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Whereas Mating in Captivity probed the dilemmas of desire within committed relationships, The State of Affairs tracks the trajectory of desire when it goes looking elsewhere.
Through examining illicit love from multiple angles, I hope to engage you, the reader, in an honest, enlightened, and provocative exploration of modern relationships in their many variations.
My role as a therapist is to create a safe space where the diversity of experiences can be explored with compassion.
Instead, my goal is to introduce a more productive conversation about the topic, one that will ultimately strengthen all relationships by making them more honest and more resilient.
What are we to make of the duality between the liberating and empowering dimensions of adulterous love and the damage that it can inflict?
Yet despite its widespread denunciation, infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy.
So much so that it is the only sin that gets two commandments in the Bible, one for doing it and one just for thinking about it.
visceral,
titillation.
Infidelity must be a symptom of a relationship gone awry.
Last but not least, divorce affords more self-respect than forgiveness.
The entire lexicon is organized around an axis of wrongdoing that not only reflects our judgment but fosters it.
Whenever I tell someone I’m writing a book about infidelity, the immediate reaction is usually “Are you for or against?” as if there were only two options. My answer is “Yes.” Behind
But when we reduce the conversation to simply passing judgment, we are left with no conversation at all.
transgressive
promiscuity,
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. Many of these people are deeply conflicted about their behavior, and they come to me seeking help.
ennui,
Paradoxically, many people go outside their marriages in order to preserve them.
transgression
Affairs are an act of betrayal and they are also an expression of longing and loss.
To look at straying simply in terms of its ravages is not only reductionistic but also unhelpful.
both/and approach may be much more appropriate for the majority of cases. We
Even an open relationship is no guarantee against deception.
What draws people outside the lines they worked so hard to establish? Why does sexual betrayal hurt so much?
For me, these conversations are part and parcel of any adult, intimate relationship.
For most couples, unfortunately, the crisis of an affair is the first time they talk about any of this. Catastrophe has a way of propelling us into the essence of things.
encourage you not to wait for a storm, but to address these ideas ...
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As tempting as it is to reduce affairs to sex and lies, I prefer to use infidelity as a portal into the complex landscape of relationships and the boundaries we draw to bind them. Infidelity brings us face-to-face with the volatile and opposing forces of passion: the lure, the lust, the urgency, the love and its impossibility, the relief, the entrapment, the guilt, the heartbreak, the sinfulness, the surveillance, the
crevices
Jessica is a financially independent woman with options, unlike the many women who have no recourse in the face of their husbands’ patriarchal privileges.
And precisely because she lives with a different bill of rights, our culture demands that she exercise them.
“Did we really have to go through an affair just to be able to be truly honest with each other?”
precludes any possibility for deeper
is helpful for her to get in touch with her anger, an appropriate response to this disfigurement of their relationship.
We have nothing to gain from breeding bitter, vengeful, and divisive sentiments.
When it comes to sex, people lie—especially about sex they are not supposed to be having.
Sexual honesty is inseparable from sexual politics.
Therefore, my focus is stories, not numbers.
All of these apply equally to infidelity, and I’d add another a-word: ambiguous.
As a result of this burgeoning field of furtive activities, we need to carefully rethink how we conceptualize infidelity in the digital age.
nebulous
not necessarily a particular sexual or emotional behavior that comprises the betrayal; rather, it is the fact that the behavior is not within the couple’s agreement.
Relationships are a patchwork of unspoken rules and roles that we begin stitching on the first date.
This does not mean they are immune to the agony of betrayal, but they are more likely to be on the same page about what constitutes
Hence, our rental agreements are much more elaborate than our relational agreements.
And yet the concealment that is frowned upon in one corner of our planet is reframed as “discretion” in others. In the stories
But it may also require that we ask ourselves, What about privacy? And where does privacy end and secrecy begin? Is snooping a legitimate preemptive tactic? Does intimacy require absolute transparency?
As Marcel Proust understood, it’s our imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person.8 Eroticism is such that the kiss we only imagine giving can be as powerful and exciting as hours of actual lovemaking.
These stories make a critical point—many affairs are less about sex than about desire: the desire to feel desired, to feel special, to be seen and connected, to compel attention. All these carry an erotic frisson that makes us feel alive, renewed, recharged. It is more energy than act, more enchantment than intercourse.
