Is (should) the response to finding out your other half is having an affair different if you are the DH versus the DW

[HauntedLittleLunatic]

Was having a heated RL discussion about the different responses of men and women to finding out their OW is cheating, and thought it was one to bring to MN

If you are a bloke and find out that your DW is seeing someone else are you

A) more likely (than a woman) to try to forgive and forget because you would lose the DCs when you kick your DW out?
B) more likely to kick your DW out anyway 'for making you look a fool', and because they are more likely than a woman to have the emotional strength to start again and practical and financial means as they (admittedly in.the specific example we were discussing) earn more.

The discussion was very heated - with individuals adamant they were right in both cases. My view depends on the character of the people involved - you can't just say that their response is related to their sex.

Discuss (as oppose to bunfight...)

I have the same view as you OP.

Not gender specific at all.

I don't think there is a point to arguing this.
You need statistics (even though they may not be accurate).

Something that may help.
thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/07/female-infidelity-its-different-from-the-guys/

IMO it's not gender specific, it's person and boundary specific.

DH and I both feel that to have an affair is to end a relationship.

I think if DH were to have an affair, I'd be devastated by the details. I'd be more hurt by the emotional side than any shagging. Especially if there was love involved.

If I were to have an affair, he would get angry. He wouldn't care about anything but revenge I shouldn't think.

Women aren't likely to go and lamp the OW but I can see a man going out to look for the OM.

As for the long term...I know mine would be angry but at the same time he would be devastated to lose his family. So who knows if he'd forgive or throw me out and be angry forever. Hope I'm never in the position to find out what our reactions would be!

It depends (ooh, that was helpful ....)

Some men find it easy to walk away from their children, so those men would be more likely to separate if the DW had an affair. Some would stay "for the sake of the kids", but IMO women are more likely in general terms to do that than men.

Personally if my DW had an affair it wouldn't automatically be the end, if we could fix whatever caused her to have the affair in the first place. It's never happened, but I don't think many people in a happy marriage have affairs.

People in happy marriages do have affairs. I've seen it time and time again.

I commend your attitude HappyHubbie, that you might try and see the root cause of the affair and work it out, rather than walking away seeing it in black and white as a lot of men do.

BelieveInPink Interesting, I've always felt the same, the emotional side would feel like more of a betrayal than the shagging. For many men (no, not me, never done it) affairs are just shagging without much emotional connection.

I understand that some blokes would thump the other man, but I never understood that - unless it's a friend he's not the person who was unfaithful to me, she is.

Another good point about it not being the OM being unfaithful. I think though that a man (unless he's an abusive bully) cant exactly hit his wife so would find the OM to go and vent his anger on.

I still think for most men it would be about their wives having sex with someone else. Whereas for most women it's the emotional side that hurts the most. (you excluded HH!)

Obviously not all men are the same and not all women would react the same.

Another good point to make...the reaction you think your other half will have might not be what you get. I assume mine would unleash hell fury but maybe he'd just cry in the corner and be devastated. A family member of ours had his wife go off with his best friend...all the husband did was beg her to come back.

This is completely anecdotal memory on my part, but I am sure I have read it somewhere that men are more likely to forgive an affair than women (when taken across the board for all types of affair)

Hmm...interesting range of opinions. And interesting article at the beginning. I wonder if that article is swayed by the fact that if a woman is in a deeper relationship with her OM she is more likely to choose the OM over her husband when 'found out' thus skewing the figures for a marriage failing...

It was a really 'interesting' discussion we were having this morning with friends being adamant that most men would react the same but they couldn't agree on how...

In my experience, men are more likely to forgive than women. When I was younger, I knew a few Neanderthal types who wanted to punch the OM's lights out, but that was based on sexism not hurt per se, i.e. it's not the done thing to invade another man's 'property' (bleurgh)

In more recent times and with more intelligent men, I've seen men who've taken the blame for their partner screwing someone else and that's usually because they've been in relationships with women who just can't own up to the real reason for their affairs i.e. they got an opportunity and fancied a shag with someone new. That's because women are conditioned to believe that if they have sex, it must be lurve and so they insist that it wasn't their sex drive talking, but their hearts. So they find faults in their partners that 'drove' them to drop their knickers and some poor sods accept this tosh, blame themselves and forgive them.

If there are differences in reactions, it is usually down to the way men and women are conditioned differently about sex and love and that sexism has negative implications for both.

I commend your attitude HappyHubbie, that you might try and see the root cause of the affair and work it out, rather than walking away seeing it in black and white as a lot of men do.

Thanks, bear in mind though I'm not 'a lot of men', I'm a Mumsnet man so I'm a: in touch with my feminine side and b: well aware of my many many faults That and being in my late 40's and having had a great relationship for getting on for 20 years maybe gives me a different perspective - I know that what I have is worth fighting for and not to be thrown away lightly. If I was a bit younger, and maybe only a few years into a relationship I might have had a different view, hard to say.

As a man I do see emotion and sex as largely separate things however. Mentally it would be relatively easy for me to have an affair without feeling like I had betrayed my wife emotionally, which is why men don't feel guilty about having a fling in many cases. Having said that, I do connect love & sex as far as my relationship is concerned, with my wife I 'make love', with an affair it would just be a shag, which is different.

I'm curious to know if women make the same distinction? I suspect generally they don't, although that may just be me being a bit old fashioned.

That's a big con Hubbie. Lots of men are like you and I know several women who can have a shag without it having to be love. It's not just men who can separate sex from love and plenty of them can't, just like plenty of women can't.