JUST PUBLISHED: “I felt like I lost my manhood”: What happens to men when women play away

‘If you hope to be married for life, then prepare for one or both of you to be unfaithful during that life. If you cannot accept that, then don’t get married.’

This is the best advice I can give any couple – to be realistic about the limits of monogamy. I laid it out in my recent autobiography, Design Your Self, and I repeat it here: the majority of relationships experience infidelity at some point. A stark truth but one born from my experiences and research, not just as a gender sociologist but as a man; married five times.

Yet no matter how much relationship experience one has, can it ever fully prepare us for the impact of infidelity; either our own or our partner’s? I think not. Infidelity is crushing. The loss of trust, the lies, the deceit, the attempt to maintain normality while your head and heart are embroiled in turmoil. Thankfully, those days are over for me. But not for most people. Globally, infidelity is rampant, with all the evidence proving that monogamy is not a natural condition for humans. Yet we continue to demand it.

What a sorry state we have gotten ourselves into. Expecting the perfectly pure, everlasting love relationship yet constantly having to deal with the pain of disappointment, both in ourselves and our partner.

Heterosexual women and men are equally guilty of having unrealistic expectations of fidelity from their partner, as high as 99% in married couples and 94% in cohabiting couples. Which just goes to show that we humans learn nothing from history.

But while the pain of a lover’s infidelity will be experienced somewhat differently by individuals and couples and across cultures, recent research by gender sociologist Damla Topbas shows that men are especially vulnerable to their partner’s cheating. Which is ironic, given that men are 50% more likely to play away than women. Perhaps this is an example of men’s willingness to compartmentalise, to separate self from reality? They go into relationships demanding fidelity from their partner, but all the while there is that tiny voice in their head whispering; ‘its okay for you to play away now and again, just don’t make a habit of it and don’t get caught’. Men rarely imagine that women to have a similar voice in their heads, but they do, with studies indicating a noticeable increase in female infidelity over recent years. However, there are differences with men. Women are better at cheating than men and women experience infidelity differently. For women, a partner’s infidelity is an intense emotional roller-coaster. What do men experience? A loss of power.

As Damla Topbas puts it: 

‘[my research shows] three dominant responses by men to their partner’s infidelity: ‘loss of masculine honor’, ‘loss of manhood’, and ‘loss of possession’, all reflecting a loss of power.’ 

Topbas’s study into masculinity and infidelity offers some revealing and disturbing, quotes from men who had been cheated on by their partners, confirming that for a great many guys, women are seen as a precious possession to be protected from ‘being stolen’, just like their favourite car:

‘For men, it’s like an honor thing, ‘you are mine now’. When a man thinks ‘she is mine,’ he experiences the same feeling as when a child’s toy is stolen’ (Man A. aged 30, married) 

‘I felt as if someone was taking possession of my things, something that was mine, as if someone else was claiming it and trying to take it away from me.’ (Man B, aged 44, married)

The sheer intensity of violent feelings which cheated men can display is staggering though sadly familiar to anyone aware of the high incidence of male violence towards wives and girlfriends.

‘I found out she had another phone, and the first thing I did when I found her message to a man was to go to the kitchen, grab a knife, and walk over to her.’ (Man C, aged 51, romantic relationship)

‘When I learned that she cheated on me, I decided to kill all her family. I gave up this idea for my children.’ (Man D, aged 56, married)

‘My girlfriend pressed charges against me because I was still sending her these messages despite a restraining order. I ended up in jail for four days and the judge told me I could face 5 years. I told them that I had not even touched the girl but if you want, release me, let me kill her and I will deserve it.’ (Man E, aged 32, romantic relationship) 

For some men, even if their partner is raped they experience it not with shock and empathy for their partner, but as a personal attack on their masculine honor and male pride. Appallingly, such men even consider the rape as ‘cheating’.

‘You know when a man rapes a woman and the woman says ‘I lost my honor’, when she cheated [sic] on me, I felt like I had lost my manhood’. Men can commit suicide when their partner is raped. Think about this from a male perspective.’ (Man F, aged 41, romantic partner)

What sort of men are these? Quite ordinary, certainly not exceptional among the global male population. Though to be clear, this study was undertaken in a country which has toxic (traditional) masculinity embedded in it at every level. But if any British guy reading this thinks that he is the exception and a lot different from the men in this study, then he should reflect on these comments:

‘When my wife was pregnant, I went to Amsterdam and had sex with two women. I did not feel that I had cheated, it was a 20-minute thing there,…women do not prefer a one-night stand. A woman does not get sexual pleasure from a relationship without emotion. (Man G. aged 30, romantic relationship).

‘My boss sent me abroad on work. I was with a different woman every day, no issues at all. You have a home, no financial problems, power is in your hands, and every evening you sleep with a different woman. (Man H, 43, married). 

Sound familiar? Of course. These comments are recognisable to any man of any nationality or culture because they reveal men totally wrapped up in their masculine entitlement and quite unable, and unwilling, to step beyond it and into the nuanced world of female experience and sexuality. Men avoid exposing themselves to women’s subjectivity because to do so would be just too unsettling, too threatening and too dissimilar from how they see the world. A bit like stepping into Alice in Wonderland; totally disorientating.

Whatever our sex, gender or nationality, Infidelity is the ultimate wake-up call in any relationship. It is the one event guaranteed to rock the foundations of any love, no matter how strongly that love is felt. But for men whose partner plays away, the trauma goes even deeper; through to their very depths of masculinity. A partner’s infidelity has the power to delegitimise a man, undermine his always fragile manliness, and cause him to grieve not just over a broken relationship but the fact his partner was ‘stolen’ by another guy, leaving him at the bottom of the male hierarchy. 

‘The way the men in my study tackled this masculine crisis, their anxiety about not being seen as a ‘real man’, was to find ways which reaffirmed their male dominance, and they did this by turning their weakness into hostility towards all women.’ 

Where does this leave us? 

It leaves us with what I term the ‘growing gender divergence’, fast becoming a chasm between independent-minded women and traditional-minded men in every country. With women and men not just living apart but growing apart. Until that day comes when all men cease seeing women as property, themselves as entitled, and sexual agency as exclusively a man’s game, then not much hope of women and men ever fully learning to live together, happily ever after.