The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

by Esther Perel

Loneliness, years of sexual deadness, resentment, regret, marital neglect, lost youth, craving attention, canceled flights, too much to drink—these are the nuts and bolts of everyday infidelity.

Sometimes silence is caring.

In the transition to marriage, too many women experience their sexuality as shifting from desire to duty. When it becomes something she should do, it no longer is something she wants to do. By contrast, when a woman has an affair, she brings a self-determination to her pleasure. What is activated in the affair is her will—she pursues her own satisfaction.