Infidelity
Most first affairs are cases of accidental infidelity, unintended and uncharacteristic acts of carelessness that really did just happen. Someone will get drunk, will get caught up in the moment or will just be having a bad day. It can happen to anyone, though some people are more accident prone than others, some situations are more accident zones.
The most startling dynamic behind accidental infidelity is misplaced politeness, the feeling that it would be rude to turn down a needy friend's sexual advances. In the debonair gallantry of the moment, the brazen discourtesy to the marriage partner is overlooked altogether, out of sight, out of mind.
Both men and women can slip up and have accidental affairs, though the most accident-prone are those who drink, travel, those who don't get asked much, those who don't feel very tightly married, those whose running buddies screw around, and those who are afraid to run from a challenge. Most are men.
Surely the craziest and most destructive form of infidelity is the temporary insanity of falling in love.
An affair with someone grossly inappropriate, someone decades younger or older, someone dependent or dominating, someone with problems even bigger than your own is so crazily stimulating that it's like a drug that can lift you out of your depression and enable you to feel things again. Of course, between moments of ecstasy, you are more depressed, increasingly alone and alienated in your life, and increasingly hooked on the affair partner. Ideal romance partners are damsels or dumsels in distress, people without a life but with a lot of problems, people with bad reality testing and little concern with understanding reality any better.
Both genders seem equally capable of falling into the temporary insanity of romantic affairs. Women are more likely to reframe anything they do as having been done for love. Women in love are far more aware of what they are doing and what the dangers might be. Men in love can be extraordinarily incautious and willing to give up everything. Men in love lose their heads—at least for a time.
All marriages are imperfect, and probably, a disappointment in some ways, a slice of reality, not a license to mess around with a neighbor. There are awful marriages people can't get all the way into and can't get all the way out of, divorces people won't call off and can't go through, marriages that won't die and won't recover.
Some set out to keep their marriages defective and distant. I have seen men who have kept the same mistress through several marriages, arranging their marriages to serve some practical purpose while keeping their romance safely encapsulated elsewhere. The men considered it a victory over marriage, the exploited wives were outraged.
Men tend to attach too little significance to affairs, ignoring their horrifying power to disorient and disrupt lives. Women tend to attach too much significance, assuming that the emotions are so powerful they must be real, therefore, concrete, permanent, and stable enough to risk a life for.
A woman seems likely to be less concerned with the letter of the law than with the emotional coherence of her life. It may be okay to screw a man if she loves him, and certainly appropriate to lie to a man who you don't love but, believes he has a claim on you.
More men than women do have affairs, but it seemed to me the rate for men was dropping, philandering has not been considered cute since the Kennedy's reign and the rate for women is rising. Women who assumed that all men were screwing around saw their own screwing around as a blow for equal rights.
Men are able to approach sex more casually than women, a factor not only of the patriarchal double standard but also of the difference between having genitals on the outside and having them on the inside. Getting laid for all the wrong reasons is a lot less dangerous than falling in love with all the wrong people.
Infidelity is a very messy hobby. It is not an effective way to find a new mate or a new life. Infidelity is a spectator sport like shark feeding or bull fighting, that is, great for those innocent bystanders who are careful not to get their feet, or whatever, wet.
Psychology Today
See Affairs and Cheaters and Philanderers
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