A study was carried out where 64,000 people were asked which of these will be more hurtful to them; whether when their partners have sex with someone else but not fall in love with the person, or when their partners fall in love but not with sexual relationship.
The study showed that 54% men were more likely to be more hurt by sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity by their partners, whereas just 35% of women would be more hurt by sex than if their partner fell in love with another person. This shows that men fear sexual infidelity, while women fear emotional infidelity.
The study which was reviewed on mail online, researchers said:
“If a man’s partner commits sexual infidelity, this brings into question his sexual prowess and therefore threatens his masculinity, which leads him to react more negatively to his
partner committing sexual infidelity rather than emotional infidelity.”
Hodson, who is also a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy,“Men can forgive themselves for their indiscretions, but they find it much harder to forgive their partners for the same. For a betrayed woman, an affair by the man is an offence against her dignity, but for a betrayed man, a woman’s infidelity is an offence against his manhood. It goes right to the core of his identity.”
This confirms the common opinion that men are less likely to forgive their partner when they commit sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity, though they commit sexual infidelity more than the women.
Why women endure sexual infidelity by men?
A psychologist at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Prof. Toba Elegbeleye explains , “So, it is not because women don’t care or they forgive so easily, but the circumstances don’t favour them as they favour men. If women were in a dominant position, they easily would have driven the man away. So, the moment a female has committed herself to marriage, for her to voluntarily and openly get out of it becomes a kind of stigma, and women cannot handle stigma, particularly where children are involved. Mothers would not want to walk away, unless it’s beyond their powers, thus they would rather endure.
“The statistics weighs more heavily in support of the fact that men hardly forgive their wives, while women would endure because of the stigma that comes with it in this part of the world. Whether we like it or not, men still have that predatory tendency which is present in every male. You want to be able to control your environment, and when it comes to hereditary transition, you just want to make sure that your line is not bastardised by an intrusion.”