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

Elaine is typical of affairs of the era and of her milieu. Married and in her mid-twenties, she met a man she felt an instant attraction to, Irwin, at a party at her uncle’s house. Not long after, they had sex in Irwin’s car (“I went down on him, in the car! I said to myself, If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it the whole way!”). Irwin told Elaine that he would never leave his wife, but Elaine had an agenda of her own, and after a meet-up or two in the city, she implemented a scheme: “I got more friendly with his wife, so that the four of us were together constantly.… There were times when Irwin and I were in New York and we’d fall asleep in a hotel, and we’d both be late coming home, and the four of us [all] had [a date] that night, and [my] husband and [his] wife never put it together.” Elaine would go shopping with Irwin’s wife and then see him at night and say, “Ugh, what your wife bought!”