Flings & Affairs: Book Eight

You argue that there is now more shame in working it out after an affair than just getting a divorce. It used to be that divorce was the stigma. Now, staying when you can leave is the new shame. For so long, women have had to endure. Now that we can leave, we must leave. It's really become the norm of the moment: The shame of staying is such today that when a couple comes in and the woman says, "I still love you," or, "I want to see if we can repair this," or, "I don't want to be divorced.

I grew up in that shitshow and I don't want it" — she has to hide this. I can't tell you the number of women who have been dumped by girlfriends who tell them, "You have no spine," or, "You're letting him walk all over you. This was partly the Hillary Clinton story.

Portrait of an adulterer: secret shots of 50 married men I met on dating websites

How could this woman who had the option to go choose not to go? I think we should feel free to choose. Leaving and divorce are always viewed as better than any of the other more compromised solutions that people come up with. But these compromises are attempts at figuring out complicated situations. Much of clinical practice focuses on helping the person who's been cheated on. You show compassion to everyone involved in an affair, including adulterers and their lovers.

We are much more willing to blame the person who went to seek sex elsewhere than to hold accountable the person who has been refusing sex for years — men or women. Many of those who stray have spoken up many times over many years. I have compassion for all the parties involved. There is zero condoning but there is also zero judgment. For some people, this nuanced, dual perspective is very welcome. When you write about this, people instantly think that you must be justifying infidelity.

I have my enemies. None of these people have actually read my work or been at a presentation of mine. You expect people with differences of opinion to reach out and try to find out why their colleagues think the way they do, rather than distorting the whole thing based on one very misunderstood idea.

The last thing that one can say about me is that I promote affairs. People actually perceive affairs quite differently around the world, from "bitter condemnation" to "outright enthusiasm. I'll never forget the woman in Morocco to whom I said that in America, you're encouraged to leave your partner if they stray. She says, "All of Morocco would be divorced if we had to lose our straying husbands.

In Mexico and Argentina, women talk about the rise of female infidelity as a challenge to the chauvinistic male status quo. Still, the double standard is alive and well in many parts of the world. Straying is a male privilege backed up by all kinds of theories to explain why men are "natural roamers.

You've seen a surge of heterosexual wives cheating in recent years. Women's infidelity could only occur in greater numbers because of contraception. They could finally experience sexuality without the threat of pregnancy. Also, mobility, economic independence, greater equality which allows her to finally say, "I want something too," a greater sense of entitlement and individualism in the society at large and less fear of the consequences.

You describe cheating wives who are bored with "mothering" their husbands and with the role of "house manager" that's been foisted on them. I'm not saying this to justify their affairs but for quite a few women, if you really want to know what they want to experience emotionally and sexually, you have to go look at those affairs. They have a truth about themselves in their affairs that they often do not have in their marriages.

Lust in Translation by Pamela Druckerman | www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Books

You believe that for some, infidelity can actually restart a marriage that's been stuck in a domestic rut. An affair can be a make it or a break it for a couple. It can be the death knell that finishes off a relationship that was dying on the vine. Nobody has an affair to improve their relationship, just as nobody would recommend getting sick because it reinvigorates your perspective. You've found that a not insubstantial number of married couples experience an erotic charge after one person cheats.

• Pro-Wrestling Interviews.
• The Globe and Mail.
• The Spirit of Sweetwater;
• What Makes Married Men Want to Have Affairs? -- New York Magazine;
• Cinq Mars — Volume 1!
• Therapist Esther Perel on how an affair can break – or remake – a marriage - The Globe and Mail.
• Poems & Thoughts - For the Soul!.

Polly, one of your patients, tells you that since her husband's affair, "sex has been the most erotic we ever had — frantic, ardent and urgent. It is the story that is less told. People are reluctant to share this, but crisis and the fear of loss can reignite a desire in them that they haven't experienced in years — not for everybody, for sure, but for some people. When your partner has an affair, the desire of the third person sheds a new light on that partner.

She described some complicated, postcheating sexual dynamics with her husband, including orgasms "heightened by grief. She wasn't a victim. She was a woman who was hurt and who claimed her passion. It hurts no less, but she took the pain to a place where she wanted to fight for something, to say, "I want you back. Your patients are embarrassed to admit that marital sex can, at least momentarily, get better after an affair.

The majority of people who write to me are straying women and wounded husbands — the shame of staying is even bigger for men whose wives have affairs.

• La CIA en Chile (1970-1973) (Spanish Edition).
• How an affair can break – or remake – a marriage!
• Les Femmes aux cheveux courts (LITT.GENERALE) (French Edition).
• Macroporous Polymers: Production Properties and Biotechnological/Biomedical Applications;

These are the two groups that are now most vulnerable and speak the least. Meanwhile, in the clinical literature, "the other woman" is never mentioned.

Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee

She's not a human being. Another quiet cohort is the man in my book whose wife has Alzheimer's. He goes to visit her daily at the nursing home. How many years is he going to live with her not recognizing him? He wants to have a connection and meets another woman at the home. The two of them are in a beautiful relationship with each other while they are each taking care of their partners. They are facing the ambiguous loss of their partners: The majority of the people we work with are not actually chronic philanderers. They are people who have been faithful for years, decades.

In the midst of their affairs, an adulterer might visit his wife's mother in hospital when she's sick. Or he might talk to his wife's niece who's been cutting herself and take her out for breakfast. You see responsible people who are doing right by their beloveds and their families, who are at the same time having a relationship or flings that are deep breaches of trust. You can have another version where the person is completely absent, travels all the time and is never home.

Is an affair always just an act of cowardice or is it sometimes also an act of boldness, a way of saying no to a rotten system? Some people need to betray to go against a marital regime that goes wrong. A woman or a man who is beleaguered, demeaned, degraded or neglected seeks or meets a new person with whom they can have a completely different experience — someone who respects them, values what they have to say and shows them that this is not their fate.

You touch on infidelity in open relationships.

• ¿Qué se le puede pedir a la vida?: Pasa página y reinvéntate (Spanish Edition).
• Avoir un Centre (Théôria) (French Edition).
• The Affairs of Men.

Even here, people find ways to break the few rules that have been explicitly set out — sex with a specific friend, or using the marital bed, or not using protection. Even in relationships that have consensual non-monogamy, where people have the permission to be with other partners, they still may go to the one place that was forbidden. She realised then that one date was enough. Many of them said this was their first time and seemed very nervous, but others were serial adulterers. They had all, however, put a lot of thought into how to have an affair — pseudonyms were used, and every one, she says, had a secret phone.

The men knew she was an artist, but none had any idea they were the subject of her work. Then she started using a disposable camera, whipped out on the premise of photographing something on the table. So many of the men talked about how they could go and have sex with a prostitute, but using those sites was to get something else.

There is this fantasy of an affair, and I was able to show the reality — the mundanity, the loneliness. It was just pattern after pattern. Some of the men would talk about sex and be very desire-driven, but there would still be hints of that loneliness. Did she ever feel bad about deceiving them? What happens in that exchange? He had travelled down from Newcastle to see me and was already on his second or third marriage.

There was so much sadness in him. The project taught her a lot, she says, mostly about the importance of communication between couples. Caruana is now searching for couples who have experienced and successfully overcome cheating for a new video commission. To get in touch, click here. Dating Sex Relationships Internet Marriage features.

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