CHEATING CONFIDENTIAL
‘Amazing, heart-pounding sex’: 61 married men reveal why they have affairs
‘RANDY,” a Maryland man who’s been married for 20 years, is having multiple affairs — not just because he enjoys the sex. His mistresses, he says, offer something different from his wife. His most current girlfriend, for example, is “always perfumed. She’s always wearing sexy underwear. She’s always attentive to my needs. You’re not cutting a fart in front of each other. It’s an oasis.”
“Joe,” another married man, said he likes cheating on his wife for the thrill. His current mistress and her husband have “both been to our house.” If their spouses ever found out, her husband “would kill me, and then my wife would revive me so that she could kill me.”
But that threat of violent retribution is what makes it fun. “The sex is absurd,” Joe says. “It’s risk-your-life good.”
These are just two of the 61 married American men who confess to their infidelity in “Cheatingland: The Secret Confessions of Men Who Stray” (Atria Books), out Tuesday. The author, a “journalist” (no other details are provided by the publisher), spent four years interviewing men, both in person and over the phone, for his investigation. All names and many identifying details of the men quoted have been changed, the author writes. Even the author goes by the pen name “Anonymous” in order to protect the men’s identities.
The author first became curious about infidelity several years ago, after having dinner with a married friend and his married girlfriend, who’d been having an affair for three months, sneaking away to a hotel room while the man’s son took martial arts classes — an escape the woman described as “Cheating-land.”
“She made it sound like ‘Cheatingland’ was a clandestine little country with its own customs — sort of Fantasy Island, where wedding vows were forgotten and normally mild-mannered people could morph into sexual beasts,” the author writes.
What’s love got to do with it?
Most Americans don’t approve of infidelity. According to a Gallup poll, 91% of both men and women find it morally wrong, disapproving of it more than polygamy (83%), human cloning (83%), and suicide (77%). But despite the finger-wagging, one in five Americans have been unfaithful at least once in their marriage, according to a YouGov poll.
Who are these people, wondered the author of “Cheatingland.”
“Are there certain traits that link men who cheat?” he writes. “How did they keep from getting caught? And what happened when they did get caught?”
The men he spoke with range in age from their early 20s to mid-60s, and run the gamut from teachers to truckers, sales reps to restaurateurs, lawyers to real estate developers. He met them mostly through friends of friends, and the overwhelming majority insisted they were still very much in love with their spouses.
“When my wife walked in the room, my heart would leap,” says “Lucas” from Austin. “She’s the sun around which my world revolves.”
He’s been married for more than a decade — “I slept with somebody else maybe two days before I got married and somebody else a week after,” he brags — and says he can’t recall how many women he’s been with.
“I did not love them,” he says. “My heart did not leap at the thought of them. I never thought, What would life be like if it was just us?”
“Jeff ” from Portland, Ore., says all of his affairs were “fairly emotionless.” He kept his wife and lover in separate boxes in his brain: “This person is for love, and this person is for sex, and there’s no confusion over who is who,” he says.
Some of the people in “Cheatingland” have affairs because of a lack of sex at home.
“To them, cheating means taking their sexual frustration into their own hands and resolving the problem so that they won’t poison the marriage with their dissatisfaction or resentment,” the author writes.
But in many cases, it has nothing to do with problems in the bedroom. Like “Brett” from Seattle, who’s in real estate and has been cheating on his wife with several women. “Cheating almost felt like a way for me to take a little bit of control back in my own life,” he tells the author. “I was making a decision so far outside of anything that she would approve of or have any real say over. I just needed to do something I wanted to do, something for myself, and that is to give myself the gift of amazing, heart-pounding sex.”
“I had a birthday recently,” said “Steve,” a radio host from the Midwest, “and it was a particularly shitty birthday. My birthday was really an afterthought in my house. So I slipped out to see my affair partner one day right after my birthday because I was, like, ‘F--k it, that’s my birthday present. I want an insane afternoon of endless, can’t-walk-after-it sex.’ After that, I did not care one bit about what my wife didn’t do for my birthday. Wiped all my resentments away.”
She’s always attentive to my needs. You’re not cutting a fart in front of each other. — ‘Randy’ from Maryland
Wives don’t always ‘know’
None of the cheaters interviewed had any moral qualms over their flings. Some likened their transgressions to slipping up on a diet.
“Cheating is, like, ‘OK, let’s get a greasy, sloppy double cheeseburger and chow down on that even though I know that it’s bad for my heart, my cholesterol, my stomach, my weight, everything,” explains “Peter” from Denver. “But it tastes so good in that moment, and while I’m eating it, I’m not saying, ‘Oh, wow, I have to run 6 miles on the treadmill to work this off.’ ” Having a wide array of mistresses is “like a Frankenstein girlfriend,” said “Morris” from Cincinnati. “You get to pick and choose what you like about everybody and have it all at your disposal. One was better in bed, one was smarter and more fun to talk to. I had all the bases covered. If one of them wouldn’t do something, the other would.”
There is a “Russian roulette aspect to all of it,” writes the author, in that the risk of getting caught is always there, and the consequences can be devastating. But some cheaters, like “Eddie,” a 30-something engineer
I did not love them. My heart did not leap at the thought of them.
— ‘Lucas’ from Austin
You get to pick and choose what you like about everybody and have it all at your disposal. — ‘Morris’ from Cincinnat
from Pittsburgh, enjoy that danger. “Going behind closed doors with someone outside your marriage when nobody knows what you’re doing, that’s a huge adrenaline rush,” he said.
While many of the subjects in the book managed never to get caught — “the old adage that the wife always knows is definitely not true,” writes the author — the few who did faced shockingly mild repercussions.
They came up with excuses, talked their way out of divorce, and a few continued to have affairs even after being caught in the act.
Affairs got discovered for all sorts of reasons, from wives stumbling upon empty boxes of condoms in the trash to mistresses showing up at their doorstep. And reactions from the jilted wives could
sometimes turn violent. When the longtime wife of “Larry” from Chicago, who’d been involved in multiple affairs, found a secret phone in his pants, which he used only with mistresses, she became enraged and attacked him with scissors.
“I was really afraid she was going to stab and kill me,” Larry said. When the police arrived and realized that only Larry had noticeable bruises and cuts, he said they took his wife to jail. (He added that they have since gotten divorced, and the wife has disappeared, even from her own children’s lives.)
Secrets & lies
One man revealed that his affair came to a violent end. “Scott” from Dallas recalls being stopped outside his house by a man who asked his name, then punched him in the face with a pair of brass knuckles. When he regained consciousness in the middle of the street, he saw a car barreling towards him.
“The car pulls up next to me, tires screech, and he says, ‘Leave my f--king wife alone, motherf--ker!’ ” Scott remembers. “Then he takes off down the street. After that, I said to myself, ‘No more married women. Ever!’ ”
Many of the subjects of “Cheatingland” consider extramarital flings “a full-time job” because of how much effort and plotting is involved.
“Men who are serious about this get really meticulous and pay attention to every little detail,” said Steve from the Midwest. “You can’t get sloppy. Every time you’re with her, or every time your wife asks you an innocent question, is a chance to screw up. One mistake, and your whole life explodes.”
Or as “Max” from Baltimore puts it: “If you’re gonna cheat, you gotta be a very disciplined person.”
Many have developed strategies for making sure they’ll never get caught, such as calculating the perfect time to sneak away for a rendezvous.
“There’s a real tight window of plausible opportunity, a window of time where your hangouts are believably innocent,” said “Lou” from Houston.
Others use burner phones, secret text messaging apps, and other tech platforms designed to throw their wives off the scent. “Peter” from Denver found an app “that would call my phone and make it look like my mom was calling me. I’d pick up and be, like, ‘All right, Mom, I’ll be over in a little bit.’ ”
Here’s why men cheat
This person is for love, and this person is for sex, and there’s no confusion over who is who.
‘Jeff,’ from Portland, Ore.
But the most important rule, according to many adulterers, is remembering to keep your story straight. “Jackson” from Los Angeles likes to take his wife and girlfriend to the same places — movies, restaurants — so he’ll never accidentally make a reference to an evening out that will make his wife suspicious.
“You don’t know how much acting I had to do when I went to a bad movie for the second time, and I had to laugh at a dumb joke I’d already seen but had to make it seem like I didn’t know the laugh was coming,” Jackson said. “It was a lot.”
Most of the adulterers in “Cheatingland” who stopped cheating didn’t do it out of guilt or a change of heart. “The number one reason why men decided to quit the cheating life,” writes the author, “was so that they could focus on their career.”
“If you ask some of the most successful people what they do in their free time, I guarantee you it’s not chasing women,” said Scott.
Or as “Roman,” who had six affairs before giving them up, said: “I stopped when my work took on more importance in my mind than my d--k.”
For the men of “Cheatingland,” only a handful of the marriages ended in divorce. But many claimed their relationships with their wives thrived once they started cheating.
“Randy,” who continues to have sexual encounters outside of his marriage and without his spouse’s knowledge, said he is more in love with his wife than ever.
“She’s seen me at my worst, and she’s still with me,” he said. “It’s real love when someone’s seen your dirty drawers, and they still love you. It makes me feel really safe in our marriage that we don’t have to maintain a fantasy for each other.”