According to Michelle Langley, author of the book Woman’s Infidelity, women are initiating between 70 and 75% of all divorces. Women in their 20s and 30s are more likely to get divorced after 4 years of marriage. The author claims that women pressure men for what they want, get what they want, lose interest in sex, are attracted to someone else, start cheating, get angry and resentful, start telling their partners They need time apart, blame their partners for their unhappiness, and then the relationship deteriorates until divorce.
Langley goes on to say that this pattern will continue until we develop an accurate understanding of women. She cites that after ten years of research, many social beliefs about women are wrong. He adds that many of the books and articles that attempt to explain why women now cheat as much as men are not successful.
I agree with her that this is an extremely difficult puzzle to solve. In my work as a Structure of Intellect (SOI) practitioner for the past 15 years, and as a Leadership Coach for the past 20 years, I have studied hundreds of intellectual profiles of both men and women. I can, through my own research, shed a new light on this very old problem.
From the original point of view of SOI, which tests, diagnoses and trains more than 100 intellectual pathways of the brain, the skills necessary for assessment and problem solving are fundamental thinking skills. In other words, when people have problems and make poor judgments that cause them more problems, these thinking skill sets are usually weak.
According to JP Guilford, an American psychologist, best remembered for his psychometric study of human intelligence, and founder of SI (the forerunner of SOI), one of the general intellectual processes essential for problem solving is called assessment: the ability to judge whether the information is either not accurate, consistent or valid. It also allows us to have foresight.
In my practice, I have found that if my clients score low in this ability, they often appear immature or irresponsible. Add poor memory to the mix and they generally have trouble in school or career and have social issues. What I have also discovered is that they do not have good emotional limits when it comes to communicating with others. Either they will raise the issue at the wrong time or place, or they are more likely to give in to their own favorite opinions or judgments rather than openly listening to their partners or friends. Even if they get all the information they need to make a good decision, weak assessment skills make it difficult for them to apply it and resolve the conflict in a healthy way.
If I look at the four Langley stages that women experience during the course of their relationships that lead to divorce or separation, it is stage one when it seems that a woman who has everything she wants feels like she should be happier. She begins to complain frequently and consequently becomes increasingly unhappy. Langley attributes the loss of sexual desire to the beginning of the stage one patterns. Having not felt sexual desire for a long time, women wake up with a new sexual encounter and enter stage two: infidelity. From here it appears to be a roller coaster ride to stage four, where divorce is seen as the solution.
If you are experiencing any of the following early warning signs, such as loss of sex drive, information overload, anxiety, a feeling that you know something is wrong but don’t know what is wrong, or chronic complaints, you could be suffering from weak assessment skills . In other words, the thinking skills that should have come into play in stage one were too underdeveloped to have a positive effect on problem solving.
If you are beginning to feel disconnected in your marriage, I recommend that you try the following method. Often times, a simple intervention on your own behalf is as far as a few rigid questions:
1) How are my feelings about my marriage the same or different from those of my husbands?
2) What characteristics of our marriage do we share? Which ones belong to a good marriage and which ones don’t?
3) What is missing in the relationship?
4) What will this marriage look like if it is turned upside down due to infidelity?
5) Does having an affair really make sense?
6) What’s so silly about having this adventure? What will happen next?
Are these questions new to you? If you answered yes, as an SOI practitioner, the first thing you would examine is your ability to evaluate. If they are underdeveloped, be aware that this has happened to you for a multitude of reasons and it is not your fault. Bad assessment skills are simply “good old friends” who have been with you your whole life and supported you as much as they could.
However, you can strengthen these skills by using the aforementioned questions and avoid becoming one of the 70 to 75% of women who will enter the world of infidelity and family abandonment.