When model, author and podcast host Emily Ratajkowski invited the esteemed psychotherapist and author Esther Perel to talk relationships on her podcast High Low, we wonder if the 32-year-old knew it would be her most interesting guest to date.
The duo riffed on many things: pornography; getting turned on; dating in the app era; and the one sentence nearly all men have told Perel about bedroom-speak. But the most notable take was the pair chatting about why more men cheat than women—and why history means this is absolutely a gendered issue.
Perhaps made more enticing and relatable since listeners would be aware of the rumours Ratajkowski’s husband of four years cheated on her, Emily Ratajkowski perfectly set up Perel with a knockout question: Why do men cheat more than women? (Please note, this conversation specifically pertains to hetero-normative relationships and heterosexuality.)
“Men cheat more because for all of history, men have had a license to cheat,” says Perel. “Women were left destitute, without kids and without a roof. So that is one very simple reason why she cheated less. And when she did, you can be sure that she hid it much better because she had everything to lose.”
Both agree that this historical notion has bled into the modern day. That is, if a woman cheats, she will be the source of accusation—no matter if she is the one in the relationship or not.
“The double standard around infidelity is alive and well,” continues Perel. “She still will get accused a lot more [than the man]. When people go to confront the person who has had the affair, they don’t yell at the [man who is in a relationship with somebody else], they yell at the mistress. Because, [according to society] she should know better.
“The ‘homewrecker’ does not exist in the masculine.”
Ratajkowski went deeper: What is the reason people cheat?
“People cheat for a host of reasons: some of them to express the discontent in their own relationships,” says Perel. “Loneliness, sexual frustration, revenge, deadness, contempt, indifference, fighting.
“Affairs are a symptom of a relationship that has gone awry.”
But then there is another set of people, a notion explored in Perel’s famous book The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity , where people would come to her practice and tell her, “I love my partner very much, but I’m having an affair.”
“This becomes more interesting, it’s not the usual script,” Perel tells Ratajkowski. “Sometimes we are drawn not by the gaze of another–it’s not that we want to leave the person we are with, but we want to leave the person we have become. It’s not that ‘I want to go elsewhere’ but that ‘I want to be someone else.’” Perel gives the example of a person in a constant state of feeling like they need to responsible, when they want to feel like they are being taken care of.
Notably, Perel touches on the term “deadness”, something we can all feel in different areas of our lives and of which Perel describes as “when we feel like we are no longer aspiring, curious, discovering, or exploring.” As Ratajkowski explains, “it’s this idea of being alive but not really living.” So, what happens when we feel “dead”?
“It’s this feeling of ‘I feel loved, but I haven’t felt wanted in many years’ [causing the person to ask,] ‘Is this it? Am I going to live like this for another 25 years? Why don’t I leave? Because I have a beautiful life, we have a family, we have a business…,” explains Perel.
“It’s so easy to think of it as ‘all or nothing’, when it’s far more complicated,” she says. “People would rather live in a compromised situation than give up.”
Perel says part of the reason she wrote The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity was because she was asking herself, “if you can lose so much–everything you’ve built, your family, your home, your reputation—and you are going to cross that line,” what is it for?
“It must be way more important than just cheating,” she says.
“The majority of people who come to see me are not chronic philanderers,” she continues. “They are people who have been monogamous, sometimes for decades. And they cross a line they themselves thought they would never cross. So [I] ask, ‘For what?’”
“The word I would hear all over the world and more than anything else was, ‘I felt alive.’”
Perel says, the fallout, where it was always painful, is today traumatic. Largely due to the introduction of dating apps. Back in the day, things like lipstick on a collar or a ticket to a show could give someone away. Now it’s texts.
“The idea that you have the complete archive available to you, every text that has ever [been] sent—it’s one thing to know the person had an affair, it’s another to read word for word years [later],” says Perel. “It’s much easier to transgress, but it’s much more difficult to keep a secret.”
Another interesting touchpoint was Perel discussing how women can find more pleasure during sex. Her answer? Women should start by asking themselves if they would sleep with themselves.
“If you don’t think you are worthy of being cherished, adored, touch, held, loved, made love to, it’s very difficult to respond to someone else who wants you,” she says. (Hit the 30-minute mark where Perel lists the questions a woman can ask her partner to achieve more pleasurable sex, and how to up his curiosity in her.)
It’s food for thought, and a really interesting chat. Take a listen to Emily Ratajkowski’s podcast, High Low, here.
Perel is an esteemed psychotherapist and New York Times best-selling author, who has spent 40 years specialising in relationships. She shot to fame in 2006 when her first book Mating In Captivity gained recognition. Since, she has been travelling the world, giving TED talks on love, sex, connection and infidelity.
