cheaters2

"Study Claims Men Resent Sexual Infidelity, Women Jealous Of Shared Love"

"while men felt guiltier for cheating on their partner sexually, women felt guiltier about being unfaithful emotionally. Men... would feel guiltier about having a one-night stand than falling in love with someone else (without sex). Women had the opposite response."

another study asked "400 people if it would be more upsetting for their partner to form an emotional bond with another person or sleep with them, men tended to be more disturbed by sex and women by the emotional bond."

i wonder if this might be true in my case. altho i have liberal views about sex outside of relationships, i think that sex (or anything relating to it, even fantasies [i know that sounds crazy. but if you're to do it, you shouldn't indulge your fantasies. and please don't fucking tell me about it]) within a relationship should be between the couple only. in other words: no fantasies about others, no porn, and certainly no sex workers (e.g. strippers and whores).

a big part of me not wanting my boyfriend to engage in any sexual activity outside of me (not physically me, you understand) is that i feel that i should be enough. if you're sexually satisfied, then you shouldn't want to look at / touch other naked people. if you're not sexually satisfied then we should work on that. i also think it's a matter of respect. i have all the same parts as any other woman (tho not the same size), and since you love me, you should prefer mine. and since i do not deny you access to my  lady bits, you should enjoy mine exclusively.

my boyfriend does not see it this way. apparently porn and strippers are just visual stimulation. nothing to do with me, our relationship, or emotions. i don't see how this is possible. if you see something you like, and you don't currently have it, don't you start to make comparisons and maybe start to wish you had it?

example, i can't "shake it" (nothing specific, but i don't have much to shake on top, and i don't know how to shake what i do have on bottom). if he sees some naked lady shaking her stuff in a way he finds pleasing, wouldn't a natural progression of thought lead to "i wish stephanie did that" (if he even bothers to think of me at all!!). maybe he'll describe the act to me, which i might try and fail at. he'll see her in his mind, very adroitly shaking, and forever more, whenever he thinks about shaking lady bits, he'll think about how great she was and how damn lousy his girlfriend is.

obviously comparisons will be made about other things, "that other girl tells jokes better than stephanie," "that other girl is prettier than stephanie." but none of it as personal as sex.

our relationship has some pretty serious issues from the beginning, so many of our arguments come back to that i don't feel like i'm the number one girl to him. which, of course, is a pretty damn terrible feeling. especially considering that i'm generally pretty self-confident, this sits particularly unwell with me. so i guess for me, cheating either way hurts equally. no matter what, i'll feel like i'm not a priority to him and that he'll always think someone else is better.

oh, btw, that second study i quoted "also implied that these reactions to cheating have to do with more than just gender and are rather explained by how a person was raised to deal with intimacy. ...both men and women with "dismissive" or "hyperindependent" senses of detachment -- meaning that they were taught as a child to avoid intimacy -- were more jealous of sexual infidelities. Those with "secure" attachment, male or female, were more likely to be disturbed by emotional infidelity."

this is actually kind of funny, because when reep and i were "fighting" the other day about porn i brought up that i think he's emotionally stunted. turns out science might actually back me up on this!