M Is for Misery

Posted by Jew from Jersey
3 September 2021

Men who cheat on their wives

All men will cheat on their wives if they think they can get away with it. The only thing keeping them in check is the knowledge that finding female sex partners is difficult, time-consuming, and requires significant resources of time and money, and their wives will probably leave them or otherwise make their lives miserable if they catch them so much as trying. In most cases, these deterrents are more than more than sufficient. After a time, husbands may become “institutionalized” and their skills to pursue women may atrophy, but they never stop thinking of doing it.

Most men probably suffer a moment of crisis at some point after getting married when it sinks in that they’re not supposed to pursue other women anymore. It’s not that they weren’t aware of this particular drawback of marriage when they got married, there’s just a slight hiccup before they actually change their habits. This does not usually require a big adjustment because, firstly, a man usually desires his wife or he wouldn’t have married her in the first place. Secondly, the adjustment he has to make regarding other women is simply to internalize that “they’re not for you” and this is usually not difficult because most women have been telling him precisely this since his early youth. Nonetheless, he has been making Herculean efforts to pursue women despite years of negative feedback from them. If not for these repeated efforts, he would not have found a wife. There’s just a bit of a lag after marriage before he stops making the efforts regarding other women he meets. But when he does end these efforts, it’s often a relief to him. Why make all that effort for other women who almost always respond negatively, when you can instead invest the effort in one woman who almost always responds positively?

Men who do not make this shift in attitude will cheat on their wives. If a wife has reason to believe her husband is cheating and does not immediately divorce him, she is essentially cosigning his license to practice polygyny. She is then one among any number of co-wives, although being the first and the one with the legal document, she enjoys some advantages over the others. Some women would rather put up with this than lose their husband, but the terms of the marriage have been forever changed. Counseling, reconciliation, promises of atonement, are all just fig leaves to distract attention from the fact that this is no longer a monogamous marriage.

Men who deny sex to their wives

If the problem is merely erectile dysfunction, men will usually be timely and diligent in seeking remedies, which are numerous and plentiful nowadays. Men hardly ever marry women they don’t desire. Heiresses are a possible exception. But there’s really hardly any woman a man won’t desire unless she really sets her mind to making herself hateful to him. Barring exceptionally ugly heiresses and women who actively want their husbands to hate them, men will always desire sex with their wives unless they are gay, or they are cuckoldry fetishists, or are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or to masturbating to porn. About these conditions women should have few illusions: alcoholism is probably the least permanent of them.

Women who deny sex to their husbands

As with men, if the problem is merely physical, a married woman will usually seek help immediately. A single woman certainly would. But the more common scenario is that of married women with vague and mysterious symptoms that they never seem the least bit interested in seeking treatment for.

There are probably few wives who have never begun to display some signs of avoiding sex with their husbands, especially after the first few years of marriage and especially after the birth of children. This is natural, but the road forward is considerably more difficult for women than the abovementioned crisis new husbands usually go through when they suddenly realize they must stop pursuing other women. Men who desire their wives at the time of marriage usually continue to desire them throughout their married lives, and in essentially the same way as they did in the beginning. But the easiest and earliest kind of sexuality a woman experiences is not conducive to happiness in marriage. The initial desire a bride experiences for her husband usually passes quickly. If she is to remain desirous of him for the rest of her married life, she must learn to develop a new attitude towards him that includes a different kind of experience of her own sexuality. The older she is and the more sexual partners she has chosen before marriage, the more difficult this transition will be.

Wives have a certain advantage in that as long as they are in love with their husbands, they seldom have trouble not thinking of other men. Men never stop thinking of other women, no matter how in love they are. On the other hand, men usually don’t have a hard time not acting on their errant desires, since most other women don’t want them anyway. But when a wife stops loving or desiring her husband and begins thinking again of other men, she will have no problem finding takers. This problem is made even worse by the fact that some women have an annoying tendency to marry men they don’t love or desire to begin with.

In many cases, wives develop a renewed sexual interest in their husbands as both of them learn and grow. However, this is a tricky process. It is not just a lag in behavioral change following a new understanding. It requires formation of a marital bond and a new sexual persona to fit that bond. She must accept the loss of her youth and any previous exciting lovers she’s had and begin to see herself as part of a new world she creates with her husband. He must loom large enough in her eyes that he replaces that great man he can never be and she must give him love devoted enough to replace the harem he can never have. A married man will naturally tend to see himself as the king of a harem of one unless his wife intentionally decides to undermine him. But a married woman will begin marriage seeing herself as having one-upped her girlfriends. It will be natural for her to continue to focus on this competition and she may eventually see her marriage to him as bringing her down a notch. It is not an easy or natural process for a woman to learn to forego this competition and instead see herself as queen in a harem of one and rechannel her competitive efforts into building up her new kingdom and her new “king.”

Motherhood itself is often detrimental to a woman’s youthful experience of sexuality which may be the only sexual identity she has known. If she is to begin a new sexual life with the father of her children, her fulfillment in being a mother must include a new adult sexual identity with him. With any luck, her husband will himself grow and change in ways that provide his wife with some occasional new excitement and their life together will build to partially compensate for the loss of excitement she used to experience from multiple interesting men in her childless youth. But often she is not able to reconcile sexuality with family life or she is not able to love her husband as an ordinary man in a workaday world and she gradually stops having sex with him under one pretext or another. Husbands often complain of a “wheel of excuses” that seem to be drawn almost at random every time they approach their wives.

The wives are seldom honest about what is going on. There is usually some element of what criminologists call “mens rea.” They claim bizarre, undiagnosable, and untreatable new medical conditions. In a manner eerily similar to cheating wives, they blame their own behavior on the husband’s inadequacies. They promise change in a tomorrow that never comes, conditional on the husband performing Herculean tasks which will never be sufficient. Some will insist it is actually the husband’s memory that is faulty and that in reality they do have sex all the time. Some will attempt to convince the husband that it’s completely normal to be celibate following the first years of marriage and accuse him of being a pervert for expecting otherwise. But deep inside they know none of this is true and would be ashamed if the truth of their marriage were revealed to outsiders. In the presence of third parties, these same wives will often make comments suggesting or even boasting of a robust sex life with the husband. They know this is in fact essential and that their own marriage is not really viable.

Sometimes the wives do give in to sex, either out of pity or because they get tired of resisting, but their lack of willingness shows. The husband can’t help noticing a depressing downward trend in both quality and quantity of sex. He knows something is wrong, but he is unable to grasp its true nature.

Such a husband is usually given the most terrible advice. The advice begins by assuming it is “normal” for his wife to want sex with him, so he must find out what is “wrong” and try to “fix” it. Husbands always fall for this because they can’t imagine their wives do not see them the same way they see their wives. Also, they love fixing things to prove what good husbands they are. But no matter how much a wife appreciates her husband making money, fixing things, or doing chores around the house, none of these things will make her more likely to want sex with him. Wives are always glad to come up with long to-do lists. But note that when they cheat on their husbands, the other man, the one they call “my soulmate” and “the best sex I ever had,” is never required to perform any of those tasks. Not a single one.

Another common proposed “fix” is that the husband should become a better lover. He should read up on foreplay and erogenous zones and the like and discover what “turns her on.” The reason these things never work is not that they don’t tend to improve sex, but precisely because they do, and improved sex with him is precisely what his wife doesn’t want. The wife’s desire is not a function of her husband’s technical ability to give her an orgasm. If she doesn’t desire him, she doesn’t want him to give her an orgasm. It’s not a question of learning what “turns her on.” At some level, she doesn’t want him to turn her on. If she were to tell him honestly what really “turns her on,” the answer would probably be: “exciting men.”

Another doomed gambit husbands sometimes try is to have a “moratorium” on sex for a certain period of time where the couple will concentrate on “non-sexual” intimacy like holding hands, cuddling, etc. The idea is that removing the imminence of sex will help rebuild intimacy. The reason this doesn’t work is not because it doesn’t build intimacy, but because it does, and intimacy with him is precisely what his wife doesn’t want. All that happens is that her dread and disgust is now extended to handholding and cuddling with him as well. Husbands then protest that the wife doesn’t understand: This is about NON-SEXUAL touching! But the wife understands perfectly: The end goal with all this non-sexual stuff is the eventual resumption of sex. The same thing happens with proposed “date nights,” romantic getaways, special gifts, spending “quality time” together, etc. Each buffer introduced becomes just another step down the aversion cascade. Eventually, the wife will not even offer her husband a simple “thank you” for anything, lest he get the wrong idea. Next, she might begin to methodically find fault with every thing he does or says in a pre-emptive effort to avoid ever feeling any gratitude, lest she feel compelled to say “thank you.”

Therapists will suggest the husband have a “talk” with his wife about how he feels. “Communication is key!” This is always a waste of time because she already knows how he feels, that’s the problem. If he insists on bringing things to a head like this, one of two things will happen. Most likely, she’ll tell him in return how she feels, namely, that she’s sick and tired of being harassed for sex. So what if he wants it? She doesn’t. So what if he suffers if they don’t have it? She suffers if they do. She will accuse him of being selfish and obsessed with sex. She gets along without it, so why can’t he? A wife might be guilt-tripped into expressing some empathy for her husband’s suffering. But feeling guilty won’t make her want to have sex with him.

Another stratagem marriage counselors like to suggest is “scheduled” sex or a commitment to sex once per some period of time. This suffers from the ridiculous assumption that the wife is subject to unpredictable “moods” where sometimes she’s “in the mood” and sometimes she’s “not in the mood.” Not only that, but worrying about being “in the mood” is making her stressed and as a result, “the mood” is even less likely. The idea here is that instead of trying to figure out what gets her in “the mood,” she will agree to sex at certain times regardless of mood. This, the thinking goes, will remove some of the stress, which will then make “the mood” more likely to materialize. But this never works because the wife’s mood is in fact not so unpredictable. She consistently does not want “the mood” with her husband. So one of two things will happen. Some women will agree to the scheduled plan just to make peace in the home, but then will develop mysterious maladies and other excuses to not follow through when the time comes. Other women will make themselves go through with the sex, which of course they will hate. They will eventually make sex as unpleasant as possible for the husband, in the hope that he will back off and leave them alone again. If the husband keeps insisting on the scheduled sex even though she so obviously hates everything about it, she will end up hating him. But if the husband does eventually back off, he will end up hating her.

It is really divorce lawyers who should receive all the money undeservedly paid to marriage counselors and therapists. This is because divorce papers are the only thing that have any chance of suddenly making wives “in the mood” for their husbands again. But even this will pass as soon as it came once the threat of divorce is withdrawn. The only two long-term solutions are either actual divorce or the husband reconciling himself to permanent eunuch status.

Wives married to husbands they don’t like often swear that they’re perfectly happy never having sex. What they mean is that they’re happier having no sex than having it with their husbands. But that’s not what they really want. Such wives will often say things like: Why can’t he just learn to control his desires?! This seems unfair if you assume that she has no desires of her own and is asking her husband to practice restraint where she doesn’t have to. But the wife is likely making great efforts to suppress her desire for someone else. And given the ease with which women may obtain sex from strangers, she is likely making very great efforts indeed. She may see these efforts as the hallmark of responsibility in marriage, and see her husband’s insistence on satisfying himself as lack of serious commitment to the marriage on his part. In any case, she will see it as highly unfair that he should go satisfied while she remains frustrated and an insult that he should think she could be satisfied with the likes of him. True asexuality is extremely rare.

Such wives often describe sex with their husbands as feeling like a “chore,” but it’s actually much worse. What they feel concerning sex with their husbands is more like revulsion and dread of a nature never experienced with respect to washing dishes or folding laundry. It’s something far more traumatic. Husbands are always glad to do more chores if that’s what it takes to get more sex. But wives are never willing to provide more sex if that’s what it takes to get more chores done. They may hold out the hope of more sex as an incentive, but they will do everything to avoid following through.

The reason counseling never works is that it treats sex as some third thing the husband and wife are in disagreement about, like a new set of living room furniture or a vacation destination. The counselor then steps in to mediate the “negotiations.” But a husband who desires his wife does not desire some third thing. He desires her. And it’s not that she doesn’t desire sex. She likely does. But she doesn’t desire him. And you cannot “compromise” over something that is existential in nature. The problem isn’t really “sex” at all, the problem is the marriage.

It’s not that such a wife necessarily hates her husband, she just views him as one of the multitude of invisible men, the unwashed, fit only to perform useful tasks for her of a non-personal nature. Thus, anything that would hint at sex with such a man revolts her. She wouldn’t hate a beggar in the street if she saw one. She might even feel sorry for him. But she would balk at the thought of sex with the beggar. And she would end up hating him if he acted like he was entitled to it or tried to somehow maneuver her into it, which is what all marriage counseling schemes end up looking like. Counseling always starts from the assumption that it’s “normal” for a wife to desire her husband. So success always seems just around the corner once things can be returned to “normal.” But it is not “normal” at all. What is “normal” is that women don’t desire sex with most men. Being married does not change this. A woman not wanting a man is not a special situation that requires an explanation or that has a “fix.”

Some women may have cynically married men they never desired in the hopes that they could eventually control them. Other women may have been less cynical and were simply Pollyannish, hoping against hope that the elusive “mood” would someday materialize for them or that they wouldn’t mind all that much having forced sex with their husbands. Other women may have started out enjoying sex with their husbands or husbands-to-be, but only in the way a young woman enjoys sex as a step-up in her social status with a man who seems like a big deal at the time. Or maybe the thrill of having a wedding and seeing her sisters and girlfriends as her bridesmaids lent her husband a certain charm as the instrument of her victory over her female rivals. But unless a husband can continually increase his status and wealth or otherwise guarantee a lifetime of new excitement, he will eventually be revealed to be just like all other men: struggling to get by, destined to be forgotten, but still craving sex as if he were king of the castle. At that point, if his wife has not bonded with him and made his cause her own, she will have no basis to find sex with him enjoyable anymore. Once he has been so reclassified, there’s really not much he can do except be her sterile housemate and co-parent of her children. His wife may also blame him as the proximate cause of her loss of youth and her sexual demotion from sought-after debutante to unsexy mommy.

Women who cheat on their husbands

At a certain age, and particularly following marriage or childbirth, women experience a soul-crushing sense of loss of their beauty and sexual worth. This is the cause of a lot of the abovementioned resentment they feel towards their husbands before and until they develop a new sexual sense of self in married life.

During this period, a married woman may soon thrill to attentions from some other man, should she signal she is interested. A woman’s interest in her husband may die a slow death, but once this has happened, interest in other men can be triggered suddenly by a major event. Sometimes it is the death of her parents that acts as a sort of reset button to remind her that she once had dreams and a wakeup call telling her it’s getting late in life if she still wants to find happiness. A change of location, change of job, or change in standard of living may also serve as this kind of catalyst. Often her new interest is an ex from her younger and prettier days or a current coworker. The co-coworker will usually be either younger than her or someone with a more senior position than her. The ex is usually someone she wishes she had married but could never pin down. Most women know in their hearts they can’t expect any commitment from any of these men. They lie to themselves that they can enjoy a purely physical temporary relationship with him, or else they lie to themselves than they can make him fall for them and commit when the time is right.

When cuckolded husbands ask how their wives could do such a thing, one of the most common things the wives will say is: “I wanted the attention.” The husband then wonders about all the attention he tried to bestow on her. Sometimes he even feels guilty about not being more attentive. But what the wives mean is: “I wanted the attention from him.” Or they will say: “I wanted to feel desired, I wanted to feel sexy again.” Of course, the husband desired her and would have done anything to make her feel sexy again, but that’s not what she means. The other man could make her feel sexy again because she desired him.

Sometimes wives will ask their husbands for permission to pursue sex with other men. The request sounds like something that will preserve the husband’s stature in her life: “open marriage,” “polyamory,” “swinging”. Even when the wife specifies the desired other man by name, the implication is that she’s only intending to pursue a short-term physical affair and will always return to her husband. But she usually has someone specific in mind even when she doesn’t specify him by name and she usually intends, if at all possible, to leave her husband for that man. Whether her husband acquiesces or not, she will not only pursue sex with the other man, but do everything in her power to get that man to commit to her.

A woman may pursue a relationship with another man that includes everything except physical sex. She may think this is safer, but it doesn’t really make much difference. She’s still dreaming about physical sex with the other man and planning to switch out husbands should the opportunity arise. And if her husband finds out about such an “emotional” affair, he’ll probably be just as devastated as if the relationship had already been physical. This goes double if it turns out she has been seeking guidance from the other man and confiding to him about the husband’s flaws and weaknesses, which she most probably has.

Some women may consider it safer to not divorce the husband, but instead keep him around as a non-sexual menial. He is kept in place by his ignorance of what is going on or by inertia or by fear of shame or the threat of a painful divorce, while the other man is tempted to remain by the promise of no pressure to commit. This may even further increase the other man’s attractiveness and potential for excitement in the wife’s eyes. Such an arrangement is in fact a form of polyandry.

The difference between polyandry and polygyny is that polygyny involves co-wives who share the same tasks and compete for status within the harem, while in polyandry only one man is the lover and the others are restricted to non-sexual roles. A woman may have ten or more co-husbands, but only one of them will be her lover. The others will play the roles of factotum, menial, financier, babysitter, social ticket, or beard. Polygyny and polyandry are not mutually exclusive. A woman may share the same lover with several other women, while also having her own stable of non-sexual males to perform other tasks. A woman is actually more likely to tolerate philandering from her lover than from her non-sexual menials, of whom she can be quite jealous.

A man who learns that his wife has been accepting the attentions of other men and does not immediately divorce her is co-signing such a polyandrous arrangement. His situation is actually worse than that of a wife who accedes to her husband’s polygyny. A wife who accepts her husband’s cheating is entering his harem as a desired sexual being who may still bear him additional children. She also has the coveted status of “first legal wife,” a certain amount of authority over the other women, and the greater share of inheritance and prestige for her children over theirs. But a husband who accepts his wife’s cheating is entering a polyandrous setup in what will be a permanently non-sexual role, one of several demasculinized dwarves working for the upkeep of another man’s children.

No woman ever marries her lover and then uses her charms to induce other men to provide financial or menial services. It’s always the other way around. If a woman is married to her chosen lover, she will not seek favors from other men for any reason, lest she risk losing the one man she actually wants. Only a woman married to a boring drudge signals to other men that she is open to favors. This is because reliable providers and caretaker men are a dime a dozen, but exciting lovers are harder to find than a cure for cancer or the philosopher’s stone. Women are happier in a harem-like polygamous relationship with a man they desire than in a monogamous relationship with a man they don’t desire. Women married to particularly desirable men may not mind too much if the husband cheats as long as he keeps it discreet and maintains the other women in sufficiently inferior positions.

Some women require such toxic levels of excitement from their lovers that it makes their sexual relationships dangerous. Such women will intentionally seek husbands that seem “safe.” Their husbands often think they are rescuing their wives from past abuse, but their wives seek out this abuse because it is exciting to them. They continue to pursue bouts of excitement with the lover, returning to the sexless sanctuary of the husband when things get harmful. What makes the husband safe and secure also makes him unexciting. Therapists will tell the husband that his wife is suffering from trauma and may have developed an aversion to sex. But she’s only averse to sex with her “safe” husband, not with the men who cause the trauma.

Finally, there are some women who are sociopaths who enjoy deceit and manipulation for their own sake. Some of them may be lesbians or professed misandrists, but not all. They are capable of intense levels of sex with multiple men without having feelings for any of them. They enjoy control and watching the slow destruction of the men whose lives they impact. Despite the large number of songs, books, and movies depicting such women, they are quite rare in real life. Most women are not sociopaths. They want one man they can love and desire and respect. They want to help this man every way they can and be faithful to him. The problem is they’re often married to somebody else. And the problem with men is they always think there’s a technical solution.