Somebody please stop me, but I'm afraid I have more to say on the subject that Tim Noah challenged us to: "What makes married women want to have affairs?"
I ran into Meghan in the ladies' room, and we both scoffed at the notion that "You don't hear stories about men telling their wives they no longer want to have sex."
I will agree with you on one point. Yeah, you don't hear stories about men telling their wives they no longer want to have sex. (In the same way they don't call and don't tell you they want to break up—they just disappear—or so the stereotype goes.) You do, or at least I do, hear stories from women about how their husbands have stopped having sex with them. For years.
Here's just one example that I found quickly. OK, the guy is depressed; maybe he is atypical. But, as a woman with female friends and relatives, I hear many stories like this.
I don't think the apt question is why do women want to cheat? I think the question is, why don't women cheat more?
And at the risk of embarrassing myself yet again, I will venture an answer with no research to back it up whatsoever except for my own little opinions and anecdotes.
First, a caveat. I sort of hate to talk about this stuff in this way. I hate to get into the gross generalizations of "all men always do this" and "all women always do that." So could we just stipulate that when I say "men" I mean "some men, sometimes" and ditto for "women"?
A male acquaintance once said to me, "I want to have sex with every woman I see." This sentence troubled me for a long time. Did he really want to have sex with every woman he saw?
I decided that the problematic word wasn't every. It was see. I assumed he simply didn't see women he didn't find attractive. That was upsetting in its own way, but at least that meant he didn't want to have sex with every woman in his purview.
I told him I'd heard that men think about sex something like 10 times a day. He told me that figure was way too low. It was more like 50 or 100 times a day ("or 1,000 or 1,000,000," other men chimed in—if this is true, how do men get anything done?). We hear statistics like that a lot; turns out they are all bunk. Nonetheless, it got me wondering: How many times a day did I think about sex? How many men did I see that I wanted to have sex with?
I decided to do some observation and experimentation. Turns out the amount of time I think about sex is quite variable. Sometimes it can be a lot in one day. Sometimes it can be not for days or even weeks.
As for the experiment, I played a little game with myself: I decided that when I was on the subway I would ask myself, "If I had to have sex with someone in this car, who would it be?"
Granted, I don't often ride the subway at the height of rush hour when there are a lot more people to choose from, and that fluorescent lighting is pretty harsh, but I have to tell you, some days it was pretty hard to find anyone at all (of course choosing someone solely based on appearance is not the only way to become interested in someone). The conclusion: It's pretty rare that I see a man I want to have sex with. (In real life, anyway, on movie and television screens is a different story.) So rare, in fact, that when I do find myself attracted to someone it is a very powerful feeling.
Now, I am happily married, so perhaps that partially explains this rarity. (Though when I think back to before I was married, I think I was always a one-crush-at-a-time kind of girl. Or, wait, maybe two. Or three. Or four. Well, maybe five at the most. But there was always a reason, albeit shallow, that I liked someone—I thought he was cute or I liked his voice or something he had said or his personality, or the way he played guitar turned me on. It wasn't solely because he had the right equipment between his legs.)
Perhaps women are just more picky. While men are looking for quantity, maybe women are looking for quality.
On the other hand, guys, maybe you need to do something about the way you look. Clooney it up a little bit, for god's sake. Do some push-ups every day at the very least.
(True, I am no Angelina Jolie, but I am not actually on the prowl, either.)
And, now, an even touchier subject. Why do some women stop having sex with their husbands?
This may sting a little. I have no delicate way to put it. Once again, it's a question of quality.
Bad sex. Obviously, sexless marriage is a deeper issue that involves more relationship conflicts than just the physical. But, speaking as a woman, all I can tell you is that if she knew she was going to have a good time, she would want to do it. Often.
As for men, I think it was Jerry Seinfeld who said, "Sex is like pizza. Even when it's bad, it's pretty good."
Not so for women.
Best-case scenario, bad sex is like being stuck in a traffic jam when you have a million other things you'd rather be doing, places you'd rather be.
Worst-case scenario, well, ask the Austrian woman whose father locked her in a basement for 24 years, raping and impregnating her repeatedly.
Now, it's not all you. It takes two to tango, and both parties need to "bring it" (or, in the case of the incestuous Austrian rapist, "leave it"), but all I can say is, guys, it wouldn't hurt for you to work on your skills.