By Dr Masimba Mavaza| An estimated 60 percent of Zimbabweans abroad marriages experience at least one episode of infidelity. Studies show more men than 
women cheat, but they often do it for the same reasons. While infidelity is a factor in many divorces, half of marriages survive an extramarital affair. A discussion on what drives people to cheat and how infidelity can affect children and the whole family is a hot potato.
Infidelity abroad is equally spread between husband and wife. Even though men are culprits in Zimbabwe and women are log leaders abroad. It is difficult to spot a partner prone to infidelity? If he’s unhappy with his wife, he’ll cheat, right? Not necessarily.
According to a Rutgers University study, 56% of men who have affairs claim to be happy in their marriages. They’re largely satisfied with all they have and aren’t looking for a way out, yet they still find themselves in bed with other women and in hot water with their wives.
Cheating is caused by a lot of reasons but the most prevalent ones are the cultural change and the working pattern in Diaspora. The economic strength which has tilted towards the women has unravelled the rot in laddies and man become ridiculed to an extent of becoming useless. By the time they crawl to their bedrooms their ego is battered bruised damaged and totally destroyed. They no longer have the strength to rise to the occasion and they are rendered useless. The words they are told by their wives reduces them to nothing and no action will be possible where it matters. In the face of all this they become useless and sexually starve their partners.
Men need the right frame of mind to operate to the full capacity in the bedroom. The stresses of the bills and the insults they get because their salaries are less makes it difficult to satisfy their partners.
Women then ditch their Zimbabwean men for West Africans who claim to be good in bed. They choose to look after those men than to look after their husbands. This becomes a breeding point for infidelity.
It is not only women who cheat. Men do cheat out of fraustration. Ofcourse there are some demon possessed idiots who cheat even if they are getting everything from home. It is a fact that most men are still in love with their wives when they cheat. They just cheat to boost their confidence because their wives are ridiculing them. Once women get a slightly more salary than the husband they become tired every day and the man had to sleep sexually hungry. This is a cocktail of disaster. Men who cheat haven’t fallen out of love; they’ve become unsatisfied with the current state of it.
“Cheating usually occurs in the phase of companionate love, when couples begin to settle down, have kids and solidify the life being built together,” says clinical psychologist Andra Brosh, PhD. While they’re fulfilled in some areas, like being a provider, the romance may be missing. “We more often think of women complaining about a lack of romance, but men feel it, too. “They frequently suffer in silence, believing they can’t get what they want from their spouses. They are told that the spouse is tired and after all she brings more money than them. Their ego is bombed and destroyed. With no adults to help, the marriage gets into a diving mode and finally into self destruction mode.
The most interesting issue with cheating men is they usually cheat with women they know. Cheaters don’t generally pick up random women in bars. They normally cheat with childhood friend or wife’s friend.
The relationships are usually friendships first.” In fact, more than 60% of affairs start at work, or at church according to Focus on the Family. Husbands feel more unconnected to their partners and more connected to his business partner or friend.
Spouses miss fore play and time for cuddling. Bedrooms are turned to court rooms and budget delivery houses. The relationships with spouse is more business than romantic. Women get married to their jobs, compete on fashion splash their payslips and forget their marriages.
As a result of this frustrated men cheat to save their marriages. “Men love their spouses, but they don’t know how to fix their relationship problems, so they go outside their marriages to fill any holes,” Men want it all and have the skewed notion that another woman will make the longing for something disappear. Then, they can live happily ever after with their wife—and their mistress—without confronting the real issues. They try to deal with romantic chaos by creating a chaotic situation.
In most cases men hate themselves after affairs. You may think of cheaters as men without morals, but while they may like what they did, they tend to despise themselves after their indiscretions. “If he puts his ego to the side, he’ll feel like a piece of garbage,” says relationship expert Charles J. Orlando, author of The Problem with Women…Is Men. “After all, he’s betraying another human being who he claims to care about, so that takes its toll on every part of his psyche.” A cheater can feel as though he’s failed as a man.but he is comforted by the feeling that I had no option.
Cheaters often get friskier with their wives when affairs begin. Men get their sexual drive destroyed by their wives and raised by their mistress. A man does not expect to use a condom in his house if it is forced on him he develops a great revulsion against the wife and finds solace elsewhere. Women make fatal mistakes in believing that men can not go anywhere until they are gone.
It should be noted that women cheat just as much as men, and their affairs are more dangerous. They cheat with impunity and the husband is the last to know. When the husband knows his ego kills him.
An Indiana University study shows that men and women cheat at the same rate. But “the reasons the sexes cheat are different,” women are more likely to cheat for emotional satisfaction. “Online cheating—without any physical contact—is the most damaging type of infidelity,” Becoming emotionally invested in another person means you’ve likely checked out of your marriage. But if it’s just sex, it’s less about attachment and more about a hurtful mistake. In most cases women spend their time on Facebook and whatsapp. The social media breaks all the lines of respect and women and other men share naked photos dirty jokes sexual videos and finally share their bodies. You find your wife smiling on the phone and frowning at you. You wake up at 2 a.m, you find your wife on whatsapp. Smiling to the phone. This spells disaster.
It is true that a wife often knows her husband’s cheating but the husband takes long to realise the cheating wife.
The pain of the husband accepting that the wife is cheating is too horrendous, men can not process it so they resort to murder.
They do not take time to chose what they could live with for the sake of their kids or to avoid prison or humiliation and the fallout.
The problem women fail to understand is that it is hard to work it out when the husband is in the midst of an affair. So driving him into an affair is pushing him down the cliff. They could agree to work on things, but it won’t matter. If he’s still in the throes of a hot, new romance, nothing a woman does will drag him out of it. “He’s got such positivity happening, without all the drama that exists in the established relationship,The marriage will likely fail, unless he decides on his own accord that life isn’t better with the other woman. So the key is prevention. Continue to be the woman he first fell for throughout your marriage. “Women often turn from a loving girlfriend into a nagging wife. Men aren’t attracted to that.” Dole out compliments and surprise him with sex—don’t just yell at him about that towel on the bathroom floor, or that you are the one getting more than him.
A man knows he’s hurting the woman he loves, tearing his family apart and sacrificing his honour all this he does because he is disrespected and ridiculed. Treated like a slave denied sex and emotionally assaulted.
A man may realize the negative impact on his wife, family and himself, but still continue an affair. How? “It’s all in the perception of the man. He needs respect regardless of his salary. If he feels unwanted, undervalued and taken for granted, his personal needs of being wanted, valued and appreciated will win out.”
Men cheat because the signs of disconnection have been ignored by both parties.
However in all these issues there are
Factors that affect whether a person chooses to try to repair the marriage this includes the social and economical conditions, the welfare of the children, the expectations or the culture, or the fears of the affected person about being alone. Love for the spouse and respect for shared history also affect someone’s decision to stick in there.
The other variable, of course, is the actions of a partner once he or she comes clean about the affair. If they dismiss it or refuse to talk about it, act like it’s the other spouse’s fault, or still insist on having their own private lives, it increases the risk that partner cheated on will just get fed up or hopeless.
The fact that we are far away from home removes shame from couples they are not answerable to society so marriages becomes vulnerable. Without external help marriages become endangered