Is Everyone Having an Affair These Days?

Published Feb 14, 2023, 8:01 AM

On the cusp of her seven year wedding anniversary, host Jo Piazza begins her investigation into female infidelity. For so long the trajectory for women has been that we would be good daughters, good wives, good mothers and good caretakers. But contemporary women have more choices and options and frankly they want more. In fact, the rate of infidelity among women has reportedly risen by about 40% since the early 1990s, while the rate of male infidelity has remained pretty much the same. So, what’s going on?

In this episode Jo meets "Nikki,” a mom of two in her thirties who had a marriage that looked great on paper, but was lacking the desire and passion she craved. When she looked for those two things outside of her marriage, she not only found the hottest sex she had ever had, but it also made her question why men have been allowed to call all the shots in relationships for so long. Jo also speaks with Susan Shapiro Barash, whose book this podcast is based on, and asks her what she’s learned from 30 years of research on female infidelity.

I thought everything I wanted and needed the hottest sect that I had ever had in my life, and I thought it was interesting to recognize that, uh so, this is how men do it. And then when I thought about it, like why are men the only ones to get to call the shops? That's Nikki. She's in her thirties, she's a mom of two, and she's been married for more than fifteen years. Nikki isn't her real name, and you'll see why she wants to use a pseudonym. What you're about to hear is Nikki telling the story about cheating on her husband for the past twelve years. So we agreed to meet up at a hotel I know the hotel, and it was like instant Bark, instant Blaine, the hottest sect that had ever had in my life, hours and hours and hours of set. I'm Joe Piazza when you're listening to she Wants More. I've spent the past five years making a podcast about marriage called Committed, and I loved talking to couples from all over the world about their relationships. These couples told me everything about their marriages, the good, the bad, the better and the worse. But lately, I've been hearing another kind of story. More and more of the women that I know have apparently been having affairs, And at first I thought it was maybe just my extended social circle, but I dug in a little bit more and discovered that the rate of infidelity among women has actually risen by about forty percent since the early and the rate of male infidelity shockingly has remained pretty much the same. So what is going on? Are women really cheating more than they used to or are they finally just talking about it more? And who are these women and why are they doing it? That is what I'm here to find out. I'm just worried a little bit about quality. It sounds because I have like the watchers going, I'm multi capting Magnelivania and like, so I want to make sure the audio wasn't sad. This is the beginning of my conversation with Nikki. I told her that her audio was fine. We can hear her perfectly well, and every woman listening to this we'll understand that she's multitasking right now. Before we get back to Nicki's affair, I wanted to go back to the beginning, back to her marriage, back to the man that she's been cheating on. So I met my husband when I was funny. I was raised to marry a certain kind of man and lives a certain kind of life. And so we have been on paper and outside looking in very happily married for fifteen years. But inside of our marriage, although we do love each other, he is just kind of a loop, not super dialed in, kind of would rather just not bring things up than mouris rocking the boat by talking about them out loud. I was really struck by how similar Nikki sounds to a lot of my friends. She's a mom like me. She has a successful job, and she has this nice life that, like she says, looks really great on paper, but underneath the surface, something wasn't right, And I had to ask her what changed in her marriage that made her choose to have an affair in the first place. You know, when communication starts to fail, sex isn't happening anymore. As you grow from early twenties and well into your thirties and late thirties and beyond, start to realize, well, this is actually what I want, or I would have thought about that. I didn't realize that this is what I needed in a way, you recognize that you're different than you thought you were, or maybe you've just grown and maybe your partner or your spouse hasn't. And it's not really their faults because you can't change who anyone is, and you can't force someone to change. At the same time, you're stuck with one of the biggest problems I think we face as adults, and that's do I live a life a stability, keeping family together, keeping routine the same, or do I find a way to feel fulfilled, happy, sexually happy, romantically happy, and all those things that we all know life is too short to go without. Then Nicki finally hit a breaking point when sex with her husband just wasn't doing it for her anymore. So I began with asking my husband for different things in bed. I wanted him to thank me, pull my hair, do different things like that, and he was, you know, agreeable, receptive. So when it came down to the sheet, I'm not even joking, he would just like give my butt like attack, and so it makes you so embarrassed because you feel like a well, I just made him feel uncomfortable or he's not comfortable doing this, or maybe he thinks something's wrong with me for wanting this. I mean, I feel like hair pulling and but banking or fairly, I don't know. Maybe it twisted vanilla, but they're not that wild. So there was no way I was going to go deep for you know than that once that failed attempt, but I still talked about it. We have date nights over dinner, and I talked about the things that I wanted, and I think through all of our relationship together, you know, I would always the initiator, always more sexually driven than him, which I think is a different role to consider it in a man anyway, However, that's a true story, you know. And so once I became frustrated enough, I stopped initiating, I stopped having the conversation. I was tired of hearing myself talk and tired of getting nowhere and just going through the same missionary motions. So Nicky did what anyone thinking about having an affair would do in the digital age. She googled it, and I popped a website called Ashley Madison. It's a well known online dating and sex site for married people who are looking to have affairs. I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna get my talent and create a profile. Who cares, No is gonna know it's me, and let me just see what's out there. And so I put a sexy photo of my mouth down to my cleavage but not my face, and I filled out as many things about myself that I was willing to share that were true, and I just wrote an open paragraph or two about what exactly I wanted. And it was like a torrential downpour of potential men begging to talk to me. Oh wait, I've got and I've got to say, what did that feel like? Crazy? Because when you're with the same person for fifteen plus years, first of all, no one else has seen you naked, You've never thought about being with someone else. You don't have any self esteem of confidence when you start thinking, but maybe not any, but very little, because it's like starting from scratch again. Even though the steaks aren't super high or not shopping for a boyfriend or a husband or anything like that, but the idea of getting naked with someone new was reasonally terrifying. So created this profile. I watched hundreds of messages come in, and no one has the time to read that many messages. So I would quickly screen them either based on their photo or what their profile had said, and the ones that I did want to respond to. This is gonna sound so nerdy, hopefully in a very hot way. I kept the spreadsheets and all my spreadsheets or identifiers by their screaming and things like consistency. If they said they were going to talk about something, did they or did they message me once and then fall off the face of the earth to communication that they actually know how to talk to a woman, because it's not enough to be hot or look good naked, or even to have some kind of amazing sexual skills. And so I screamed more than a hundred men that made it to that point on the spreadsheets. The spreadsheet was like the nerdy version of a Little Black Book. I would say, this is definitely nerdy in a hot way, by the way, total nerdy in a hot way. Totally. Also, I imagine that a woman's spreadsheet is much more rational and organized than a man's spreadsheet. No offense, but I think most men at most would have had a post it note or a scrap becauld favor from a wallet. We'll be back after a short break and we'll find out what happens when Nikki finally starts meeting some of those guys on her spreadsheet, we're back with she once more. At first, Niggi got a lot of really porny messages, and she was shocked by these, as she should have been. She'd been with the same man for fifteen years. But anyone that's ever been on any of these dating websites knows that if you put yourself out there, you're going to get some pretty dirty messages. And at first she wrote those things off. But then Nicki got curious and she started exploring things on her own, and that opened her up to a whole new world of possible pleasure. Mm hmm. You would be surprised at how early in the conversation some men will introduce these questions, and so that puts you on this path of exploring how do I make this happen to myself. You started exploring different toys, like, for example, I was really afraid of like platoral suction toys because I thought it would hurt me. Now I barely go without it. So it really did open up so much that you didn't even know was out there exactly because I was so young when I met my husband. And I was raised very traditionally, very strict as the only child of my parents that just do not want anything sexual or otherwise to come into my brain. And so I lived a repressed life until you know, late thirties, and so I had this whole world out there I had no experience or knowledge of, and I was just sick of it. And once Nikki did finally feel sexually savvy and confident enough to meet some of the more appealing men on her list, she set it up so that no one would ever find out what she was doing. She created a Google voice number and a WhatsApp to make sure that none of these conversations would ever be saved on her phone. And then she just started talking to some of the men that she was tracking on her spreadsheet. After that came the next step, meeting them in real life. I down colected to the top ten, and after video chatting to verify identity, I met each of these ten men in person. For some we went and had a cocktail, someone took a walk in a park a couple of weeks for breakfast, and I picked the best of her all based on our chemistry, the quality of person I believed him to be what he had to offer the affair, and he was really respectful not only of me, but of my process. And so we agreed to meet up at a hotel and it was like instant spark, instant flame, the hottest sect I had ever had in my life, hours and hours and hours of sects, and such a masculine kind is a progressive way that I had. My whole body was craving for so long that I had nearly begged my husband. My oblivious, barely paying attention, doesn't want to talk about his husband. I begged him, and all of a sudden it was writing from me. I couldn't believe it. And I was so proud of myself in a way that I did just follow all over this man and just fall in love and have all the hard eyes and I it's very mature about it, and I thought it was interesting to recognize that, uh so, this is how men do it. I didn't feel attached to him at all. I got everything I wanted and needed, and I gave him everything I wanted to as well, and then that was it. And then when I thought about it, like why are men the only ones that get to call the shops. Why are they the ones who get to have all their sexual pleasures to build? Even if you watch porn, how many porn videos have you seen that are all about the woman climax thing? Just like the word a fair is typically associated with a man having an affair and behind closed doors, it just makes you want to laugh like it. Don't underestimate women because we are capable of getting everything we want and doing anything we can think of. NICKI knew that this was it, this was what she'd been missing, and she ended up meeting with the same man again and again. The first time I met him was September twenty nineteen. I have seen him so many times. We consider each other friends. We talk openly with each other. He's been very supportive and encouraging of me exploring and going on other dates, and so I did. I've got a lot of dates, and I've seen him specifically a lot of times, and really, after a couple of years in this experience, I'm so lucky that it was him the first time, because he was so respectful of me, so kind, but also scorching hot and my best xt ever. And is he married too? He is? And how much do you talk about your spouses, not a lot. We feel like we know. It's pretty much everything that we needed to know. And unless one of us is having an issue. I know his wife has threatened to leave him few times, and so we talked about that on his end, just as far as giving support and talking things through. And funny enough, in the beginning of this conversation we were talking about everyone comes down to the line, what are you gonna do. Are you gonna leave your kids so you can go and get whoever and be free and clear about it, or are you gonna keep your family together and find a way to be happy? And this, for you is the answer to keeping your family together, also being happy, and also feeling fulfilled. Absolutely, And for Niki that means keeping completely separate lives. She's essentially the home edit of having an affair. She can put her family in one bucket and her affair and another, and she organizes her entire lifestyle so that the two things never cross streams. We don't involve anything from our personal life with our affair lives. We are not in position to run into each other. We don't have mutual friends, we don't work in the same industry, we're not going to casually see each other on the sidewalk in an awkward way. We quite literally have a completely separate life that no one knows about. I don't know if you're a fan of Nagan the Stallion, but in one of her songs, who says, it's okay because I have another that'll do it if you won't, And it brings me back to the conversation with my husband of asking him to thank me and pull my hair and talk to alreat eating me, and all of these things. And this wasn't onto the next because once you start growing your sexual exploration and adventuring and experiencing getting what you want, it's uncharted territory. But there's also really endless possibility. So until you've come to a point of wanting to slow down or settle down or so a different way, it's just like a tank of gas that's fool and getting the keys to the car handed to you every time you want to take a ride. Do you think having the affairs makes you a better wife and partner. I don't know about that, but I will say that it makes me less resentful, less spiteful. I don't have a lot of contention built up in my chest, or stress or anxiety or any kind of that negative cloud that kind of grows within you when you go without for so long and you start looking at this person like, why can't you understand? Why can't you give me these things? And why are we stuck in this marriage? When I deserve to be happy. I deserved it, feel good and all of these things. So having that room to breathe, it just makes you less bitchy, for lack of a better words, There's less resentment because I know that if I want to do anything else, I'm going to do it. I'm more confident, I am more self aware, I have better self esteem. And it also bleeds over into a lot of other areas such as a friendship, professionalism, my role at work. Everything I do is different now because I'm different now. How so how does it How does it plead over into your professionalism and work? And how do you feel different? When I walk into a room and I'm going to give a meeting or maybe I'm speaking in public, I'm not worried about what somebody thinks about what I'm wearing or how I look, or if I am so stressed out from being so sexually unfulfilled. That is showing on my face, and I'm wondering if people are looking at me asking themselves. I wonder how often she gets it. You know, all the things that go through people's minds that you really shouldn't concern yourself with, But when you're so unhappy and so stressed over it, all of these things just start to bring it down. But when you become sexually fulfilled, you become more confident in your body and how you feel naked, and how you make other people feel and how they feel about you. Knowing that you have the keys to the kingdom and you can control it however you want. That's a big sense of power. It could be a total ego trip if you let it. So when I walk into a room, I'm not nervous anymore. I know so much more about how men and women think sexually than I ever could have imagined without this experience. So I feel less stressed, less worried, I feel more powerful, I feel more confident, I feel more in my real self, and I'm just not afraid anymore. What do you feel comfortable telling me about one of your wildest, greatest, most fulfilling experiences. I think the wildest I was getting overwhelmed with so many messages from so many men, and because I always practice say sex and wasn't really in a position to drive a group sex or gang bang scenario, if you will. There was a day where I saw four different men in the same day and I expect them, all four of them, and it was amazing. Wow, I was not expecting that answer. So four different men were they were all of the experiences different totally in moment one of them, I where it was like maybe twenty minutes in and out and I was like, I see you later, have great rest of your weeks. Like I did not care. I didn't need to be held or cuddled or kissed. I didn't need any of it. I was able to then to shower, to take a meeting, come back, have a dinner date, asked on again. It was amazing. It was so cool because I got to really be in the driver's seat, get exactly what I wanted, and I just happened to feel sectually greedy that day. And it's like, then such a power trip to be able to command the sexual presence of people you desire and have them to fill whatever it is you need crazy. We'll be back with more from Nikki. After a short break, we're back what she wants more. The trajectory for women has been until the late twentieth century that we would be good daughters, good wives, good mothers, good grandmothers if we were lucky, and that was the arc. And what contemporary women are saying is that with more choices, they end up having the ability to finesse an affair and the drive to finesse an affair if they so choose. That's Susan Shapiro Bearish, her book, A Passion for More, inspired this podcast, and she's been researching women and affairs for more than thirty years. How do you think affairs have changed since she started doing this in ninety years ago. Are you seeing more affairs, less affairs, women being more comfortable talking about them. What are the big changes that you've seen. First of all, I do think there are more and more affairs. I think that women have more agency. I think that women are more self aware with every decade, so they're really saying, well, what am I not getting in this relationship? And how lucky I am to have found this lover who can provide when I'm missing so women are feeling more like they deserve to have an affair, And of course I don't want anyone judged. You know, this is just in the pie of life, and women who have affairs, they're saying I want more. In fact, I have a passion for more. Before talking to Susan and Nikki, I'm not sure if I thought of an affair as just another choice, But the more I think about it, it just makes sense. As women throughout the course of history, haven't we always gotten the short end of the stick? Haven't we historically, and frankly even right now, lacked the autonomy to make decisions about our own lives and our own bodies. So is an affair just a choice? A choice to feel happier, a choice to feel good, the choice for more. But an affair doesn't happen in a vacuum. It can always go further. And what happens when that affair isn't just sex. It's a relationship that's complicated. I decided to ask Nikki, you seem really good at not getting emotionally attached, But has there been a time when one of these relationships started to cross a line? I think the way you know you cross the line. It's like any other relationship. If you just start thinking about that person constantly, you can't stand it. When you're not talking or texting all you wanted to be with that person, you've gone too far. And it definitely organically happened with a man in New York, and honestly, I don't know if it would have stopped or how it would have stopped, but he got caught and it stopped abruptly, and because I had feelings for him, it just was so painful. And being in the long term relationship in a marriage so young, that's something I hadn't really experienced before, like grown up version of heartbreak. And it stopped, and I so so shitty. And you know what else, It's like the old saying, if you want to get over one man, you have to get under another. And it was so true. And I went right back to Ashley Madison and got back on the horse. Nikki got right back on the horse. She just wanted to have X, but with the next guy she ended up getting way more than she bargained for. And then last year, literally was planning an appointment for a Wednesday afternoon, and this was a Friday, and I said, I can't talk on the weekend, but if you can video tell with me on Monday, I can confirm my availability for Wednesday afternoon. Quite business like, I got on what's up? I got in this video call and the man staring back at me, the connection of his eyes, the way he looked at me, I was like, funk, I should have breast my hair. Oh my gosh, guy. I don't know what it was about him, because I wanted to be like such a hard ass and I we're like, I haven't even breshed my hair yet today. And I don't only care about this video meeting because I'm just going through emotions with you to see if I want to have sex. I just stopped something different, and so we started talking NonStop through that through video on the phone, which not stop talking. And so we met that week. And I feel like I have butterflies all over my body right now just telling you this, because we've been involved since last August September and we have had the most intense, dramatic romantic relationship of my adult life, and I have no idea what's going to happen. I feel like because I know so much about so much of this whole world as far as affairs and things, I have no idea where it will go. I have let go of the expectation of not being close to someone and not crossing lines because rigid boundaries like that are really hard to follow. And it sounds really good on paper, but being good on paper isn't enough. That we know, and that's what brought us here to this entire conversation. So now I see him exclusively and we'll see what happened. Wow, And so you're open to that if it came to you were both in a place where you could leave your spouses, you would with this person. Finally, be open to that, I think so. And he's gonna he's already he's not married anymore, and so it's I'm the one who is married. And so now I'm spending a lot of time with him and his because and we definitely talk about the future. Not there yet, not been the easiest road for this relationship. I just don't know where it will go. But I feel like I have a lot of control and experience under my belt to be in a good position to make the right call when it comes time to it. But you've met his kids, that's a big deal. I know, of course, but he can't meet and he can't that is that is a lot to be feeling right now. You're going through a lot. It is a lot, and it's I think one of the hardest things about it is when it's really heavy and you know, I've got that ball of anxiety and your stomach and that lump in your throat and someone who everybody else in your life doesn't know about it, so there's no one really to talk to, and then people don't understand why you're reacting a certain way because you don't really know what's on your plates. And then before you know what your plates become a plotter, and effectively, I feel like I am now living two totally separate lives, which is interesting, and not crossing those two has been very hard. But again, my ultimate goal is to be as happy as I can be and to be the best version of myself for myself and for everyone that I love, and this is an important part of that. And so to be continued. I asked Nikki if she's ever imagined telling her husband about the affair and what that might look like. Yeah, I do, actually, and now I'm starting to get emotional, so I apologize it. Last year, when I first met the man that i'm with, nell I said to my husband, are you open to having a conversation about divorce? And he acted so surprised, and I said, I'm not happy, and I don't think you're happy either. You want someone to be domestic and clean house all day and make dinner for you, and you resent me because I worked so much, and I resent you because you don't care about sex. And I just think we deserve to be happy. And he's like, well, I guess i'd be open to it. He's like, but not now if you have some kind of boyfriend on the side, And of course I lied into no, I don't. That's how much this is about. And he was kind of pissed her a couple of days and he was just saying things like, you know, it would be really sad if we split up. We've we have a family, we've been together forever, and I just can't imagine not being married. And this is why I say he's oblivious, because this was October and he has never brought it up again. He has never done anything different, anything to keep me, anything to do anything but just let time go by, and that's not willing to keep doing that. And I think about so many women I know that are are likely to be unhappy, or maybe they've gain weight, or they don't feel great about themselves, or their husbands aren't having sex the way they want them to. And I think about how many women are probably just silently suffering through monalogamous relationships or marriages because they feel like they have to and they don't know where to start, or they don't know how they'll ever get out of it or have anything else. And it's just it's such a problem of privilege. I understand that there are what way worse things in the world, but when it comes something that's terrible on any scale, for any person who, no matter who they are, it's a wasted life of not being happy. And I think that's the worst thing that could happen to anybody. She's right, don't We all just deserve to be happy. But happiness is just one need that an affair can fulfill. Susan Shapiro Barrish, who we spoke to earlier in this episode, has interviewed hundreds of women about their affairs over the past thirty years, and in her research, she's actually categorized four different types of affairs based off the reasons that women pursue them. Women have empowering affairs, sex German affairs, self esteem affairs, and love affairs. When I talked to women about empowering affairs, it was very new because suddenly women felt that they were on a par with what men had been able to do, you know, like a husband who would go on a business trip and sort of have fun on the side, and women were expected to look the other way. And so these women are saying, hey, I trade in the same currency as men. I earn a lot of money, I travel when I need to, I'm independent, and this is the type of are that I choose to have. In terms of the sex driven affairs, and those are I think, pretty self explanatory. The women are really specifically saying, look, not enough sex, not exciting enough, not intriguing enough. I want something very different than my partner does, than my husband wants. The self esteem affair has a lot to do with longevity. You've been married five years, you have two children, You look in the mirror, you're maybe close to forty, and you say, is that all there is? Is this? It I don't feel really understood, I don't feel very visible, and the lover makes these women feel really alive, they feel really appreciated. In terms of the love affairs, I've found those throughout my study to be the most poignant because I'll interview women and they'll say, my life was really fine. I loved my husband and I, you know, loved our family. I met someone online, I walked across the room at a party and something changed me and changed the way that I want to go forward. And then you know, women will say, I'm in love with my lover, I love my husband still, and then they're really caught. Susan's research made me think more about Nikki's story. Her affairs started because she wanted something different sexually, but they also changed along the way. They made her feel empowered, improved her self esteem, and her most current affair is for love. An affair might seem to start for one reason, but people are complicated. Life is complicated, and the motivations behind these affairs and what they do for the people who have them are very nuanced. Nikki is a perfect example of that. In future episodes, we are going to hear from a lot more women, many of whom are telling the story of their affair for the very first time. We won't just be learning about the details. We're also going to hear how it changed them and why they took such huge risks to feel more confident, sexy, fulfilled, and loved. We're also going to be bringing in plenty of experts to help us figure out what does all of this mean and to answer a lot of questions. Are more women cheating now or are more women talking about it right? Because historically they have just face so many more consequences compared to men. I think we need to take the stigma out of all of this because infidelity is a normal part of the sexual repertoire of the human female. That's all coming soon. This is She Wants More. Thanks for listening. She Wants More was inspired by the book A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish. It was adapted for audio by executive producers Merril Poster, Kara Pfeiffer, and Susan Shapiro Bearish. She Wants More is hosted and reported by me Joe Piazza. Jennifer Bassett is our lead producer and story editor. Our sound design is by Jessica Crunchich. Our theme was composed by Anna Stumpf and Hamilton Lighthouser. Research was done by Erica Berlin. Our executive producers for I Heart are Ali Perry and Nikki Eator. She wants More as a production of I Heeart Podcasts. For more podcasts from my Heart, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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