This sex therapist says that sex isn’t the only, or even the biggest reason men lie about being married.
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Why do married guys pretend to be single online?
The obvious answer, I guess, would be for sex.
But as a sex therapist I can tell you it’s often not so straightforward.
Rosemary Counter’s first-person account “A Craigslist Missed Connection Lure” in this week’s New York Times “Modern Love” section is a pretty good example of how deeply irrational these things can be.
When she asks him if there’s anything he needs to tell her, he bursts into tears and reveals that he’s married, with one child already and another on the way.
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She meets a man through Craigslist who treats her better than any man has ever treated her before. Tentatively at first, then with gathering conviction, she begins to accept this gift from the universe: a man who seems to want nothing more than to take care of her.
Day by day she begins to trust him. When he offers one day to pick her up from work, she recalls, “Nobody had ever picked me up or cared how I’d get home, so I happily accepted.”
Ten days into the most satisfying relationship of her life, a friend confronts her with the fact that she knows next to nothing about him. When she asks him if there’s anything he needs to tell her, he bursts into tears and reveals that he’s married, with one child already and another on the way.
It’s puzzling that a married man would lie on Craigslist and romance a young woman, knowing he’s going to eventually break her heart. But there are lots of men doing this online.
Who are they, and why do they do it? Some married men who make believe they’re single online are like compulsive gamblers borrowing money to use at the gambling table, knowing they’ll never be able to pay it back.
Why hide the wedding ring and go after single women, knowing you’re just going to break their hearts?
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It requires a particular kind of mind. You need to be able to think ultra-short-term, and to keep your feelings tightly compartmentalized so long-term considerations don’t get in your way. Not many people can tolerate that kind of stress. But if you can, you’re at risk.
Still, why do it? Why hide the wedding ring and go after single women, knowing you’re just going to break their hearts?
As with compulsive gambling, some men have an insatiable need to win. They have to keep the thrills coming, or they feel catastrophically bored.
Other men, more paradoxically, seem to have an insatiable need to lose. Give them something good, like a marriage or a young woman’s open heart, and they’ll wreck it.
We mental health professionals have lots of theories why: early emotional abuse, neglect, too few good role models, too many bad ones. The stories usually involve early heartbreak — children starved for love and told they’re no good, by parents who were treated the same way.
Sometimes a dismal story of emotional betrayal echoes down through the generations, like a tale that never made any sense but just got repeated over and over.
If you’re a man caught up in mindlessly repeating one of these dismal stories, the online world lets you do it with a much wider audience. And if you’re a woman who’s badly in need of love, there are unfortunately a lot of dismal stories on the internet waiting for you to write the next chapter.
In love, as in finance, it’s unfortunately true that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
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It’s especially painful when fate takes a woman for whom “nobody had ever picked me up or cared how I got home,” and matches her up with a man who can’t stop acting out some horrible unconscious story of heartbreak from his own troubled past.
In love, as in finance, it’s unfortunately true that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We mental health folks know that you’re much more likely to find a genuinely loving partner if you’ve known love already.
To those of us like myself in the mental health field who make our living trying to stamp out irrational suffering, the implications are clear.
Let’s teach our children to be careful with their hearts and those of others. Let’s teach them that real relationships usually aren’t so dazzling. The real ones tend to disappoint in a gradual fashion, often from the start.
And let’s try to make sure our children don’t go out into the world too hungry for love. Let’s pick them up, and let’s care how they get home. We can’t protect them from heartbreak, but let’s make sure their hearts are well nourished at home before they go out into the cold.
Originally Published on Huffington Post
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Photo: Flickr/Pic Basement
Steve Horsmon, having been in a dysfunctional marriage — one that should have ended six years sooner than it did — I completely agree with you. I didn’t cheat (my ex did), but I did turn to outside activities and people to assuage the loneliness. I also have a lot of married male friends who have girlfriends on the sly. To the outside world, their marriages seem pristine; they are the “happily-married” Facebook couples who post smiling photos of their latest family vacation or holiday. A lot of people would be surprised at who these men are and how deeply… Read more »
Lisa Marie, “Fifty years ago, people didn’t live nearly as long as they do now. ” Well. Yes, and no. It is true that modern medicine together with increased knowledge about nutrition and hygiene has radically increased our life expectancy over the last century. But, most of the increase is due to so any more of us surviving our infant years, which in less developed countries are still by far the most taxing in this regard. The life expectancy for anyone reaching adulthood (old enough to get married) hasn’t changed nearly as much. Also taking into account that people used… Read more »
FlyingKal, your comment made me think about something. Since increased knowledge and nutrition and hygiene HAS radically increased our life expectancy, why do we not assume that increased knowledge, better relationships practices, journey’s to more emotional health and the likes of that wouldn’t also increase the life or our relationships? Why do we all just assume that our relationships should be shorter instead of longer?We spend more time today on our emotional health and pyschology that generations before us didn’t have the luxury of doing. Something I am going to chew on since your comment got me to thinking about… Read more »
Hi Erin, Thanks for the reply. I’m glad I gave you something to think about. First, I don’t think we all just assume that our relationships should be shorter with increased knowledge. To the contrary I think most people expect THEIR relationship to last longer (forever) with better “tools” as in increased knowledge. But somehow statistically they just do get shorter. And I think the answer to that is that the focus on “our” in “our emotional health and psychology” in large has switched from “our” as a culture or society, to “our” as our own, personally. Consider for instance… Read more »
I struggle with this simply because it’s on line crapola. Here is an idea, get the heck off the internet and get out in the face to face world. Let’s teach our kids to live a non-technology kind of life and get back to the basics. A guy that pretends he’s single and he’s not is a jerk, a moron and I give a rats ass why he plays a singles role. Teach your kids to call it what it is, a man/women that does such a thing is a jerk, scum bag. It’s one thing to behave in a… Read more »
“Let’s teach our children to be careful with their hearts and those of others. Let’s teach them that real relationships usually aren’t so dazzling. The real ones tend to disappoint in a gradual fashion, often from the start.”
Did anyone else find this crazy? I agree with the notion that we shouldn’t give away our hearts too easily or live in a fantasy world with unrealistic expectations but to expect a real relationship to disappoint from the start sounds sad.
Thank you Stephen for bringing up this important issue.
The end of your article is what I mean. How to prevent than anyone get fooled,used ,exploited and damaged by these persons that are only out to satisfy what they see as their needs……no I do not feel sorry for anyone that live in relationships that makes them suffer so much that they feel free to use others in return.
If you also added all the romance scam online then the picture would be perfect.
The chance for being used online is high if you do not know what love is,
Personally I think this entire article is deplorable! Either you’re in a committed relationship, like a marriage, or you aren’t. Anything else is a lie. So you either choose to fill this ’emotional cup’ or you learn to live with it being ‘bone dry’. If you cannot do either, end it and let your partner live a better life.
The author clearly isn’t trying to pass judgement on the actions, just to understand them. So if you don’t want to try to understand, then at least don’t try to stop others from doing so. Empathy is a valuable human emotion, regardless of who you are attempting to empathize with.
Interesting and helpful article, Stephen. Thanks. I’d like to add something regarding the insatiable desires you mentioned. I see both married men and women in troubled relationships reaching out to other to fill needs which haven’t been met in ages at home. What these “emotional affairs” have in common is the insatiable desire to feel appreciated, desired, accepted, and significant. The love/connection cup is bone dry and there seems to be no hope of getting a drop of it at home. It’s easy for both men and women to neglect to mention their marital status online as they seek to… Read more »
I agree with Steve Horsmon’s reply. Well put.
I’m don’t see the article as being helpful. I see it as a continuum of the mantra that men are emotionally broken. Men are often accused of being emotional illiterate. I see it differently. Men are cut off and removed from their emotions. That father working 60 hour weeks to provide for the ones he loves is told he isn’t involved. The man requesting more sex from his wife is a pest. That man going to prostitute is a loser or a deviant. The man in this story sounds more like a man seeking intamacy in an alternate reality because… Read more »
Josh
interesting views., But let me ask you one thing:
If men are so good at emotional connection when they have sex with somebody why do they like porn so much.Porn dissociate feelings from action.
And one more question.
How can a man be good at emotional connection during sex with another person and the other person sense no connection at all?
Don’t you think it takes two individuals to say we have a “connection”. Connection is a relationship and not a feeling inside only one person.,
Silke, If I may try and answer your questions? Short simple answers on a personal basis that could be elaborated in eternity based on preferences, experience, etc… But here we go: #1, Re. Connection vs. p0rn. Sex is both about connection and satisfaction. But if we can’t have it all (that is in an ideal world, mutually engaging, stimulating and satisfying sex with someone we have a deep emotional connection with), then one out of two might sometimes feel better than nothing. #2, Re, Mutual emotional connection. I think you’re missing part of what Josh is trying to say. I… Read more »