Picture yourself in a room full of wives in heterosexual relationships. Now look to the left of you, then to the right. What do you see?
According to Susan Shapiro Barash, author of the newly revised book, A Passion for More: Affairs that Make or Break Us (Meridian Editions), you see a whole lot of women cheating on their husbands — 70 percent, in fact. This mega-number may knock your socks off. Or not. The figure will be no surprise if you’re one of the women rushing off to canoodle with your lover at a day-rate motel when the hubby thinks you’re at the gym or having lunch with a client.
Women may be in an affair primarily for silky romance, enhanced self-esteem, a shot of high-voltage power, or the novelty of hot sex with a new partner. Consider this 53-year-old wife from Detroit, who has been married for 29 years and has three grown children. Barash calls her “Clarice.” (In order to protect her interviewees’ privacy, Barash explains that she has changed names, some physical characteristics and occasionally created composites in the dozens of women she profiles in her book.) “I do it for the sex,” Clarice admits, “and to feel good about myself. Some people like to go to the movies or binge on a series; this is what I do.”
Do you? Could you? Before you judge, let’s hear what the author has to say.
Susan, you’ve been looking at female adultery since 1991. What draws you to this subject? How do you conduct your research?
I have been long been fascinated by how women are positioned in our culture. How they present themselves versus how they really feel and what it is that yearn for. What got my attention from the start was the risks that convention-bound women were willing to take for a lover, and how prevalent this was.
When I first began my research in 1991, I put ads in newspapers across the country and on the ‘board’ at Y’s and fitness centers. From the start I interviewed a diverse group of women in terms of age, race, religion, level of education. In the following years, I posted on the internet as well. Often the interviewees knew someone who was having an affair and so one interview led to another.
Why do you think there is more female adultery now than 30 years ago? Do these affairs tend to be secret or an expression of an open marriage?
There are more affairs now than in the past because there is more access to ‘the other man’ through social media, cell phones, the internet. If someone wants to find that former colleague she always had a crush on, or a college or high school reunion, the information is readily available. There are options at every turn because women have more autonomy and power than ever before — the workplace, the schoolyard, the gym, Starbucks, travel.
Women are quite facile at keeping the affair a secret and most of the women are not in open marriages or open partnerships. They are aware that their husband or partner would be upset if the affair was discovered. To this end, the women are very careful and clever at balancing their lives with the affair.
Why do wives and women in committed relationships cheat?
In my study/book, I found that women stray for four reasons. There are empowerment affairs, where the women feel in control and that this is an option. They are confidently trading in a currency that men have historically had available to them. There are sex-driven affairs, where the women want more sex than is happening in their primary relationship and have no intention of any commitment.
Next are love affairs. These frequently throw the woman for a loop and her life becomes challenging. In many cases, she and her husband/partner were very happy and then the lover came along and changed the status quo. The fourth type are self-esteem affairs. In these cases, the women describe their marriages/ monogamous relationships as stale, they feel unappreciated and invisible. The lover makes them feel alive and important.
Has the Pandemic given women a what-the-hell, life-is-short-and-I-may-as-well-cheat attitude or made them more cautious?
Yes, you are totally right. Women of all ages reported that the pandemic made them rethink everything with a sense of how precious time is. What about the man who got away, the one left behind? Where is he now and what was not experienced with him? Add to that the fact that everyone was working at home and enough women reported this made their husbands/partners less desirable. Many of the resulting affairs were cyberspace, virtual affairs that got the women through some tough times.
Let’s talk about what you call “emotional affairs.” What are they and do they damage the primary relationship as much as a traditional, in-the-flesh fling might?
Emotional affairs definitely are affairs. There is no question one is crossing the line even if it isn’t a physical affair. Emotions traded, secrets shared, confidential conversations — these all count as having an effect on the women and on the marriages/ partnerships. The litmus test is how one’s husband/partner would feel knowing about the exchange. For this reason, these affairs are as guarded as a physical affair where the couple is meeting in a hotel room. Women describe the emotional affair as riveting and all-encompassing — they finally feel understood.
At what age is infidelity most common?
Infidelity happens at any stage of a relationship. I have interviewed women in their early twenties to their early eighties who are engaged in a tryst. Of course there is nothing like the demands of parenting to squash the romance in a marriage/ partnership. For women with children — babies through the teenage years — report that they miss how it used to be with their husbands/ partners and are uncertain how to recapture it. That opens up a void for a lover to fill.
Who usually ends an affair, a man or a woman?
The majority of women in my book/study have been the ones to leave the affair. However, in my research, only 35 % end up with their lover. And for 70 % of my interviewee pool, the lover is a wake-up call — a way to better understand themselves and what they have and do not have in their marriage/ primary relationship. So, while 52% stay in the marriage and 48% leave, there is an awakening and a self-exploration that has occurred for the women.
After husbands find out they’ve been betrayed, your research suggests that more of them than in the past are willing to try to fix the marriage through therapy. Why?
Most times the men do not find out about the affair because women are adept at compartmentalizing their lives and invested in the secret. It is only if a woman wants her husband/partner to know, as a negotiating tool in the relationship, that she confesses. Then she says, look, I’ve been having this affair, but I’d like to work on us. Let me tell you what is missing.” And in a departure from the past, men today are willing to listen and learn. The affair could be the saving grace.
About Susan Shapiro Barash:
Susan Shapiro Barash is an American author of thirteen nonfiction women’s issue books. She writes fiction under her pen name Susannah Marren. Susan’s books focus on the gender divide, how women are positioned in our society and their innermost feelings about themselves as daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, wives, mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, rivals, colleagues and lovers. Susan has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Chicago Tribune, Elle, ‘O’, and Marie Claire.
For over two decades Susan has taught in the Writing Department at Marymount Manhattan College. She has guest taught at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and presently is teaching at the Westport Writers’ Workshop. She has served as a literary panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a judge for the International Emmys and as Vice Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Women’s Leadership Board at the JFK School of Government, Harvard.
