Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free

by Wednesday Martin

I couldn’t bear making them feel that way, any more than I could tolerate the sting of judgment, the feeling of having done something bad, of being bad. And while I felt the urge to play around on the side and couldn’t sustain interest in one man for as long as I felt I should, I didn’t want to be subjected to non-exclusivity myself. Hypocritically, I wanted to have affairs, but I didn’t want my partner to. As one vivaciously beautiful and intelligent woman in her late thirties told me, “I don’t want to be with a player, even though I want to be one.” Of course she added, “What the hell is wrong with me?!”

Over the next decade or so, I worked, socialized, and had relationships and sex. I thought I would grow up and grow out of my “crazy” libido, that non-monogamy was perhaps a developmental stage for the twentysomething, and that once I was in my thirties, things would change. I would calm down and figure it all out, and life would get easier. It didn’t. When I was in a long-term relationship, the sexual spark died within a year or two, and I felt defective that it had happened—and that I cared enough about it to move on or look for other excitement. When I wasn’t in a relationship, I longed for sex and sought it out. This too made me feel like a freak, since everyone knows men want sex more than women.

“My job is to help people who have decided not to be monogamous keep turning back to each other if they feel insecure or flooded with fear. That way a negative becomes a positive. What might weaken or sink a relationship strengthens it.”

This makes sense.