Men Care More About Physical Cheating While Women Care More About Emotional Cheating: Here’s Why
Pretty much everyone knows that cheating on your romantic partner is kind of a scumbag thing to do. While the reasons that people cheat vary across the board, there's a shocking amount of difference in terms of how women and men view cheating in terms of physical and emotional connections.
Why exactly might that be? Let's dig in.
First Of All, What Do We Mean By Physical Cheating?
Physical cheating is exactly what it sounds like: it is when one partner engages in physically intimate acts with someone else, especially knowing that their partner would be unhappy if they found out.
This can mean that they kiss, inappropriately touch, have intercourse with, hold hands, or do any other physical deed with someone outside of their relationship. It's purely about bodily pleasure.
Emotional Cheating Is A Little More Nuanced
In contrast to physical cheating, emotional cheating is when one partner starts to engage in a close relationship outside of their original relationship and has romantic feelings toward the other person. Essentially, they're not emotionally staying true to their partner.
Emotional cheating can be hard to clock because it's not as clear-cut as physical cheating, but it can look like someone having a very close relationship with a coworker or "friend" that goes beyond the normal grounds for a platonic relationship.
There's Science To Back It Up
It is no secret that women and men tend to operate differently in how they perceive the world—partially due to genetic differences and partially due to the way women and men are socialized differently from when they were children.
There have been numerous studies on infidelity and how gender impacts the way that we perceive it, including this 2015 study conducted in Norway on gendered jealousy.
So Which One Is Worse?
Here's where it gets interesting. When men and women were asked what form of cheating they would find more harmful, women consistently said that they would be more hurt by emotional cheating than physical cheating.
In contrast, men said that they would prefer to find out a romantic partner had an emotional affair rather than physically cheat on them with another man.
What Makes Women And Men React So Differently?
While the Norweigan psychologists expected there to be differences between genders, they didn't expect the difference to be so strong.
Psychologists have tried to understand why men and women have such different beliefs when it comes to physical vs. emotional cheating, and have come up with a few theories behind why this phenomenon occurs: one theory considers evolutionary psychology, while the other looks at cultural gender norms.
Is Evolution The Reason?
Through evolutionary processes over thousands of years, women and men have adapted to challenges around reproduction differently.
Historically, for men, physical infidelity was a threat to him knowing if a child was his own. Especially if a man was to put extra resources and effort into raising a child and continuing a genetic line, he wanted to be sure the child was his.
Women Had Evolutionary Concerns As Well
Alternatively, women would rely on having a male partner to help care for and raise the children, and therefore, having him form an intense emotional connection to her was one of the most useful ways to ensure he would be invested in their children.
At the time, the greatest threat to a woman and her family was that her male counterpart would become emotionally attached to another woman and start using his resources on her.
Have Our Concepts Of Infidelity Been Shaped By Social Norms?
Another theory as to why women and men have different valuations of infidelity is that each gender is raised with different values and gender roles.
For thousands of years, a wife was viewed as a man's property, as well as a woman's physical appearance being tenuously tied to her "worth." Naturally, in this mindset, having another man physically interact with his "property" can be perceived as upsetting. Even if the same stringent gender roles aren't as important today, the mindset remains intact.
In Turn, Women Are Raised To Value Social And Emotional Connections
In turn, women are socialized to be emotionally in tune with their own feelings and the feelings of others around them and are taught to prioritize their emotionality.
Therefore, to women, forming an intense emotional connection with someone else and losing some emotional connection with them is a much more complex and damaging betrayal than simply having an instance of physical intimacy with another woman.
So What Does This Mean For Relationships?
All in all, this just goes to show that men's and women's attitudes toward relationships can be different from each other and, therefore, recognizing these differences can help us approach difficult situations in a more productive way.
Understanding each other and the way we react to things is the first step towards caring for each other in a healthy way. Overall, though, I definitely do not recommend cheating on your significant other, emotionally or physically.
