There is nothing new about married men carrying on romantic relationships and open sexual affairs with young single women. Despite today’s hi-tech update, it’s an old story: a married man, a single woman, a sexy, secret seduction, then hotel trysts in distant cities.
There was a time when most of us would’ve readily believed that these married men somehow tricked the unmarried women into the relationships. That is no longer the case today.
More and more single women are apparently becoming attracted to married men, and purposely seeking them out for seduction and sex. So much so that relationship experts have coined a term for it: “mate poaching.”
“Mate poaching is a robust phenomenon, and it’s here to stay,” says clinical psychologist Stephanie Newman. “When many single women see a moderately attractive male, they are more interested in him if they believe he is already in a relationship.”
The Perfect Match is a Married Man
Researchers have been noting the trend for decades. Sociologist Laurel Richardson conducted in-depth interviews with 700 women for a study on the subject in 1985. One of her major findings is that, by then, an affair with a married man was no longer taboo. In fact, it had already become a recognizable social pattern for a diverse population of single women.
The women in Richardson’s study were 24 to 64 years old. The median age was 28. They came from all social strata and geographic areas. They held blue, pink, and white-collar jobs. Most had been married once. Most had affairs with older men, many of whom were mentors or bosses.
More recent studies appear to shed light on at least some of the reasons behind the trend. In 2010, researchers from Oklahoma State University showed a sample group of women a picture of a man who was their “perfect match.”
When the women were told that their perfect match was single, 59 percent of them said they’d go out with him. When they were told he was taken, 90 percent said they would.
The study reveals something an increasing number of married men are learning. When a man is desired by other women, his physical attractiveness automatically increases. The conclusion? Merely knowing that a man is spoken for apparently makes him more appealing.
That’s not just for some women, but for women in general, say the researchers. What makes “the other woman” different is that she acts on her desires.
Primitive Instincts
Scientists have attributed mate poaching to a primitive instinct. Back when we lived in caves, finding an ideal mate could well be a matter of life or death. The world was a much more perilous place, especially for pregnant women. If your man couldn’t protect and provide, you wouldn’t survive, says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher.
Some trace of this primitive logic is evident in the results of Richardson’s research. More than 40 percent of the married men she interviewed admitted to having affairs. For those men with incomes over $70,000 – a considerable sum at the time – the figure was 70 percent.
That makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Men who earn more are obviously better able to provide for their families.
But there are fewer situations today than ever before in which a woman needs a man’s money and protection. Women have sought this kind of liberation for a long, long time, and its achievement is something to celebrate, isn’t it?
Of course it is, but our instincts have apparently not caught up yet. Psychologists suggest the trend may have extended into our times due to a psychological process known as “mate-copying.” Simply put, females tend to want males that other females agree to be desirable.
Humans are social creatures. The opinion of others matters to us. This stems from the importance of group inclusion for survival throughout evolution, Psychology Today reports.
We are genetically programmed to belong to a larger society. We want to belong. That’s why children tease the loner, and why we – as adults – take other opinions into consideration when we make decisions.
Other research findings on this subject propose that females are more likely to change their selection of a possible mate based on the opinion of other females. Interestingly, men don’t feel the same evolutionary urge to consult other men when choosing their partners.
“Men don’t have to do as much digging to get that instinctual sense that a woman would be a good mate,” says Fisher. “They look for physical signs that a woman is fertile, like having a good hip-to-waist ratio, which can be sized up visually on the spot.”
The New “Other Woman”
In addition to primal urges, some women are drawn to married men simply because they don’t want a committed relationship of their own. They see affairs with men in committed relationships as a way to avoid marriage when other priorities are pressing.
In this respect, “the other woman” of today differs from her counterpart in the past. Her goal is not to marry, but to enjoy seduction, sex, and male companionship while pursuing other goals. These might include building a career, surviving a divorce, or earning a college degree.
In a 2018 piece for the New York Times, the writer Karin Jones admits to having multiple affairs with married men. She says she began seeing them for companionship while she processed the grief of being newly divorced.
“After being married for 23 years, I wanted sex but not a relationship,” says Jones. “This is dicey because you can’t always control emotional attachments when body chemicals mix, but with the married men I guessed that the fact that they had wives, children, and mortgages would keep them from going overboard with their affections. And I was right.”
“The Desire to be Friends”
Newman says the fact that society frowns on extramarital affairs might actually increase the temptation for some women, fueling their sex drive. In fact, the allure of forbidden love is so powerful that, in some cultures , women risk death by stoning for a taste of it.
“Sneaking around has its thrills,” says Newman. “The sex itself may be lustier because it’s clandestine. Having sex in the married couple’s bed, for example, becomes a daring thrill, full of lust and passion, in a way not possible otherwise.”
Most of the research on the subject indicates that these overheated affairs typically last four years. That is longer than most of the women expected. The men usually end the relationships. Almost invariably, the women try to part on good terms.
For most of the women, friendship is how the affairs start – and that is where it should hopefully end. “If the single woman can regain that friendship,” says Richardson, ”she can feel that he is worthy, after all, that her judgment is not totally faulty and that she loved well, if not wisely.”
In this sense, she adds, the other woman is all women. ”The desire to be friends with men – both before and after the love relationship – may very well be one of the major ways in which women’s sexuality is socially controlled and ultimately constrained.”
Will the increasing sophistication of sex robots come to the rescue of marital fidelity or will women always want a ‘real man’?
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