Wife Guys Keep Cheating On Their Wives

Why? What are they doing? In this video, I aim to talk about Ned Fulmer (formerly of the Try Guys) and some of the socioeconomic realities behind the hot topic of his (and other famous men's) affairs, as featured controversially on Saturday Night Live.

edited by danae o.!

03:10 - Part 1: Survivorship Bias
10:40 - Part 2: Wife Guys
15:21 - Part 3: Parasocial Relationships

[MissyMidna]

As a person who was named after someone's mistress...men PLEASE DON'T.

[jenrosejenrose]

"nobody deserves to be betrayed" hit hard. Really insightful video.

[WildKat]

I think the better question is "why do we think guys who 'love' their wives are automatically good?" Like the bar for being a good husband is SUPER low, so why is doing the bare minimum to be considered a mediocre spouse somehow a trait of bring "good?" Like if a wife did the bare minimum that husbands can get away with we would say she is a shit wife that doesn't deserve her husband.

[hashtagmate]

It's almost as if being obsessive about your partner while dehumanizing her (aka always calling her "my wife" instead of her name) is always unhealthy....

[sonorasgirl]

I think one thing I’ve noticed with wife guys is they always talk about their wives in an idolizing way, at least for a while. I compare this to my dad, who is pretty well off, and who has been happily married to my mom for almost 40 years, and he LOVES her, and has had people try to separate him, but he talks about her like a human. Neither the idolizing or put downs, just…a lovely human he cares for

[Mothermochi]

I was married to one of these “wife guys. He cheated and abused me emotionally. He exploited our relationship to further is public career. He got tattoos (without asking me too) and posted little tidbits about our happy relationship, all the while he isolated himself and did what he wanted. He joined the “family” when it was convenient for him. It destroyed my self esteem, mental health. I feel for all of the women and children used in this way.

[annearchy]

This is LEGIT the first video I came across that actually tackled the power dynamics of "wife guys" cheating. Ned Fulmer is the third man I distinctively remember pulling this crap within the circles I follow for the past few years. It feels disappointing when you find stuff out like that and now I will always question men who build their careers on being a good husband etc.

[Celestein]

The thing with 'wife guys' is that their whole spiel about 'their wife' is actually narcissistic and about how awesome and great it makes THEM look instead of their spouse as a person. It's not appreciation for the other, it's a flex which attracts admiration for themselves.. especially from other women who fawn and praise them over how wonderful man-material they are. It is always done very publicly too, it's performative. I bet that alone with their actual wives, they're nowhere as fantastic and present because no audience is there to show off to.

[usyugxs]

As a woman. Marrying someone who loves and adores me and tells people they love and adore me is you know anyone's dream for marriage. It's kinda terrifying that those actions can really mean nothing and arent security of its self. Puts my trust issues into over drive. In highschool I had a "boyfriend" who didn't want anyone to know about me especially his mom. He told me it was just because she was a very religious Muslim woman. Turns out he was with every other girl he had access to. Makes me look for people who are very happy to tell people about me. But with all this. What can you trust?

[SorrySoup]

This is very valid.
Can I say that, in my very biased personal experience, the guys "taken" guys who have tried to hit on me were ALL very about their wives/girlfriends online. It has actually done a lot to mess with my trust, I never want to get married because I have this irrational fear that the kind of men who are interested in me just lie to get what they want when they want it.

[Anounoune]

You know... This made me think about how these guys were capitalizing on their wives's labor while also betraying them. Great points made in the video.

[MichelleD]

Where parasocial relationships can go sour is when fans think their personal feelings supersede those of the people DIRECTLY affected by bad news. In the most recent Try Guys podcast, Zach talked about how someone (correction:) approached him at a wedding he was a guest at and started chatting about the drama as if he didn’t know what was happening and wasn’t personally handling the consequences of the events. That reminds me of how many years ago, a preteen Bindi Irwin had to put on a happy face and console fans who were weeping and bemoaning the death of her OWN FATHER. Fan entitlement is one hell of a drug

[ML-dilt]

I remember all of my friends saying that my (now ex) husband reminded them of Ned because of what *they* saw. However, when the doors were shut and the curtains were drawn, I got to see the abusive, neglectful, selfish man who walked around pretending to be a 'wife guy'. Of course, I lost all my friends in the divorce because how could anything I say about him possibly be true? He's a 'wife guy'.

This news about Ned made me happier than just about anything in the world could. I'm sorry for his wife and his family, but I saw through that bullshit act because I was married to one of these losers. This news *validated* my suffering.

[jademoon]

This is actually quite common in relationships. The intensity of the feelings they have for their partner are mistaken as a deep, abiding, unconditional love. Irl, it's some combination of fulfilling a fantasy or dream, the social/political/etc. cred they get from the other person, sexual desire, enhancement of personal image, excitement and fascination at least bordering on obsession.. Stuff like that.

But. It's not deep, abiding, unconditional love for their partner. It's not necessarily about them as a person at all. And so that will eventually fade and it isn't retrievable. So, what happens?

They meet someone else who DOES fulfill those feelings, the feelings their partner used to give them, and they pursue that instead. Cheating.

You know how Adam Levine wanted to name his kid after the girl he was seeing? That legit happened to me with the first guy I slept with when I was around 18. He had broken up with his longtime girlfriend and we started dating, she called a few months into our relationship and said she was pregnant, and it got weird. I was like, I'm uncomfortable with this, you need to be in their lives, this isn't gonna work.

He called me after we broke up and said that he told the girl he chose the name: Jade for a girl, Jaden for a boy. She agreed, having no clue where the name came from and said they should put a y in (his name is Jayme) and he flat out refused, because my name has no y in it. It was a girl. Her name is Jade. Neither her mom nor her know about me. I hope they don't find out. He messaged me years later and said, "I should've married you when I had the chance" lol. Dude what?? What chance? I was like 18-19 and you were having a baby lmao there was never a chance!

But he was obsessed with the fantasy he had. That's what it was. No normal thought process would allow you to obsess over a girl you dated for a few months over ten years ago. He obviously had this idea that his life would've been amazing had he declared ownership of me, and I would've made life sunshine and rainbows forever.

Only one of my exes hasn't done that, and he owed my mom money, so there were mitigating factors to him not reaching out. But the rest have. Partially because I have PTSD and issues that lead me to choose narcissists, but also partly because I have a one and done policy. If we aren't working and I've put years in, and we break up, that's it. No more chances. It's not going to be any different if we did. And I think that immediate slamming of the door screws with them psychologically, and they develop an obsession and fantasy world about what it WOULD HAVE been like. They don't even consider what COULD happen, like idk, maybe the same thing as the first time??

Anyway, my point is, I know this sort of person, and it's because it was never about them being deeply in love with their spouse as a person. It's a whole bunch of weird psychological dysfunctions and fantasy. "The Wife Guy" never existed in the first place.

[taylorfrink]

tru, fell in love with a rich guy and the result was him cheating despite holding me to extreme standards and also going to jail for attacking me.... be wary about men with money bc they think the rules dont apply to them...im positive there are good ones out there but this is def a pattern in "powerful" men

[MethuselahWinter]

I grew up watching the Try Guys, like I was in my early teens when they left buzzfeed and now I’m 24 almost 25 and engaged. I completely understand the disappointment and hurt fans feel!

[Nublet]

I've been seeing tik toks that have been giving the "well that's what you get for forming a parasocial relationship" towards fans who feel hurt by this and I hate those takes not only because it is a very narrow view on parasocial relationships as they apply to "stan behavior" but because these wife guys who cheat did betray their fans (obviously to a much lesser extent to their partners and families)

Like with the try guys situation I'm sure there are a lot of fans out there who may not have any good models for a healthy romantic relationship in their real life so all they had was Ned and Ariel's relationship to be that good model. And I know that many would say that it's not really celebrities' responsibility to be good models to fans, and in many circumstances I agree with that wholeheartedly, but when a dude takes on the wife guy persona so hard that he makes the theme of his solo segment on a live show "Love" well. . .I don't think we can really fault fans for reading the "author's" intent

[lisahoshowsky]

Not going to lie, I clicked this expecting another piece of hot drama trash rehashing the same details through their personal lense of bias and misunderstanding (my own fault for continuing to watch them and the algorithm feeding them to me because of that) and was pleasantly surprised to find someone tackling this from not only a new angle but in an extremely thoughtful, intelligent and eloquent way. You’re the first person I’ve watched who’s really dove into it from a social and psychological standpoint.

[tianabrote]

I was conceived during an affair. My existence came with a lot of guilt that I’ve had to work through throughout my life

[lovegood]

People need to stop praising men for doing the bare minimum: liking their wives

Jesus it’s so ridiculous how a man doing what should be a normal thing (loving their partner) is seen as some groundbreaking romantic act and then y’all get surprised when he turns out to be a jackass