So, What Does All of This Mean Anyway?: Making Sense of Men’s Participation in Infidelity

Abstract

Men spoke of primary partnerships where their perception of a lack of an enthusiastic sexual partner, lack of relational management, and their primary partners’ disinterest in their feelings resulted in a loss of self-esteem and emasculation. Outside partnerships offered opportunities to validate their masculinity via sexual prowess, and functioned as a space where partners lavished them with attention, praise, and care. Men exercised the Infidelity Workaround. They outsourced the unsatisfying aspects of the primary partnership to a more interested third party while retaining the status of being married, avoiding the emotional upset of toppling their current lives, and circumventing the stigma, pain, and expense of a divorce. Men sought to outsource the emotional aspect of their primary partnerships via sexual outside partnerships.