Why Men Cheat?

‘Why Men Cheat?’ was a CBC based documentary aired on January 2013 (Newswire, 2013).
The documentary mainly emphasizes on how men are vulnerable to have multiple partners
and even promiscuity as a norm to their societal behaviour. The film also explores the
concepts and idea of monogamy by discussing the concepts such as social monogamy and
sexual monogamy. It is a fact that the film has portrayed the concepts and ideas on men’s
promiscuity as simple and straight that even a common audience member could understand,
however, layered with complex themes and physiological patterns. Apart from being a
comprehensive and informative documentary, the film itself succumbs to narrate the reasons
and logic behind male bad behaviour, simply through the assertion of biological and few
human evolutionary information. For this reason, this essay would argue that it is incorrect to
reason male bad behaviour through the reasoning of male physiology and few evolutionary
information, which completely undermines the patriarchal structure in which the society has
been built from earlier times. The essay would also argue that many of the conceptual and
data-based findings that has been asserted in the film are extremely narrow, yet it tends to
generalize to conceptualize the society as a whole.

‘Why Men Cheat?’ starts with images and photographs of famous male celebrities who had
been involved in various sex scandals and became infamous around the world through
popular media. The documentary then goes on narrate through various experts and doctors to
reason on why men in particular tends to cheat on their spouses and choose promiscuity over
monogamy. The film even documents a scientific study in which the researchers proves that
men are psychologically built to be polygamous in nature, also why males naturally and
instinctively tend to look out for other female partners even when they portray a
monogamous lifestyle to the public. One of the main emphasize that the film gives is on the
role of testosterone hormone in men, which plays a major role among the males in the society
to actively indulge in sex and attraction of their opposite sex (Newswire, 2013). They even
justify that it is because of the testosterone hormone in males they tend become risk taking
and even transcends the societal and marital norms of monogamy.

One of the foremost ideas that the film discuss is on the concept and dynamism of
monogamy. The film dissects and explores this in such a way that it tends to state the idea of
monogamy itself is wrong and is a wrongly inserted ideal in the society. One of the main
arguments that the film brings forth is by stating that the society tends to look upon men who
are monogamous are good, simply by stating ‘monogamous man is a responsible and
trustworthy man’. Although the documentary has several fallacies throughout, it strikes the
right chord on proving the concept of monogamous men in the society. According to Scheele
et al (2012), men who are monogamous in nature are also equally vulnerable to promiscuity
and even tend to get attracted towards other females other than their female partners. Apart
from that, the study also states that thirty-seven percentage of the males who participated in
the study admitted of having committed adultery out of their wedlock, even though they were
into monogamous belief and relationship (Scheele et al, 2012). This proves that this specific
idea and concept of monogamy in the society itself is wrong, and it is not necessary that a
monogamous man is a responsible and trustworthy man as always believed within the
modern society.

One of the crucial statements that the documentary makes at one point is that seventy-five
percentage of men have said in a research that they would have affair if they never get
caught. This statement is not only a narrowed view which normalize men as cheating animals
but also a falsifying statement that could mislead the general public to believe that it is
normal for the males to cheat. Anderson (2012) in his book states that both women and men
are equally prone to cheat in a monogamous relationship. In another study conducted by
Walters and Valenzuela (2019), only nineteen percentage of the men have asserted that they
would commit adultery, while forty-eight percentage of the women in the study group have
said that would commit adultery if they never get caught. These varying studies and findings
not only nullify the statement made by the documentary, but also totally dismiss the research
statement made by the documentary which asserts that it is very normal for men to cheat in a
relationship.

Another extreme normalizing statement made by the documentary is that the exchange of
female sex for male is common in the society. It is a fact that in many societies around the
world there is a huge female following for the male athlete, and there is a trend sustaining
among the teenage and adolescent female crowd in American and European nations to follow
rock stars and athletes. However, it is important to comprehend the fact that this not a
common cultural practice or a move in all countries. Conservative nations in Asia and South
East Asia still admires their sport stars as celebrities and have a conventional fan following
(Park et al., 2019). Therefore, again the documentary has tried to generalize an extreme
niched European and American cultural practice by providing examples of American
celebrities and their lifestyle around female fans and admirers and manipulated its narrative
to convey that these practices are common around the globe, which is not only wrong, but
also ethically and morally incorrect as well.

There has always been prolonged debate and discussion among the scholars and
academicians on concept of love and sex. There is a popular notion sustaining among the
society that love and sex can coexist differently, that it is not important for an individual to
indulge in sexual activities without the feeling of love. For example, at the end of the film
‘Why Men Cheat?’, one of the interviewees says that sex and love are like ‘cheese and cake’,
they would go together, but they are not the same thing, hence would not be coexisting at the
same time. However, majority of the studies and philosophers tend to disagree with this
statement that love, and sexuality are different. Hendrick and Hendrick (2002) in their studies
affirms that love always comes before sex, and this was derived through the analysis of a
group study in which majority of the participants agree that they would require the feeling of
love in order to indulge in sex with their partner. It is also an interesting aspect that forty-five
percentage of the participants in this study were males. Soble (1998) in his work have stated
that love is always valued in an individual in order to experience sex at its fullest. These
philosophical as well as scientific point of view opens to the revelation that it is important for
the individual, despite male or female, to feel love in order to indulge in sex. Therefore, it
becomes clear that love and sex are not different, rather it is important for love exist before
the sexuality to happen.

Many of the statements and information asserted in the documentary ‘Why Men Cheat?’ are
not only undeveloped, but also misleading. The film mainly delves with normalizing men’s
cheating behaviour or habit as an alpha male in the society and linking this behaviour with
testosterone. Therefore, through this essay, a systematic argument has been made to conclude
that the film is not only misleading in its nature, but also deceptive. Hence the essay has
argued that it is wrong to reason and link male bad behaviour with the physiology and
evolutionary history. Apart from that, the essay has also stated that most of the conceptual
and data-based narrative used in the film to generalize male hetero sexuality is not only
narrow, but also fundamentally wrong.
References:
Anderson, E. (2012). The monogamy gap: Men, love, and the reality of cheating. Oxford
University Press.

Hendrick, S. S., & Hendrick, C. (2002). Linking romantic love with sex: Development of the
Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 19(3), 361-
378.

Newswire, 2013. CBC's DOC ZONE Exposes The Reasons "Why Men Cheat". [online]
Newswire.ca. Available at: <https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/cbcs-doc-zone-exposes-
the-reasons-why-men-cheat-511832891.> [Accessed 10 December 2020].

Park, J. A., Sung, J. M., Son, J. M., Na, K., & Kim, S. K. (2019). Athletes’ brand equity,
spectator satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and
Logistics.

Soble, A. (1998). The philosophy of sex and love. Theological Studies, 59(4), 760.

Walters, A. S., & Valenzuela, I. (2019). “To me what’s important is to give respect. There is
no respect in cheating”: Masculinity and Monogamy in Latino Men. Sexuality &
Culture, 23(4), 1025-1053.

Scheele, D., Striepens, N., Güntürkün, O., Deutschländer, S., Maier, W., Kendrick, K. M., &
Hurlemann, R. (2012). Oxytocin modulates social distance between males and
females. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(46), 16074-16079.