Read my blog post about Chasing Masculinity

This book analyzes men’s experiences and perceptions regarding their participation in infidelity and offers a glimpse into the inner workings of their most intimate relationships, as well as the ways men negotiate marriages that fall short of their expectations.

Using a sample collected from the online dating service Ashley Madison, this book finds that contrary to gendered social scripts, the men in this study described motivations for outside partnerships that were not rooted in the desire for sexual pleasure or variety. Rather, men described those relationships as an outlet to soothe their bruised egos, receive attention and validation from a romantic partner, and to fight their feelings of emasculation. These infidelities thus provide support and praise, and aid in the processing of complex emotions.

This in-depth analysis provides a unique insight into men’s experiences of sexuality and masculinity, and will be of keen interest to those seeking to understand male infidelity from a sociological perspective, across gender studies, psychology, counselling, and beyond.

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Review

Contemporary Sociology review of Chasing Masculinity Written by Julia Meszaros

Alicia Walker’s Chasing Masculinity: Men, Validation, and Infidelity examines heterosexual men’s motivations for infidelity. In order to access unfaithful men, Walker reached out to men signed up as profiles on the website Ashley Madison, which is designed for people looking for a discreet location to meet other people interested in pursuing infidelity. Walker is expanding on her first book, which examined the infidelity practices of heterosexual women signed up with Ashley Madison as profiles. In both books, Walker challenges the common gendered perceptions that dominate typical discussions of heterosexual infidelity: that men cheat for the opportunity to have sex while women cheat when they are emotionally dissatisfied in their primary relationships. In Walker’s study of unfaithful women, she found that most of the women from Ashley Madison were seeking orgasms and sexual release, as they were largely satisfied emotionally but not sexually within their primary partnerships. On the other hand, Walker finds that men are more likely to seek validation and emotional labor from women to reaffirm their masculinity rather than an orgasm.

Men’s choices to outsource the emotional aspects of their intimate relationships to outside women challenge social perceptions that men cheat simply out of a biological urge for sex. The need for emotional connection and validation that appears in Walker’s interviews points to the importance of women’s emotional labor. Based on the gendered nature of emotional work within heterosexual marriages, Walker argues that women are expected to be the relational managers of the lives of their husbands, who are not allowed to demonstrate emotion as men. The men in Walker’s study cited being ignored and undervalued in their primary relationships as their main motivation for cheating. Walker links men’s desires for emotional partnerships when cheating on their wives to the girlfriend experience offered by many sex workers. According to Walker, this is because “men need their egos pumped up regularly,” which is a form of masculine validation that they seek within intimate relationships. However, what men considered to be examples of emotional intimacy, most women cheaters simply defined as examples of common friendship behavior. Thus, men’s conception of emotional intimacy is often the basic type of intimacy women engage in with their friends.

Men often sought validation in their non-primary relationships through sex. A relatively large proportion of the men in Walker’s study (nearly a third) had had very few sexual partners outside of their marriages, if any at all. The men with relatively few sexual partners before marriage often discussed their “fear of missing out” as a reason to cheat. Regardless of their sexual pasts before marriage, a large number of men defined their masculine worth in terms of their sexual prowess. Most of the men involved in sexless marriages viewed their wives’ disinterest in having sex with them as a testament to their undesirability and as the ultimate form of rejection. In order to mend their emasculated egos, men sought outside partners that would validate their sexual prowess.

For men in this study, their own self-worth and masculinity were inherently tied to their sexual prowess and how it was judged by women. In current U.S. popular culture, men’s masculinity is tied to penis size and sexual capabilities in pleasing women, or producing orgasms. The men in Walker’s study also focused a lot on their own research into women’s desires, anatomy, and preferences. The pressure men felt to be excellent lovers capable of producing real orgasms in women helped men to redefine their self-worth after being emasculated in their primary relationships by their wives’ lack of sexual interest. Men wanted to be reassured of their sexual prowess by their lovers, which allowed them to turn the blame back toward their wives for being sexually uninterested.

While Walker references the importance of women’s emotional work and relational management to heterosexual relationships, as well as recognizing the same drive within men’s purchases of the girlfriend experience from sex workers, I think the book would have benefited from a deeper engagement with the literature surrounding women’s intimate, sexual, and aesthetic labor and its role in bolstering masculinity. Ultimately, the men in Walker’s study complained about the lack of emotional and intimate labor their wives performed. The men’s complaints remind me of the men involved in the “mail-order bride” industry, who voice similar dissatisfaction with relationships in the United States, saying men are no longer seen as women’s top priority. Within Walker’s study, men’s desire for women to perform both the aesthetic labor of looking feminine and the emotional labor of prioritizing men comes through and reinforces my own concept of the emotional labor of selflessness.

In addition, I think the book could address the role of capitalism within this newfound business model of selling access to potential opportunities for infidelity and situate it within the wider theoretical framework of intimate industries. How is the website Ashley Madison situated within the larger commodification of intimacy engendered through various online dating services? I would have liked to see a discussion of the role of the site itself mediating people’s searches for external relationships and the role of commodified beginnings on the site. What types of men and women interested in pursuing infidelity and external relationships are willing to pay for a site like Ashley Madison, and what does that mean in general for thinking about the future role of capitalism in facilitating other avenues for infidelity?

Overall, the book provides an important view into challenging common gendered tropes surrounding infidelity. As Walker highlights, men’s masculinity is fragile and needs to be bolstered on a consistent basis in heterosexual relationships by their wives. If men’s masculine identity or sexual prowess is challenged by their primary partnerships, they search for validation of their masculinity in other intimate relationships with women. Scholars studying gender, masculinity, intimate relationships, and the family would benefit from reading this book, as this study provides important insights into gendered behaviors surrounding infidelity within heterosexual relationships and challenges assumptions that men only want sex.