SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

As someone who’s been reflecting on infidelity and how it impacts us, I’ve also been thinking a lot about how it affects women in particular. From my perspective as a man, I’ve come to realize that patriarchal expectations don’t just shape the way men respond to betrayal, but they also place a heavy burden on women when it comes to self-worth and identity after infidelity.

Society often defines femininity in terms of loyalty, purity, and the role of being an emotional caregiver. Women are frequently told that their value is tied to how faithful they are, how well they keep their partner satisfied, and how much they take on the emotional labor in relationships. When infidelity happens, it seems like those pressures become even more intense, making women feel like they’ve somehow failed—not just as a partner, but as a woman.

I’m beginning to see how patriarchal values enforce the idea that a woman’s worth is based on her ability to be "enough" for her partner—whether it’s physically, emotionally, or sexually. When infidelity occurs, this can make women feel like the betrayal is a reflection of their inadequacy, rather than what it truly is: their partner’s failure to honor the relationship.

I can’t speak from a woman’s personal experience, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how patriarchy reinforces these damaging beliefs. I wonder what it would look like to redefine femininity outside of these pressures. What if a woman’s worth wasn’t tied to her role as the emotional caretaker or the faithful partner, but instead to her resilience, her ability to heal, and her capacity to reclaim her identity after such a betrayal?

From what I’ve seen and learned, it seems that many women feel the pressure to keep the relationship intact and to bear the emotional weight of it all, even when they’ve been hurt. But maybe the true path to healing is about realizing that a woman’s worth has never been tied to someone else’s actions, or to living up to outdated societal standards. Maybe real strength lies in rejecting the idea that you have to "fix" the situation and instead focusing on rebuilding your own self-worth on your terms.

I’m interested to hear how traditional ideas of femininity might have influenced your emotional response to infidelity. Do you feel like societal expectations to be the "perfect partner" or the emotional glue of the relationship made the pain worse? How have you worked to redefine your sense of self-worth and rebuild your identity after experiencing infidelity?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, especially around how patriarchy can sometimes place extra burdens on women during an already difficult time. I’m hoping this can spark a conversation about reclaiming your sense of self without needing to live up to outdated or unfair expectations of femininity.

I love this post, and am anxiously waiting to hear what BW think? I also made an additional post about how this and the other on BH has just rocked my world. So…you got my attention.😂

I was the ws first. So some of my reaction to your post is not the why or how I cheated, but the environment in which I cheated.

Women are both biologically and socially conditioned as to what a good wife and mother does. However, the idea of that hasn’t evolved since women entered the workforce. So many of us (especially Gen X or up) are still carrying the mental load of running a household, the lion share of domestic duties, are often the default parent, and still having to work a full time job.

I was CEO of a small company for most of our marriage. I worked 50+ hours a week, traveled, did all the grocery shopping, bill paying, cleaning, getting the school clothes and supplies and planning birthday parties and other kid social events. I did all the laundry from start to finish, had sex with my husband 4-6 times a week, planned all our date nights, took the kids to school, picked them up, packed their lunches did most all the homework. I cooked dinner most nights, not a phone it in kind of dinner but real home cooked food. Shopped for all the Christmas gifts, wrapped them all, put up and took down all the decorations and no one so much as out a thing in my stocking.

Did I complain? Nope. I loved my family. The problem was - how much time do you think I had for friendships or hobbies or me time? I just didn’t see it, and thought I was a happy and high functioning person. As the children left, and I got my time back it was…terrifying. I felt without purpose or identity.

It takes a toll. I think the younger generations are splitting more of that, but back when we started our family, this was nowhere near the norm. I was at work the other day and heard the guy in the cube in front of me talking to his wife about how he bought gift bags for the piñata for their daughters party. It was obvious to me that he thought of that himself and did it on his own. This never would have occurred to my husband, despite the fact that I know he loves our kids very much.

By the time of my affair, there was nothing left of me. My husband was blind to the labor and my resentment was deep. While no one should ever cheat, it’s not hard to understand how I was exhausted and was looking at moving into one of our apartments so it could just all stop.

Porn can be a huge issue in marriage. It’s not one I have put a kibosh on. It’s a catch 22 for me because I have watched too and it can be erotic and enhance arousal. But, I never just get out my phone and watch it randomly, when I am bored, or excessively. A lot of men, including my husband seem to scroll through it through the day. I have entered his office while he is working and he would be looking at porn. Not masturbating, not really even aroused. Just scrolling through. Combine that with body image issues due to extreme societal pressures about what beautiful means, and it’s a toxic combo. I always feel like my husband used these women as his mental fodder while using my body.

Is it accurate? I don’t know. But it certainly can get in a woman’s head. And I realize that you can ask them to stop. But, then am I going to be considered a controlling shrew, when porn is so prevalent and most guys watch it?

So I felt like I failed as a woman far before my husband cheated. But when he did, it reinforced every suspicion I had that I had given all that effort and time and none of it was enough. I wasn’t enough. My husband needed porn girls and someone to run our lives together.

Of course, this wasn’t true either, the patriarchal system that our relationship was run was done without maliciousness on his end. He is pushing sixty and from the south, this was just how he grew up. And I happily enough went along with it.

In addition, I think the introduction of instagram, Pinterest, etc also has placed these idea in our heads about what it is we need to do for our families and in some ways I can see that my overdoing was my own doing.

We don’t have kids at home anymore and I healed from my burnout while we were traveling and I was off from work for three years. I do what I want now, and he helps more around the house if I say " can you take care of these things?" I felt like earlier in our marriage he would seem irritated and I wanted him to think that I hung the moon. I wanted to be seen as the capable amazing wife and mother. I still do most of the things, but I have relaxed about what it needs to look like and be.

I am not sure this fit the question or not. I was not the original BS in our relationship, but when he cheated all these things came up that despite these huge efforts and sacrifices it didn’t mean what I thought it did. The period of time of being the ws before he cheated, I did work on these things but for sure felt that I had the bigger role in carrying the relationship, and that was a tough pill to swallow and I think why it took almost a year to feel remorse over what I had done. I still resented him so much and had to dig my way out of that for a long time. I had to take accountability for my role in letting that go on. I had to realize that someone who has a sense of worth or value wouldn’t have felt the need to go to the extremes I did.

Wow hikingout!
That was a really heartfelt, good explanation of how….and I am hearing you. I hear it. I felt a great deal of that for years before my HB made choices that challenged us. But I feel like something is really clicking with this discussion. The patriarchy is really just a fallacy! It’s the idea that we can have control if we subscribe to the "dare I say" irrelevant and random thoughts? They are thoughts that somehow became constructs not just to men but to women. Prior to the affair, I would never have thought of my husband as controlling or part of the patriarchy…but here we are. And I am here too😂

I have shared this before but I had heard more than once from men in the religion I was a part of with exwh that if a man cheats then a woman could divorce but really she has to (wait for it mic drop) consider what she did to make him cheat. I am of the era where I read mainstream pregnancy books where women were encouraged to do things like buy thongs to look sexier while pregnant and do specific things to meet a man’s needs while they were pregnant so that the man does not cheat. Then I lived in the South and Midwest which I found to both be places where women were expected to be homemakers even while working . A man somehow deserved to have the house cleaning done for him, meals prepared for him, child care dealt with and all of it while looking pretty or he would go someone else. Men are much more likely to leave women who are sick (statistically true) or who don’t make hot breakfast for their families (whether they work outside the home or not).

This is not to say there are not good equitable men out there and many of them are in this group. That is not to say that all men are exploitive of women’s uncompensated mental and domestic labor. And men can be exploited and have negative impacts by this sort of system too.

That said…
I am horrified how much of this societal programming I mentally absorbed and how little I set boundaries, took on mental work, and took actual care of my own needs. Not only did I get cheated on while I was life threateningly sick but then people had the gall to victim blame me for EXWH’s abuse. If someone had told me I was going to get cheated on after a more than 3 decade long marriage I would have noped out of about 90 percent of the mental and physical work I did in the marriage. Well honestly I would have just noped out of marriage entirely now that I think of it.

Something I read lately said that women in general and women my age more than ever are choosing to not remarry. The same something read is that women are not wanting to trade them having to overwork in relationships just to get what was termed mediocre sex.

Did I mention that men are societally taught that intimacy is something men take and women give up…..

Wow this post really got me… I think women do get very unfairly judged for having their partner cheat on them or for how they react to being cheated on. One of the things that I remembered since all this happened is how many WOMEN told me they ** NO POLITICS **.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:07 PM, Friday, September 13th]

** mod hat off **

My W says she's tied in knots by double binds. I think that's because our culture is filled with innumerable contradictory messages. Different people accept different messages from their culture, but I have no idea what causes one man or woman to accept one idea and another man or woman accept the opposite.

I know a lot about how I responded to being betrayed. All I know about women's responses comes from the self-selected SI crowd.

I don't know about 'patriarchy'. It provides many benefits to innumerable women. It oppresses innumerable women. It provides many benefits to innumerable men. I personally find it an annoying burden.

*****

** mod hat on **

From the guidelines:

GENERAL STATEMENTS: Please refrain from making statements that generalize gender, WS/OP/BS, race, religion or political alignment. Also do not presume to speak on behalf of other people.

So far, I think the responses have stayed within guidelines. Let's keep it that way.