Response to “Money for Monogomy”: Infidelity and Wealth
For the past few days – I have been trying to articulate my own responses to Tiger Woods’ infidelities. Tonight I stumbled upon a very thoughtful blog piece written about Woods’ infidelities from an “economic sociology” perspective that I would like to directly address here.
I stumbled upon the article Money for Monogamy (written by Brooke Harrington on her blog, Economic Sociology) while looking for articles or statistics about marriage and infidelity in different Socioeconomic classes. The article posed questions regarding prenuptial clauses regarding payments to a spouse in the case of the other spouse cheating. The two questions posed were “What are these payments supposed to mean to the wronged spouse?” and “Do financial penalties deter infidelity?” These questions deal with a couple that would have considered their beliefs about infidelity in the marriage and what that would mean to them prior to marrying. Couples that would do this would seem to be two rational individuals that married with prior agreements and conditions as to how the relationship would proceed and remain intact. Wouldn’t that be wonderful if we could do that?! I think the divorce rate would be much lower if each couple really thought out what issues were important to them prior to marriage, and laid out the rules for those issues.
However, as Brooke points out, “humans are boundedly rational” – that is that even though our intentions may be to make logical decisions, weighing out the pros and the cons of the consequences of that decision, we are limited in our ability to do that. In the case of many human relationships – especially marriage – I believe that most people enter marriage without a lot of prior thought about what occurrences in the marriage would make them want to leave it. And perhaps most people go into it believing that their marriage will be “happily ever after.” Also maybe for most, decisions to marry and stay in a marriage are primarily based on societal and cultural upbringing and pressures (and perhaps “cultural value” and “societal values” can be thought of as a substitute for “monetary value” in this case.)
So the questions that Brooke posed are not the questions for which I seek an answer:
But that just raises another set of questions, like: why would you want to marry on those terms? When one spouse seems so likely to cheat that it’s necessary to have a ‘bad boy clause’ in the pre-nup, and the other spouse spells out how s/he plans to exact retribution for any infidelity, I have to wonder why the couple are bothering to marry in the first place. The whole arrangement just has ‘train wreck’ written all over it.
Because the marriage described above sounds like two mature adults going into a relationship with no blinders – which sounds like the making of a successful partnership. The question that I have is “Which societal and economic pressures make someone stay in a marriage if they know their partner has extramarital relationships?” That seems to be the more likely case than a case where couples have a pre-nup agreement that handles instances of infidelity.
To put some context to this question, let me explain my interest in infidelities by men of power, wealth, and in the upper socioeconomic class. I am currently editing a novel based on a recent affair of Gregg Gordon (president and CEO of the Social Science Research Network) with a former employee (who was an employee of SSRN at the time of the affair.) Strip clubs, and other “transactional” exchanges with women are commonplace among particular groups of businessmen while on their business trips. They know of the others’ indiscretions – and keep those incidents sacred among themselves. However, I am at a loss for understanding how their spouses could be totally clueless to the activities of their husbands while on business trips.
This leads me to a hypothesis that I have formed:
Females from a high socioeconomic class base decisions to divorce or not to divorce on monetary economics more than females from a lower socioeconomic class.
I would be greatly interested on any studies or papers written about this particular issue. Also, I am interested in my readers’ responses to this – good or bad.
Like this:
This entry was posted on December 15, 2009 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Editorials with tags bounded rationality, Economic Sociology, Gregg Gordon, infidelity, Money for Monogomy, Social Science Research Network, socioeconomic classes, Tiger Woods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 16, 2009 at 5:22 am
Hi Razor… A very interesting piece, it made me think about the Tiger Woods saga in an entirely new light. I think Elin is screwed whether she stays or not… If she divorces him, she’ll be painted as the unforgiving wife who dumped her superstar husband even though he apologised and tried to make it up to her. If she stays, she’ll no doubt be slammed because of the money angle you’ve raised her. It’s a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.
December 16, 2009 at 10:01 am
Men of power have been the “bad boys” for centuries. Nothing has changed, there’s just more of them in this day and age. In the past 100 years, there’s been an evolution between genders that really has nothing to do with socioeconomic influence. Men have never been as discreet as women. Reason being is simply this, women have become more cunning and savvy to divorce laws. Be it in no-fault states, or otherwise, men will always pay the price and women know it. Despite pre-nuptual agreements.
Where the aforementioned evolution plays a role is that women feel they have less to lose now than ever. They have tools at their disposal that allow them to manipulate a given situation to their advantage. They become mentally and emotionally agressive towards men, leaving them frustrated and confused. The innate logic and rationale of the man short circuits, thereby leaving him to grasp his emotional side. No man can compete with a woman on emotions, especially one that incorporates, lies, deception, and manipulation.
You’re probably asking yourself by now, “what does this have to do with my hypothesis?” Because despite the socioecomic status a woman may have, psych studies are now revealing that the number of women being in control of interpersonal relationships, marriages, etc., are equal in proportion. Men of power are beyond normal/healthy narcissistic levels, however, they are typically no competition for female adversary with the same condition. Couple that with the advantage women have in the legal system and the socioeconomic status no longer applies. The evolution is, we are making a strong move towards a highly narcissistic society and it’s becoming a woman’s world.
So, in this day in time, a more likely hypothesis would go like this; “The largest share of women, base decisions to divorce, or not divorce on monetary economics.” It’s referred to in the psych world as, “sense of entitlement.” It’s a sad state of affairs when the moral compass of society has no true bearing. The only reason we have become limited in our ability to weigh the consequences of our actions is through choice. Choices that are self-serving and give no consideration to significant others feelings. People are becoming more individualistic, and self-centered. When things go slightly off course in a marriage, people withdraw rather than communicate. We then begin to resent our significant other and once regret sets in, infidelity is not far behind. People begin then to believe they deserve happiness and use extra-marital affairs as a conduit to their happiness.
The irony of this is, probably the only accurate statistic out there, is based upon this very question: Do you believe that adultry/infidelity is wrong? 90+% answer YES. Here’s another statistic: If you could have an extra-marital affair and know for certain, you could never get caught, would you do it? An astounding 80+% said YES. This of course is a bit more rhetorical than, “do you believe infidelity is wrong”, still astounding though. Wouldn’t you say though, that this confirms “our moral compass has no bearing.”
Regarding your statement about not understanding how women can be clueless to their men’s outside activities, well, they simply don’t care. Five out these 10 women are probably doing something “they ought not to” when their husbands are out of town! We are slowly becoming a society without a sense of reality.
December 16, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Thank you both for your comments. Yes – these are indeed strange times in which we are living.
So I just read that Elin is leaving Tiger – and there was a prenuptial agreement. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601079&sid=aHA2Z8B9rx8g Very interesting. I am curious as to what was in the agreement. If anybody reads any details about it – please leave information. Thanks.
~Razor
December 16, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Hi again Razor… Found two interesting pieces on the prenup while fishing around:
http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/blog/devil_ball_golf/post/Details-of-Elin-Woods-newly-rewritten-prenup-em?urn=golf,206529
AND
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-03/new-details-on-tigers-prenup/?cid=hp:mainpromo1
December 16, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Hi Janine.
Thank you so much for posting the URLs for the two articles. I have read both, and my jaw is to the floor after reading the figures (it was worth $20 million to Elin if the couple had remained married for 10 years – however, they were in negotiations to have an immediate payout to Elin of $5 million and it would have been worth more than double the original $20 million if Elin had decided to stay married to Tiger another two years.) I cannot even fathom living in those dollar amounts! WOW!
In addition, I cannot begin to understand two people that negotiate in such a manner. I grew up in a culture where we didn’t talk about money. I would have never dreamed of bringing up finances while dating someone nor would they have entered my equation of marriage.
Now I hope that my daughter will have a better balance in her mind set in that
1) she wouldn’t rule out or rule in a mate solely based on monetary economics
2) she would feel comfortable discussing personal views of finances seriously with a potential mate
3) she would never feel that she had to stay in an unhappy marriage because of monetary economics.
Thank you once again for sharing!
~Razor
December 17, 2009 at 7:39 am
Re: your hypothesis. It’s an interesting one, because what little I’ve read on the subject actually suggests the opposite:
The lower the SES bracket, the less able a woman is to leave a marriage, because she simply lacks the resources to move, find a new place to live (deposit plus first and last month’s rent can be a huge chunk of change), file for divorce and support herself, along with any dependents (because the women usually get responsibility for care of the kids). Plus, women from lower SES brackets are less likely to have the basics needed to *get* a job if they don’t already have one: they may lack the educational credentials (like a HS or college diploma), or simply a way to get to work from wherever they live, by car or even public transport.
On the contrary, women from higher SES brackets have fewer survival worries, and so money is less of consideration. That’s not to say it’s irrelevant! Of course it is, no matter what the SES status of the parties involved. But wealthier people can fight about money as a matter of fairness or lifestyle expectations (remember when Liz Taylor’s ex-husband, Larry Fortensky, sued her for additional alimony saying that he’d become too used to the lifestyle of taking private planes to ever fly commercial again?), rather than as a matter of survival. That gives women from higher SES brackets more discretion about whether to divorce, because–unlike for poorer women–ending a marriage probably won’t end them leaving them with no roof over their heads.
December 17, 2009 at 7:46 am
Hi Brooke.
These are some very good and valid points. Over the weekend I am going to try to find a few papers or studies from some of the resources you had suggested via email. I will post what I find.
Thank you so much for all of your help and contribution!
~Razor