My point wasn't about the number but rather something more subtle. The very framing of the acts of adulterous wives as "cheating" (and the reinforcing of that framing through repetition) is effective at keeping our attention on the egalitarian social order of which those vows are part rather than on deeper patriarchal tradition which has no such vows.
In the world that has concepts of cheating, male prerogative doesn't exist.
If you're tossing a ball around with friends and one says, "Oops, I fouled," the implication is that a game with certain rules is being played, rules that apply as well to your own actions. Women embrace the language of vows and violation of vows when it's applied to them so that they can then apply it to men, as an alternative to checking their jealousy and submitting. This shows how deeply they believe in the value of vows — as a tool for achieving the real objective, which is to limit not their own sphere of action but that of men. Or at least that's a way of describing what I was getting at.
I haven't been reading the thread closely, so my remarks are intended as no further agreement or disagreement with your general thrust, rockfox. I just saw your comment about whether women take vows seriously, got an idea about some of the language we use around these things, and took the opportunity to share it.
