Why Would Any Man Choose To Be Cucked? - Dr David Ley

The term cuckolding is related to the cuckoo bird that lays an egg in the nest of other species, and then that egg hatches sooner, and then the cuckoo chick consumes the food and the resources of the other species. And early naturalists looked at that and said, "Well, that's what happens if a guy's wife cheats on him. The man is at risk of investing resources in a child not genetically related to him."

(wind blowing) Cuckolding, why did you get into that?

(laughs) Why did... Well, uh, to be clear, why did I get into writing and reading and researching about it and dr- working with people that, that engage in it? Um, uh, back in like 2007, um, I was clinically depressed. Um, I, in my day job, so to speak, I run a, a large, eh, you know, community mental health center agency, uh, traditional behavioral health services, lots of Medicaid, HR, budget, all those kinds of issues. Um, and it was really challenging. I was really struggling. So, um, I, I started collecting data for a study about, uh, consensual non-monogamy. At the time, very little had been published about polyamory, et cetera. And, uh, I never published the study. It was a, it was a crappy little study, probably not very good anyway. But as I was doing it, I ran into these two couples who lived the cuckold or hot wife lifestyle, where the wife was, uh, enthusiastically, um, you know, sexual with people outside the relationship, with men outside the relationship, and the, and the husband was monogamous. And my initial impression and reaction was honestly to say, "Wow, that, that's crazy. That, that can't work." Um, but what was really remarkable was that, uh, both of these couples had been married for decades. They had incredibly successful careers, uh, very healthy, you know, kids, families, um, incredible communication skills. By every measure that we would, as a therapist, you know, apply, these were very healthy people. And so then I, I kind of questioned myself. I was like, "Well, why did I assume that, that they're unhealthy?" And, and at that point, you know, I'd been working around sexuality issues for a while, but, but I realized that without noticing it, I was applying moral biases around female sexuality, around promiscuity, around monogamy. And those biases had snuck into my clinical thinking. And so I, uh, went to the literature, and there was nothing published about this. There was, there was one study in the '90s by an Isra- Israeli psychologist who analyzed, you know, letters to Penthouse about wife sharing. And, um, there's nothing else, nothing else published about this. And then as I started, you know, talking to people, I started hearing how common this was. And so I dove into the literature, um, evolutionary psychology, uh, ps- psychology of monogamy, biology of s- uh, of sexuality, female sexual arousal. Um, uh, and I also interviewed people, um, around the world who were living, uh, this, this lifestyle. And, and at the end of the day, I found that, you know, there were actually lots of, uh, people who... clinicians like me who, um, assumed it was unhealthy because they'd never been taught how diverse sexuality is. Um, and, uh, the fascinating thing is, I mean, you know, when I wrote the book, um, nobody was really talking about cuckolding. But over (laughs) the past few years, it's really exploded. I mean, we've got, you know, the Jerry Falwell Jr. scandal, um, multiple folks around, uh, the Trump administration actually involved in cuckolding, and, um, it's super popular in pornography now, uh, and we didn't see any of that coming. Um, and, and n- my book, uh, Insatiable Wives, on the topic, um, re- was re-released as an audiobook last year, and it's just like flying off the shelves on Audible because people love to go on these road trips with their wife and pop that in and then say, "Hey, what do you think?"