It is indeed my hope that you will find the information that I am going to share with you funny, informative and best of all sharable with your fellow-man or woman.  I have told this story to many more women than men because they always want to know why married men cheat.  The answer is one that I have subscribed to as making the most sense from a logical male perspective but first let me set the record straight.  Contrary to public opinion, all married men don’t cheat.  In fact, the percentages of married men and women who cheat are not that far apart.  Married men stray about 1 in 3 (33%) and married women fool around on their hubby 1 in 4 (25%).  I have joked that if I wrote a book entitled “66% of Married Men Will Never Cheat” no one would ever buy it.

There are a million different reasons why someone makes the decision to be unfaithful to their spouse and I’m only going to dive deeply into one that I have found to be quite common.  I would be willing to bet that if this common reason could be somehow eliminated, the male cheating percentage might even be cut in half.  I have named this cause of infidelity the Bronze Medal Effect for reasons based solely on logical male thinking patterns.

The Bronze Medal Effect is based on the sexual activity levels of four different types of men.  The men are described as Single Man, Divorced Man, Married Man and Man Living with Girlfriend.  Everyone that I have asked to order these men in their level of sexual activity from most to least has failed.  I always have to give several guesses just to get 2 out of 4 correct.  Ladies, you are the determining factor for the activity levels but you rarely come close to getting the order right.  Rather than have you guess incorrectly for the rest of this post I will give you the answers in order from most to least sexual activity.

*Man Living with Girlfriend

*Divorced Man

*Married Man

*Single Man

Before you get upset because the order is not the one that you guessed, I will give you the logical rationale behind the order of these four types of men.  I will give the rationale in order from least to most just for suspense purposes.

Single Man has the least amount of sexual activity of these four types because he has to spend a lot of time meeting a lady, taking her out on a few dates and then eventually closing the deal.  This can take a few weeks and there is no guarantee of a successful connection, meaning they both enjoy the encounter.  Without mutual satisfaction in this first encounter, he will probably find himself having to begin the cycle all over again.  That means going out to a club, even club internet, identifying a potential young suitor and then going out on a few dates to get to know one another.  As you can see, this can take a lot of time for Single Man without yielding a lot of activity.  I know that there are exceptions to this guy that I am describing but for most Single Man types this is the unfortunate cycle that occurs.  Lots of time, lots of money but not necessarily lots of action with the opposite sex.

Married Man is the guess that I get the most from women who humor me with this exercise.  They have normally broached the subject and of course believe that 99.9% of married men are running around on their wives.  They can’t believe that Married Man is not getting the most action of the four types.  They are shocked to learn that he comes in third place.  Well guess what?  Married Man is shocked to be in third place as well.  He is also pissed with his 3rd place status.  Why, because he is the one that took the plunge into the world of matrimony and he believed that his leap of faith would at least yield the most sexual activity of his other counterparts.  His disappointment will probably manifest itself later into one of a variety of different destructive behaviors and one could be infidelity.

Divorced Man is in the number two spot because he was probably in a marriage that did not end overnight. It was bad for one or a few years and it was no secret to those who knew him…both male and female.  He may have fooled around or wanted to fool around and now all of those temptations are up for grabs with his new-found status.  Just think, Divorced Man is now able to pursue once forbidden fruit, the mistress and he also gets to take a bite out of Single Man’s playground for his pleasure.  Want to take a guess who else may have crept onto his sexual activity roster?  That’s right.  His ex-wife may be a real possibility especially soon after the divorce is finalized.  Some divorced women don’t want to lose that familiarity they had with their former husband.  She may not like him but if he was decent in the bedroom there’s a good chance she’s still in the picture from a sexual activity standpoint.

And last but not least, we have our good buddy Man Living with Girlfriend.  He is living a charmed life from an activity standpoint.  He is shacked up with his lady and has the option to walk away from that deal whenever he chooses.  Now this is where the fun begins.  The girlfriend doesn’t like this setup one bit but it is a means to an end.  Because she wants to be married to this man she is doing a lot of things to get her man to pop the question.  They do it when they go to bed at night and first thing in the morning.  They fight like cats and dogs and then enjoy the collateral damage called make-up sex.  Eventually the girlfriend will wear down Man Living with Girlfriend and he will pop the question.  At that moment, he has convinced himself that the sexual activity that he is experiencing now is what he will have forever after.  If it is he can consider himself a very lucky man but when it isn’t he will find himself now coming in 3rd place and earning the unwanted “bronze medal.”

How did this happen to him he wonders?  One day he was fighting to get away from his horny girlfriend and just get in the shower and the next day he finds himself praying for “sports talk radio sex” with his wife (that’s once during the week and once on the weekends for you non-sports talk call-in fans).  Once he feels that he’s been played for a fool, he really starts to get pissed and considers doing destructive things such as getting back to the life he once enjoyed.  You remember the one that involved a girlfriend.  We love girlfriends.  Girlfriends are always ready to please.  Girlfriends play by our rules because if they don’t we can always walk away.  Once you become Married Man walking away becomes a difficult undertaking and if there are kids involved just forget about it.

So what just happened here?  Hopefully you saw how a man went from being a gold medalist (#1) when he was Man Living with Girlfriend to a bronze medalist (#3) after he marries that same girlfriend.  Logically it doesn’t make sense that when you make the highest level of commitment for a lifetime that you end up coming in third place.  Men want to win and if getting married means you’re going to get less loving then why would you ever make that choice?  You make the commitment not knowing that you’re making the choice of less activity.

Speaking from a man’s point of view, when we commit, or propose, we do so believing that things will remain at least the same but we are really pulling for better ever after.  When things don’t quite work out that way we get down and try to figure out a way to fix our problem.  Contrary to what you may think, I am not condoning or giving unfaithful men a pass.  I am just shedding light on just one possible root cause for why he may have made a choice that will possibly end his marriage one day.

I know that every man doesn’t live with his future wife before they marry.  I know that every divorced man doesn’t sleep with his ex-wife.  I know that every married man doesn’t suffer with a reduction in sexual activity and I know that there will be some single men who will read this and say “last place…please.”  This piece was based on surveys conducted using thousands of men that fit one of those four descriptions.  The logic of where they place is really quite sound when you process it as a rule and not as an exception which I know some readers will.  That’s just human nature.

I decided to post this topic because I believe that it might help one woman from letting her activity with her hubby fall off from its premarital level as well as letting one man avoid the pain of going from first to third.  If we were playing baseball that would be great but in the marital olympics no man is trading his gold medal for a bronze one.  Hope this one man’s opinion/perspective was enjoyable as planned.