In case you need a good reason not to cheat on your wife…

Family Issues, Lifestyle, Sex, Stress, Well-being

In case you need a good reason not to cheat on your wife…

May 29, 2012

I’m sure Hank Williams, Jr. was just being poetic, but there’s a certain amount of true poetic justice in the lyrics to his classic song, Your Cheatin’ Heart. “Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you,” writes Hank. “Your cheatin’ heart will make you weep.” Another example of Country music getting it exactly right.

Researchers at the University of Florence (Italy) found that men who cheat on their wives are more likely to suffer from “sudden coital death” (or, in cowboy terms, “dying in the saddle,” meaning they have a heart attack and die) while having sex with their mistress, than men who are sleeping with their wife.

There are a number of factors at work here. “Extra-marital sex may be hazardous and stressful because the lover is often younger than the primary partner,” writes Dr. Alessandra Fisher, lead author of the study. Translation: trying to satisfy a younger, more sexually demanding woman can cause a heart attack. Vigorous sex may also be responsible for knocking lose plaque deposits that have been building up inside arteries. Those chunks of plaque then clump together and create blockages which cause death.

Affairs away from home are especially dangerous. “It is possible that a secret sexual encounter in an unfamiliar setting may significantly increase blood pressure and heart rate, leading to increased oxygen demand,” Fisher says. Translation: The excitement and titillation of being an in unfamiliar place gets your heart racing so much that you could have a heart attack.

Throw in a guilty conscience, the stress of keeping the affair secret, the likelihood that adulterous sex will happen after excessive eating and/or drinking, and you’ve got a real-life case of a cheatin’ heart getting its just desserts.

You can read an abstract of the study, which was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, here.

Author: Armin Brott

Hailed by Time Magazine as “the superdad’s superdad,” Armin Brott has been building better fathers for more than a decade. As the author of eight bestselling books on fatherhood, he’s helped millions of men around the world become the fathers they want to be—and that their children need them to be.

He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, American Baby, Parenting, Child, Men’s Health, The Washington Post, and dozens of other major publications and websites.

Armin has been a guest on hundreds of radio and television shows, including Today, CBS Overnight, Fox News, and Politically Incorrect, and his work on fatherhood has been featured in such places as Glamour, Time, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and many others.

Armin is the host of “Positive Parenting,” a weekly radio program which airs in the San Francisco Bay Area and a number of other markets. He also writes the nationally syndicated newspaper column, “Ask Mr. Dad.” As a trusted spokesperson, Armin speaks on fatherhood around the country and teaches classes for expectant and new dads. Armin lives with his family in Oakland, California.

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Need a good reason not to cheat on your wife? Hopefully not, but just in case…. » DadSoup - May 29, 2012
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