Chapter 2: Defining Infidelity
1. Because there is no Susan H. Eaves and Misty Robertson-Smith, “The Relationship Between Self-Worth and Marital Infidelity: A Pilot Study,” The Family Journal 15(4): 382–386.
2. research indicates a 40 percent jump National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey, cited in Frank Bass, “Cheating Wives Narrowed the Infidelity Gap over Two Decades,” July 2, 2013, Bloomberg News, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013–07–02/cheating-wives-narrowed-infidelity-gap-over-two-decades.
3. In fact, when the definition Rebecca J. Brand, Charlotte M. Markey, Ana Mills, and Sara D. Hodges, “Sex Differences in Self-Reported Infidelity and Its Correlates,” Sex Roles 57(1): 101–109.
4. The possibilities for dalliance Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg, Modern Romance (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 31.
5. “accessible, affordable, and anonymous” Al Cooper, Sex and the Internet (New York: Routledge, 2002), 140.
6. three constitutive elements I am indebted to Shirley Glass, whose “three red flags” inspired the line of thinking that led to my own triad.
7. “Sex and subterfuge” Julia Keller, “Your Cheatin’ Art: The Literature of Infidelity,” Chicago Tribune, August 17, 2008, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008–08–17/news/0808150473_1_scarlet-letter-anna-karenina-adultery.
8. As Marcel Proust understood Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. VI (Modern Library, 2000).
9. “dry dating” Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things (New York: Vintage, 2012), 136.
10. “It wasn’t sex because” Francesca Gentille, in private correspondence with the author.
11. “The move from passive” Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, Love Online: Emotions on the Internet (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 2.
Chapter 3: Affairs Are Not What They Used to Be
1. “Most societies have” Stephanie Coontz, personal correspondence with the author, March 2017.
2. The fact that she Statistic Brain Research Institute, 2016, http://www.statisticbrain.com/arranged-marriage-statistics/.
3. “property of the self” Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 14.
4. “unholy muddle of two” Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), xi.
5. “personal gain, low cost” William Doherty, Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart, 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 2013), 34.
6. “from being an institution” Alain de Botton, “Marriage, Sex and Adultery,” The Independent, May 23, 2012, http://www.independent.ie/style/sex-relationships/marriage-sex-and-adultery-26856694.html, accessed November 2016.
7. “Our high expectations” Pamela Druckerman, Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 273.
8. “Culturally, young adults” “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America,” In Brief, http://twentysomethingmarriage.org/in-brief/.
9. Hugo Schwyzer comments Hugo Schwyzer, “How Marital Infidelity Became America’s Last Taboo,” The Atlantic, May 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/how-marital-infidelity-became-americas-last-sexual-taboo/276341/.
10. “Swept away” Janis Abrahms Spring, After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful, 2nd ed. (New York: William Morrow, 2012), 14.
Chapter 4: Why Betrayal Hurts So Much
1. Couples therapist Michele Scheinkman Michele Scheinkman, “Beyond the Trauma of Betrayal: Reconsidering Affairs in Couples Therapy,” Family Process 44(2): 227–244.
2. “rigidly stuck in the present” Peter Fraenkel, private correspondence with the author, January 2017.
3. “internal structure that helps” Anna Fels, “Great Betrayals,” New York Times, October 5, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/great-betrayals.html.
4. “the only place” Jessa Crispin, “An Interview with Eva Illouz,” Bookslut, July 2012, http://www.bookslut.com/features/2012_07_019157.php.
5. The shift from shame Julie Fitness, “Betrayal and Rejection, Revenge and Forgiveness: An Interpersonal Script Approach” in ed. M. Leary, Interpersonal Rejection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 73–103.
6. “The dance of anger” Maria Popova, “Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on Anger, Forgiveness, the Emotional Machinery of Trust, and the Only Fruitful Response to Betrayal in Intimate Relationships,” Brain Pickings, https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/03/martha-nussbaum-anger-and-forgiveness/.
7. “transfer of vigilance” Janis Abrahms Spring, How Can I Forgive You?: The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not To (New York: William Morrow, 2005), 123.
8. “if loss of power” Steven Stosny, Living and Loving After Betrayal: How to Heal from Emotional Abuse, Deceit, Infidelity, and Chronic Resentment (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2013).
9. “Everything can be taken” Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Touchstone, 1984), 74–75.
Chapter 5: Little Shop of Horrors
1. Researcher Brené Brown Brené Brown speaking at the Emerging Women Live conference, San Francisco, October 2015.
Chapter 6: Jealousy
1. “that sickening combination” Helen Fisher, “Jealousy: The Monster,” O Magazine, September 2009, http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Understanding-Jealousy-Helen-Fisher-PhD-on-Relationships#ixzz3lwnRswS9.
2. “The literature on infidelity” M. Scheinkman and D. Werneck (2010), “Disarming Jealousy in Couples Relationships: A Multidimensional Approach,” Family Process 49(4): 486–502.
3. “Recognized all over” Ibid.
4. “erotic rage” Giulia Sissa, La Jalousie: Une passion inavouable [Jealousy: An Inadmissible Passion] (Paris: Les Éditions Odile Jacob, 2015). Translated from the French by the author.
5. Sociologist Gordon Clanton Ayala Malach Pines, Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (New York: Routledge, 2013) 123.
6. As Sissa points out Giulia Sissa, “Jaloux, deux souffrances pour le prix d’une,” Liberation, http://www.liberation.fr/livres/2015/03/11/jaloux-deux-souffrances-pour-le-prix-d-une_1218772, translated from the French by the author.
7. “Two’s company” Adam Phillips, Monogamy, (New York, Vintage, 1999) 95.
8. “suffer[s] four times over” Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 146.
9. “the demon that cannot be exorcised” William C. Carter, Proust In Love (Yale University Press, 2006), 56.
10. “Jealousy is the shadow” Pines, Romantic Jealousy, 200.
11. “an honest feeling” Sissa, Liberation.
12. “Four Cornerstones of Eroticism” Jack Morin, The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Passion and Fulfillment (New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), 60.
13. “Jealousy feeds on doubts” François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (New York: Penguin classics, 1982) 41.
14. “I was, in both senses” Annie Ernaux, L’occupation [Occupation] (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2003). Translated from the French by the author.
15. Weaning oneself off Helen Fisher, TED Talk, “The Brain in Love.” http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_love/transcript?language=en.
16. “an exquisitely tailored” David Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, 5th ed. (Psychology Press, 2015), 51.
Chapter 7: Self-Blame or Vengeance
1. “it is difficult to unlearn” Ayala Malach Pines, Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures (Taylor and Francis, 2013, kindle edition), loc. 2622–2625.
2. “Bouts of anger” Steven Stosny, Living and Loving After Betrayal: How to Heal from Emotional Abuse, Deceit, Infidelity, and Chronic Resentment (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2013), 10.
Chapter 8: To Tell or Not to Tell?
1. “A no-secrets policy” Michele Scheinkman, “Beyond the Trauma of Betrayal: Reconsidering Affairs in Couples Therapy,” Family Process 44(2): 227–244.
2. “We live in a culture” Evan Imber-Black, The Secret Life of Families (New York: Bantam Books, 1999), xv.
3. The same erotic longings Stephen Levine, Demystifying Love: Plain Talk for the Mental Health Professional (New York: Routledge, 2006), 102.
4. “favor the implicit” Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind (New York: Berkley, 2010), 50.
5. “Discretion seems to be” Pamela Druckerman, Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 124.
6. “French affairs can” Ibid., 125.
7. “puts a crack in the foundation” Harriet Lerner, personal correspondence with the author, March 2017.
8. “The tendency toward infidelity” Dan Ariely, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone–Especially Ourselves (New York: Harper, 2012), 244.
9. “You can’t ‘prevent’” Marty Klein, “After the Affair . . . What?” Sexual Intelligence, Issue 164, October 2013, http://www.sexualintelligence.org/newsletters/issue164.html.
Chapter 9: Even Happy People Cheat
1. Mexican essayist Octavio Paz Octavio Paz, The Double Flame: Essays on Love and Eroticism (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996), 15.
2. Hence, forbidden love stories Lise VanderVoort and Steve Duck, “Sex, Lies, and . . . Transformation,” in ed. Jean Duncombe, Kaeren Harrison, Graham Allan, and Dennis Marsden, The State of Affairs: Explorations in Infidelity and Commitment (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 1–14.
3. “lives that could” Anna Pulley, “The Only Way to Love a Married Woman,” Salon.com, July 21, 2015, http://www.salon.com/2015/07/21/the_only_way_to_love_a_married_woman/.
4. “rearranges all our priorities” Francesco Alberoni, L’erotisme (Pocket, 1994), 192. Translated from the French by the author.
5. “Perhaps,” he suggests Jack Morin, The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Passion and Fulfillment (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 81–82.
6. “erotic equation” Ibid., 56.
7. “poised on the perilous” Ibid., 39.
8. “there is always a suspicion” Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (Polity, 2003), 55.
Chapter 10: An Antidote to Deadness
1. “Love and Eros” Francesco Alberoni, L’erotisme (Pocket, 1994), 192.
2. we crave security Stephen Mitchell, Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002).
3. “expressions of exuberant defiance,” Ibid., 51.
4. “melancholy marriages” Pamela Haag, Marriage Confidential: Love in the Post-Romantic Age (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 15.
5. “The adulterous wish” Laura Kipnis, “Adultery,” Critical Inquiry 24(2): 289–327.
6. “The transformative allure” Lise VanderVoort and Steve Duck, “Sex, Lies, and . . . Transformation,” in ed. Jean Duncombe, Kaeren Harrison, Graham Allan, and Dennis Marsden, The State of Affairs (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 6.
7. “touchy-feely” M. Meana, “Putting the Fun Back in Female Sexual Function: Reclaiming Pleasure and Satisfaction.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Las Vegas, Nevada (November 2006).
8. “Erotic silence” Dalma Heyn, The Erotic Silence of the American Wife (New York: Plume, 1997), xv.
9. “Whereas before their affairs” Heyn, The Erotic Silence of the American Wife, 188.
10. Meana’s research with K. Sims and M. Meana, “Why Did Passion Wane? A Qualitative Study of Married Women’s Attributions for Declines in Desire,” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 36(4): 360–380.
11. “Rather than being anchored” Ibid., 97.
Chapter 11: Is Sex Ever Just Sex?
1. “One of the key challenges” Jack Morin, The Erotic Mind: Unlocking the Inner Sources of Passion and Fulfillment (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996) 180.
2. “unholy triangle” Terry Real, in conversation with the author, February 2016.
3. “Men are finding” Irma Kurtz, Mantalk: A Book for Women Only (Sag Harbor, NY: Beech Tree Books, 1987), 56.
4. “This macho view” Ethel Person, “Male Sexuality and Power,” Psychoanalytic Inquiry 6(1): 3–25.
5. “No bill of sexual rights” Daphne Merkin, “Behind Closed Doors: The Last Taboo,” New York Times Magazine, December 3, 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/03/magazine/behind-closed-doors-the-last-taboo.html.
6. “You may eventually discover” Janis Abrahms Spring, After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful, 2nd ed. (New York: William Morrow, 2012), 6.
Chapter 12: The Mother of All Betrayals?
1. In a 2013 Gallup poll Eleanor Barkhorn, “Cheating on Your Spouse Is Bad; Divorcing Your Spouse Is Not,” The Atlantic, May 23, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/05/cheating-on-your-spouse-is-bad-divorcing-your-spouse-is-not/276162/.
2. Sometimes we need David Schnarch, “Normal Marital Sadism,” Psychology Today blog, May 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intimacy-and-desire/201205/normal-marital-sadism.
3. Big data analyst Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “Searching for Sex,” New York Times, January 25, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/opinion/sunday/seth-stephens-davidowitz-searching-for-sex.html?ref=topics&_r=0.
4. “infidelity sometimes provides” Irwin Hirsch, “Imperfect Love, Imperfect Lives: Making Love, Making Sex, Making Moral Judgments,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 8(4): 355–371.
5. Psychologists Janet Reibstein Martin Richards and Janet Reibstein, Sexual Arrangements: Marriage and Affairs (Portsmouth, NH: William Heinemann, 1992), 79.
6. As Pamela Haag observes Pamela Haag, Marriage Confidential: Love in the Post-Romantic Age (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 23.
Chapter 13: The Lover’s Dilemma
1. “I had my freedom” Susan Cheever, interviewed on Dear Sugar episode 52, WBUR, April 24, 2016, http://www.wbur.org/dearsugar/2016/04/24/dear-sugar-episode-fifty-two.
Chapter 14: Monogamy and Its Discontents
1. “not a matter of nature” Meg-John Barker, “Rewriting the Rules,” http://rewriting-the-rules.com/love-commitment/monogamy/.
2. “The exhortation” Katherine Frank and John DeLamater, “Deconstructing Monogamy: Boundaries, Identities, and Fluidities Across Relationships,” in ed. Meg Barker and Darren Langdridge, Understanding Non-Monogamies (New York: Routledge, 2009), 9.
3. “the improbable union” Pascal Bruckner, The Paradox of Love (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 3.
4. “Experiences such as these” Shalanda Phillips, “There Were Three in the Bed: Discursive Desire and the Sex Lives of Swingers,” in ed. Barker and Langdridge, Understanding Non-Monogamies, 85.
5. A recent study M. L. Haupert et al., “Prevalence of Experiences with Consensual Nonmonogamous Relationships: Findings from Two National Samples of Single Americans,” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, April 20, 2016, 1–17.
6. our values evolve Stephen Levine, Demystifying Love: Plain Talk for the Mental Health Professional (New York: Routledge, 2006), 116.
7. “may never be openly” Tammy Nelson, “The New Monogamy,” Psychotherapy Networker, July/August 2012, https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/428/the-new-monogamy.
8. “Monogamy and nonmonogamy” Dee McDonald, “Swinging: Pushing the Boundaries of Monogamy?” in ed. Barker and Langdridge, Understanding Non-Monogamies, 71–72.
9. “Who is having sex” Ibid., 71–78.
10. Philosopher Aaron Ben-Ze’ev Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, “Can Uniqueness Replace Exclusivity in Romantic Love?” Psychology Today, July 19, 2008, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/200807/can-uniqueness-replace-exclusivity-in-romantic-love.
11. “Whereas borders are constructed” Jamie Heckert, “Love Without Borders? Intimacy, Identity and the State of Compulsory Monogamy,” in ed. Barker and Langdridge, Understanding Non-Monogamies, 255.
12. the “myth of equality” Tristan Taormino, Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 147.
13. “Freedom does not release” Bruckner, The Paradox of Love, 5.
14. Their critics highlight Monica Hesse, “Pairs with Spares: For Polyamorists with a Whole Lotta Love, Three, or More, Is Never a Crowd.” Washington Post, February 13, 2008.
15. “a queer critique” Diana Adams, in conversation with the author, September 2016.
16. “from gay men” Michael Shernoff, “Resisting Conservative Social and Sexual Trends: Sexual Nonexclusivity and Male Couples in the United States,” unpublished paper shared by author.
Chapter 15: After the Storm
1. “To forgive is to set a prisoner” Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget (New York: HarperCollins), 133.
2. “an abandoned cemetery” Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian (New York: Macmillan, 2005), 209.
3. “not with the fanfare” Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003), 313.
4. “marital safety narrative” Katherine Frank and John DeLamater, “Deconstructing Monogamy: Boundaries, Identities, and Fluidities Across Relationships,” in ed. Meg Barker and Darren Langdridge, Understanding Non-Monogamies (New York: Routledge, 2009).
5. “It is always” John O’Donohue, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), 155.
6. “Trust is a confident relationship” Rachel Botsman, TED Talk: “We’ve stopped trusting institutions and started trusting strangers,” June 2016, https://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_we_ve_stopped_trusting_institutions_and_started_trusting_strangers.
7. “a risk masquerading” Adam Phillips, Monogamy (New York: Vintage, 1999), 58.