Cheating and Perception

I was reading a loving wives story last week, by an author, who in a very brief passage, said the word "compartmentalize" with respect to a woman's actions. It was a gently BTB story, which means he divorced her, but no scorched earth action. All at once, it clarified and put a word to something I have intuitively known for probably decades. I had to put a story I am almost finished with on hold while I wrote this while it was still fresh in my mind.

This is a discussion about cheating and about how mens' and womens' brains are different in the way they process things.

It is not about cuckolding, swinging, swapping, sharing, hotwifing, or any other activity in which the husband is involved. It is cheating, nothing more, nothing less.

Anyone who has had a sister, girlfriend or wife knows that a woman's mind is all over the place, and very complex in the way they think about and categorize things.

Men's brains, on the other hand, generally tend to be very binary. By that I mean left/right, up/down, white/black, right/wrong. You see my point.

Let us take almost any sample cheating story out of the Loving Wives section of the board.

It goes like this: Beautiful marriage, loving family. She is always there for him, adores her husband, and never denies him anything, and they have a great sex life.

However, at some point, it doesn't matter when, could be five years in, could be 25 years in, though it generally happens later in the marriage, she succumbs in a moment of weakness, and cheats, and the details are irrelevant at this point in time.

She feels guilty, and swears to herself to never let it happen again. But, the fact is that it rocked her world. He did things to her and with her that she would have been ashamed to ask her husband to do.

So they connected again, and again. She then was able to do something that most men could not do, and don't even have the comprehension to do.

She compartmentalized the two parts of her life and in her mind was able to understand that they were two parts of her life that had absolutely nothing to do with each other. What she was doing had nothing to do with her husband and family, because she was still the same, mother, wife and lover. Still was always there to support him, denied him nothing, and they still had an awesome sex life, and he was still and always the love of her life.

As these thing quite often happen, by accident, she gets busted. She tries to tell him it has nothing to do with him. Has anything changed? She is still the wife and the mom, is always still there to support him, denies him nothing, they still have a great sex life. She is sorry to have hurt him this way, and he is the only man she has ever loved.

He looks at her as if she has grown a second head or has gone totally insane, or batshit crazy and can not even comprehend what she is saying.

At this point in time, the old male insecurities and fragile ego make their appearance. Is he bigger than me, is he a better lover, why wasn't I able so satisfy you? And did you ever make me have sloppy seconds? And what about STD's? And how many other men have you fucked? And some of the LW authors throw in him puking and/or running away and hiding like a little boy, which is a MAJOR disrespect to all real men.

And then the husband throws out the old "trust" line. I still love you, but how can I ever trust you again? He is forgetting that she never said she was sorry and was breaking it off. She was sorry for hurting him and causing the man she loved so much pain, still not understanding why he can't see and understand what she is trying to tell him.

Of course, in the LW versions, they beat her down to where she is sorry, has broken it off and will never cheat again, and begs him to forgive her.

So he says, I still love you, but I can never again trust you, and divorces her. Then, in the LW version, he eventually finds and marries a "pure" woman who would never do that to him.

She, on the other hand, in the LW version, either becomes a celibate monk, or becomes a slut and whore. Doesn't matter which, the BTB boys will be happy because she got her just reward.

In reality, as opposed to LW, this is what probably happens. She goes to see a therapist or two, maybe a woman, and a man, and they both tell her the same thing. That most men are incapable of anything more than binary thinking, so she should be discrete, keep her lover, who she doesn't even like, date other men but keep them at a distance and don't fall in love and hurt another man.

Several years later, she goes out on a date, goes home with him on the second date, and he rocks her world, as good as her lover. After several more dates, she kicks the long time lover to the curb, and eventually marries the guy that rocks her, and they live happily ever after.

REAL WORLD

Now, let's talk real world for a minute. Thinking and counting back, I have been with almost as many married women as I have with single women (not quite, but fairly close). How, you ask? It is simply being discrete, and being gentleman instead of an asshole.

Here is what I have observed. Short term relationships (one-offs, vacation hookups, conference hookups, etc), women get a taboo thrill, and several orgasms out of the act of cuckolding their husbands, and sometimes even brag about it. As an aside, my wife and I gave each other hall passes for conferences, as these short term hookups are not threat to a good marriage.

Longer term relationships (I have had a few, never got caught, and don't even like them, as I do not want to be the other man) are a totally different thing. I have seen the compartmentalizing in action. In these relationships, the wife will not tolerate any disrespect to her husband, who she truly loves and adores, her family, or her marriage. In her mind, they are two different parts of her life that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

One more comment, sure to fire up a certain segment of commenters over in the Loving Wives genre. The more binary a man's thinking is, the more apt you are to find him frothing at the mouth as a BTBer, and any man who is at all less binary than he is, is a cuck, and by the way, she is a whore. Most of them post as anonymous because they have no balls.

I do believe that the differences in the way men's and women's brains are wired, makes for a lot of the unresolved conflict in these situations. And who is to say who is right?

Discuss

As an addendum, some men can also compartmentalize. Every couple of years, there will be a story about a man who somehow, has two different wives, and two different families that do not know of each other, and he somehow has juggled both for years. That is the ultimate compartmentalization. In researching for this discussion, I have decided to explore this in a future story.