Sex, less painful than falling in love.
According to a research, women would rather their partners had a fling than form an emotional bond with another female. The recent study discovered that two-thirds of women said emotional attachment is more hurtful than extra-marital sex.
Only a third of men said that their partner forming an emotional bond with another man was more painful than having an affair with them.
The American study, which polled 477 adults was published in the journal, Evolutionary Psychology. Participants were quizzed on different scenarios of emotional and sexual infidelity, and asked which would hurt more.
Generally, women found their partners’ emotional bond with another woman to be more hurtful than them cheating physically. When both love and infidelity occurred together, it was physical cheating which was overwhelmingly the biggest betrayal for men, not women.
A third of women said they would be more hurt if their partner was sexually interested in a former lover, than if they became emotionally involved with an ex. Again, the opposite was true for men, with the majority being more hurt by any sexual interest with a former partner.
Participants were questioned over their own lifestyle, morality, how emotionally close they were with partners and sexual history by the researchers.
Lead author Dr Gary Brase, from Kansas State University, said: “Males reported that sexual infidelity scenarios were relatively more distressing than emotional infidelity scenarios, and the opposite was true of females.”
He said: “No factors showed a stronger relationship with reactions to infidelity than participant sex. This research finds no evidence that the specific beliefs about infidelity, sex roles, attachment styles, reported socio-sexual orientation, or cognitive styles are driving the consistent sex differences found in reactions to different types of infidelity scenarios.”
Dr Brase also said that there was a long running debate over whether it was nurture or nature that had created such opposing sexual attitudes. He wrote in the journal that evolutionary psychologists believed the difference was down to men facing a problem of paternity uncertainty.
He continued: “Men can never be absolutely certain that an infant carries their genes. This prospect should make men differentially sensitive to sexual infidelity on the part of their mate. Women, on the other hand, confront a different potential problem of ensuring continued paternal investment by the sire of their child. This possibility should make women differentially sensitive to emotional infidelity of their mate.”
