Monday, August 31, 2009

Common Mistakes in Perceptions

I have spoken with many women on the subject of extramarital affairs (EMA for short) and whether it's the men or the women who have more affairs. Most women responded to me saying that men have more affairs than women. And that men are much more likely to cheat than women. "Men are just built that way, those #$%$$#@%" would be the typical response.

In another article I read today (written I think by a man), an explanation was given that EMA usually start at the workplace. And that in the olden days few women were found at the workplace and hence men had more opportunity to have affairs than women. The author continued that these days with women joining the workplace, their (women's) indulgence in EMA is also higher. If few women went to work earlier and hence (as per the author) few women had EMA, I wonder who the men (who were largely the ones who went to work) had affairs with...Maybe those few women who were having EMA's in those days were multitasking and having a rather busy social schedule. Seems possible?

I used to think that it's not possible that men can have more affairs than women. I defined an affair as a relationship between a man and a woman who are not married to each other. If a man has an affair with a woman, ipso facto, that woman also has an affair with the man. Hence the affair statistics has to be equal for both men and women (unless of course men had affairs with entities other than women).

I came across these nice articles:

where I find that other people have been thinking along the same lines as me!! While providing links, I am aware that the links provided in this post may not be available at a future date and you may be hit with a 404. These links were working at the time of writing this post.

The article below is based on a survey in India.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?239547
An interesting thing is the statistics published by the survey (as per the article, equal number of men and women were surveyed in each of eight cities across India). Some responses are categorized by gender. I am quoting a sample data from the article.

"How frequently do you have sex with your spouse?
Of those who said "once a week", males were 8% (of all males) and females were 21% (of all females)."
I wonder if it's possible to have data like the one above. I thought accurate data would show percentages for males and females to be close to each other. Did the respondents to the study provide accurate data? The total number of sexual sessions for men must be equal to that for women. And if the number of male and female respondents were same or almost same then... (This is what happens when you have emotional people do data analysis. Vaat laga di analysis pe. Read also http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/07/tu-mere-saamne.html). 

I happened to look at the outlookindia link today (March 2018). The data has changed from what it was 9 years earlier. Now the sum total of percentages across all frequencies (sex once a day, once a week etc) for men is 100, as it should be. While for women the sum is in single digits. Don't believe? Click the outlookindia link above. I wouldn't be surprised if the same set of people, who collected and analyzed the data, came up with a report on male and female fertility rates suggesting that males have on an average 3.1 kids and females have 2.3 kids.

Digressing slightly, recently I came across an interesting type of marriage in Saudi Arabia very similar to the one that Anil Kapoor proposes to Kajol in a Hindi movie (and Vijay to Simran in the original Tamil version). This is one of the best things I have heard about Saudi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misyar_marriage  This is a cross between a marriage and an EMA.

While I was trying to look up paternity suits where the father learned that the children he was supporting was not his, I came across this interesting case http://www.canadiancrc.com/Magill/Magill_v_Magill_Judgment_09NOV06.aspx  where the husband and wife had three children during the course of the marriage. Later, the couple got divorced and the husband started paying maintenance for the children. Subsequently, the husband found out through DNA tests that he was not the father of the 2nd and 3rd children and that his wife had had an extramarital relationship with another man who was the father of child 2 and 3. (The husband was the biological father of child 1). 
The trial court held that the man should be paid Aus $70,000. The highest court in Australia turned this down, as I understand. 

If all this seems too diabolical and if you are spiritually inclined read this: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/03/shiv-mandirs.html.


Additional reading:

  1. http://canadiancrc.com/newspaper_articles/Globe_and_Mail_Moms_Little_secret_14DEC02.aspx (Very nice)
  2. Blood group mapping between parents and offspring: https://canadiancrc.com/Paternity_determination_blood_type.aspx 
  3. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/200911/who-s-your-daddy-global-nonpaternity-rates
  4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/she-thought-she-was-irish-until-a-dna-test-opened-a-100-year-old-mystery/?utm_term=.d155546acb88
  5. In India: The Indian Express: Oops! Girl found out her father isn’t her REAL dad during a BIOLOGY lesson.

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