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Find out whether men or women are more likely to forgive cheating..

Which gender would you say is more likely to forgive cheating? Men or women?

According to a study I read about just the other day, it all depends on the type of cheating.

Whereas men are less likely to forgive cheating of a sexual nature, women are less willing to forgive emotional cheating.

In a way, these findings should come as no surprise to us. The research supports what many of us have been hearing for a really long time: That men are physical creatures and thus more interested in sex, and women are emotional ones.

We've all seen movies where a woman catches her boyfriend sleeping with someone else. After much crying and bickering, the woman takes her cheating boyfriend back for one simple reason: He manages to convince her that he doesn't love the other woman. Now firmly believing that her boyfriend only has feelings for her, she reasons there must be a legitimate reason why he had intercourse with the other woman. A lot of thoughts begin to run through her head: Maybe she hasn't been giving her boyfriend enough sex, or maybe she isn't good enough in the bedroom. Thereafter, she sets out to work on these things so that he never again goes looking for sex.

On the other hand, when a woman cheats on a man, he is more inclined to forgive her if she hasn't slept with him. The reasons for this might seem a little murky, but men tend to associate sex with offspring. So when he discovers that she has indeed slept with someone else, it leads him to wonder whether that man in turn impregnated his girlfriend. Remember, in the animal kingdom, males are biologically programmed to spread the seed to as many females as he can. That his girlfriend actually gave another man the green light to potentially reproduce with her is viewed as wholly unacceptable.

No matter what these studies suggest, I would not forgive my wife if she engaged in either kind of infidelity. Any kind of cheating is a violation of trust and of the bond two people share with one another. I'd be just as hurt catching her knocking boots with someone else as I'd be if I saw her writing him a love letter.

What are your thoughts?

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To read prior entries, please click here: How to Understand People

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