Approach and Methodology

Many men speak about a paucity of articles, books, and podcasts about infidelity that align with their experiences. We have read and listened to much of the popular material about infidelity and can confirm that it does not align with the experiences men speak about. As such, we engage in ongoing, detailed study of scientific research about infidelity, particularly articles and books based in quantitative methods, regression analyses, moderation analysis, and longitudinal approaches. We are not aware of any scientific research specifically centered on men’s experiences. Much research, however, addresses concepts and facets of infidelity that rarely appear in popular literature, if at all. Moreover, many of the concepts and facets that scientific research addresses align closely with experiences that men speak about.

Scientific research that most closely aligns with the experiences men speak about addresses basic and cognitive differences in men and women. This research uses such terms as, sexual psychology differences, sex differences, personality differences, individual differences, and situational differences. Our research centers on alignments of experiences men speak about with scientific literature that addresses concepts and facets of infidelity, which rarely appear in popular material. No two men experience infidelity in the same ways, but many men speak and write about similar experiences. As such, our research prioritizes the most common similarities.

We have read the seminal literature of numerous infidelity support models. We have found that scientific research questions those models. We have also spoken with many men who have participated in various infidelity support models and have come away frustrated. These men speak of reading about, or being told, how they experience infidelity, or how they should experience it, when neither is what they experience. We believe that individual and situational uniqueness requires adaptive support approaches, not models.

Our approach to these topics centers on intersections of—and conflicts between—basic nature, cognitive understandings, and societal normatives. Moreover, we take deep time perspectives. Throughout recorded history, thinkers and societies have consistently identified some concepts and topics as exceedingly complex, unknown, or unsolvable. Put differently, the collected wisdom of countless generations, throughout millennia, points to striking complexities, unknowns, or unsolvability of some topics. One of these has been sexual infidelity.