There was a recent essay in the New York Times,
"What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity", that I've been meaning to post for discussion. It's marginally affair-related, although the author of the piece wasn't really involved in an all-encompassing affair.
There were sections of the piece that resonated pretty strongly for me and what I imagine (as well as what I know, or think I know) about my MM's home life.
But sex is basic. Physical intimacy with other human beings is essential to our health and well-being. So how do we deny such a need to the one we care about most? If our primary relationship nourishes and stabilizes us but lacks intimacy, we shouldn’t have to destroy our marriage to get that intimacy somewhere else. Should we?
<snipped section>
After our second night together, though, I could tell this was about more than sex for him; he was desperate for affection. He said he wanted to be close to his wife but couldn’t because they were unable to get past their fundamental disconnect: lack of sex, which led to a lack of closeness, which made sex even less likely and then turned into resentment and blame.
I'm not saying this is MM's and BW's "issue(s)", but can see where this kind of domino effect could be pretty devastating in a primary relationship.
(And conversely, how being openly communicative and non-judgmental works for making the relationship MM and I have much closer ... and sexually quite compatible.) Frankly, from my perspective open communication needs to be in place or there's little point in sex, or lack thereof.
Anyway, like the author of this piece I wasn't looking for a relationship at the time I met MM ... and don't think MM was looking for a relationship either. But eventually, that is what we ultimately found in one another.
According to this "INSIDER" article, the NYT essay is a small part of a longer article/book: A lot of this nuance was eliminated, Jones said, because the piece was originally much longer — as part of a chapter in a larger book — and had to be cut down from 10,o00 words to 1,500. "There were some things that had to be taken out of the [New York Times] piece, which I feel bad about," Jones told INSIDER. "A lot of people thought I was blaming the wives, but I wasn't."
I'd be curious to read the book when it comes out ... but have no idea whether it's a compilation by various authors, or a book by Karin Jones.
The INSIDER article has some interesting perspectives from psychologist Wendy Walsh as well.
