In recent years, the divorce rate has been rising year after year. This may be caused by emotional discord or personality differences, but one of the important reasons that cannot be ignored is extramarital affairs, cheating, this kind of betrayal of one's partner, having romantic or physical relationships with other (her) people. Sex is cheating. It's just that when it comes to the two forms of infidelity, the forgivable infidelity behaviors of women and men are different.

Physical infidelity

Women don't care much about men's physical infidelity. They care more about whether their partners have betrayed them mentally. Men are more pragmatic. They feel that as long as each other does not cross physical boundaries, it can be forgiven.

A large body of previous research evidence points to the same result: Men react strongly to their partners' physical infidelity, while women react strongly to their partners' emotional infidelity.

Sexual relationship

Evolutionary psychology suggests that this difference can be explained by a theory of parental investment. Human beings have the instinct to reproduce their genes to the greatest extent, and in the process of reproducing offspring, the energy invested by the fathers and mothers is different. Men have much higher chances of having children than women. They tend to have relationships with many women and are less involved in raising their offspring. Women, on the other hand, have more precious reproductive opportunities and spend more energy taking care of and raising their children.

A woman cheats

This difference also affects their jealousy after their partner cheats. Women are 100% sure that the children are theirs, while men cannot fully guarantee that the children their wives give birth to are theirs, so they are jealous of their wives’ physical Cheating is very sensitive; on the contrary, women are afraid that their husbands will abandon them emotionally, which will make it difficult to raise their children, so they are very afraid of their husbands' emotional cheating. This view that "genes determine everything" is supported by a large number of experiments. For example, using electrodermal recording of physiological changes of subjects can reveal gender differences in emotions when imagining a partner cheating.

Experimental conclusion

However, many studies have found that in addition to this gender difference, there are also differences between the same gender. That is, gender cannot explain all sources of variation. A recent research report published in the American Journal of Psychological Science divided subjects into two groups according to their emotional attachment types: one group was subjects who were relatively cavalier about feelings, the other was subjects who were securely attached, and then Compare the two groups' reactions to their partner's cheating. The results confirmed the long-standing research conclusion just mentioned: Men were four times more likely than women to report being more sensitive to physical infidelity. However, the study also found that subjects with a high need for secure attachment, even male subjects, were more sensitive to emotional infidelity than physical infidelity; while subjects who were more cavalier about feelings, even women, were more sensitive to physical infidelity. Susceptibility to infidelity is also higher.

Thoughts derailed

Researchers believe that this is because subjects who are emotionally indiscreet pay more attention to the sex-related aspects of their relationship and ignore emotional communication with their partner, so they are more concerned about their partner's emotional cheating. At the same time, subjects with more frivolous feelings are usually less secure, so their defense mechanism keeps them at an emotional distance from others and refuses intimacy.

This research result tells us that it is not "the butt determines the head", but "the head determines the behavior." How you treat your relationship also determines how you react when your partner is having an affair.