Beware Missing Signals
AshleyMadison.com, a personals site designed to facilitate extramarital affairs … enjoyed another big boost this week, following Father’s Day, when CEO Noel Biderman says men often feel underappreciated. Traffic to the site tripled on Monday. (Biderman says there’s a similar boost in interest from neglected wives and girlfriends after Valentine’s Day.)
That is from Time. It is interesting that it is Father’s day when men feel unappreciated. Although Valentines Day is officially “for lovers” we all know it is far more for men to signal to women than vice versa. So on what day do kidless men feel most underappreciated?
Just getting around to reading this...
Alternative explanation, rather than feeling under-appreciated, what about them feeling old, and that life is moving past them, kind of a realization that leads to a mini-mid-life-crisis?
do sportscar sales spike after father's day?
mikem: Ignore the word 'tripling' and the CEOs armchair justification for the boosts and we have a description of an event that matches intuition fairly well and which we have no reason to doubt: traffic to AshleyMadison.com increases between Father's day and the day after.
It would be nice to have base rates, but we aren't empty handed without them.
We do know one base rate though: the base rate of willingness to cheat of our sample is 100%.And which of these sounds like a cognition of someone ready to cheat:"Father's day is coming, so I'm not going to seek sex outside my relationship until I see how that pans out.""Father's day passed and left me feeling underappreciated. I need someone new who will appreciate me."
It has been my experience that cheaters (or people seriously considering cheating) have huge relationship discount rates (or they perceive themselves as having them). That may be definitional. But it means they don't "do" delayed gratification well, yet they do respond strongly and immediately to negative emotional stimuli within their already unhappy relationships, such as being neglected on Father's day. Remember, everyone involved is already prepared to cheat.
It seems stranger to assume cheaters become good at subduing their impulses before major relationship-related holidays than to assume that a cheater behaves like a cheater all the time, but moreso after these holidays.
"But surely sex, promised or actual, doesn’t perfectly correspond to feelings of accomplishment, satisfaction, or due appreciation. Some people report having stressful or humiliating sexual encounters, and some sexually satisfied people complain that they are disregarded in other ways."
Your brain wants your body to have sex and it will accept no substitute stimulation gladly. Feelings of sexual under-appreciation must be set apart from other disappointments; they have a unique psychological signature. Remember, these people aren't cheating because they lost their job or because their dog died.
Gordon nailed it: "[Kidless men feel underappreciated] every day without sex or the promise of future sex."