According to Michelle Langley, author of the book, Woman’s Infidelity, women are initiating 70 to 75 % of all divorces. Women in their 20’s and 30’s are most likely to divorce after 4 years of marriage. The author states that women push men for what they want, get what they want, lose interest in sex, become attracted to someone else, start cheating, become angry and resentful, begin telling their partners they need time apart, blame their partners for their unhappiness and then the relationship deteriorates into divorce.
Langley goes onto say that this pattern will continue until we develop an accurate understanding of females. She cites that after ten years of research, many societal beliefs about women are wrong. She adds that many of the books and articles that attempt to explain why women are now cheating as much as men are not successful.
I agree with her that this an extremely complicated puzzle to solve. In my work as a Structure of Intellect (SOI) practitioner for the past 15 years, and a Leadership Trainer for the past 20 years, I have studied hundreds of intellectual profiles of both men and women. I can, through my own research, throw a new light on this very old problem.
From the original standpoint of SOI which tests, diagnoses and trains over 100 intellectual pathways of the brain, the abilities required for evaluation and problem solving are foundational thinking abilities. In other words, when people have problems and make poor judgments that get them into even more trouble, usually these sets of thinking skills are weak.
According to JP Guilford a US psychologist, best remembered for his psychometric study of human intelligence, and founder of SI ( the forerunner to SOI ) one of the general intellectual processes essential for problem solving is called evaluation: the ability to judge whether or not information is accurate, consistent or valid. It also enables us to have foresight.
In my practice, I have found that if my clients score low in this ability, they often seem immature or irresponsible. Add poor memory to the mix and they are usually in trouble in school or career and have social problems. What I have also found is that they do not have good emotional boundaries when it comes to communicating with others. They will either bring up the problem at the wrong time or place or they are more apt to give into their own pet opinions or judgments instead of listening openly to their partners or friends. Even if they do get all the information they need to make a good decision, weak evaluating skills make it difficult for them to apply it and resolve the conflict in a healthy way.
If I look at Langley’s four stages that women experience during the course of their relationships that lead to divorce or separation, it is in stage one when it appears that a woman who has everything she wants feels that she should be happier. She begins to frequently complain and consequently becomes unhappier and unhappier. Langley attributes the loss of sexual desire to the beginning of stage one patterns. Not having felt sexual desire for a long time, women are reawakened by a new sexual encounter and enter stage two – infidelity. From here it seems to be a roller coaster ride through to stage four where divorce is considered to be the solution.
If you’re experiencing some of the following early warning signs such as, loss of sexual desire, information overload, anxiety, a feeling that you know something is wrong but you don’t know what is wrong or chronic complaining, you could be suffering from weak evaluation abilities. In other words, thinking abilities which should have come into play in stage one were just too undeveloped to have any positive effect on problem solving.
If you are beginning to feel turned off in your marriage I recommend trying the following method. Often a simple intervention on your own behalf is only as far away as few good stiff questions:
1) How are my feelings about my marriage alike or different from my husbands?
2) What characteristics of our marriage do we share? Which ones belong to a good marriage and which ones do not?
3) What is missing in the relationship?
4) How will this marriage look if it is turned inside out because of infidelity?
5) Does having an affair really make sense?
6) What’s foolish about having this affair? What will happen next?
Are these questions new to you? If you answered yes, as an SOI practitioner, the first thing I would examine is your evaluation abilities. If they are underdeveloped be aware that this has happened to you for a multitude of reasons and it is not your fault. Poor evaluating abilities are just “old good friends” who have been with you all your life and supported you as much as they could.
However, you can strengthen these abilities by using the aforementioned questions and avoid becoming one out of the 70 to 75% of women who will enter the world of infidelity and familial abandonment.