Why do some but not all women cuckold their husbands? A proposed answer.
Harry,
A question similar to yours was posed, in essence, by Son of John in one of his threads a while back. The subject line was, “Why do some women want to fuck men other than their husbands?” I proposed an answer that might be considered an hypothesis. Others may have proposed similar ideas, and for all I know it may have been proven (or disproven) elsewhere and/or published somewhere. If so, I don’t know who the others might be or where one might find it. In any case, since it has long since disappeared into the forum backlog I’ve reproduced it below, in edited form, on the chance it may be of interest to you and some other forum members. It is as follows.
Female sexuality, like essentially all other human characteristics, varies widely among individuals just as (for instance) athletic ability, musical talent, mathematical talent, outgoing vs. shy personality, and of course male sexuality, vary widely among individuals.
To see this in a simplified way, visualize female sexuality as distributed along a vertical line. At the lower end of the line are women who are asexual. They don't need it, they don't want it, and if they never have sex with another person their whole lives, that's fine with them. (Apparently there’s some evidence that roughly 1% of the population, female and male combined, may be in this cohort but that’s considered a weak statistic. See “asexual people” in Wikipedia.)
At the upper end of the line are women who are highly sexual. They need it, they want it, sex is always on or never far from their minds, they seek it constantly, and they find it successfully. Some prostitutes are in this catagory, as are (probably) the most sexually-active married cuckoldresses described — some by their cuckolds, others by themselves — in this forum. These women can be viewed as the sexual equivalent of talented athletes.
Between these extremes, female sexuality can be viewed as distributed along this vertical line. At the mid-point are women with average sexuality. Over a broad central segment are women with sexuality falling within the range average plus or minus 1 standard deviation. If the sexuality line is in the form of a bell-shaped curve — which may or may not be the case — average plus or minus one standard deviation would constitute about 68% of the female population. These are the women having more-or-less average sexuality. Above them are women with sexuality ranging from high to extremely high. Below them are women with sexuality ranging from low to extremely low.
Now, suppose a woman with high sexuality accepts a marriage proposal from a man with low sexuality. There are, of course, large numbers of such marriages. I suggest they might be called marriages with female-positive sexual offset. The woman may suspect or know this will be the case prior to marriage, from her pre-marital sexual experiences with her fiance.... but she accepts his proposal anyway, for any of the reasons other than sexual compatibility that form the basis of marriages.
At some point after marriage, the woman realizes she does not find her husband sexually satisfying for reasons that amount to her being a relatively more sexual women and him being a relatively less sexual man. Her situation can be considered roughly analogous to a talented varsity-level university basketball player (a woman, in this example) who marries then plays one-on-one basketball exclusively with a man whose basketball talents are, unfortunately, average or below-average. For the more talented player (the woman), it simply isn't very satisfying. In fact, it's probably quite boring — even though, off the court, they may be good friends who are compatible in other ways. The woman promised at the time of their marriage to play one-on-one basketball only with her husband, and he made the same promise to her, but after a while she begins playing one-on-one with other men having basketball talent comparable to her own. She finds this much more satisfying and at first does it secretly, but sooner or later her husband becomes aware of her extracurricular basketball. At first he feels crushed by this evidence of his basketball inadequacy, but recognizing he is incapable of satisfying his wife’s demands for high-end basketball he brings the subject up with her and, after a long conversation and many glasses of wine, convinces her it really is OK with him if she plays basketball with other men. She accepts what she now views, finally, as his generous offer, and their marriage continues on a much more satisfactory level.
Returning from basketball to sex and viewing it in terms of probability, a woman with high sexuality relative to her husband would be more likely to take a lover — and perhaps, over time, many lovers — thus making her husband her cuckold, than a woman married to a man whose position on the male-sexuality scale is similar to her position on the female-sexuality scale. The woman of the latter couple would, by hypothesis, be more likely to find her husband sexually satisfying over the long term; hence she would be less likely to take lovers.
There are, of course, also many marriages in which the man is more sexual than the woman. The man's situation in this case is essentially a mirror image of the above. Thinking again in terms of probability, such a man would be more likely to take a lover, and perhaps many lovers over time, than would be the case if his position on the male-sexuality scale were similar to his wife's position on the female-sexuality scale.
This is my proposed explanation for why some married women want to, and do, fuck men — in some cases many men — other than their husbands. The concept is simple and has the advantage of being symmetrical. That is, if “man” is substituted for “woman” and “husband” for “wife” (or vice-versa), above, the argument remains the same. Women are not treated as special cases. Also, it can be compared to the principle of Occam's razor, which is most commonly understood as: “Of several seemingly-acceptable explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest is preferable.” (From Wikipedia.) For simplicity, please note I’ve omitted the influences of cultural expectations which can range from important to very important in influencing the sexual behaviors of women and men.
For a deeper and much more fascinating answers to this question, see:
Baker, Robin, Ph.D. 1996. Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex. BasicBooks, 319 pp. (hardcover).
And
Ley, David J., 2009. “Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them.” Rowman and Littlefield, 291 pp. (hardcover).
—Custer