Women Are Cheating More Than Ever. 'The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives' Takes a Crack at Why
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“Jordan and I have been struggling for a while,” begins Jessi Draper Ngatikaura when she’s confronted by Layla Taylor about her affair in the season three opener of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
She paints a picture of her marriage to husband Jordan Ngatikaura on the brink of collapse after years of issues and confesses to cheating on him with a fellow Hulu reality star, Vanderpump Villa’s Marciano Brunette.
Jessi, 33, admits that she kissed Marciano twice during a night out, stayed in a hotel room with him (without having sex), and continued an emotional affair until she decided to come clean to her husband. They’ve been picking up the pieces ever since.
If rights and wrongs were black and white, it would be easy to cast blame onto Jessi. She’s the one in the relationship, she’s the one who lied to her husband, she’s the one who engaged in the affair. However, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives paints a more complex picture.
What follows, across the show’s 10-episode third season and Jessi’s ongoing press tour, is a series of revelations about Jordan’s behavior, which she now describes as “emotionally abusive,” that speak to Jessi’s mental state.
“There is no excuse for what I did,” Jessi told SheKnows this month about her affair. “I don’t want to blame Jordan because it was my own actions, but I do think his actions definitely contributed to my mindset that led to the affair.”
According to research cited in psychoanalyst Esther Perel’s 2017 book, State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, there has been a 40% jump in married women having affairs since the 1990s, while the rate of men having affairs has stayed the same. According to a 2024 study cited by Marie Claire Australia, women closed the affair gap. We are having just as many affairs as men.
Women’s reasons for cheating are largely understudied, but the 2024 study, published in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behaviour, does offer some details by way of explanation. Much of what women report as their motivations for cheating echoes in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ affair scandal.
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The study found no evidence to support the theory that women cheat to “mate switch,” or upscale their partner. Often, women who cheat don’t find their affair partner more parentally attractive than their primary partner. Jessi speaks to this when she repeatedly calls Jordan a good dad and misses having him around for her kids during their trial separation. However, like another woman in the study, Jessi admits that she shoulders the burden of parenting alone.
“There wasn’t a single day, I’m pretty sure, for the past 3 years, where we didn’t fight,” Jessi tells her castmates in the third episode of the season. “I didn’t do anything right, parenting, laundry. I was doing it all.”
Jessi talks about being the breadwinner, noting that Jordan doesn’t work or pull his weight in their home. This is a common factor in women’s affairs. Psychotherapists find that women who cheat may be looking to have fun and enjoy themselves as a break from the exhaustion of taking care of everyone else.
The study also found that women are more likely to cheat when they feel dismissed by their partner. In the fourth episode, viewers catch a glimpse of this side of Jordan when he tells his wife, “This is exactly why I’ve treated you the way that I’ve treated you,” while a tearful Jessi struggles to explain why she got dinner with Marciano and her friends after meeting up with him for a lie detector test, which Jordan was aware of in advance.
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Later, we see Jordan gather Jessi’s friends in an apparent attempt to get them on his side. He’s unsuccessful but admits that he “acted extremely poorly” in his marriage and that “made us get to a place where it was extremely toxic.”
Ultimately, in another debunking of the “mate switching” theory, Jessi and Jordan reconciled after plenty of therapy. He has spoken out about his part in their marriage issues, telling People, “I take full accountability for the pain I caused Jessi during our marriage. At that time in my life, I was deeply unhealed, and as the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. That doesn’t excuse my behavior in any way, it’s something I’ve had to face and take full responsibility for.”
Jessi makes it clear in the show that she set out to have an affair, and isn’t quite sure how she found herself in this situation. But if it’s possible to answer why women cheat, Jessi’s affair might give a lot of clues.
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