For some people, marriage is the end-all-be-all of a relationship. For other people, marriage comes too soon in their lives, and it ends in divorce. For others, marriage happens – and then, despite all odds, love happens again after that. When a man gets married, it doesn’t mean that he’s cut off from other people for the rest of his life.
Many people, including women, will continue to come and go and sometimes, those women can form connections with him that he hadn’t been expecting. Of course, a man who is married ought to stay true to his wife, or come clean about his emotional wanderings. But what does it happen? What causes men who are married, who have devoted their life to one woman, to seek out or fall in love with a woman outside of his marriage?
1. Emotional needs
While a man may be getting certain emotional needs met by his wife, he may also be subconsciously seeking something else when looking outside of his marriage. The way that some women may, subconsciously, seek out relationships with men that are much like her father, the same can happen to some men. When the partner in the marriage isn’t fulfilling a specific type of nurturing or caring role that the man is looking for, he may seek out an emotional connection with another woman who is more like his mother. She may be older, have different life experiences than his current wife, or may offer a different kind of emotional support.
2. Emotional satisfaction
Different that an emotional need, seeking emotional satisfaction is all about feeling good. A man who seeks extramarital companionship may be lacking satisfaction, emotionally, in his relationship. He may feel unhappy, or there may be problems in the marriage caused by marrying too young or too quickly without the couple having known one another well enough. This is also a way for a man to seek validation if his partner is unable to provide that for whatever reason. When a married man falls in love with another woman, or seeks that extramarital affair, it can be because he wants more emotional satisfaction, and has decided to look elsewhere to get it.
3. Sexual satisfaction
Sometimes, men who fall in love outside of their marriage with another woman are seeking something sexually that their current partners either can’t or won’t fulfil for them. These affairs often start out as casual flirting or conversation before developing into an extramarital relationship. Sometimes, men seeking outside relationships happen even in an entirely fulfilling marriage. Men can often time crave attention from more than one woman at a time, as it makes them feel powerful. This can cause men to seek satisfaction away from their wives. Men who seek sexual satisfaction outside of their relationship often do so with younger, more vivacious women than their current partners.
4. Stroke their ego
Men who crave the attention of other women may seek extramarital affairs, either with affection or intimacy, because it makes them feel good. Perhaps they’ve been in their marriage long enough that the spark is gone, or both partners have started taking one another for granted. When this happens, men can often need, want or crave that feeling that they once had at the beginning of their relationship – and rather than work to rebuild it with their current partners, some men may decide to seek out the beginning of another relationship so that they may relive the honeymoon phase and stroke their egos.
Sometimes, men simply fall out of love with their partners. It isn’t always a malicious thing – maybe he married when he was too young or too inexperienced, and married the first woman he was ever in a relationship with. This can cause some men to find themselves making connections with other women who are more on their own wavelength. Perhaps they have similar goals in life, or their interests align more so than his current marriage partner’s. Some men find themselves in extramarital affairs simply out of love for the other person – of course, this shows a marked lack of respect for their current partners, but even they are only human.
Married men who seek relationships with other women aren’t all the same, and not all do so for the exact same reasons. There are a plethora of ways that men cope with their own inner feelings towards themselves, their life situation, and their spouse. Not all of these coping mechanisms are healthy or good for them, or their relationships. Extramarital affairs are one of these ways to cope – and something that can often destroy the relationship between both the man and his wife, as well as the man and the other woman. Sometimes, to married men who fall in love with other women, the benefits of the affair outweigh the risks.
