to look at the woman dumb enough to marry him as a loser squared. She has allied herself with failure and is part of the same loser package. And if she has no value, how can she confer it on someone else?
The public makes the mistake of assuming that powerful, successful men are the most confident, that elite sport stars like Tiger Woods are unflappable. Precisely the opposite is true. Everyone who seeks the spotlight, whether in sports, television or politics, does so to compensate for some inner feeling of inadequacy, as Aristotle made clear more than two millennia ago. Every ‘successful’ man is inwardly broken in some way. If not, why would they spend their lives seeking a place in the public’s heart?
Many will argue with me. Adultery is about sex. It’s about powerful men behaving arrogantly. But then why is the most common refrain of the adulterous husband to his mistress the very infamous, ‘My wife doesn’t understand me,’ meaning, My wife can’t take away my pain, but maybe you can. My wife can’t make me feel good about myself. Even in my marriage I still feel so insignificant. But being with you makes me feel special.
I was not at all surprised to hear Tiger’s alleged mistresses saying that he told them he loved them and was unhappy with his wife. Cheating husbands always say things like this. And at the time, they mean it. Monica Lewinsky said that Bill Clinton told her he would leave Hillary and marry her, which again is common with the unfaithful spouse. They’re expressing their inner misery and blaming their wives for their unhappiness when really they are solely responsible for their low self-esteem which will carry over into every relationship until he finally decides to fix himself.
This is why we see philandering husbands so often having many, as opposed to just one mistress, like Tiger Woods. No woman can make a broken man feel good about himself. So he becomes a wanderer, obsessively traveling from woman to woman hoping that at least one will provide the magical salve he seeks.
Many have said that husbands like Tiger Woods are sex addicts. But then why aren’t they addicted to sex with their wives? Why does it have to come from another woman?
But from understanding the cause we can create a solution. Men who learn to talk to their wives about their deepest fears slowly become immune to an affair. Infidelity, it turns out, often provides a starting point for couples to address the void in their relationship which usually consists of the lack of truly intimate communication about life’s anxieties and apprehensions. A man’s deepest fear is of failure. And the person he most masks this from is his own wife because she is the person whose opinion matters most. I know husbands who have been laid off from their jobs in this recession who still put on a suit every day and leave the house so that their wives never find out. So called ‘successful’ men harbor the same fears. And rather than destructively address the fear by becoming a stud to other women, he can purge from himself a dependency on strangers by learning to confide fully in his wife.
The number one complaint of wives in marriage is that their husbands don’t talk to them about their feelings. When a philandering husband is trying to win his wife back after cheating on her, what better way than to finally open up to her about the reasons for his unfaithfulness. It was never a rejection of her. It did not happen because she did not give him enough sex, or that she didn’t go to the gym, or wasn’t emotionally available. Those are the excuses of a coward. A boy blames others for his failures. A man takes responsibility for his actions. Rather, it was because he falsely thought that someone other than his wife could make him feel good about himself. And now he has learned that those feelings of self-confidence are the preserve of only one woman.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is author of many books on relationships, including ‘The Kosher Sutra,’ ‘Kosher Sex,’ and ‘Kosher Adultery.’ www.shmuley.com
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What utter balderdash, Rabbi Boteach! For all the hoopla about your books, you are clueless on this issue. You are an amateur psychologist and a very bad one at that. There are so many factors and variables in any relationship that to proffer your simplistic one dimentional explanation is a waste of time and reading energy. You have no idea what it is all about and it none of anyone’s business. Leave the man alone and don’t try and build you name and reputation on his loss and pain. As a Rabbi, this should be the one thing that is obvious.
Rabbi Boteach has the arrogance to profile another man without having met Tiger Woods or having the professional training to do so. Invariably, he seems to interject himself vicariously in the lives of “stars”, i.e.Michael Jackson. One is almost forced to wonder whether he too seeks a place in the public heart. How ironic that he profiled himself when he said about Tiger Woods:
“Every ‘successful’ man is inwardly broken in some way. If not, why would they spend their lives seeking a place in the public’s heart?”
This seems to accurately describe Rabbi Boteach.
yea, ok.. some may see this issue as a power and fame seeking issue. Way too often stuff like this gets pinned on the man as being a filanderer or some oversexed status seeker looking for another rconquest. Many of these women who claim affairs with Tiger Woods are just that.. trying to lay claim to him, possibly to get pregnant so they can dip into his fortunes for several decades and live a better life without having to work for it. Nothing more than goyim whores on a mission. Then we should maybe consider he obvious. His wife is not fulfilling her marital obligation to take care of his sexual and emotional health and needs.Far too often this is the case, and if a man needs more sex than he is getting at home, he’s going to perform less than perfect because he is distracted. If his sexual emotional needs are not being met, then he is going to have communication problems because he wont be able to express himself. Consider Mr Cool on the Green, not a hint of emotion…doing the putz..
Agressive status seeking women like his wife, however smart and beautiful is in a direct competition. These women are outstanding role models for girls and women that want to Be-Do-Have a career and life outside of a family, but IMHO, they are far from wife/partner/companion materials. Like the sign says, pretty to look at and lovely to hold.. but if they are broken,consider it sold…Those pretty girls are selling a lower standard bill of goods…
Shalom.
why do the women get involved in such relationships ?
for one, the wives themselves, at least those who knew prior to marriage, that their man may have a high probability of straying
the mistresses who are aware of the wife and know firsthand that their man will do the same running around on them
was it only minerva who could tame the centaur ? if so, how did she do it ?
IMHO men stray for a more basic reason, we all want what we can’t have
or taken another way, the TWO worse things in life are said to be 1/getting what you want and 2/NOT getting what you want
anyway be well
frankD
Sometimes in live you loose if you don’t know exactly what your goals are.!!
Rabbi You Got It Right!
You know you did. Heck Edwards has a baby because the woman said, “You look nice today.” His wife could not remember the last time she complimented him. I know she had cancer and that was the most important thing to take care of, but the burden of every wife and mother is to take care of her kids and husband. The burden of every married man to take care of his wife…“Isn’t that why he signs the contract?”
When married men make inappropriate moves on me it is not because I am prettier than their wives (i assure you Im not) or because I’m smatter ( i doubt it).
It is because I just sit, listen, and respond without judgement. Plus, I don’t want or need anything from them. If I compliment a married man and it makes him want to fornicate then i know however I said what I said was inappropriate to HIS situation. The unhappy marriage he is in does not need any help in being worse.
So if your married and thinking about cheating or if you are cheating please STOP and THINK. Your wife will forgive you but she will NOT forget. No more naked wife or her saying sexy things to you when you gave away something that she worked so hard for and possibly exposed her to a “situation.” -Pregnant mistress or an STD
I don’t think we can generalize on the reasons WHY men cheat. I guess for some it’s a physical reason, some an emotional reason. Maybe even more money!
Sometimes we forget that even celebrities and stars are human.
i am a betrayed spouse who found out in 2006 that my husband of then 27 years had been cheating on me. i had learned of his first discretion back in 98 when i was informed via a letter, which i intercepted and opened, that my husband had fathered an illegitimate daughter 3 years into our marriage. he called the childs mother a welfare whore, and insisted he never knew she was pregnant - A STATEMENT I NEVER BELIEVED. but none the less i chose to forgive him.
ever since 2006 i have been reading everything i could find to understand the mess of it all.
i thank the rabbi for this commentary - and while i do not believe in making excuses for my husbands actions i found many answers in reading this article. for so long i have believed it was about ME - i now realize it was all about HIM.
Men who are professional & make a lot of money have the time & opportunity to
have extramarital affairs. Men usually have no intention of leaving their wives & families The women they cheat with aren’t that important to them. Men are horny
bastards after seeing the same old girl after a few years he’d like a little excitement, maybe a little younger, someone who will give him what his wife won’t. Sorry Rabbi extramarital sex isn’t because the man feels low self esteem, In fact most are arrogant sob’s & think their too smart to get caught. The usually do & end up getting taken to the cleaners unless he’s smart enough to get a prenup
I couldn’t disagree more with the rabbi. These ultra successful men are not feeling like failures, insecure and broken. They think they are indestructable, can get away with it and think that nothing they do is wrong because everyone around them tells them they are right 24/7. There was no void in Tiger’s life. He had a lot of friends, a model of a wife, a new baby, successful job and lots of money and time for fun. He didn’t care about the consequences of his actions and like the typical cheating man thought he was entitled to have as much fun as possible at any cost. He’s upset he got caught but that’s the only regret, that he didn’t do a better job covering up his tracks.
I think this article is the most truthful thing I have ever read! Thank you for your transparency, so refreshing! People really need to accept that men are hardwired to plant-and-go…always have been, always will be.
Info on abusive relationships cheating spouse and cheating husband
is there a chance for redemption though? doesn’t look like it in Tiger’s case, he’s blown quite a few deals and destroyed his marriage. Nice.
Get your man back
you are 100% right I’m a cheater with a happy marriage i can’t say nothing more than you are right. People thing I’m very confident and successful. I never realized what triggers me to do that. And yes I’m seeking love more than sex, and my wife loves me and tells me and shows me how badly she needs me. At least from now I will try to work on my self confidence
the concept was really very interesting, such blogs contain a lot to read.