One of the studies showed that the tendency to cheat has an age component.
Women are MORE likely to cheat when younger. Men when they are older.
Why? I suspect their relative value in the dating marketplace, if I were to be so crass. Young women have good looks and the ability to bear children in their favor. As they age, these advantages diminish. Men become more valuable in that same dating marketplace as they progress in their careers and have more money and more earning capacity.
In relatively new marriages, it is women ending the marriage at a much higher rate than it is men. She is still young and has little risk of losing her children in the divorce. At some point, this changes. In marriages of longer duration, it's the man who becomes more likely to end the marriage. He has a higher value in the dating marketplace and since his kids are probably adults, he doesn't have the risk of losing them (he thinks.)
The overall numbers are still women choosing to end marriages at a rate 2x higher than men. I.E. about 67% are ended by women and about 33% are divorces sought by men.
Dr Willard Harley says most women who choose to end their marriages are not victims of cheating or abuse. He indicates that he has a hard time convincing such victims to end their marriages. The women who choose to end their marriages, by his accounts, are those who feel they've been neglected by their husbands and can do better either on their own or with another.
And he's worked with thousands of couples, so he has the experience to know.
Men who cheat on their wives are more likely to return because they never really shut out their wives, they claim to still love them, and were cheating only for sex.
Women who cheat on their husbands are far less likely to return because they've shut out their husbands, believing they no longer love him, or perhaps that they never have loved him. They cheat for emotional connection.
The betrayed husband has a far more difficult task winning back an unfaithful wife than does a betrayed wife. She is far more likely to have emotionally checked out of the marriage than a cheating husband, and therefore, is much harder to engage in rebuilding the relationship.
Of course, there are exceptions. But the general trend is women end marriages because they believe they are not loved by their husbands and do so at a rate 2x that of men leaving their marriage. They are NOT ending marriages due to abuse or adultery on the part of their husbands in the majority of cases.
Originally Posted By: Dr Harley
When all forms of spousal neglect are grouped together, we find that it is far ahead of all the other reasons combined that women leave men. Surprisingly few women divorce because of physical abuse, infidelity, alcoholism, criminal behavior, fraud, or other serious grounds. In fact, I find myself bewildered by women in serious physical danger refusing to leave men that threaten their safety.
Simply stated, women leave men when they are neglected. Neglect accounts for almost all of the reasons women leave and divorce men.
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8111_leave.html
If you read further, you will see that often it's simply different ideas on how to do the relationship. Now, I'm not so sure it's as cut and dried as Dr Harley says. After all, I believe there are some who believe in the idea of a soul mate. I even heard from my ex-wife "If you loved me, you would know what I need and want."
So I'd temper his view with a caveat that you need emotionally healthy people and expectations to build a loving marriage. If you have a women expecting a fairy tale or a man expecting a porn movies in real life, both are unrealistic and destined for disappointment.
