Not my view, but something I heard from friend of a friend (and overall piece of shit) when he was boasting about and justifying cheating on his fiancé.

His theory was that it's fine for him to cheat since he "still loves her" and is only doing it to explore his biological male desire to sleep with new women, whereas if his fiancé was to cheat that would be crossing a line since she would be doing it to fulfil an emotional need.

I'm sure we can all agree that this guy is an asshole. But I am interested to hear what people think of the basis of this theory. It's obviously an unfair, sexist and horrible thing to think/say but is it entirely false?

When I think about at my past relationships, my (m) temptations if I ever had any to sleep with other women were always purely sexual. The fantasy of sleeping with an attractive woman I saw would of course cross my mind as a straight man, but never did I feel any temptation to actually spend time or have any emotional needs met by another woman. If I didn't feel emotionally fulfilled by my partner I would end the relationship. My desire to sleep with other women however doesn't seem like something that could be switched off even by the most insanely attractive partner possible. To end a relationship over that desire would sentence me to be single forever.

I guess it all boils down to the theory that men have sex because they want to have sex (mostly physical) and women have sex because they want to feel sexy (mostly psychological). That men will always naturally want to cheat because men always want more sexual partners, but a woman would only cheat if she wasn't fulfilled by her man. This is also somewhat backed up by the study that showed how men viewing porn could only find the same pleasure from watching new women, watching the same one always got boring for them, but this wasn't found in women as far as I can remember. I'll try to find it.

When I think about most, not all, of the women I've been with and the relationships I've seen, this does seem to be true on the whole. I now however that it is not entirely true, because a lot of people, male and female alike, seem like to sleep with new partners to increase their own self-esteem. Which is surely an emotional driver.

I think one supporting argument for this idea would be cheating on your partner with a prostitute. I don't think anyone gains self-esteem or emotional strength from paying a prostitute to sleep with them. There is only sexual fulfilment to be found in a prostitute, and who uses those? Men. Not strictly true however since men do pay women for companionship too.

Any thoughts?