Here's a nice attitude that I've recently discovered some people in the frum community hold: If a man cheats on his wife, it's because his wife was doing something wrong.
So, just so we're clear, the guy breaks the sacred bond of marriage and it's the woman who gets blamed.
I hope that the fact that I heard this from people in the frum community doesn't mean that it's a common attitude in the frum community.
How many frum people out there agree with this statement?
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Hi, I just discovered your blog and I'm checking through the archives (which is why I'm commenting a year plus after this was posted).
ReplyDeleteThis attitude is not completely what you think, or hear. As a married woman, I can tell you this: when a husband cheats, there is more going on in his head than "I want to have sex with women who are not my wife." Men in happy marriages don't cheat - and when I say happy, I mean happy with every aspect: physical, mental, and spiritual.
Two people make a marriage, and the low, low, low percentage of frum men who cheat on their wives shows us that while not every frum marriage is altogether happy, most men will have stronger willpower. However, a man who is unhappy in his marriage for whatever reason, and cheats on his wife, will have reached a point so low that, while he is 100% accountable for his action (the solution to any marital problem is NEVER to cheat!!!), his wife - as the second person in the miserable marriage - definitely holds some blame.
When you hear men justify their infidelity, sometimes what comes out their mouth is plain old BS. But very often, they have similar complains: their wives have no time for them. Their wives only think about the children, or haven't slept with them in months (months!), or use them as ATM's or sperm banks. Men have feelings too, and consistent neglect, disrespect, and lack of marital intimacy will destroy a man like nothing else. This too, is a difference between men and women: women are not as likely, even if desperately unhappy in their marriages, to have a sexual relationship with someone else.
So this attitude, while not as widespread as you think, holds some merit. Not all, but some. Two people make a marriage and they both have a responsibility to fix it before it erodes to the point where a man will seek outside comfort in the form of another woman's welcoming arms.
Cop out. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteIf there's, "consistent neglect, disrespect, and lack of marital intimacy," as you put it, then the guy should get help with his marriage or, if that's impossible, seek a divorce. Cheating is much worse than either of those alternatives.
Only those couples in which the man is an animal hold this to be true.
ReplyDeleteIt is not the woman's fault that her husband cannot control himself. And if the man would care about his wife, she might not be repulsed by him. (Rav Arush; "In the Garden of Peace")
This, by the way, is what comes out of teaching our students that the girls have to make sure that they are not attractive, so as not to cause the boys to fall. In effect, what we are saying, is that the responsibility for the man is on the wife's shoulders. And we are telling the boys that nothing they do in this area is their own fault.
In reality, if a man wants to sin, he will find someone to sin with. A girl can do everything right, and a man might still pick her to be the trigger. That is why there are people who daven that they should not cause it. The only way to prevent it is to daven for it. Men are in charge of their own actions, we are not. (In defense of the male species, my husband believes in everything I just wrote even more strongly than I do.)