Psychologist Sadia Khan makes the case that women cheat more than men in relationships due to feeling unsatisfied, bored, or having unmet needs. And she emphasizes the importance for men to educate themselves in order to protect against this threat.
But the drivers behind this gender gap in infidelity actually stem from deep evolutionary roots. Our ancestral programming continues to shape female motivations and reactions in the context of modern relationships – often in ways that lead women to cheat.
The Evolutionary Forces Driving Female Infidelity
According to evolutionary psychologists, the innate mating strategies of men and women have diverged over hundreds of thousands of years. While men are wired to seek quantity of partners, women are designed to pursue quality.
This female drive towards hypergamy – desiring to "marry up" – served an important purpose. By securing a committed partner with superior genes and ample resources to invest, women maximized survival odds for offspring.
However, hypergamy also bred an inherent dissatisfaction and longing for "something better" that lingers to this day. When modern comforts and gender equality empower women to act on these drives for status-seeking through cheating, men suffer the consequences.
Boredom and the Thrill of Novelty
Khan notes that women need consistently greater novelty and stimulation to maintain high satisfaction – or else boredom sets in. This too ties back to evolutionary adaptations.
Pregnancy and nursing posed extremely high costs for ancestral women. Straying from a protective partnership during these vulnerable times could prove fatal.
So evolution favored females who focused material and bonding rewards onto a single committed mate, while males sought novelty by spreading their seed to multiple women simultaneously.
Today‘s contraception liberates women from these historic costs against novelty-seeking. Meanwhile research confirms lust and passion fade faster in long-term female partners on average:
"Women‘s sexual desire tends to drop dramatically after the beginning phase of a relationship, while men‘s sexual desire remains relatively constant." ^1
Without children binding her loyalty, boredom drives today‘s woman to recreate that emotional high of early courtship with forbidden affairs.
Blaming Men to Avoid Guilt
As Kahn explains, women avoid guilt over cheating by coping with shame and blaming husbands for failing to meet their needs. This ties back to deeper social dynamics around pair bonding.
Ancestrally, a woman and her offspring depended heavily on a man‘s willingness to invest resources and protection. Early human females lost reproductive capacity and died younger without provisioning help.
So evolution selected women who elicited empathy, validated strengths, and amplified the feeling of being trusted as a means of securing a partner‘s investment. Self-preservation demanded this nurturing, ego-boosting role – it heightened survival odds.
Today‘s women inherited these instincts to avoid ego-threats against their mates. Directing blame outwards shelters a trusted partner‘s confidence…which remains useful even when she has become an unfaithful spouse.
Men on the other hand evolved to take risks for status rather than play a complimentary role, as they faced lower reproductive costs. So accepting blame simply signals weakness rather than threatens a survival-level dependency for males. They do not share the same psychological avoidance wiring.
This is why women so naturally deflect accountability after cheating while men resign themselves to guilt. It reflects ancient asymmetries in pair-bonding attachment strategies.
Alpha Males & Hypergamy
Another evolutionary concept relevant to female cheating is the drive to secure investment from an "alpha male" over less dominant partners.
Across species, alpha males demonstrate superior fitness by attaining high social status through aggression, ambition, and out-competing other males. Evolutionary science suggests our female ancestors were naturally attracted to alphas who could offer greater protection, resources, and strong genetics for offspring.
But human societies rarely sustain alpha monopolies on females. So women evolved a dual mating strategy to balance extracting investment from one man while also deceitfully securing superior alpha genes from others.
Men with admiring female partners arouse suspicion and risk among other men. So cheating females take care to conceal affairs with alternative mates. Numerous studies confirm women perceive high-testosterone men as more likely to cheat, but still choose them over faithful male partners:
"Though women found prestige & faithfulness desirable, prestige indicators outweighed faithfulness at determining mate value and attractiveness." ^2
This research suggests that despite every rational modern incentive for loyalty, women‘s ancestral programming still subtly pushes them towards alpha infidelity regardless of relationship contentedness. Seeking top male genes trumps faithfulness unless an equally high-status male has committed to invest.
Women Cheat as Much or More Than Men
Before analyzing motivations, we must first establish whether research actually confirms women cheating more than men.
Surveys have always shown men openly admitting to more extramarital partners. But social stigma causes women to lie and underreport infidelity. When examining less biased evidence, the numbers converge:
| Source | % Men Cheating | % Women Cheating |
|---|---|---|
| 1991 Survery ^3 | 14.7% | 11.6% |
| 2015 Study ^4 | 20% | 15% |
| 1999 Divorce Study ^5 | 22% | 28% |
Accounting for response bias, multiple authorities conclude the gender gap in cheating has likely reversed by the 1990s with technology, financial independence, and shifting cultural attitudes enabling more female affairs:
“Since the 1990s, the divorce data suggests that women now cheat at least as often as men.” ^6
So Kahn‘s view aligns with updated research on female infidelity exceeding outdated assumptions. But the evolutionary drivers behind that modern trend reveal much darker truths about loyalty that men must educate themselves on.
Why Female Infidelity Causes More Harm
From an economic standpoint, female infidelity poses substantially higher relationship devaluation risk compared to men cheating.
Men‘s ancestral wiring focuses on reproduction – so a female affair only threatens his exclusive breeding access to her. But historic female wiring centers on securing a partner‘s material investment into her. An emotionally-motivated woman risks diverting that kitchen-table resource commitment when she cheats.
"Men with cheating wives still delivered resources to maintain the provider role, resulting in cuckoldry – unknowingly investing in offspring that weren‘t theirs." ^7
This lopsided arrangement gave unfaithful females of the past an evolutionary leg up. But in the modern era, gut instincts often lead women to selfishly pursue the same strategy despite its unjust impact on men.
Additionally, legal institutions now amplify the damage when contemporary women mislead partners, reproduce with multiple men, and break trust.
Outdated divorce laws often:
- Separate fathers from children (and vice versa)
- Siphon financial resources away from husbands towards ex-wives
- Fail to recognize female violations of commitment as equally violating
So while the mating mind may unconsciously drive women‘s cheating, social constructs and policy now exaggerate its harm on families in ways that primitive woman lacked the scope to impact.
Our government and courts essentially subsidize female betrayal by supporting her ancient strategy of cuckoldry. So the need for men to protect themselves is urgent in navigating this uneven terrain.
Why Women Still View Cheating as Worse When Men Do It
Even accounting for equal rates between genders, social biases continue to shame male cheaters more harshly. Why does this double-standard on infidelity persist even with evidence it occurs just as frequently in women?
A Economics Today study observes:
"Women stated strong moral views against cheating and reported faulting women more than men for cheating behaviors." ^8
Females judge other women‘s affairs most harshly. Yet they also self-report cheating at equal rates to males in anonymous studies.
This paradox exists because women‘s subconscious mating strategies breed a tribal, gendered response. A man cheating threatens her strategy of securing sole investment. But another woman‘s affair indirectly threatens group provisioning resources.
Since ancestral tribal fertility demanded collective investment, female psychology evolved to aggressively discourage resource threat from other women as a matter of survival. But male cheating does not register the same innate response – even if women consciously begrudge his affair in modern times.
This creates an emotional double standard around infidelity justified through moral arguments. One that disguises underlying gender biases built into human mating strategies. And convenient social assumptions for women to fall back on if caught betraying a loyal partner.
Why Men Must Educate Themselves on Infidelity Risks
Sadia Khan repeats throughout her video interview that men deserve to be heard and educated regarding female nature and resulting infidelity risks. As we‘ve explored the evolutionary science around mating strategies:
- Men should recognize innate female wiring unconsciously works against them
- Outdated laws incentivize women embracing strategies that exploit male trust
- Knowing female motivators exist empowers defensive strategy for modern men
This insight allows men to make informed decisions navigating relationships. He can screen for partners based on loyalty signals rather than settling out of naiveté or wishful thinking.
Asking critical questions also trains women to recognize these dark impulses in themselves and reinforces accountability. Does she take responsibility for her past relationship failures for example? Or default to blaming former boyfriends?
Prioritizing honest and direct communication around commitment and expectations further honors men‘s voices in relationships. Mutual understanding builds trust as couples cooperate rather than compete.
Finally, establishing relationship support communities provides alternatives where males can share warnings, find healthy relationships, and heal from damage caused by toxic women.
Facing the dual challenges of evolutionary wiring and institutional biases, the deck remains clearly stacked against modern men. Collective knowledge, transparency, and accountability represent their best defenses for finding meaning despite the risks.