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

Of her own life, she writes: On the mornings when I walk from my boyfriend’s apartment to the home I share with my husband, I sometimes find myself reflecting on the disconnects between my own experiences with romantic love and the way romantic love is normally understood in the time and place in which I live (Vancouver, Canada, in 2016). Sometimes this starts out in my mind as a replay of an awkward conversation, one of those where someone’s asked me a perfectly innocent question—“So how do you two know each other?”—and unwittingly forced me to choose between giving a deceptive answer and providing what I know will be too much information. If I tell the truth—“He’s my boyfriend”—to people who know me and my husband, it’s inevitably going to cause embarrassment—the kind of embarrassment that comes with suddenly being made to acknowledge the existence of something awkward, something abnormal, something that makes people feel icky. Deceptive answers—“Oh, he used to work in the office upstairs from mine”—are easy and comfortable.