| Chapter 1: | Operationalizing Fidelity |
Sexual scripts are gendered, influencing the ways both men and women perceive, experience, and negotiate their intimacies (DeLamater 1987). Male sexual scripts have traditionally involved more sexual freedom and legitimacy than women’s sexual scripts, which have encouraged emotion and love rather than sexual behavior. As a result, women often place importance on relational connections, whereas men favor sexual relations, according to traditional gender scripts. But as women increasingly realize their sexual autonomy and as men embrace less rigid forms of masculinity, contemporary sexual scripts may involve a more contextualized account of men’s and women’s relationship expectations, experiences, and practices (Weinberg et al. 1983; Hatfield and Rapson 2005).
Men are expected to be the “cheaters” when it comes to violating the script of monogamy, and women are expected to not only desire but also uphold fidelity. Some have characterized this difference in terms of men’s cheating through brief encounters and sexual liaisons, whereas women engage in “emotional affairs,” which involve feelings (Thompson 1984; Lawson 1988). Further, DeLamater (1987) suggested that women learn that love, sex, and commitment are intertwined, whereas men are taught to take a more recreational approach to sex (Hatfield and Rapson 2005). Men are also more tolerant of extramarital sex than women are, especially when men are engaged in such activity (Margolin 1989; Greeley 1991).
However, as more women today have actualized their sexual agency, entered the workforce, and gained both social and financial autonomy, shifts in the gendered dynamic of monogamy have also occurred. Sexual scripts involve women’s upholding monogamy, but women are increasingly engaging in affairs, sexual hookups, and extramarital sex (Blumstein and Schwartz 1983; Thompson 1983; Reinisch et al. 1988). Such data contest the long-assumed notion that cheating (especially sexual) is male terrain; in fact, several studies specifically document the sexual liaisons of married or committed women who relayed their experiences,