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10 reasons women have affairs with married men

10 reasons women have affairs with married men - Patrick Wanis

Why do some women find married men so attractive? What is the lure of the man with the wedding ring?

Why did actress Kristen Stewart have an affair with her movie director Rupert Sanders? The “Snow White and the Huntsman” director Rupert Sanders is married with 2 children.

There are multiple reasons that a woman will be attracted to a married man. In the case of Kristen Stewart, it wasn’t as much about the fact that he was married as much as it was about the fact that he was very powerful.

Power is one of the most potent aphrodisiacs for women, number one. Number two, women often fall in love with a man who becomes their teacher.  Women get very attracted to a man that can teach them something – a man who can help them to evolve, help them to grow. So it’s not unusual that a young impressionable, vulnerable girl that’s growing and evolving and blossoming will easily get attracted to someone that could actually help her to do that creatively, artistically, and maybe even emotionally because of the role she’s playing in the movie.

Number two, women often get attracted or form relationships with people with whom they spend a lot of time because our bonds are not only formed by intense emotional activity and interaction; our bonds are also formed by simply spending a lot of time together.

In order to fully understand why women are attracted to married men – the lure of married men – one must understand the profile of the mistress. Here are ten reasons women fall for or seduce a married man.

1. Life Experience & Worldliness
As in the case of Kristen Stewart, the young, impressionable and vulnerable girl, will be attracted to the worldly and wise man who has had lots of life experiences, thus offering her more adventure and an opportunity to grow and experience more of life. It also creates a sense of security and safety for woman to be a with an experienced man since she believes that he will better understand women and be able to offer her emotional support and understanding.

Monica Lewinsky who had an affair with US President Bill Clinton also fits into this category – like Kristen Stewart she was also 22 – although for her, power was the aphrodisiac and primary motivator. As most women will tell you, 80% of a woman’s orgasm is mental, so the intellectual enticement of an opportunity to be with a perceived wise, knowledgeable man paradoxically leads to a visceral experience.

2. The Man is Significant, Valuable and Confident

One of the first things that attracts women to married m

en is that they recognize that he is significant – in the sense that another woman wants him, another woman found him attractive. And what we find through research and studies is that the more popular a man is with a woman, the more popular he becomes with other women. In other words, a man becomes more magnetic and appealing to women when he’s already in a relationship first and foremost because he has more confidence about himself. So that changes the way he presents himself to the world. And because a woman, the wife, finds him so appealing, his social value rises – He must be significant and valuable because he is married.

3. The Man is The Provider
Women are attracted to married men because they recognize that he’s already a provider, that he already is offering security to a woman. He appears powerful.

4. He’s a Great Father
If he’s a married man and the woman (potential mistress) sees him around children and she recognizes that he’s really good with children; that also makes him more appealing because it reveals his paternal aspect. So we have confidence. We have the fact that he’s perceived as a provider; that he’s offering security; and that he might potentially be a great father. He might be very good paternally.

5. Women Compete With Other Women
Women love to have something that belongs to another woman. They love to compete. Women compete with other women more than men compete with each other. Yes, men are highly competitive, men are highly ambitious, and that’s due to testosterone. But when it comes to relationships and even image, women will compete more with each other.

So in a room, women are often competing with each other to see who is the best dressed or who has the best relationship. However, men compete with each other through money and possessions and women compete with each other more through their relationships.

Women are more concerned about what other women think of them in their clothes than what other men think of them in their clothes. Women will tell you they dress for women and not for men. Why? They want to stand out. So we also have that element of competition amongst women.

6. Schadenfraude – Coveting and Sabotaging The Other Woman’s Happiness
Then we have the woman who sees that this man is married and maybe she knows the other woman, knows that she’s happy and she wants to sabotage the other woman’s happiness. Some women who are very miserable, have low self-esteem, and believe that they can never attain happiness or have a real meaningful and happy relationship will set out to sabotage another woman’s happiness, even though they know that they can’t actually have or keep the married man – except for a short while; they simply want to use him as a way to lash out at the world. There is a word that only exists in the German language for this emotion – schadenfraude – pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. Specifically, the word comes from two parts – Schaden (damage, harm) and Freude (joy). In other words, the mistress receives joy from knowing she has harmed the other woman and her relationship/marriage/family.

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7. Revenge
Closely connected to the concept of Schadenfraude, a woman who has been the recipient or victim of a betrayal, will also set out to do to someone else what has been done to her; a client whose boyfriend cheated on her, ended up having an affair with a married man because she became disillusioned about relationships, fidelity and wanted to hurt another woman the way she had been hurt.

8. Fear of Rejection & Intimacy – Safety in A Married Man
There is also the profile of the woman who is attracted to a married man because ultimately she has extraordinary fear of rejection and issues with commitment & thus intimacy. All issues regarding fear of intimacy and commitment come from a deep fear of rejection or a traumatic experience of rejection. So this sounds like a paradox because you have a woman chasing a married man and yet she fears rejection, and she knows that he will ultimately reject her because he is unattainable. I don’t know what the exact research is but possibly only about 10% of married men who have an affair actually end up leaving their partner permanently to be with the mistress.

Ultimately she knows at a subconscious level, he’s most likely going to reject her or break off the affair. But now she has a really good explanation. Now her explanation to herself is “Well, he couldn’t leave his family. He couldn’t leave his children.” So she justifies his actions and it reduces the sense of pain surrounding rejection as the she justifies it to herself by arguing to herself that he’s in a situation in which he can’t get out of – he can’t leave his family. It also keeps her safe because she cannot truly experience intimacy (“into-me-you-see”) because she never really bares her heart and soul – she very rarely becomes truly vulnerable. And given the married man’s other familial responsibilities, she believes that he will make less emotional demands on her.

9. Ego, The challenge & Forbidden Fruit
There is also the woman that is driven by ego, loves a challenge; the woman that’s bored with her life or seeks the power of the conquest. Sex also becomes very exciting when it’s taboo or a taboo form of sex in the sense of having sex with a married man creates a thrill. So there’s always a chance of getting caught; and that creates the thrill and the enticement for both the man and the woman.

10. Self- Sabotage
I call this the Law of Deservedness: You only get what you subconsciously believe you deserve. And if you get more, you’ll sabotage it or push it away or you won’t enjoy it. There are some women who put themselves in this situation because they don’t believe they deserve more: they know they can’t have a real relationship with this man; they know it can’t last. So it’s not just the fear of rejection. It’s a whole different category. It’s the woman who’s going to get into a relationship of an affair, will end up miserable, will end up being alone, experiencing deep sense of loss, deep grief, and all she’s really done is she’s created a sense of self-sabotage. She’s going into a situation, a dynamic where she knows she ultimately can’t win and she’s going to end up hurting herself emotionally. So this is the woman that doesn’t think she deserves better, doesn’t think she deserves to have a real, stable, secure relationship or real love.

Having said all of the above, obviously there are a small percentage of affairs that do turn into something. There are people, married couples who will have affairs like a married man and a married woman and they may go beyond the affair and they may actually end up leaving their partners and family and get together. But that’s a rare situation such as LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian. They were both married, they cheated together on their partners – and they ended up getting together.

Here is another example from one of my clients, a married woman: her husband has an affair, promises he won’t do it again but does it again. She ends up dumping him and eventually divorces him. He begins a relationship with the mistress that he was having an affair with and when that falls apart, he has a relationship with another woman and he ends up marrying her. In other words, he didn’t marry the mistress, he married another woman.

NOW READ ON and learn more about the dangers of affairs with married men.   Beware: The Dangers and Heartache of Affairs with a Married Man https://patrickwanis.com/blog/beware-dangers-heartache-affairs-married-man/

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