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On the rise - women who cheat

February 15, 2011 @ 2:23 am (Updated: 3:46 pm - 3/28/11 )

Usually when we hear about affairs, it's high profile men admitting they've done wrong. Tiger Woods, John Edwards, Elliott Spitzer, and Bill Clinton are a few of the men on the cheaters list. But what about the women who have affairs? We never hear from them. Is it because married women don't cheat?

Affairs"I'm the last person anyone would suspect of having an affair. I haven't had just one. I've had several - more affairs than my husband would believe and I can't stop," says Amber.

She's one of the dozens of women in the Seattle area who emailed me about their affairs.

Another is Karen who writes, "My marriage is stronger because I have someone on the side who sustains me. It takes the pressure off my husband and we get along better than before my affair."

"It's easy to have affairs because most men don't suspect a PTA mom would do such a thing," says Anna. "Why wouldn't we? We have needs too that sometimes our husbands can't meet."

People who study relationships estimate 20 percent of married women are involved with someone else at least once during their marriage, and that's an increase from a few years ago. Estimates on men having affairs range from 30 to 70 percent, but it's almost impossible to have accurate numbers on cheating because by the very nature of what's going on, most people don't admit to it.

"I was lonely for a couple of years and then I met someone who I just felt this strong attraction to and this rapport with," says a Bellevue woman who's using the name Megan van Eyck. "It just happened."

It just happened.

Those few words are repeated with the other women who emailed me talking about their affairs. Most of them say they didn't intentionally stray from their husbands.

Van Eyck met the man she had an affair with on a plane headed to Hawaii. They exchanged phone numbers, because they both live in the Puget Sound area, and later agreed to have lunch.

"It was overwhelming," she says. "There was this tsunami of instant desire. I didn't expect it. I wasn't looking for it. It just happened and I didn't have any reason not to."

He was married, so was she. But van Eyck felt like her husband had already broken their marriage vows because he didn't cherish her.

"I was kind of on auto-pilot. I wasn't thinking about the ramifications of being with a married man. I wasn't thinking about anything but just trying to get through the moment. I was really quite desperate emotionally and untended to and needy," she says.

Needy, wanting an emotional connection, feeling like they weren't appreciated, even bored. Those are the reasons women gave me for why they ended up breaking their vows and having affairs.

M. Gary Neuman, who's studied hundreds of people who've had affairs for his book, "The Truth About Cheating," says surprisingly many of those reasons are why men cheat too. It's not as much about the physical attraction and sex, for both men and women, as it is about having an emotional connection with someone.

"Men I studied also felt under appreciated, they felt lost, they felt like they couldn't win with their wives no matter what they did," he says.

Neuman began studying affairs after he started a program to help children of divorce. He thought the best way to help kids was to keep their parents together in more solid, loving marriages. His advice on how to "affair proof" your marriage begins with four, 45-minute sessions a week when you have uninterrupted time with your spouse.

"It can be cooking, it can be playing a board game, having a drink of wine while sitting out on the balcony, whatever," says Neuman. "Take some time just to connect and talk about the day. Talk about the stuff that's going on. Then have a weekly date night where you go out for a couple of hours alone just for fun and you do not talk about business, money or kids."

That is something that van Eyck and her husband are working on now. He found out about her five-year affair, which has now ended, and they're dealing with it.

"I thought he didn't love me," she says. "He had said, 'I'm not in love with you. You're not the woman that I want. You're not my perfect woman. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't marry you,' is what he had back then. And now I come to find out, he loves me very much."

Van Eyck details her affair, which she says she doesn't regret in her new book "Memoirs of a Widowed Mistress."

There's a deeper discussion of affairs, and women who cheat, on my podcast.

More from Linda Thomas

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Comments (48)


  • Add A Comment

  • seattlebearsfan wrote...
    Really disappointing.
    February 15, 2011 5:58 am
    As a child of divorce it saddens and disappoints me how many adults will roll the dice and risk their childrens' long term emotional well being for the sake of some fling. Everyone wants a fling. Is that enough to ruin your kids lives or set them back emotionally for years over? Too many people don't think about it that way, they swallow the belief that divorce is no fault and no lasting damage. And for those that think cheating has no damage on the partner... How many of you cheaters would want your spouse to cheat as well?
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  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    Women who cheat get caught less often than men
    February 15, 2011 6:49 am
    They are typically craftier, and more careful about picking an entirely discreet time and place. Guys too often think with the wrong head and can be more like, "You want to do it in the backseat, at 1 PM in the Costco parking lot? Sure, let's get it on!"

    Men are less likely to notice the little tell-tale signs; hair on a sweater, a pair of underwear missing from the weekly wash, a sudden increase in overtime or "ladies' nights," unusual and perhaps dramatic shift in clothing or hairstyle. Our radars just aren't as keenly tuned to detect a spouse running around. Besides, we're all so cocksure we're King Stud we can't begin to imagine any reason a woman would look for something on the side.

    And of course there are those cases, not infrequent, when a cheating woman sets up the cheating guy to get caught. sometimes it's as basic as a marking of territory. Maybe she's tired of one particular plaything and wants to move on to the next. Outing the guy to his wife or sending an unmistakable signal (something incriminating tucked into a jacket pocket works nicely) can work to shut down a current affair.

    If sex were the only reason to be married, nobody would ever get married to start with. Sex is about as hard to find as raindrops in Seattle. The women say it's not all about sex, and maybe it isn't. Cheating will more often be all about sex for a guy.

    It's my opinion that what we put into a relationship influences what we get out of it. Like the Beatles sang, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

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  • AJ McCarrell wrote...
    Swinging cures affairs
    February 15, 2011 7:31 am
    If you're already in the habit of swinging then affairs are less of a temptation. Most swinging groups and swingers emphasize the importance of maintaining your primary relationship first and foremost.
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  • cdbtx wrote...
    Odd how the experts
    February 15, 2011 7:37 am
    are also making excuses for bad actions. Their thinking is just as defective as those having affairs. An affair is one of the most selfish acts a person can commit. It involves zero commitment and zero work with the end result being pure pleasure and satifaction - instant gratification. Things don't work out - on to the next one.................... If things were really as bad as some of the people state then do one of two things, do the work to repair your current relationship or get a divorce........... oh but wait... work and pain... and life has become all about instant gratification and self satisfaction......... and what the recipient of the affair looking for? A long term relationship - hmmmmmm... now how is trust going to develop with someone that's already lying to their partner......... The so-called experts are alumni of the "Me" generation........
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  • Ankur Baybi wrote...
    HHHHmmmm.....
    February 15, 2011 8:06 am
    Dump the Biatch?
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  • len98531 wrote...
    religion conditions humans to be, or at least TRY to be monogamous
    February 15, 2011 8:32 am
    but monogamy is not the normal human condition. And that is why so many 'give in to temptation'.
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  • AJ McCarrell wrote...
    Len - I disagree
    February 15, 2011 8:44 am
    MODERN religion asks people to be monogamous. Nowhere in the entirety of Old Testament Law does it ask that of anybody. It's one of those many cases where people ASSUME something is in the Bible that isn't. Most of the Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives and the Jewish understanding of adultery was that of a property crime, IE you shouldn't take another man's wife. It said nothing about condemning men for "sin" for having 2,000 wives. Heck, Absalom was condemned for sleeping with David's concubines, but no condemnation was given to David for having them in the first place. The Bible recognized that men were predisposed to having multiple partners. It wasn't until the last 1500 years or so of Christianity that marriage became monogamous. The only edict in the entirety of the New Testament was that deacons have only one wife, but we've perverted that into one wife for everyone period.
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  • HPD 5-0 wrote...
    Dump the Biatch?
    February 15, 2011 8:50 am
    Easier said than done. Thanks to the libs in power this is a "no fault" state. So she can cheat AND get half your stuff.
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  • AJ McCarrell wrote...
    HPD
    February 15, 2011 9:08 am
    I guess that would be a bigger deal to you then most. Then again, if you could pleasure a woman to begin with, you wouldn't have to worry as much. Sex requires more than, "let me hop on top...I'm done", HPD, you actually have to care enough to take care of HER needs too.

    Secondly, no fault also spares men from a degree of baseless allegations. How many men have had their reputations destroyed because of false allegations from desperate wives trying to get out of their marriages? Courts used to only grant divorces in extreme cases of molestation, severe abuse, abandonment, etc. I'm not saying it no longer happens, but not to the same degree it used to.

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  • len98531 wrote...
    AJ, true enough
    February 15, 2011 9:38 am
    I wasn't going that far back with my example. I should have said 'modern religion'. I thought that would have been implied, given the conspicuuous lack of the Internet in the Old Testament days. At least, I'm relatively sure my wife would not take kindly to being refered to as 'property'.
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