- Question
- Why do men cheat on women?
- Position1 of 6›
- The 'Other Woman' is why men cheat
- Argument‹2 of 2
Women lure men away from their partners
Infidelity takes place when a woman chooses to lure a faithful man away from their unsuspecting partners.
The argument
The position locates the cause of infidelity outside the relationship, and it draws support from how women who have been cheated on actually apportion blame. A 2017 study by researchers at the University of Cardiff found that they are considerably more likely to hold the other woman responsible than their own partner — a striking pattern, given that the partner is the one who broke the commitment. The reasoning behind that response is a moral one about third parties. A woman who becomes involved with a man she knows to be attached is not stumbling into the situation; she is making a deliberate choice with the relevant facts in front of her. On this view the choice is wrong in itself, because it treats someone else's commitment as an obstacle to be worked around rather than a reason to stop. And because it is deliberate, it carries responsibility: the other woman is not a bystander to the betrayal but a participant in it, supplying the opportunity and the encouragement without which the affair would not take place. From there the argument reaches its conclusion about cause. A man in a settled relationship does not usually set out to find someone else; what changes is that someone presents herself, available and willing, and makes the alternative concrete rather than hypothetical. Proponents of this position argue that this is why the question of why men cheat is better answered by looking at the other woman than at the man. The temptation is not generated inside the relationship but introduced into it from outside, and the person who introduces it is the one who sets the betrayal in motion.
Context
When a heterosexual man cheats on his partner, he is led by the other woman.
Premises
Counter-arguments
This perspective is wedded to outdated beliefs that claim the man has no responsibility for his actions and objectifies women. When men decide to cheat, only they can be held accountable. As Rebecca Reid writes in The Telegraph, "When a man cheats on his wife, it is not because he’s been forced to. He hasn’t been conned into it or tricked. He has decided that sex with another person is more important, more interesting, more arousing and therefore worth compromising whatever it is that he has committed to at home."
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] The existence of a female cannot be responsible for the actions of a man