Relationship Blog by Advice Maven
Posts Tagged ‘cheating’
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
 With all the posts I’ve done about cheating this year, I couldn’t let the Tiger Woods scandal go by without commenting. I’m actually focusing on the general nature of celebrity relationships as well as Tiger’s situation, because I think that his marriage is typical of so many of the celebrity relationships that hit a downward spiral as the world watches.
The volatile nature of celebrity marriages is clearly illustrated when we look at their divorce rate. Divorce rates the U.S. are running at about fifty percent for the general population, but when we look at celebrities, most of us would be hard pressed to name more than a few who have never faced divorce. So, whether it is cheating or just a revolving door of marriages and divorces, what is it about celebrities that makes their marriages so difficult?
On the one hand, celebrities do have concerns about privacy and fending off paparazzi that the rest of us don’t have to consider. On the other hand, celebrities don’t have many of the everyday worries that the rest of us have. They’re don’t have to worry about paying the bills or whether that old car will break down. When it comes to those household chores that many couples argue about, celebrities also have a pass. There’s no need to divvy up who will handle the cooking, cleaning, errands and yard work when this can all be hired out.
So, if their lives are not really harder, then why are their relationships so disastrous? I think that the high number of failed celebrity marriages stems from the types of personalities that are attracted to stardom and the choices that are made to maintain this stardom. Many of the personality and lifestyle traits that make a celebrity successful in their profession are the same traits that are not well suited to a successful marriage.
Big Egos and Marriage Don’t Mix Well- Most celebrities have big egos, as do many other high profile professions like politicians and even surgeons. A big ego is not only a useful characteristic when your work is under the constant scrutiny of critics, but it’s often necessary to survive in these fields. Celebrities often see their careers plummet when they reach a point where they no longer believe that they’re “better” than the rest of the people in their field. The problem is, that ego is not so useful when you are trying to make a marriage work. As much as you need to bring self confidence to a marriage, you also need to frequently “check your ego at the door” when you are dealing with your spouse.
Surrounded by Enablers- A well positioned “friend” of a celebrity often benefits more when the celebrity achieves success in their career rather than in their personal life. As a result, they’re often surrounded by enablers who don’t really care what happens to the celebrity as long as they are making money. We see it all the time where “friends” help celebrities acquire things that will ruin their personal lives. Some help celebrities arrange secret rendezvous with mistresses and some introduce them to shady doctors who will write unlimited prescriptions. Either way, if the people that surround you encourage your vices rather than telling you that what you are doing is wrong, you may actually start to lose touch with the reality of just how bad your actions are.
A Life of Excess- Celebrities have an excess of material things in their lives. If they want yachts, multiple houses, multiple cars or even multiple mistresses, they can afford all of these things and more. Of course we don’t know if these celebrities start turning to infidelity because they’re still seeking something that all these material things can’t provide, or whether they just like the thrill of getting everything that they want, including people. Whichever reason prevails, it is safe to say that this life of excess does not bring happiness.
In the end, I think that we are often drawn to watching these celebrity relationships explode because it makes us feel better about our own lives and relationships. The relationships of celebrities often make even the typical person’s dysfunctional relationship look relatively tame and normal. I think that many people also find comfort in seeing that underneath the glamor that surrounds the lives of celebrities, they have the same basic struggles to find love and happiness that we all have.
So what do you think about why celebrities have such a difficult time with relationships? Does their fame make their relationships harder to maintain or do they just make terrible choices? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Tags: adultery, celebrity marriage, celebrity relationship, cheating, infidelity, marriage, Tiger Woods cheating
Posted in cheating, marriage | 13 Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
 In a previous post I examined some common excuses for cheating that men tend to use when defending their actions to the woman in their life. I promised to do some digging into why women cheat after many readers pointed out that women cheat too. Although I truly was aware that women also cheat, I have to admit that when you say adultery I generally think of men.
I received a comment from physician and dating blogger, Bina Patel, who explained that in her practice it seemed that women cheated at least as much as men. This was a surprise to me, so I set out to find some answers about women and cheating. I found many statistics that showed rates of cheating among married women and men each coming within a few points of the 50% mark, but these were not scientific studies, so I decided to focus on finding women who were willing to tell me why they cheated. It has been a long process, but I finally received enough replies to spot some patterns in their replies and share the following results:
Not Satisfied With Marriage was top excuse- Now you’re probably thinking that this one is ridiculously obvious because if you’re cheating you’re not satisfied with your marriage. Keep in mind though, that many of the men said that they were perfectly happy with their marriage but they found themselves in a situation where they were overcome by chemistry and “it just happened.” This is not to say that there were not women who cheated purely out of lust, but they certainly were not ready to admit this to us. In fact, this brings us to the next big difference between the answers from men and women.
More Complicated Answers- I read somewhere that in most situations women use 40% more words than men, and the answers that I received about cheating were no exception. I didn’t get one instance of the old standbys like “it just happened.” The women who replied seemed very concerned about stating their case and giving background information. The women didn’t just tell us that they were dissatisfied with their marriage, they also made a point of letting us know that they had been unhappy for a long time before their affair. It seemed important to them to state that this wasn’t just some fling and that they were searching for someone who could provide them with something that they felt was missing emotionally in their marriage.
More Likely to Leave for Their Lover?- I put a question mark here because this was not a scientific study. It could just as easily be that women who married their lovers were more likely to respond, but nearly half of the women that replied left their husbands. From what I’ve found on my site and around the web, it does seem that cheating men were more likely to beg to be taken back while women were more likely to stay with their lover. What I found most troubling about this is that there were quite a few women that seemed to feel that if they went on to marry their lover that this somehow justified the cheating. There was even one woman who replied that she had cheated on her husband years ago but that she wasn’t really sure if that counted because she has been married for many years to her former lover. I’m sure that her first husband thinks that it counts, and I do too.
Based on the replies that I received from these women, I sensed that they felt a strong desire to plead the case that they had a “good reason” for cheating. They wanted to create the impression that cheating was more justified if it stemmed from a long term unhappiness rather than a spur of the moment whim, or if it was done out of love rather than lust. The problem is that when it comes to explaining why you were late for work or why you were speeding there are “good” and “bad” excuses, but when it comes to cheating there is no such thing as a “good excuse.”
Despite the difference in excuses between men and women, my conclusion is the same as it was for the men–Cheating occurs because of selfishness. A marriage may not be working for a variety of reasons, but it is time to decide if things are bad enough to end that relationship before getting involved with someone else, not afterward.
So what do you think? Do the different excuses that men and women give for cheating make any difference or are they both just as guilty? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Tags: adultery, cheating, cheating spouse, cheating wife, infidelity
Posted in cheating | 16 Comments »
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
 A few years ago I was surprised to learn that a friend of mine, I’ll call her Jenna, was getting a divorce. Her husband asked for the divorce after she admitted to having an affair with her personal trainer. I remember being surprised, because Jenna didn’t strike me as the type of woman who would cheat on her husband. As surprised as most of us were to find out about this affair, we had one friend who seemed to have known that it was just a matter of time before this friendship between Jenna and her personal trainer turned into something more.
When we asked our friend about how she knew that Jenna was heading down the road to adultery she simply replied “they’ve been dating for months.” Of course we fiercely defended Jenna’s lunches with her trainer as friendly lunches after her training sessions, but our friend then asked us “what’s the difference between that and a date?” With that question, she had us stumped. The only differences that we could come up with were 1) Jenna was married and 2) until the affair, there was nothing physical going on between them during or after these lunches.
Aside from those two factors, these weekly lunch outings did have all the makings of a date. When we thought about it that way, we were surprised that we too hadn’t realized where this relationship was heading. This is not to say that every time someone goes out with a friend of the opposite sex that it is a date in disguise, but there are many times when that’s exactly what it is. So, what is the difference between a friendly outing and a date? Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Is it business or pleasure?- The reasoning behind Jenna going to lunch with her trainer was that her training session finished at lunch time, and her trainer was also a nutritionist. Yes, he could make sure that she had a healthy meal after her workout, but having lunch together was definitely not necessary to the business nature of their relationship. If the goal were really just to make sure she knew how to choose a healthy meal, then giving her copies of nutritional guidelines would have served this purpose better than going out to lunch. I’ve also had friends that have met regularly over lunch or dinner with their accountants and lawyers to discuss business that is usually discussed at an office. If your meetings that are supposed to be business are really more pleasure, then you may be venturing into the date category.
Are you getting closer over time? The purpose of going out on dates is to get to know the person better to see if this is someone that you want to be involved with romantically. Of course when you’re single, you know that this is the purpose of going out with this person. When you’re in a relationship, you may mindlessly find yourself getting to know this “friend” better, but you may not realize what is happening.
Although there was not even a friendly kiss on the cheek after lunch according to Jenna, she and her trainer did share things like what places they would like to travel to, and what kind of music they enjoyed. They were definitely getting closer over time and knew much more about each other than you would expect from the typical trainer/client relationship. This should have been a big red flag as to where this relationship was heading, but I think that because she was married and hadn’t actively set out to find a lover, that Jenna still thought of this as a friendship.
Are you attracted to this person? In the end, this is the question that underlies whether a friendship has the potential to turn into something more. If you are attracted to this person, then you need to honestly ask yourself if you would still be heading out with them if they were not attractive. Odds are that if Jenna did not find her trainer attractive, she would have found that there was no reason to be having lunch with him. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible to be friends with an attractive person, but if that friendship involves going out alone with that person it makes it that much more likely that this friendship will turn into something more.
So, what if you realize that yes, you enjoy meeting with this attractive person over lunch when you could meet in their office, and you are getting to know each other better each time you go out. You may tell yourself that you’re not the cheating type, so there’s no reason why you can’t have this close friend who is of the opposite sex. The problem is that you are truly playing with fire by having a friendship with someone you find attractive when you’re in a committed relationship. It just takes that one time when you’re friendly outing happens to be during a rough patch in your relationship or right after a fight with your partner for that friendship to turn into something that you swore would never happen.
What is your opinion? Please share your thoughts in the comments section about whether or not someone can regularly go out with an attractive friend of the opposite sex without risking it turning into something more.
Tags: adultery, cheating, cheating husband, cheating wife, infidelity
Posted in advice for women, friends and lovers | 14 Comments »
Friday, June 19th, 2009
 On LuvemOrLeavem we often have dilemmas where the votes and comments very clearly fall into the Luvem camp or the Leavem camp. When the votes hover at over 90% for Luv or Leave it is clear that visitors are very united on which action the writer of the dilemma should take. Of course we have some dilemmas where voters are nearly evenly split and the comments are lively with strong sentiments on each side. One topic that often has our voters split down the middle is the issue of cyber or internet relationships.
Cyber Sex
When we think of internet relationships interfering with our romantic relationships, the first thing that comes to mind is cyber sex. These sexy chats can take the form of free chatrooms or paid services and as the name implies, the purpose is to give and receive very intimate and arousing details during these “chats.” Not surprisingly, the person doing the chatting usually claims that cyber sex is not cheating, while the partner of the “chatter” often feels that it is a form of cheating.
Many of the women that comment on these cyber sex dilemmas agree that this is a form of cheating, but there is also the group that firmly believes that this is a harmless way to put some “spice” into a long term relationship. We also see arguments that a man will be less likely to physically cheat if he gets this extra cyber excitement on the side. Of course the counter argument is that these men will be more likely to cheat because this is step one on a path to being stimulated sexually outside the relationship.
Internet “Friendships”
For cyber sex relationships even those that think that they’re harmless will usually acknowledge that they can understand how they could be viewed as cheating. The situation becomes more complicated when the internet relationship does not invove sexual details but is more of a friendly chat with a member of the opposite sex. Actually, many women are more threatened by these relationships than they are by the cyber sex type.
I can understand this, because there are often details that are shared that could enhance their real life relationship if they would put enough faith in their partner to share these details with them. A common theme of these relationships is that people are sharing details about themselves that they believe they can’t tell their partner either because their partner won’t understand or flat out won’t care. People in this situation need to share these things with their partner and whether this results in their relationship becoming closer or falling apart, at least they have been honest.
The big question to ask yourself?–Does you partner know about this relationship? When you’re sneaking around having a cyber relationship behind your partner’s back then it is cheating whether it is cyber sex or an internet friendship. If you’re hiding it, then you either believe in your heart that it is not harmless or you know that it is something that your partner would find objectionable. Either way, once lying and dishonesty surface in a relationship, it is the start of a downward spiral.
Of course there are those couples where the other person may know all the details of the internet relationship and not mind, but I would still caution against any relationship that takes time away from you and your partner. Most of us feel that we don’t have enough time with our loved ones as it is, so why split that time ever more? Plus, if both of you are open to wanting to add some spice to your relationship, I’m sure you can find some way that is more romantic and doesn’t involve the internet.
***Special Note- Video Blog Series***
Here are the video replies from our advice panel vloggers and their take on cyber relationships and cheating.
Tags: cheating, cyber sex, internet relationship, lying
Posted in advice for women, cheating, relationship problems | 25 Comments »
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