My mother stayed with my cheating father because she was raised to believe that divorce was a sin and that it if a woman was a good enough wife, her man wouldn’t stray. It took her 20 years to get past that brand of horse shit.

Wrong. Very, VERY wrong. It is purely cultural. Women are socialized to stay with men, regardless of how they are treated or whether their husband cheats. For all the progress women have made (real and imagined, because your entry here, and your recent one about “deserved rape” are sterling examples of the double-standard against women, proof of how we still have far to go), we haven’t quite escaped the 1950s mindset of “Stand By Your Man” which is so much more than just a bad song. Women are taught that cheating is just what men do and that it’s a silly reason to leave a man, because, wait for it–cheating is biological in men, they’re just wired to be that way. You’re actually claiming that women stick around because of some chemical release and getting men off the hook by claiming it’s a self-esteem issue, when the reality is that women and men are taught that men “just do” these things that hurt women because that’s how men are, and women have to just tolerate it because it’ll never change.

That is the reality. Your claim here is total myth. Women are harrassed, ostracized, manipulated, and bullied into staying with men who cheat–and with men who abuse–and stigamtized if they do leave. Perhaps not to the extent that we used to be, but it is far from a rare or unusual mindset now.