Why Do Men Cheat?

We see it all the time in the headlines: Tiger Woods, Jesse James, John Edwards, Reggie Bush -- all men getting caught having affairs. The tabloids go crazy and play into stereotypes that men cheat because they can and that they do so more often than women.

We wanted to know if there was any truth to this perception not only with famous men, but also those without fame or fortune.

And what about women? Do they cheat for the same reasons?

For answers I spoke with two experts: clinical psychologist Jill Weber and sociologist Edward Laumann.

First, why do men cheat?

Dr. Jill Weber: "In my experience, what I’ve seen in my practice, is that they want to feel like they matter. They want to feel like they can, sort of, influence their mates and their mate’s decisions or their wife’s decisions. 

"And sometimes when there’s the general stress of life and work and all of that, men can get kind of withdrawn or marginalized with a family where they’re not full participants. And of course that has impacts on the rest of the family. But for men, they also don’t like that [being marginalized] makes them feel less important, that they don’t matter, that they’re not influencing anything. And sometimes an affair can really be quite enticing because it makes them feel that they can influence someone else’s life or that that someone’s interested in their perspective."

In other words, it's not just for sex -- "sowing the wild oats," as it were. More from Dr. Weber:

Weber: "There’s always been another reason, even for men, [why] they cheat. It’s not just a desire for sex. And I’m actually surprised at how much they’ll report having a lot of small talk. ... Often times they’re not even able to see the person a lot, and there’s a lot more of emotional kind of affairs with Facebook and that kind of thing."

Weber: "Same for them. The struggles of life, the stress of life. They can start to feel like they’re not being connected to emotionally. So when they feel somebody’s validation and empathy, somebody asking them, really connecting with what they’re saying, what they’re talking about, that can feel very powerful to them.

So do men really cheat more than women?

For that answer I turned to Sociologist Edward Laumann, the principal investigator of the National Sex Survey in 1992. Among the 3,432 respondents in that study, he found about 25 percent of men and about 15 percent of women said they’d cheated on their spouse at some point in their marriage. When asked if they'd had more than one sexual partner in the last year, 4 percent of the married participants answer they had. 

As for why famous men like Reggie Bush or John Edwards go off the reservation, Dr. Laumann says there isn't any reliable data on the subject that he's found. He did, however, venture a guess:

Dr. Edward Laumann: "People who are successful, tend to have higher levels of testosterone. There's a book called 'Social Structure and Testosterone' which looks at studies -- these are usually little mickey mouse surveys -- of small numbers of people in special circumstances."

For example, when medical doctors and doctors in training were analyzed, there appeared to be a testosterone surge for those who had just received their degrees. But what about athletes or politicians?

Laumann: "In games or competitions -- and this has been observed in the animal kingdom as well -- winners (males) have a t-surge and those that are defeated have a dampening down of testosterone. Now that would make sense because [the losers are] less likely to challenge or fight with somebody who’s already beaten them. So they withdraw from the fight and the other gets priority for sex, for food, for whatever’s out there that they want to have. So you have a situation where you’re selecting on exactly those variables.

"So why are you seeing so much of it in politics, successful men?  Everyone’s running around and actuating on it. This is feeding into that kind of megalomania about themselves being wonderful people and so on. And women may find them attractive, sort of like the groupie effect.

"So it’s that type of process that you’re getting here, that I would suggest is one reason you tend to this more elevated than 'normal' people, you know, who are not having these kinds of surges or doing these respectable daily kinds of things and don’t have this sort of punctuated sexuality."

He also adds:

Laumann: The average person only has sex six to eight times a month. A third of the population will have sex not at all or a handful of times in a year. And about a third [will have sex] about once a week and about a third, or 34 percent, will have sex twice a week or more. Most people are not doing sex all the time.

If you want to learn more about our cheating hearts, Discovery News reporter Kasey-Dee Gardner produced a couple stories with Dr. Helen Fisher on the subject.

First, a scientific explanation of why we cheat:

Second, why we can't help but watch when famous people cheat: