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Researcher Seeks Cheating Husbands: Recruiting a Closeted Population

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Chasing Masculinity

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Abstract

I interviewed forty-six men who generously shared their stories about participation in outside partnerships and how that affected their primary partnerships. Semi-structured email interviews provided opportunities to probe participant responses for meaning and clarity. This overwhelmingly White, married, predominantly middle-class group of men provided insight into the qualities of outside partnerships formed purposefully from online profiles for extramarital affairs. The narratives in this study illustrate men’s meaning-making of their experiences seeking out and participating in outside partnerships concurrent to their primary partnerships. The existing literature on infidelity suggests distinct gender differences in approaching and navigating outside partnerships. The sample presented here challenges previous understandings of men’s participation in infidelity, as well as assumptions that infidelity participation functions as gendered.

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  1. Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, USA

    Alicia M. Walker

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Walker, A.M. (2020). Researcher Seeks Cheating Husbands: Recruiting a Closeted Population. In: Chasing Masculinity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49818-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49818-4_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49817-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49818-4

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