An infidelity conjecture... your thoughts?
Doc in Cleveland,
Your comments about thinking it advisable to counsel married men against starting their wives "down the road" toward enjoying sex with lovers; i.e.:
Doc in Cleveland said:
.... I am currently treating two cuckolds whose relationships failed. They incessantly pine for the woman who cuckolded them and completely believe that they will never love again. I believe this to be a very dangerous depressive state and might be reason for me to begin to steer males away from cuckolding because this psychological situation cannot be remedied until certain conditions again exist; i.e., deep love and solid trust. .... The severity a "lost cuckold" experiences is so frightening to this caretaker that the answer may be, in fact, never to start. ....
bring to mind a question posed quite a while ago by Son of John. It was: "Why to some women want to fuck men other than their husbands?" (or words to that effect).
In response, I posted what might be called a "conjecture" or perhaps "hypothesis" (the latter if one considers there to be sufficient supporting evidence). It has long since disappeared into the forum backlog; since it's relevant to your thread I'm re-posting it here. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on it.
It's in a form somewhat edited and slightly-modified from the original. As you will see, the underlying concept is simple and has the advantage of symmetry. That is, women are not treated as special cases. It pertains to men who want to fuck women other than their wives, and may do so on occasion, as well as to women who want to fuck men other than their husbands and may do so on occasion.
The underlying concept is that female sex drive, like essentially all other human characteristics, varies widely among individuals just as (for instance) athletic ability, musical talent, mathematical talent, outgoing vs. shy personality, and of course male sex drive, varies widely among individuals.
To see this in a simplified way, visualize female sex drive as distributed along a vertical line. At the lower end of this line are women who are asexual. They don't need it, they don't want it, and if they never have sex with another person their whole lives, that's fine with them. (Apparently there’s some evidence that roughly 1% of the population, female and male combined, may be in this cohort but that’s considered a weak statistic. See, for instance, “asexual people” in Wikipedia.)
At the upper end of this line are women who are highly sexual. They need it, they want it, sex is always on or never far from their minds, they seek it constantly, and they find it successfully. Some prostitutes are in this catagory, as are (probably) the most sexually-active married women described in this forum, in most cases by their cuckold husbands and in a much smaller number of cases by themselves. These women can be viewed as the sexual equivalent of talented athletes.
Between these extremes, female sex drive can be viewed as distributed along this vertical line. Grouped around the mid-point are women with "about average" sex drives. Over a broad central segment of this sexuality line are women with sex drives falling within the range “average plus or minus 1 standard deviation.” If the female sexuality distribution is in the form of a gaussian distribution, i.e., a bell-shaped curve — which, in reality, may or may not be the case — about 68% of women have sex drives within this range. These are the women who can be viewed as having “more-or-less average” sex drives. Above them are women with sex drives ranging from fairly high to extremely high. Below them are women with sex drives ranging from fairly low to extremely low.
Now, suppose a woman with a relatively high sex drive accepts a marriage proposal from a man with a relatively low sex drive. A significant (i.e., definitely non-trivial) percentage of marriages fall into this category. I suggest these might be called marriages with female-positive sexual offset. The woman may suspect or know this will be the case prior to marriage, from her pre-marital sexual experiences with her fiance.... but she accepts his proposal anyway, for any of the many reasons other than sexual compatibility that form the basis of marriages.
At some point after marriage, the woman realizes she does not find her husband sexually satisfying for reasons that amount to her having a relatively high and him a relatively low sex drive. I omit other reasons that may be highly significant such as, for instance, the husband having a very small penis, or severe problems with erectile dysfunction, or simply the psychological/emotional effects of long-term marriage.
For purposes of illustration, assume an absurdity. Suppose it is a strong cultural tradition for women and men to get married and, in addition, it’s a very strong cultural tradition for women and men, once married, to play one-on-one basketball with each other and only with each other. Suppose also that one-on-basketball between women and men somehow results in children. Thus, there is great pressure for couples to successfully "play b-ball" to satisfy the desires of grandparents-to-be for grandchildren and... well... to perpetuate the species.
The situation of a sexually-unsatisfied married woman with a high sex drive can be considered roughly analogous, in this absurd illustration, to a woman who is a talented university varsity-level basketball player marrying then playing one-on-one basketball exclusively with a man whose basketball talents are, unfortunately, merely average (or below). For the more talented player (the woman), it simply isn't very satisfying. In fact, it's probably quite boring — even though, off the court, they may be good friends who are compatible in most other ways.
The woman, of course… in accordance with cultural tradition… promised at the time of their marriage to play one-on-one basketball only with her husband, and he made the same promise to her. After a while, however, she succumbs to temptation and begins playing one-on-one with other men having basketball talents more comparable to her own. She finds this much more satisfying and pursues it secretly, but sooner or later her husband becomes aware of her extramarital basketball. At first he feels crushed by this evidence of his basketball inadequacy. After a while, however, he recognizes he is incapable of satisfying his wife’s demands for high-end basketball. He brings the subject up with her and, after a series of long conversations extending over many days, including many glasses of wine, he convinces her it really is OK with him if she plays basketball with other men. His wife, at first very reluctant to even admit she’s been playing extramarital basketball (in violation of cultural expectations and, indeed, her self-image as a GoodWife), accepts what she finally comes to view as her husband’s generous offer, and their marriage continues on a much more satisfactory level.
Returning from basketball to sex (while continuing to keep the above absurd analogy in mind), and viewing extramarital sex in terms of probability, a woman with a high sex drive relative to her husband would presumably be more likely to take a lover — perhaps, over time, many lovers — than a woman married to a man whose position on the male sex-drive scale is similar to (or higher than) her position on the female sex-drive scale. The woman of the latter couple would, by hypothesis, be more likely to find her husband sexually satisfying over the long term and would be less likely to take lovers.
There are, of course, also many marriages in which the man has a higher sex drive than the woman. In such marriages, which can be viewed as having "male-positive" sexual offset, the husband's situation can be viewed as essentially a mirror image of the wife’s situation outlined above. Thinking again in terms of probability, such a man would be more likely to take a lover, perhaps many lovers over time, than would be the case if his position on the male sex-drive scale were similar to, or lower than, his wife's position on the female sex-drive scale.
This is my proposed “basic level” explanation for why a significant percentage of married women want to, and sometimes do, fuck men — sometimes many men — other than their husbands, and vice-versa. In addition to being symmetrical (as noted above), it can be compared to the principle of Occam's razor which is most commonly understood as: “Of several seemingly-acceptable explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest is preferable” (from Wikipedia).
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this hypothesis, including an opinion that it's wrong (if that's what you think... preferably supported by some reasons).
—Custer
