Acceptance doesn't mean predictability. Sex isn't always for 11 at night - - it's also 'meet at a hotel room at noon'. What you feel during dating can exist at home, if you don't suffocate it.
At the same time, eroticism in the home requires active engagement and willful intent. It is an ongoing resistance to the message that marriage is serious, more work than play; and that passion is for teenagers and the immature. We must unpack our ambivalence about pleasure, and challenge our pervasive discomfort with sexuality, particularly in the context of family. Complaining of sexual boredom is easy and conventional. Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defience.
There is no sex without a cue. People who date have their cues at home, before they meet. You think about where to go, what to eat, what to do and say. Sometimes the cue is short - - just before we reach the bar - - but sex is never just spontaneous. Spontaneity is a myth.
In desire, there must be some small amount of tension. And that tension comes with the unknown, the unpredictable. You can close yourself off at home and say, "Whew, at last I'm in a place where I don't have to worry," or you can keep yourself open to the mystery and elusiveness of your partner.
The vast majority of unfaithful people are experiencing a conflict between their values and their behavior, and that is the mess of infidelity. It's not an either-or. The idea that you would ask, "How can you say you love your husband and you want to stay married, and you also are having an affair?" Because we are not the same woman, or the same man. Because sexual revolutions don't take place at home. Because for most of us, freedom wasn't something that we experienced in our family, but usually outside of our family.
Secrecy fuels erotic intensity because it makes you feel like you're doing something that is entirely yours. It gives you the sense of autonomy, the sense of freedom, and the sense of sovereignty. And then you add to that the sexual energy. In many affairs, people will tell you they slept with the person three or four times, but the story went on for months. That's an important thing because many people who have affairs often have very good sexual relationships at home. It's not necessarily a compensation story. But affairs offer a different sexuality with a different context.
I say no to a double standard that men can roam and women must stay put at home. I say no to the fact that men are allowed to claim their sexuality and women just have to pretend that it doesn't matter to them. It's resisting poor relational arrangements. An affair is a way of saying, "No. I'm not playing by the rules." And sometimes betrayal is part of that because you deceive somebody else but you feel like you are, for the first time, being honest with yourself. Sometimes when people have affairs, they feel like they have been lying to themselves for years.
Modern infidelity is different than traditional infidelity and sits on top of the romantic ideal that you find "the one" and that if you have everything that you need at home, you have no reason to go looking elsewhere. And if you have an affair, it's a symptom of a flawed relationship. If you don't apply the deficiency model to the relationship, then you apply it to the person. The person who strays is selfish, immature, addicted suffers from insecure attachment. And the person who doesn't stray is the committed partner: mature, stable, and non-selfish.
