Girl with girl cheating OK, half of boyfriends say

[NormalBob]

Girl with girl cheating OK, half of boyfriends say







By Basil Katz


NEW YORK | Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:05pm EST



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Half of men would forgive their female partner's infidelity, as long as it was with another woman, according to a new study on cheating.


Women, however, were less likely to forgive and forget if their boyfriend had been with another man, the University of Texas at Austin study showed.


Researchers asked 718 college students to imagine being in a long-term relationship and what their reactions would be to several different cheating scenarios.


They found that overall, 50 percent of men would likely continue a relationship with a woman who had a dalliance with another woman, while 22 percent said they could forgive betrayal with another man.


For women, the results were reversed. If their boyfriend cheated with another woman, 28 percent said they'd keep him around, but only 21 percent said they would if he cheated with another man.


Published this month in the journal "Personality and Individual Differences," the study concluded the participant's reactions were based on basic jealousy instincts.


"A robust jealousy mechanism is activated in men and women by different types of cues -- those that threaten paternity in men and those that threaten abandonment in women," said Jaime Confer, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate in evolutionary psychology.


Men, they said, felt more threatened by a rival male because of paternity uncertainty, whereas they saw a female partner's homosexual affair as "an opportunity to mate with more than one woman simultaneously, satisfying men's greater desire for more partners."


Mark Cloud, one of the study co-authors, stressed in an interview that the homosexual infidelity scenario they asked participants to imagine was very rare in reality.


So, the researchers asked participants about their real experiences with cheating. There again, men showed less tolerance of cheating than women.


"Men were significantly more likely than women to have ended their actual relationships following a partner's affair," according to the study.
(Reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Patricia Reaney)

[Chloe]

I am pretty sure that by now I have realized that I have a different view of cheating than most of the world . . .

Before providing I always "cheated" on boyfriends with girls because I never thought of it as cheating. It was difficult to arrange the threesome situation in the normal world so I had fun on the side, but was honest about it.

As a provider if I had an SO I am technically "cheating" when I provide but I do not view it as such because even though I derive pleasure and create relationships it is still how I retain income and does not pour out of the bedroom . . .

I could also be biased because of my personal POV but aren't the men the one's who cheat the most? Why are they less tolerant? Maybe they are not as used to it?

[NormalBob]

What I found most interesting about this poll was that a significant number would not end a relationship over cheating. It seems to me that a poll like this in the early 1970s would have shown about half these numbers being able to roll with that revelation:

Researchers asked 718 college students to imagine being in a long-term relationship and what their reactions would be to several different cheating scenarios.

They found that overall, 50 percent of men would likely continue a relationship with a woman who had a dalliance with another woman, while 22 percent said they could forgive betrayal with another man.

For women, the results were reversed. If their boyfriend cheated with another woman, 28 percent said they'd keep him around, but only 21 percent said they would if he cheated with another man.

[wlhrgfan]

Do you find it funny that Parrots in the wild mate for life...The same two for life and that is it...

I guess humanity sometimes needs to look at some of the smaller and dumber creatures on this earth to derive a lesson. But I guess we humans are too smart for our own good as we seem to overthink relationships. Either that or we as humans have a very loose opinion of the word commitment.

[NormalBob]

I derive a lesson from Salmon that swim mightily upstream to spawn, only to die shortly thereafter.

I think the concept of commitment was likely to change as society went from marriage at 15 and death at 35 to now with delayed or no marriage and an average age at death well beyond Social Security.

There's also the idea that there's a distinction between "commitment" and "sexual fidelity".

[wlhrgfan]

Yeah but Like I said parrots don't get social security nor live in our society (other than imprisoned in it for our amusement)...they don't even have a word for marriage (unless we teach them to repeat it) and look at their values. The distinction here is...Sometimes it's the smallest creatures on earth that can teach the biggest values.

[NormalBob]

Maybe if they had opposible thumbs, they would have invented Parrot Porn.

As a society, we do get a lot of values from the bird-brains, just not all of them.

[wlhrgfan]

I guess we can sew thumbs on them...let them watch porn...and teach them to say Cheaters always win too!!! LOL

But you are right society is filled with Bird-brains they just have trouble establishing values

[NormalBob]

I'm glad we could find a point of agreement.