If you’ve ever wondered if there was a link between hormones and affairs, you’ll want to read and re-read this post.
Researchers have long known hormones can radically change a person, but can they make you cheat?
In terms of hormone studies, there have been several findings. One is that some researchers have found that the hormone oestradiol has been linked to women who have more affairs.
Those with higher levels think and behave differently that those with lower levels of the hormone.
Another finding is that males with high testosterone and cortisol are more willing to take risks. This risk taking includes a willingness to cheat. A professor associated with the research, Robert Josephs stated,
“Testosterone furnishes the courage to cheat, and elevated cortisol provides a reason to cheat.”
Research findings like these indicate there is a link between cheating and hormones. What is not known is ‘how strong that link is.’ The study on men only included 117 college students.
Making life decisions about whether or not an affair was due to hormones based on the behavior of some college students is scary. College students are known for their risk taking. Making major relationship decisions on how a college student behaves and thinks is shaky ground.
You also need to consider that both studies were done at the University of Texas. When such surprising findings for both men and women come from the same university, I become suspect. Since I live near the university and am familiar with the behaviors of their students, it often doesn’t take much to give such students and excuse for an ‘affair’.
The researcher who examined the impact of hormones in women has since left University of Texas and now teaches marketing with an emphasis on consumer behavior.
Although links were found between hormones and affairs, it’s not time to loudly proclaim “It’s not my fault! and science proves it”. If there is truly a strong link, other researchers from other locations will replicate similar findings.
There are solid research findings that hormones cause the brain to shift where the neurons are firing. Hormones don’t make you stupid, they just shift where your brain activity is happening.
Hormones definitely play a role in prolonging the trauma after an affair. The role of such hormones has been documented repeatedly across studies. The hormones involved often keep you ‘stuck’ in a state of either shock or depression following an affair.
Cortisol is one of several hormones that keep you stressed and unable to ‘calm down’. There are times that you wanted to be yourself, yet find that you can’t. There is a reason for that and it involves those pesky hormones.
The good news is that you don’t have to stay stuck in that hormonal parking lot. You can learn ways of getting past the stress. In my video on Affair Trauma, you’ll learn ways of getting unstuck from those situations.
You’ll learn ways of comforting yourself and calming down. You need some ways of taming all the activity going on with your emotions and brain. This video helps you stair step down from being so wound-up and freaked out.
In such cases, where you are ‘uptight’ and stressed out, it really is “not your fault” that you’re unable to get past the affair, for both men and women. The hormones involved in the stress reaction totally change your mood and your ability to handle stress.When those experience continue being repeated, it changes your brain.
Those mood changes and stress you are experiencing, along with the bodily symptoms really are not your fault. Once the powerful stress-related hormones kick in, you loose control of your body.
The chemicals take over and start calling the shots, even when you don’t want them to. They tell you brain where to activate. That tells it what to turn on and what to turn off in your body. You can give order all day long, but a stressed out body and mind can’t follow orders.
If you are caught up in ‘the lifestyle’ of swinging, you are not immune from those hormonal changes. Your situation has some different dynamics. Those are addressed in the Relationship Trauma for Swingers video.
The link between hormones and affairs is real. Hormones definitely impact your behavior and thinking in ways you never imagined. The twist is that those hormones have a bigger impact at the end of an affair than at the beginning of one.
Those hormonal reactions make it harder getting over an affair, than the emotional rush of starting one.
Best Regards,
Jeff
