This thread is great! Dervish on the one hand hanging it out for all to see and the rest of the male contingent fighting to be top of the "I'm faithful" pile whilst the chickas tell us were doomed with a certainty that borders on understanding, understanding I might add that would soon evaporate should "her" man act like she predicts he will.

Just my ha'pence worth....
While men and women are equally likely to misbehave, most men go through life feeling that they've been rather short - changed regarding sex.
This is ingrained starting around age 15 when they spend the whole time randy as hell, but with little idea about how to get beyond 1st base. The fact that they are not yet socially adept, and it takes a lot of practise and some very hard knock-backs from flighty, confusing girls to reliably get some, really leaves a mark.
Once you put in the time and effort to enable you to attract a woman, more often than not, she spins her silken web, and you end up married with a sprog or two.
This peaceful situation is once again disrupted when you get to your late 30's / early 40's, where if you are reasonably normal man, with a good income, and in good physical shape with all your own hair / teeth, you suddenly find yourself in huge demand. It absolutely amazes me and I often wonder, "Where the heck were you when I was 17, and all I had was Playboy and my AD&D manuals?" I don't consider myself anything special, but I have had some predatory women make it very clear what was on their minds, even when my wife and kid were just in the next room! In each case I piously told the woman "I've got a life with my wife.", but it did require some effort to get the brain between my ears to overrule the brain between my legs.

I'm sure that a whole bunch of precocious lotharios are going to jump up now and claim that they were getting it by the truckload from age 13, but the only two examples I remember from school of very good looking lads who were prolific conquerers of the fairer sex are now happily shacked up with their male parteners.

Bye for now...

Jim

Two comments...

This is an oft quoted remark, vis-a-vis the lack of women when one is desperate as a young(ish) bloke, as they (the older wimmin) weren't in tune with their biological clocks at that age... That of course changes, and there is a plethora of magazines and articles on the topic of "Where have all the good men gone?", "lonely at 30" etc.



There's a brain between the ears?

sleeping around with all your classmates when you're a 17 year old girl does not in any way prevent being lonely at 30

Is there a perception that the 'good men' are already married? Does this leads back to the psychology study that Ullainga posted?

Because they are f****** lying two faced b******* or bit****!

^I thought all people are natural good samaritans? I'm confused...

Women and men have a different perception of desire, love and attachment. I think this difference is mainly due to social norms. It's much easier for men to split desire from love, whereas for women it's apparently more difficult and socially less accepted.
Humans are not a 100% moral and reasonable species. I think we have an "animal" dimension in us, and therefore observations like the Coolidge effect may explain a few things about cheating.

I found the following study by Glenn Wilson (1989) very interesting for our discussion:
Large samples of men and women were asked if they were 'getting enough sex at the moment', 56 per cent of men and 41 per cent of women replying that they were not. When asked what their ideal would be, 63 per cent of women said 'more sex with their spouse or steady partner' (compared with 38 per cent of men) and 37 per cent of men said 'more partners' (compared with 18 per cent of women). Separation of the data into results for people of two different generations (younger and older than thirty) showed no change in this sex difference as a result of the new climate of sexual equality in which the younger generation has been raised (Table, from Wilson, 1981b). Evidently partner variety is of greater interest to men than to women, and this difference is reliable and enduring.

Fundamentally, yes, I think... re the first one. Not sure if leads back to Ullainga's post though. [Edit: went back to see the post - I guess so, although I don't know if my info comes from the same source. It's just something I picked up a while ago from a TV doc and personal observation, so don't have a source /Edit]

The perception is that the men who are left single are too long in the bachelor tooth to be any use, while those in stable "successful" relationships have shown/proved that they are worthy partners.

There's a rich irony here in that you cannot prove you can do it until you've done it. So to speak.

Clearly this is: 1) a "population" rule and there are exceptions; and 2) very subjective (i.e. what is "good" and what is "successful"?)

Haha... I knew I was unique!

Maybe I dont really live my life, seeking appreciation and affirmations of my peers or maybe I dont really give a crap what others think, or maybe Im just having fun... or maybe I dont like being pretentious and live my life based on lies and hypocricy.

Life is always not as simple, atleast for some of us, people change, things change, circumstances change. The only thing that would make a relationship or anything last is unfaultering Commitment, rest are just excuses and justifications for the unjustifiable.

This post was good right up to here - what follows is not really worthy of a true bohemian.

Aahh.. I never thought you had such deeper implications to what you said!

Since you mentioned, let me clarify. There are 3 parts to every deed. Knowledge, Action and Intention. One might know something, but not act upon it, or even know and act upon it but with wrong intentions.

Knowledge of right and wrong, most people have, its the actions and intentions where most portray Ignorance.

If I have to distance myself from certain things, then I must Know what to distance from and only then I can figure out How to!

The only tragedy is...

A heart that has no desires, cannot be broken - But has it ever lived?

Oh Dervaish, you got your self a second nick?

Susan mart,
Why do you think it is impossible to live with only 1 woman ?

Because...

?

Yes, nickname collecting is my new hobby

You mean because of internet?

I have been cheated on once long ago... but recently learnt from here an important and cruel lesson in my life: If you wanna stick around with her just stick it in... and from now on it all started making sense.

That reminded me of this software upgrade joke:

A friend is having trouble with his system. Last year he upgraded to
Girlfriend 1.0 from Drinking Mates 4.2 which he'd used for years
without any trouble. However, apparently there are conflicts between
these two systems and the only solution was to try and run Girlfriend
with the sound turned off. But to make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is
incompatible with several other applications, such as; Lads Night Out
3.1, Golf 2 and Playboy 6.0. Successive versions of Girlfriend proved
no better, Girlfriend 3.0 had many bugs and left a virus in his system,
forcing him to shut down completely for several weeks.

Eventually he tried installing Girlfriend 2.1 as well as Girlfriend 1.0
only to discover that when these two systems detected each other they
caused severe damage to all his hardware.

Sensing a way out, he upgraded to Fiancee 1.0 only to discover to his
dismay that this system requires rapid upgrading to Wife 1.0.

However, whilst Wife 1.0 uses up all available resources it does come
bundled with FreeSexPlus and Cleanhouse 2000 plus GreatMealsOnTable
{Guaranteed for a limited period). But imagine my friend's
disappointment on discovering Wife 1.0 can be unstable and costly to
maintain, any mistakes he makes are automatically stored in Wife 1.0
Hard Drive and can not be deleted - they then resurface months (or
years) later. Wife 1.0 also automatically runs Ultra STROP and WHINGEzip
and no option on the Help menu seems to work, leaving him to try and
GUESS the fault himself.

The system footprint needs updating regularly requiring Shoeshop Browser
Pro for new attachments - Hairstyle Express needs to be reinstalled
every week. Wife 1.0 also has a rather annoying pop-up called
Mother-in-law, which can't be turned off.

Recently he's been tempted to try Mistress 2000 add-on, but there could
be problems. If wife 1.0 detects the presence of mistress 2000, it will
delete all MS Money files before un-installing itself.

Are you saying we (I) are sad/unhappy because we (I) don't like people who cheat?

Not very logical.

Here's a real story.

• Shared a flat with a bloke
• Became friends and met his long term gf
• A few years later they moved back to their country and remained in touch
• They had a child
• She stopped studying to be a full time mum and he carried on his PhD (they were both students so couldn't afford child care)
• Few years later we went to their wedding
• They had another child
• Didn't speak for a while, but rang up to catch up and found out they were separating, because (in his words) he had fallen in love with someone else

I thought, OK, fair enough that happens. It's sad but that's life.



Here's what really happened:

• Shared a flat with a bloke
• Became friends and met his long term gf
• A few years later they moved back to their country and remained in touch
• They had a child
• She stopped studying to be a full time mum and he carried on his PhD (they were both students so couldn't afford child care)
• He started having an affair with a colleague at work
• Gf found out and challenged him before the wedding
• He said he would change his ways and they went ahead with the wedding
• Few years later we went to their wedding
• He carried on having an affair (with the same woman)
• They [bloke and gf/now wife] had second child (to patch things up)
• He got mistress pregnant and declared he was leaving his wife and two kids
• Didn't speak for a while, but rang up to catch up and found out they were separating, because (in his words) he had fallen in love with someone else

What's to like about that kind of behaviour?

He basically left his wife up the creek without a decent education (which she would have got if she'd carried on studying) and two kids, aged less than 30.

Are we still friends with him? No.
Are we still friends with her? Yes.

Right Any other nuggets of wisdom?