What I Learnt After My Wife Cheated on Me

It’s been a debate in sociology whether cheating one’s spouse is very common. It could be a normal phenomenon biologically.

Coming back to my own life, I was cheated and betrayed by my wife and there was a lot of tension between us for years. But we chose to stay together. I shared that difficult chapter of my life in an earlier post.

Life was not exciting and happy for us but we were together for our son and trying to manage our life for the better.

And then covid pandemic happened in 2020. I stayed back mostly at home as the technology sector was doing work from home during the pandemic.

It was an excellent time for me to spend time with my son and wife.

But both of us can feel deep down that there was not much passion left in our relationship.

Sex was nowhere. She was not interested in intimacy and I was also tired of rejection.

You can say, there was no mutual attraction left.

It was the middle of 2020 and one day I met Brian. Brian was my old buddy in middle school and though we seldom met recently, we always had stories to share.

Brian knew about our personal life and the struggle. And one day when he was in the town, we met in a coffee shop for a chitchat.

He mentioned “Hypergamy” as a potential reason why women cheat and I was keen to know more.

I was not sure what he was talking about but thought let’s learn about it just by doing some internet search.

I never thought my life would change dramatically in the next 6 months !

But before sharing what happened in my life, let me share what I understood on “Hypergamy”.

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Let’s dive a little deep to understand how the mating dynamics work broadly in our society.

Whatever I am writing below is a cocktail of proof taken from history, evolutionary biology and sociology as I read it from different sources from internet search, books and online mag related to psychology.

For men, it looks very simple and straightforward.

Men ( male population ) have an instinct to have multiple partners. It’s just not in human civilization. We can find many examples in nature as well.

Why ?

Because the return on investment for mating is pretty high for the men.

Men can indulge in sex but they do not need to bear the child for long 9 months.

Also logically a man can impregnate a large number of females in a shorter span of time.

And hence the selection criteria of mating for men is a relatively easy process.

A man can have sex with 50 women in a year and out of them if 25 is pregnant, there is a high probability 20% of the kids are successful socially in a longer run.

So, mating is a number game for men throughout history.

Whereas if you look at the women, it is different.

Women can not take a lot of risk when mating with anyone.

The ROI is not in their favor.

They have to bear the child for 9 months. There will be huge physical, mental investment before the kid is born.

And it is not over. She will take care of the kid more than her partner.

There is a huge investment from a woman’s point of view when she is engaged in mating with someone.

As a result, mate selection is not an easy decision for a woman.

The woman just does not look at the external beauty to judge a potential partner.

She wants to look at the future prospect. She wants to make sure the guy can provide well in the future for their offspring.

And the partner should potentially spend most of his resources for their future generation.

Because of high investment risk, the female mind runs complex thoughts (algorithms) and comparisons to select a potential good partner.

It is biologically difficult for a woman to bear multiple child, so they look for quality.

Woman wants a man who is physically strong, financially well equipped and with higher intelligence to make sure she gets the best out of a lot.

And if you think deeply, it is absolutely logical. Isn’t it ?

If you can not afford to buy a lot of things, you try to be very choosy and buy the right one for you.

As a result it is not difficult to understand that adult women in their subconscious mind are running a complex selection criteria to search for a good potential partner for their future.

There is nothing wrong with it. It is the outcome of evolutionary biology which hardwired in women psychology.

A man can have sexual interest with many women, as he has pretty insignificant investment of time & commitment if he chose so. As a result, the man can have multiple offspring and few of them can sustain well by natural selection.

End of the day, whether you are a man or a woman your animal instinct wants strong replicas ( kids ) who can survive in future.

This leads to a common psychological framework for men which pushes them towards becoming polygamous creatures.

Whereas women always try to settle for the best and that leads them to something called hypergamy. Marrying up. That means getting involved with someone who is economically, socially stronger than her.

And hypergamy in play is just not marrying someone who is level up than that woman. Women tend to look for someone who is best among the pack.

If there are 10 men, who is the best among the 10 ? Women look out for that.

Logically, I would say this is the right thing to do because when you can not buy everything, you should settle for the best option. Isn’t it ?

This creates an unique outcome in society.

You will find there are men, who are involved with couple of women. This is definitely a form of cheating.

But you will not find many women who are emotionally & physically involved with multiple men.

Yes, you can find a married woman, involved with another guy. But in 99% of the cases the woman is not attracted to her husband or partner.

She is not equally involved with two men. She emotionally left one guy before getting involved with another guy.

This is also cheating because the husband or the earlier partner is unaware about it.

But essentially, all I want to say here is — there is a fundamental difference in how the male cheating vs female cheating works.

Male cheating is essentially a byproduct of polygamy. And the man can be emotionally & physically involved with multiple women.

Whereas female cheating is essentially a byproduct of hypergamy. And generally the woman is emotionally detached with her partner before latching on with someone.

There are exceptions but if you look at society around you, we might see a lot of examples which establish this.

Now coming back to my own life, does this mating dynamic played a role in my wife’s case ?

My wife’s betrayal — is it the outcome of just hypergamy ? Looking out for a better partner as her animal instinct is in play or is it something more darker than that ?

I will try to explain that in more detail in the next few posts.

Keep in touch.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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