Job Discussion Forums

[Samantha]

It seems Russian men may have actually cornered "shameless". And French Presidents.

Pamela Druckerman, a former Wall Street Journal staff reporter, has written a book about infidelity around the world.

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

I have just deleted several off topic postings. Please stay on topic.

[Mrs L]

Can I just add that I understand why Samantha's been getting defensive about some of the claims people have made here. In my experience of being married to a Mexican, many Americans/ Canadians/ Brits assume (before meeting him) that he's a cheating sleeze, or he's just with me for my passport, or that I'm deeply insecure and a bit desperate and he's all I could get, or all of the above. I don't feel the need to defend my marriage against these claims because they're so ludicrous but it can be rather irritating.

When I hear claims that 'all' Mexican men cheat I know they're not talking about my husband, or one of his brothers, or his dad, or his best friend, who are all totally devoted to their wives. I believe a lot of the cheating that does go on in Mexico happens because the women accept it. I know my husband wasn't always faithful to his ex-girlfriends. I also know he thinks I'm the best thing that ever happened to him and would be too frightened of losing me to cheat. He knows if he cheated the marriage would be over, and so I trust him 100%.

Samantha sounds like she's quite lucky with her extended family of faithful husbands. On the other hand we have a cousin with a wife and two kids in one house, and a girlfriend and child just down the street. The women take turns to come to family parties (depending on who he's living with that week), we all struggle not to call them by each other's names, and it's generally treated as a bit of a joke. I don't think that's a unique situation, many of us know stories like this and it's what enforces the stereotype of the cheating Mexican man.

[MELEE]

I brought up the subject with my husband this weekend.
At first he said, People all over the world cheat, Mexicans don't cheat anymore than any other nationallity. Since he's never been outside of Mexico I questioned him further on why he thinks so. As is so often the case, he's judging US culture on our TV and movies, and why not that's what he, and so many other people around the world have to go on. So in Grey's Anatomy, he sees married people cheat, and he sees me totally caught up in the show and using it to get my "America" fix each week, which is extrapolates to think it is an acurrate reflection on "normal" people in the US. I as an American viewer allow the show to be exagerated to a certain extend for the sake of entertainment. My reactions to the characters are such as reactions to characters I know are fictional, and therefore are not the reactions I would have if my friends confided similar events to me. Or to a greater extreme, lets change shows to Sex in the City. The show allowed millions of American women to live vicariously. But then foriegn men think those women are acurate dipictions of American women. We know that they are Charactirtures. Of course some do really exsist. I know a Samatha-from-Sex-in-the-City type myself, but in real life I think she's pathetic and I certainly don't emulate her lifestyle. And I imagine her namesake on the forum would agree with me.
So back to the point
I told my husband I thought no more than 25% of married people, be they men or women in the US cheat--that's my personal impression, as others said, the real stats would be hard to get.
My husband was surprised, he conseeded that probabaly more married people, men and women, in Mexico cheat.
And we decided that it had to do with 1) attitudes torwards divorce as Mikey already pointed out. In the US a married person who was not satisfied with their spouce would divorce. In Mexico, it would have to be a much more dire circumstance for people to divorce. And a lot of women, who are disenfrancised in Mexican culture would rather stay in the finacial security of a marriage even if their spouce was no longer commited to them, then face being a divorced mother, especially among the un/undereducated classes. A piggy back factor 1 1/2) would be lack of the option of marriage councilling. In some places its totally non-exsistant, in others it's not well know, and still others it would be stigmatized to a degree that few couples would seek it. So in a marriage where one or both partners were unfullfilled, they would be more likely to simply look elsewhere, then try to make their marriage better.
2) Another reason that many have touched on is a cultural acceptance of cheaters and silence my the women that goes back generations (at least to the colonial period is not before). So children, both male and female, see if not their parents, then a family member or a neighbor couple in where the man doesn't do much to publicly hide his conquests and the wife accepts her lot in silence (as opposed to getting revenge like geaaronson mentioned) because for her and her children finacially and or socially it is better to tolerate the affair(s) then to leave her powerful husband. Because the wife never talks about how much his hurts her, the sons grow up thinking it's okay and the daughters grow up thinking it's normal.
As I said before I know of many Mexican men who I'm sure do not cheat. I do know some who I know and many who may cheat. My husband has one close friend, who is not married, but has children by at least two women and has frequent conquests, and for the record, he thinks that guy is pathetic and pathologically looking in the wrong place to fill the emptiness he has inside. Which is a similiar attitude I have towards my Samantha-from-Sex-in-the-City type friend.

[TheLongWayHome]

[john_n_carolina]

[Guy Courchesne]

[MO39]

[MELEE]

Or maybe it's because Mexican men feel threatened by the foriegn man invading on their territory and "talk the talk" to them, even when they aren't really walking the walk?

(sorry I just finished a book on evolutionary mating habits of humans and I'm seeing chimps in all of us.)

Or maybe because several women on this forum are actually married to Mexicans? Three of the men are/were and one of those marriages ended? And one of those men hasn't contributed yet.

Oh and I also want to say my 25% guess is based on the middle of the country (and it's also worth noting that I really haven't lived in the US as an adult, so maybe I'm totally off.)

[MO39]

[john_n_carolina]

[TheLongWayHome]

[Samantha]

I wonder if the OP will ever check in and let us know how her Mexican dating experience is going, or if she decided to join a convent instead, after reading this thread!

[thelmadatter]

who knows Samantha!

My experience has not been so much with the macho type but rather with the mama's boys... that is probably because I prefer the shy, quiet type when I date... and I seem to usually get guys with an artistic bent as well.

Hard for me to compare dating experiences as when I started dating here I was about 3 years post-divorce after a marriage of 14 years... I cant tell how much of the differences I find are age-related or culture-related.

One other stereotype I have not encountered is the "in it for the green card" type. But that one might be age-related... by your 40's you're usually settled

[MikeySaid]