{"id":1782,"date":"2009-12-07T01:05:45","date_gmt":"2009-12-07T06:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1782"},"modified":"2009-12-07T01:05:45","modified_gmt":"2009-12-07T06:05:45","slug":"why-mistresses-talk-and-wives-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2009\/12\/07\/why-mistresses-talk-and-wives-dont\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mistresses Talk And Wives Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"With Tiger Woods in the news for this latest round of Very-Public-Infidelity, guest blogger Ebony A. Utley weighs in with her expertise on the issue. A research expert on marital infidelity, Utley confronts common stereotypes and raises questions about cheating, talking, silence, and power.<\/em><\/p>\n

The proverbial cats are out of the bag as the tabloid media collect stories from Tiger Woods\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 alleged mistresses. The mistresses are increasingly chatty \u00e2\u20ac\u201d talking about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was with Tiger here\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153he left me a voicemail there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Woods is busy denying what he can and apologizing for what he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t while Mrs. Woods remains silent.<\/p>\n

None of this is unusual. With a slew of high-profile unfaithful men in the news lately, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard not to notice a pattern. These men haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come out in public to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had inappropriate sexual relations outside my relationship\u00e2\u20ac\u009d without first facing an impeachment trial, sexual-assault accusations, blackmail threats, texts, sexts, voicemails \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 you get the picture.\u00c2\u00a0 Rarely have these men come clean without some sort of provocation.\u00c2\u00a0 Often, famous unfaithful men confess to their infidelity because the other woman beat him to it.<\/p>\n

Mistresses are notorious for telling their side of the story because the world wants to hear it. The sex secrets of sexy women are titillating. Be honest with yourself. You wanted to know whether Tiger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mistresses were prettier than his wife. Some of you readers out there also wanted to know whether she looked like she was better at sex than the wife. Admit it. Those are our society\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s infidelity stereotypes. The other woman had to be offering something that the wife did not.<\/p>\n

The wife wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t giving it up. Or if she was, her sex was boring.
\nThe wife let herself go.
\nThe wife was too invested in the kids.
\nThe wife didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t (emotionally) support her man.
\nThe wife was emasculating.
\nThe wife was never around.<\/p>\n

Mistresses are quick to perpetuate these stereotypes, but the husbands are quick to offer their wives $4 million diamond rings and $80 million prenup revisions.\u00c2\u00a0 If the wives were such horrible people, why dish out all the cash to keep them? Since the husband can no longer keep the mistress quiet, is he buying his wife\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s silence? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so. Men who cheat on their wives rarely want to leave them; usually they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re genuinely sorry. The silence on the wives part is not about his money. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about power.<\/p>\n

A mistress has power because she is the secret. She is the one tasked with being discreet. Once the secret is out, the mistress loses her power. She scrambles to get it back with revealing details, but the more she talks, the more her power diminishes. People know who she is, where she was, what she did, how she did it, and who else she did it with. Once the prurient details are all out there, people are free to pass judgment on the mistress and she rapidly moves from sexy story to object of public scrutiny to obscurity.<\/p>\n

But the wife who refuses to talk gains power. Now she is the one deciding to be discreet.\u00c2\u00a0 No one knows what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thinking and everyone wants to. Did she know?\u00c2\u00a0 Did she have a revenge affair? Why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she leave him? Does she love him that much? How is she going to spend those millions? The quieter she remains, the more dignity that wife regains.\u00c2\u00a0 Long after we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve forgotten the mistress\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 name and the seedy motels and the racy voicemails, the silent wife is still standing in the spotlight with an air of mystery about her. We might not understand her, but her secrets are the ones that garner respect. The most understated gift a chatty mistress gives to the wife is power.<\/p>\n


\nEbony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an expert in infidelity. She is currently writing about her interviews with wives who have experienced infidelity during their marriages. See more of her research at http:\/\/www.theutleyexperience.com\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Tiger Woods in the news for this latest round of Very-Public-Infidelity, guest blogger Ebony A. Utley weighs in with her expertise on the issue. A research expert on marital infidelity, Utley confronts common stereotypes and raises questions about cheating, talking, silence, and power. The proverbial cats are out of the bag as the tabloid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1906,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21313,39,2177,320,21554,99,176,2170],"class_list":["post-1782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ebony-a-utley","tag-ethics","tag-infidelity","tag-marriage","tag-marriage-today","tag-relationships","tag-sexuality","tag-tiger-woods"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1906"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}