A recent study by a group of researchers at the Cheating Buster Center for the Study of Women in Leadership at the University of Chicago found that over the course of their lives, women who had been cheated on by their partners ended up being less successful than those who had not been cheated on. Apparently, this is because cheating women are more likely to be emotionally vulnerable.
The study says a lot about why so many women have affairs: because it’s so messy and stressful, and because it doesn’t feel good to be responsible for someone else besides your partner and your kids. Our society has always rewarded men who are willing to take risks that other people won’t. The only problem with that is that those risks often cost us our happiness, which means we don’t get to live comfortably while we do it.
To think about what differentiates low-hanging fruit from high-flying fruit — something I believe is an important conversation to have — let me pose two questions:
1) How would you rate your career as a guy versus a girl? I’d guess most people would say they are roughly equal when it comes to having great jobs but not as great personal relationships (maybe there’s a one-percent difference, but then again I might be underestimating). Which would you say will make you happier? And which would you say will bring more happiness?
2) How much do you value having a good relationship with your boss or spouse versus having a good relationship with your friends? As I see it, all three relationships will bring happiness; they just differ in how much they do. But how much difference do you suppose there is between those three things if we take the total number of hours people spend working on each one of them into account? I think most people would probably consider them virtually equal, except maybe for the fact that bosses tend to have bad bosses (can you name any?) whereas friends tend to be very cool (can you name any?).