Hugo Schwyzer: Can Handsome Men Stay Faithful?
I was married and divorced twice before I was 30, and chronically unfaithful through both marriages. I wouldn’t call myself a sex addict, but like Anthony Weiner, was hungry — even desperate — for validation. The actual sex I had with women was less important than the thrill I got from knowing that someone new was willing to sleep with me. I was chasing affirmation more than orgasm. The thrill wasn’t in getting close to new naked skin, the thrill was in knowing that yet another person found me desirable. It was as if I were trying to collect evidence that I wasn’t that nerdy, awkward boy whom everyone had teased in high school.
Just as Anthony Weiner was more interested in having women praise his naked body than in seeing their nudie pics, I cared as much about being told I was “hot” as I did about sex itself.
At the same time, like so many men who cheat, I did want a monogamous relationship. I was in love with both of my first two wives and hungry for the stability that marriage could provide. I just had no clue how to deal with that gnawing hunger for sexual validation. In order to “work,” the validation needed to come from someone new each time. I’d make a promise to stop cheating, and then I’d find myself in a situation with another woman, and my compulsive curiosity seemed to take over. As self-destructive and joyless as it usually was, it felt like I had no choice.
Sexually exclusive marriage isn’t for everyone. We live in a society that has increasingly viable alternatives to state-sanctioned monogamy. Fewer and fewer of us can claim to have been forced into something that we didn’t really want and for which we weren’t ready. That means that those of us who want to be and stay married need to realize that the greatest impetus to cheat isn’t sexual frustration or romantic disillusionment or even the easy opportunities that seem to come most easily to the handsome and the powerful. The real problem is that relentless craving for validation.
