Men report feeling excited about the sexual experience of the affair. They try to control their feelings in the affair and do not compete with their feelings for their wife. Often they limit the emotional involvement with their lover. Men also feel guilt and regret over deceit when an affair ends, but less so than most women. Men and women have affairs for different reasons.
Research has shown that women seek affairs in order to be loved, have a friend, and feel needed.
Men seek affairs for sexual fulfillment, friendship, and fun. In 1953 Alfred Kinsey found that 29 percent of married women admitted to at least one affair. Several studies come to this same conclusion. And New Woman magazine found that 57 percent of employed wives who had an affair met their lover at work. In 1975, Linda Wolfe published Playing Around after she studied twenty-one women who were having affairs to keep their marriages intact.