(For the record, I am very sympathetic to people whose partners don’t want to have sex with them, or don’t want to have sex as often as one partner thinks is ideal. Serious libido imbalances are deal-breakers for me, personally, in my relationships, and I would be pretty frustrated/devastated if I were married to someone who only wanted to bone me once a month. But the solution to that situation is not to cheat on your partner, with sex workers or anyone else (the “prostitute” part is kind of not the issue here!). There are lots of different ways to be in a relationship, but if you’ve agreed to be monogamous, cheating violates the deal and puts your partner at risk for STIs. The solution is, you decide just how much of a deal-breaker this is for you and then you talk about it and you lay it all out on the table so that both you and your partner can decide how to proceed. Otherwise you are a piece of shit. Oh also you’re kind of a piece of shit if you only cook and help with chores and child-rearing as a way to “increase the likelihood that [your] wife would be in the mood.” Chores need to be done, food needs to be cooked and kids need to be raised; if you’re a parent, you don’t get to drift in and out of those obligations according to how hard your dick is, and then get all salty when the person who’s doing them because they need to be done maybe resents you a little bit. Oh and then cheat on her, but because you’re paying for it say you consider your extramarital sex more “honorable” than having an affair. But totally, go on with the “I’m a decent man” thing. Definitely bring this story up on dates, after your inevitable divorce, to show how decent you are.)
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Hahaha.. I saw this article and knew I’d be seeing it here.
Don’t you know? Men need to be rewarded for chores with sex. Women…we just do chores for the innate joy they bring to our lives.
A+ post.
I won’t defend the guy who wrote the letter, who’s clearly an asshole, but when sex goes out of a marriage because one partner changes and won’t give, it is a sad thing.
@ Christina: it isn’t that men need to be rewarded with sex for doing chores, it’s that they be rewarded with sex for doing chores.
Those thousands of diaper changes and loads of laundry should have had some sexual currency. And don’t tell me that you have to wait for the stitches to heal; I was in the room, and I saw how easy that delivery was.
Argh. That should be “…it’s that they *should* be rewarded….” The second paragraph wasn’t offensive enough.
Did he actually signed off his letter with “A Decent Adulterer”? Either way he’s a berk, one who (like the vast majority of berks) doesn’t know he’s one. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
This guy is so full of shit, it’s amazing.
Yeah, get a divorce now, before you spend all your kids’ college money on ‘the thrill of seeing prostitutes and the variation from my usual sex life,’ and then maybe your wife will be free to find a guy she doesn’t mind getting banged by more than 12 times a year.
fail
Wait until he finds out about her boyfriend!
Poor guy, he is so confused, I can’t imagine living with so little grasp on reality.
Very Dan-Savage-esque, and I totally agree with your take. (Might as well make the Savage reference directly, since much of your language comes from his column.)
Wow. Just wow. But I’m curious, what do you think about a guy, newly married, who routinely flirts with a woman who isn’t his wife, tells her she’s hot, and routinely grinds his hard dick against her (both of them fully clothed) while pressing her against a wall? No hands are used, no kissing, but he tells the woman how hard she makes him. Is that cheating? He doesn’t seem to think so.
Alison: Um, that’s just creepy, unless the woman is more into it than your piece suggests. And cheaty. Wife needs to be told, so she can dump his ass.
I think he’s an asshole. Whether or not he’s cheating depends on whether or not his wife is knows about and is OK with his behavior. If she doesn’t, he’s cheating and an asshole. If she does, he’s not cheating, but I think he’s still an asshole unless the woman he’s grinding against is fully aware of the situation and agreement vis-a-vis his marriage. If everybody knows everything and is OK with it, well, best wishes to them, and please do not do the grinding thing anywhere where I have to look at you.
Seriously. And obviously every situation is a little different, but the whole “staying together for the sake of the kids” idea is often pretty wrong-headed. I know a couple people whose parents delayed divorce for years “for the sake of the kids”, and both of them now, years later, are like “I wish they’d just fucking gotten divorced.” If the couple isn’t fighting and nasty toward each other and can be amicable and make it work, okay I guess. But if not? Being raised by separated but happy parents > being raised by married, angry, unhappy parents. That shit is toxic.
In fact, there’s a situation in my own family where divorce should have happened yeeeeeears ago, and the kids would be a zillion times better off now if it had. It’s really sad.
(Also, I am not the same Alison as at #13. Thank God.)
Alison, I can’t speak to what constitutes cheating in anyone else’s relationship, but I if my boyfriend was out humping anyone else (clothed or unclothed), I’d regard that as a major violation of our monogamous commitment.
Just to be on the safe side, grindee should ask the grinder whether he thinks he’s cheating, and/or whether his wife would think so.
Lindsay, this is why I love you.
I would suggest divorce, but that “would DEPRIVE him of seeing his children every day.” And I know he cares about his kids, since he “helps out” with the child care. It just makes me so sad when a decent, loving, nice guy doesn’t get access to all the things he’s entitled to, like sex on demand and having a proper wife who doesn’t require him to “help out” with all the things that are supposed to be her duties.
Fuck this noise, seriously.
Exactly!
What an ass.
And I’ve been on the “kids” end of “staying together for the kids.” Seriously. Don’t stay together for the kids. It’s miserable for everybody.
I’ll add: Don’t have three kids with someone you know going in doesn’t do it for you sexually. Makes the inevitable break-up that much worse. I mean, some things you can’t prevent, but this one’s on you.
Oy.
He may have married this woman, with whom they had an initial sexual incompatibility problem going on, precisely *because* of said incompatibility. Some guys do think that a woman who is less interested in sex than they are is “wife material”, because she’s “not dirty,” etc. It’s no wonder he now seeks solace with sex-workers – after all, the “dirty stuff” now mostly exists outside of his family life. He claims to enjoy sex, and I believe him when he says he’s unhappy with the way things are – but he could benefit from some introspection on the subject of his relationship with his wife.
His problem may not being able to admit the fact that he’s got these underlying views on sex and marriage in general, and they have lead him to where he is at present.
*led, dammit.
I call it what it is: abusive. I’ve been the one “trapped” in a relationship with someone who’s drive changed over time, and who both wouldn’t discuss it and wouldn’t consider an open relationship. And then made sure to use my stronger drive as a way to shame me, call me a slut, and pout about how my unwillingness to live celibate because he wants to makes me a horrible person.
But, the higher drive person also can’t do anything about it because that very quickly becomes abusive in the opposite direction: that is, coercive.
I don’t know what that would mean for a married couples, and I’m certainly not trying to defend this douche. Cheating isn’t the answer. LEAVING is the answer.
That said, I know a dude in a situation like this: he married the woman he was dating on-and-off in college because she got pregnant and now he “feels responsible” for her. Doesn’t love her, definitely cheats on her because she (according to him) has no sex drive, but won’t leave her because of the kids.
That’s the worst damn idea in the world. The kids know you’re miserable. All you’re teaching them is that marriage is a terrible thing that should be avoided at all costs. I’m case study A.
If a guy did that to me, I’d consider it sexual assault. You don’t fucking grind your dick up against me asshole. You don’t assume that it’s okay to do whatever you want to me. Think about it: would it be okay to do that to a stranger? So why is it okay for him to do it to a woman he knows?
The thing that gets me about this guy? He knew she had a much lower libido from the get-go. She refused him more often than not since the beginning of their relationship.
I. . .I don’t know what he thought would change. He needs to leave the marriage if she’s not willing to go to counseling or talk with him about this. Hell, he needs to leave the marriage because fucking around on your spouse is a shitty, shitty thing to do. If you’re that miserable and you see no solution, get a divorce. Your life will change, but you won’t lose contact with your kids if you’re a good parent and you have shared custody (though you will have to do more stuff on your own).
Christina@2 : No, women are supposed to be rewarded with sex in exchange for chores too! It’s perfectly egalitarian. (/snark)
But… if he leaves her and moves to his own place, he’ll have to do ALL THE CHORES HIMSELF.
If people become incompatible in the relationship they’re in, they need to either change the relationship, or end it. I suspect that Natalia is right; that this guy is a victim of his own whore-madonna complex, that he wants to go on having a wife with only occasional interest in sex (with him) and a sex with someone else on the side, and he wants an advice columnist to tell him it’s okay.
But it’s not okay. He’s made it clear that his behavior is not acceptable in the relationship he has with his wife. What he wants is almost certainly not available to him — possibly with anyone, because any woman who would be okay with a more flexible arrangement probably doesn’t meet his madonna criteria.
Regarding the cock-grinder, if the grindee isn’t consenting, that’s a sexual assault, whatever his wife thinks of it. And the chances of his wife being okay with that are infinitessimally small.
This is a good point–especially if his wife picked up on it or internalized it on her own before meeting him. Men who buy into this shit want “pure” women and then complain about how their wives are so frigid when they’re married. Well–you can’t have it all ways. You can’t expect someone who is repelled by sex (whom you require to be repelled by sex to be worthy of marriage, to be a “nice woman” etc.) to suddenly want to fuck you in every corner of the house several times a week.
Rare Vos
I don’t think walking away from a marriage – just LEAVING – is as easy as it sounds, especially when there are children involved. And even if there is honesty about the issue of non-compatible sex drive, actually doing something about it, like agreeing to an open marriage is a slippery slope. So everyone who said that the time to figure this out is BEFORE you tie the knot or have kids is right. If you can conceive of the possibility that things may not work out for you sexually, you had better walk away while you still can. It sounds like the relationship you were in was definitely abusive.
Another thing about sex drive is that it isn’t constant through life. It goes up and down. Small children, for example, seem to have a depressive effect, but who knows, maybe when they grow more independent the fire rekindles. Ahh, Phuket Thai restaurant. Maybe divorce is the answer after all.
This guy may be a decent adulterer but he’s clearly a shit husband.
What do I think of a man like this? I’m just glad he’s no longer Governor of California.
Yeah, but Archie, the LW is upfront about the fact that his wife has always been this way. This is not a new development.
And really–is it any easier to fuck around on your spouse and put them in danger of catching an STI? Is it any easier to lie and creep? How much easier will it be when she finds out and kicks his ass out? Because really, this is more a matter of him trying to get her to do what he’s too afraid to do–end the marriage. When the mature and decent thing to do would be to tell her “I’m not happy. We can try to work on this if you like but I don’t want you to have sex when you don’t want to. But I feel neglected and unsatisfied. So where do we go from here/I think we should end things.”
Then he gets today’s Biggest Dumbass In the World award. Looks like Marcotte nailed it: why the fuck did he marry and have 3 kids with a woman he knew from the start is not compatible in ways he clearly finds important?
I shudder to think, actually.
++
I have such a hard time buying the “its not that easy” argument though. Because, what’s the alternative? Stay and cheat, possibly someday bringing an STI home to his wife? Staying and living her way, so that resentment can build up nice and strong and poison everything? Stay and badger her to do things his way so he can add coercive rapist to his laundry list of douchery?
As I said, I’m the product of “staying for the kids” and it fucked up my view of marriage. I’d have rather they got divorced, then teach me marriage is a fucking nightmare of derision, disappointment and resentment.
Yes, of course the right way to do it is split before the knot is tied and the kids are born, but as you pointed out, sex drives can fluctuate throughout life. So, what then?
This reminds me of an article I read once about women talking about their sex drives being lower than their husbands and asking why is his sex drive considered normal? Why does she have to get on “meds” to raise hers, instead of him having to lower his?
I read the whole thing thinking: it’s a valid point – why should the male partner’s drive be the standard by which hers is measured? And yet, having been the higher drive person being shamed for it, I’m ambivalent.
Yeah Sheelzebub, that’s it. LW is an asshole, and only has himself to blame. As noted previously, I think the time to figure these things out is before making commitments like marriage/kids, and that for that family, ending these commitments is probably the only way out.
It’s not EASY. Taking responsibility never is. But this guy fucked up, cheated on his wife and plans to do it again. He needs to own this thing.
“This reminds me of an article I read once about women talking about their sex drives being lower than their husbands and asking why is his sex drive considered normal? Why does she have to get on “meds” to raise hers, instead of him having to lower his?
I read the whole thing thinking: it’s a valid point – why should the male partner’s drive be the standard by which hers is measured? And yet, having been the higher drive person being shamed for it, I’m ambivalent.”
Frankly, in either case, taking meds to try to change your natural sex drive just to make your partner happy sounds pretty crappy to me. But maybe it has worked out for some couples. Anyway, let’s not assume men are always/usually the ones with the higher sex drive.
It may interest people here to know, by the way, if they don’t already, that in ancient times it was thought women were too sex-crazed to say no to sex, while men were supposed to be the virtuous ones, and that being too sexual with women was an insult to a man’s virility. This is why Lysistrata (a play where women go on a sex strike) was a comedy, because the idea of women abstaining was considered absurd. So it hasn’t always been believed that men love sex so much more than women do.
“And yet, having been the higher drive person being shamed for it, I’m ambivalent.”
Well, nothing justifies shaming your partner for their level of sex drive. Much better to just say “we’re sexually incompatible and therefore we can’t have a monogamous sexual relationship; would you like to try an open relationship or break up?” than to go blame your partner for being so horribly frigid/slutty.
Anyway, let’s not assume men are always/usually the ones with the higher sex drive.
Anna, Rare Vos is a woman, so she’s not assuming that, no worries! :)
Sure, in theory that makes sense, and I’ve already agreed that the LW should exit. But “doing his own thing” opens up scores of questions: What is the financial condition of this family? Are they capable of providing responsibly for their children as individuals? Do they have extended family support? Divorce is expensive, and being a single parent, even part time, is orders of magnitude more intense than when there are two. It is not for the weak.
And then there is LW’s wife. What does she think of all this? What will she think when she finds out about his cheating?
I really don’t want to suggest that the asshole LW stay put and make everyone in his family miserable – including himself. That letter painted a truly gross picture of domestic life. But on the other hand the questions are many, and it isn’t – EASY – to come to a conclusion about the question.
Oh sorry for the misunderstanding! Guess I should recheck *my* assumptions eh?
Find other ways of negotiating those needs and limits together? Probably wouldn’t work in this situation because the guy’s an asshole, and wouldn’t work for everyone, but it’s an option that should be on the table.
Sorry for hijacking the posts with my own drama. I was drunk last night and Jill’s post and the Dear Prudence article got me to thinking. I don’t disagree with any of the assessment you wise women provided — and Lindsay B., I really appreciated your comment in particular. Grindee is okay with it, because that’s all grinder is offering her. Sad, but true, says this die-hard feminist who obviously has issues. And I am quite sure — quite sure — that grinder’s new bride does not know about his grinding. I’m guessing she would not be okay with it. Sorry again for hijacking the comments while drunk.
Grindee may be okay with it, Alison, but it’s still fucking creepy as hell.
Grinder is the main culprit here, so grindee should not feel as guilty as she does…if it wasn’t her it would be someone else.
Alison, I know nothing about you, but even if that’s all the “grinder is offering” you, I’m sure you can do better than that.
Fat Steve, you are absolutely right. I can do better than what I’m participating in. Much better. It’s not creepy, Zuzu, while it’s happening, I assure you. It’s rather hot because, well, we very attracted to one another. But it can’t go anywhere. He has limits/rules, some of which are unspoken (no using hands in front of pants, clothes on, no kisssing.) I imagine these rules are to help him rationalize that he’s not “really” cheating on his wife. Anyway, this post was a timely one for me and hopefully will set grindee on a better path – one where she (single) is not participating in a semi-affair with a newly married man who has a nice wife (by all accounts).
I can’t shake the depressing thought that perhaps his wife thinks she’s never had it so good:
* If he’s accurate (which I doubt, but…), her initiation:orgasm ratio is an impressive 100%.
* She isn’t being “pestered” for sex when she doesn’t want it.
* He’s doing more than what he perceives to be his fair share of the chores. (Of course, this may just mean more work for her, but perhaps her television time has doubled.)
This isn’t to endorse the LW’s conduct; I just know perhaps half a dozen (or more) coupled people who, although not being miserable enough to initiate separation, would professedly jump at the opportunity to outsource. It would serve the LW right if he turned out to be completely wrong about her considered attitude. For all anyone knows, she might just have tossed off a casual sentence on one occasion to the effect that any extramarital sex would instantly equal divorce without meaning it as seriously as he took it or perhaps without really having thought it through (example: the Farradays in *Sparkling Cyanide*).
If it was serious enough for him that he could no longer bare to be monogamous, it was time for him to be a single man again. He should have divorced her, there wasn’t much to talk about if it isn’t working. Just go. Cheating is a POS move for sure.
Who said it was easy? Nobody said it was easy. Doing the right thing is not necessarily easy. “But it’s haaaaard!” is not, however, an acceptable excuse for not doing the right thing. That’s why it’s called “doing the right thing” instead of “doing what makes your life most comfortable.”
Actually, EG, many commenters have said that the LW should just leave. But it’s never that simple. You might think that a single swift severing stroke is the best way to untie the knot, but there’s a fine line between elegance and brutality. Just ask anyone who’s grown up with a parent gone missing. Regardless of perceived difficulty, it isn’t always obvious in real life what the right thing is.
People have said that he should “just leave.” That doesn’t mean it’s easy. That means that that’s what he should do–not fuck around behind his wife’s back, not make a long, drawn-out thing of it, but leave. That doesn’t mean doing so would be easy.
I’m not sure what you mean by “a parent gone missing.” I don’t think that anybody here has suggested that he disappear mysteriously into the night, never again to contact his children. If what you mean is to ask someone who, when they were a kid, saw one parent leave another, I don’t have to. I remember it very well, thanks.
It’s pretty obvious, actually, what the right thing is: it’s treating the people whom one claims to love and be close to and with whom one has built a life with a modicum of respect, compassion, and honesty. The fact that doing so seems so difficult to this fellow speaks volumes about him.
I’m sorry about your parents EG. I think that LW just leaving may not be the most honest and compassionate thing he could do. Maybe not the hardest thing either.
What do they help you rationalize?
Zuzu – You raise a fair question, but I don’t feel the need to rationalize anything. It might make me a bad person, true, but I’m not married. He is. And yes, I’m now opening up myself to the accusation that I’m a homewrecker. But I did feel I needed to answer your question. If it weren’t for his rules, we’d have been having sex a long time ago (this has gone on since before his wedding).
And yet, here you are, rationalizing away.
What on earth are you possibly getting from this relationship? I mean, it’s like you get all the guilt without getting an actual penis inside you (nothing wrong with a preference for frottage, but you say you want more.) And what, may I ask is the best case scenario for an outcome? He dumps his wife for you and starts dry humping some other girl? You start an actual sexual affair which would also be dictated by his ‘rules’? It’s so hard for me to figure out what you’re actually asking for I cannot understand being attracted to someone whose behavior is so repellent. I can understand thinking that a person is objectively attractive, despite their personailty (Casey Anthony, Christine O’Donnell, and Marine LePen are a few of mine) but that doesn’t mean I’d let them dry hump me.
I assume that you would not complain if some time in the future your spouse became an extramarital grinder?
I can’t speak for Alison Fat Steve, but from being in a (vaguely) similar situation I can say that logically it’s a no-brainer but your body is over-riding your logical faculties, and anything you can get is better than nothing. :/
I’d just like to say that I too sometimes like to read rather than have sex. This is not a horrible thing.
Okay, Zuzu, I think I get you (well, I think I get you a little bit based on the tone of many of your comments on this board over time). I’m moving on rather than arguing with you. Peace.
This guy may be a jerk, but I am a little grossed out by all the “either leave or stfu you pos” attitude in this thread.
I am a woman who only found the self-worth to (eventually) understand how much more I was worth than my abusive marriage after I cheated on my ex-husband. And I have never and will never regret that.
Life is not an afterschool special. It’s complicated, and people — even men — generally make the least destructive decisions they know how to make.
Oh, puke, puke, puke to this. This guy is a perfect example of why I can’t see myself having a romantic partner ever again.
You really can’t see the difference between cheating on an abusive husband and intentionally marrying someone with whom you knew you had sexual problems and then using those sexual problems, which you were totally aware of before you even got married, as an excuse to step out on that person instead of either leaving or making a hard-core good-faith effort to resolve the sexual problems (nowhere in that letter does the guy say “I told my wife how important sex was to me and how unhappy I was having it only once a month and how if we couldn’t work that out on our own or with a therapist, I could no longer go on like this”), using them as an excuse to step out on your wife?
Alison, I say this in all sincerity. I really think you need to talk to a professional–a good therapist to figure out what is fueling this.
Wow. It shocks me that this man says he considers himself to be a decent man after hearing what he’s doing to his wife. Not only is the cheating and sneaking behind his wife’s back with prostitutes wrong in so many ways, the fact that he is primarily doing chores around the house hoping for sex, is ridiculous. Men that are trying to have sex more often than their wives are willing or want to can not then decide to help out around the house for the sole purpose of sex. To Mr. Decent Adulterer, your wife is tired from doing all the work around the house as well as for the kids because you’re too busy finding sex elsewhere to help out. Work out the problems with your wife in a mature and responsible way instead of cheating on her.
Cheaters can have a huge ability to delude themselves.
There’s an adulterer sleeping beside me…
I first saw this during my morning swim through my inbox. It was posted by Feministe, which by the way has the highest likelihood of being read among my emails. Jill certainly has an amazing way with words and I am inclined to agree with her, but I won’t go into specific reasons why, I want to avoid repetition.
What I want to comment on is the obvious that’s just beneath the more obvious layer of shit of the man’s character (and lame ass justifications for his actions-repetition!), this being the issue of compatible sexuality and its link to Westernized sexuality, specifically for heterosexual men and women.
My entire sex life literally up until now has been tangled in a constant frustration over my own sexuality: how to express it, experience it, what it is and what it’s not, and how a partner was supposed to figure into this mess. Once I felt like I got all the “me” stuff worked out, along comes a partner, and well, back to square one. And something tells me that this situation might just be universal.
Here’s an excellent example: this dude makes out like he’s a revved up sex machine and his wife is little ms.–er, mrs.– frigid. He’s tried to talk, she didn’t want to listen. He’s tried doing more chores around the house to free up her energy and her time so maybe it could go to servicing his dick a bit more (Hello! Maybe the lady wants a little time to herself!). But perhaps it’s an issue of sexual compatibility that he’s run into (among MANY other issues like selfishness? maybe a wee bit on his part?) and he, being an ignorant sexual partner, doesn’t recognize that his sexuality does not dictate her sexuality.
Fine, you could point out that no no no, she’s doing just that by determining their sexual time table with “bland” sex about once a month. In either case, the point remains that sexual incompatibility is at work here, and neither partner is wise enough to deal with it. A good question to ask at this point (one I have had to ask myself many times) is how important to a successful relationship is sexual compatibility? Well, before everyone screams some absolute answer at me, consider how diverse people are and how many types of intimate relationships there are out in the world. Obviously some people value sexuality and sexual compatibility more than others and some less than others. With this situation, the answer is confusing. On one hand, it’s very important or else he probably wouldn’t be risking his marriage over getting laid enough to sate himself. On the other hand, he’s fucking “hired help,” not his wife, and I wonder how into it most of that “hired help” is. So does sexual compatibility with his wife matter more or less than his own sexual expression?
Granted, suppressing one’s sexual expression is extremely uncomfortable to say the least, I can definitely vouch for that. But sacrificing one for the other is not the way to go. Too many people get hurt, and I’m not just talking about two people, I’m talking about everyone out there who’s trying to make a mutual sexual relationship happen. Enter Westernized heterosexuality. Unfortunately, this brand of heterosexuality creates a world where men’s sexual needs rise above women’s and women’s sexual desires and needs becomes those of men’s. If you don’t believe me, watch porn for about an hour. Read some erotica. Talk to some regular straight joes and janes. See if you don’t find yourself experiencing firsthand “Man Over Woman” heterosexuality. Could this be creeping into the decent adulterer’s sexuality?
I don’t think his problem is that he’s caught in a sexless marriage, running the risk of fucking up his kids with a very real prospect of divorce because he’s decided he needs to screw around behind his wife’s back. I think that’s the effect. I think the real problem is a sexual incompatibility based upon a heterosexual identity that justifies men’s sexuality being of greater importance and need over women’s.
And by the way, just because she’s having an orgasm doesn’t mean she’s satisfied. Duh.
It’s nice to FINALLY see some realism in this thread!
Too bad it took 66 comments before common sense entered the conversation!
Life according to Gregory:
“It is just unrealistic to expect a man to behave like a decent human being! Clearly his situation is just like that of a woman suffering abuse from her husband! Why can’t you ladies see that?”
Jesus, here I was cooking and cleaning out of a misplaced sense of duty. I didn’t know I could get sex out of it too!
“And yet, here you are, rationalizing away.”
“Alison, I say this in all sincerity. I really think you need to talk to a professional–a good therapist to figure out what is fueling this.”
I don’t get it. Alison is not the one “cheating” on her partner. She is just enjoying whatever time she gets with a dude that turns her on. Why is she being snarked at/her mental stability undermined etc? Why is she being asked about what she’s getting out of it? She knows what she’s getting out of it and doesn’t need to explain herself to anybody. If anyone needs to do the hard thinking it’s the douchey guy who thinks secretly rubbing up his dick against someone else does not constitute “cheating”.
I hate this “homewrecker” concept, partly because it’s highly gendered and mainly because the partner doing the cheating has the responsibility to stick to whatever vows they made. Why is it up to the “homewrecker” (slut/woman/she-devil!!111!) to make sure all erect homs don’t “stray”? What the everloving fuck.