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What do you find different in the behaviour between women and men who are unfaithful? Are there any similarities?
Men and women who are tempted by extra-marital affairs are looking for something that’s missing, whether it’s basic sexual contact or a practice refused by their partner, a good distraction, the need to please, to relive forgotten sensations, the list is long and varied. However, men act more like hunters waiting for a concrete result or the contrary looking for a polite flirt or raw conversations that will excite them. He will not expect consequences and when he turns off the TV or returns home after having left his mistress, he will go back to being the father and husband no longer thinking of his affair. We also find among women, adventuresses looking for sex for sex, romantics looking for compliments that they no longer get at home and the sensitive ones who fall so in love that they put their relationship at risk. What’s the difference? Men are more sharing, their wife and mistress are interchangeable. Women would be more likely to want to replace their husband with their lover.
In your opinion, how has the internet changed dating? In your opinion what is expected on a site like Gleeden ?
New technology, the internet and above all « social » websites (for flirting) supports extra-marital affairs and the hunt, 24/7 without having to leave the house or work. Within a few clicks the followers of unfaithfulness can even be in several relationships at the same time and copy-paste their « qualities » until the bait is taken. Behind a screen and with the use of a keyboard, they are more handsome, bigger, better lovers and they can say what they want in order to seduce in a few clicks. Dating sites allow you to go sexual shopping without wasting time with dates, trips and wasted expenses. On a website like Gleeden, things are very clear: no need to lie about your marital status.
Do unfaithful men and women look for the same thing in an extra-marital relationship?
The want for change, to please others, a distraction from the daily routine, the desire to please other women, to feel forgotten or dormant emotions, to have a sexual life more suited to them… is common for men as much as it is for women. Sometimes men look subconsciously for The women who will allow him to make a new start (men rarely leave « for nothing » or for « no one » they often want assurance that they will be taken care of by another woman, this is also a reason why they prefer, in most cases, to find a mistress who is single and can invite them to hers, who will be available and will spoil him as much as his wife at the beginning of their marriage), whilst women might just look to fill their emotional need and to awaken a dormant sex life, to change their daily routine ; they are not really looking for an exit from their relationship when they take a lover but sometimes they fall in the love trap and put their relationship at risk. Women seem more wholesome, more honest and not as good at dealing with two relationships head on.
In your book Joyful confessions of a mistress, you strongly criticise the fact that married men are not honest and don’t necessarily say that they are already in a couple. Do you not think that Gleeden is a good way to make things clear from the start?
Indeed. I have never cheated on my loved ones but if the idea came to mind to have an affair whilst preserving my relationship at the same time, I think I would rather be honest and present myself as a «taken» woman who is looking for a distraction with someone with the same status as me. On conventional dating websites normally reserved for single people looking for love, married men often hide this fact because very few available women want to be a mistress or a courtesan or want to find themselves roped into a relationship with a « married » man and to have to share him in « time-sharing » with his wife. Single women, in general, « claim » to want a free man all to themselves because they « deserve it ». In this way, I think that a dating website which posts honestly its aim to devote itself essentially to people in a relationship looking for an affair is a lot more serious and « honest » than a website that allows any deviance at the expense of a single person who is looking for a serious relationship with another single person.
Why do we feel the need for a lover even when we are happy in a relationship?
I personally don’t know. Every relationship I have had in the beatitude of mutual love my partner was enough for me; when my relationships started to collapse, I thought about why they were collapsing and how to stop them from doing so rather than looking for a lover to forget about the problems I was having. In addition, being « happy in a relationship » does not necessarily mean that we still love our partner passionately but rather that we love the life we have with them for habits, logistics, comfort, kids we have with them, social balance, religious pressure or other. I’ve met many men « happy in a relationship » who were just looking for an affair without changing their life. So I asked them « why? ». I notably asked them in the second part of my book « Joyful confessions of a mistress » and their replies were enlightening… Nevertheless, looking back at the failure of my last relationship which was based on ─ among other problems ─ sexual frustration, I have more than once thought it would have been better for me to find a lover than to take it out on my husband for not being able to fulfil my desires. If only I had known about Gleeden at that time! (She laughs)
* French author, Chantal Bauwens offers works full of reflections on the morals of our society. Discover Joyful confessions of a mistress and her last work Mum flirts on the internet
They are available in Arbre editions.
Interview by Gleeden.com
