7. Oxytocin (a peptide secreted by the pituitary gland) plays a central role in the urge to bond. Just before o.r.g.a.s.m, this hormone spikes to levels three to five times higher than usual. It is more intense in females than in males, so women have a stronger sense of bonding with a s.e.x partner than do men. Theresa L. Crenshaw (1997), The alchemy of love and l.u.s.t: How our s.e.x hormones influence our relationships, New York: Pocket Books.
8. In the airport sample and in the clinical sample, husbands and wives both perceived greater equity in their affairs than in their marriages.
9. The metaphor "riding the pony" versus "cleaning the barn" was first introduced by Daniel Casriel and is included in the PAIRS marriage education program developed by Lori Gordon (personal communication with Lori Gordon, 2/19/2002).
10. Linda Waite a.n.a.lyzed the marital satisfaction of married respondents in the National Survey of Families and Households in 1987-1988 who were still married to the same people in 1992-1994. On a scale of marital happiness from 1 = Very unhappy to 7 = Very happy, 77 percent of those who had rated their marriage at 1 subsequently rated it at 6 or 7 five years later. Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher (2000), The case for marriage: Why married people are happier, healthier, and better off financially, New York: Doubleday.
11. Research consistently finds that male withdrawal signals likelihood of future distress unless the pattern is altered When females withdraw later in the relationship, this is a sign of serious current problems and is a predictor of divorce unless help is sought. Cliff Notarius and Howard Markman ( 1993), We can work it out: Making sense of marital conflict, New York: Putnam.
12. Mich.e.l.le Weiner-Davis (1993) states that one person can make changes that radically shift destructive relationship patterns. Making a 180-degree turn in your own actions is a marriage-saving approach in her solution-oriented brief therapy. Divorce busting: A revolutionary and rapid program for staying together, New York: Simon and Schuster.
10: Your Individual Stories 1. The results of a survey of 100,000 women appeared in Robert J. Levin and Amy Levin (1975, October), The Redbook report on premarital and extramarital s.e.x, Redbook, 38ff.
2. Annette Lawson ( 1988), Adultery: An a.n.a.lysis of love and betrayal, New York: Basic Books.
3. Intent was found to be inversely related to the amount of guilt respondents reported following the infidelity. Paul A. Mongeau, Jerold L. Hale, and Marmy Alles (1994), An experimental investigation of accounts and attributions following s.e.xual infidelity, Communication Monographs, 61, 326-343.
4. In my clinical practice, moral values were an inhibitor for 90 percent of men who were s.e.xually intimate, compared with 61 percent who engaged in extramarital intercourse. Moral values was a deterrent for 95 percent of the women who had no s.e.xual involvement at all, compared with 79 percent of women who were s.e.xually intimate and 78 percent who had extramarital intercourse. Religious beliefs were a deterrent for 41 percent of men and 54 percent of women with no s.e.xual involvement, and for approximately 25 percent of men and women who had any type of s.e.xual intimacy.
5. Frank Farley (1990) theorizes that Type-T personality and behavior ranges from Big T (high-risk, thrill and stimulation seeking) at one end to small t (low-risk, avoidance of thrill or stimulation seeking) at the other end. T+ is risk taking and thrill seeking that is positive, healthy, and constructive. T- is negative and destructive risk taking and thrill seeking. Type-T behavior and families: Introduction and background to a new theory, Family Psychologist, 6(4), 24-25.
6. Alexythymia is defined as the inability to identify and describe one"s feelings in words. Psychologist Ronald Levant (1992) suggests that alexythymia is common for men in our culture because of the way they are socialized. Toward the reconstruction of masculinity. Journal of Family Psychology, 5(3-4), 379-402.
7. One-third of the patients at residential treatment center, Sierra Tucson, were s.e.x addicts. Betsy Morris (1999, May 10), Addicted to s.e.x, Fortune, 66ff.
8. Jennifer P. Schneider and Burt Schneider (1999) s.e.x, lies, and forgiveness: Couples speaking on healing from s.e.x addiction, Tucson, AZ: Recovery Resources Press.
9. Kimberly S. Young (1998), Caught in the Net: How to recognize the signs of Internet addiction-and a winning strategy for recovery, New York: Wiley.
10. Lori Gordon writes, "Anything in our lives that has caused us pain or disappointment or distrust can develop into an "emotional allergy,"" regardless of whether the memory is conscious or unconscious. Lori H. Gordon with Jon Frandsen ( 1993), Pa.s.sage to intimacy, New York: Fireside/Simon and Schuster.
11. PAIRS (Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills) is an intensive relationship-enrichment program in which specific exercises, such as "A Museum Tour of Past Hurts," are used to reconnect with the sources of emotional allergies.
12. Many affair-p.r.o.ne women in Carol Ellison"s survey (2000) had personally suffered childhood s.e.xual abuse. Women"s s.e.xualities. Oakland CA.: New Harbinger.
13. April Westfall (1995), Working through the extramarital trauma: An exploration of common themes, Gerald R. Weeks and Larry Hof (Eds.), Integrative solutions: Treating the most common couple problems, New York: Brunner/Mazel.
14. Patrick Carnes (1991), Don"t call it love, New York: Bantam Books.
15. Attachment styles influence not only the way people act in romantic relationships and caregiving patterns, but also in their s.e.xuality. Ayala Pines (1999), Falling in love: Why we choose the lovers we choose, New York: Routledge.
16. Elizabeth Alien"s dissertation research a.n.a.lyzed attachment styles and infidelity patterns of 251 married adults: 46 percent had at least one affair; 90 percent of them involved s.e.xual intimacy such as oral s.e.x or intercourse. Preliminary results were reported in Elizabeth Sandin Allen and Donald H. Baucom (2001), Attachment styles and their relation to patterns of infidelity, paper presented at Conceptualization and Treatment of Infidelity symposium, annual conference of a.s.sociation for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Philadelphia.
17. Ibid.
18. Dalma Heyn (1993), The erotic silence of the American wife, New York: Signet Books.
19. The diagnostic criteria for 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder (pp. 658-661) and 301.7 Antisocial Personality Disorder (pp. 645-650) are presented in (1994), DSM-IV: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition, American Psychiatric a.s.sociation, Washington, D.C.: Author.
11: The Story of Outside Influences 1. The United States was one of the most s.e.xually conservative among twenty-four countries that were studied. Eric D. Widmer, Judith Treas, and Robert Newcomb (1998), Att.i.tudes towards nonmarital s.e.x in 24 countries, Journal of s.e.x Research, 35, 349-359.
2. In the absence of group support from male peers, a man was less likely to find opportunity unless he was a singular deviant who operated in terms of hiding behavior from practically all others. Robert N. Whitehurst (1969), Extramarital s.e.x: Alienation or extension of normal behavior, in G. Neubeck (ed.). Extramarital relations, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
3. Laurel Richardson (1985), The new other woman: Contemporary single women in affairs with married men, New York: Free Press.
4. In two studies of extradyadic relationships in The Netherlands, with 125 men and 125 women in each study, sanctions from the group when deviating from prevailing group standards predicted willingness to engage in extradyadic s.e.x (e.g., "If most of my friends do not play around, there must be good reasons not to do so"). Bram P. Buunk and Arnold B. Bakker (1995), Extradyadic s.e.x: The role of descriptive and injunctive norms, Journal of s.e.x Research, 32(4), 313-318.
5. Anthony Thompson"s (1984) study of Australian married and cohabiting couples found that involved persons may justify their own behavior by perceiving extradyadic activity as more prevalent; involved individuals gave higher estimates than noninvolved regarding what percentage of men and women partic.i.p.ated. Thompson concluded that friends and acquaintances serve as adult socialization agents, whereby extramarital behaviors become likely and desirable. Emotional and s.e.xual components of extramarital relations, Journal of Marriage and Family, 46, 35-42.
6. Lynn At.w.a.ter ( 1982) conducted in-depth interviews with forty women recruited through an ad in Ms magazine asking for women with current or past extramarital relationships. The extramarital connection, New York: Irvington.
7. Affairs are more likely to occur among those whose parents had affairs. Emily Brown (1991), Patterns of infidelity and their treatment, New York: Brunner/Mazel. Over the course of marital therapy for infidelity, 90 percent of Bonnie Eaker Weil"s patients found that at least one partner was the adult child of an adulterer-sometimes involving four generations. Bonnie E. Weil and R. Winter (1993), Adultery: The forgivable sin, New York: Birch Lane Press.
8. In-depth interviews were conducted with seventy women age 23 to 90, and a sixteen-page questionnaire that was developed with Bernie Zilbergeld surveyed 2,362 women throughout the United States about s.e.xuality. Carol R. Ellison (2000), Women"s s.e.xualities. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.
9. Sally D. Stabb, Brandi Ragsdale, Alison J. Bess, and Heather Weiner (2000), Multigenerational patterns of infidelity and their relationship to attachment, paper presented at annual convention of American Psychological a.s.sociation, Washington, DC.
10. David Maraniss (1995), First in his cla.s.s: The biography of Bill Clinton. New York: Simon and Schuster.
11. Studies of traditional cultures with a double standard of infidelity included Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Societies that provide higher status to men may give wives few options except to tolerate their husband"s infidelity. Christie D. Penn, Stacy L. Hernandez, and J. Maria Bermudez (1997), Using a cross-cultural perspective to understand infidelity in couples therapy, American Journal of Family Therapy, 25(2), 169-185.
12. Suzanne Frayser (1985), Varieties of s.e.xual experience: An anthropological perspective. New Haven: HRAF Press.
13. Harold T. Christensen (1962), A cross-cultural comparison of att.i.tudes toward marital infidelity, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 3, 124-137.
14. Male extra-s.e.x behavior is more likely to be a result of s.e.xual drives in the context of societal norms than a result of marital distress. Lewis Yablonsky (1979), The extra-s.e.x factor: Why over half of America"s married men play around, New York: Times Books.
15. Vaughn (1999), Jan Halper (1988), Quiet desperation: The truth about successful men. New York: Warner Books.
17. Annette Lawson and Colin Samson (1988), Age, gender, and adultery. British Journal of Sociology, 39(3), 409-440.
18. Under Muslim law, a man may freely murder his wife if she is discovered having extramarital s.e.x; in modern Saudi Arabia she could be stoned to death. Suzanne Frayzer ( 1985), Varieties of s.e.xual experience: An anthropological perspective, New York: HRAP Press. Most cultures have punished women more severely than men for extramarital transgressions. Husbands could protect their honor and kill wandering wives in traditional Greek culture. Until quite recently in France, the crime pa.s.sionel was acceptable for men, and in Belgium only the wife"s infidelity const.i.tuted legal grounds for divorce. Robert G. Bringle and Bram Buunk (1991), Extradyadic relationships and s.e.xual jealousy, in K. McKinney and S. Sprecher (eds.), s.e.xuality in close relationships, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
19. College students judged women more harshly than men who were portrayed in exactly the same vignette of s.e.xual infidelity. Paul A. Mongeau, Jerold L. Hale, and Marmy Alles (1994), An experimental investigation of accounts and attributions following s.e.xual infidelity, Communication Monographs, 61, 326-343. A severe double standard among Asian Americans ill.u.s.trates how women are blamed for the infidelity of either spouse. Infidelity is deemed more acceptable for men and is not tolerated for women. The high status of males puts them into a "no-fault position" in which male affairs are either blamed on the wife"s not being there for him, or on the other woman who took him away from his family. C.D. Penn, S.L. Hernandez and J.M. Bermudez (1997), Using a cross-cultural perspective to understand infidelity in couples therapy, American Journal of Family Therapy, 25(2), 169-185.
20. In an a.n.a.lysis of the National Health and Social Life Survey, it was concluded that similar incidence findings among men and women under forty years of age signified that either the previous double standard regarding extramarital s.e.x did not exist among the younger generation, or that older women displayed a response bias as far as admitting extramarital s.e.x. Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, Stuart Michaels (1994), The social organization of s.e.xuality: s.e.xual practices in the United States, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
21. Lewis Yablonsky (1979), The extra-s.e.x factor: Why over half of America"s married men play around, New York: Times Books.
22. Husbands and wives who were more likely to approve of premarital and extramarital s.e.x resided in or near large metropolitan centers rather than in rural areas and were unhappily married. David L. Weis and Joan Jurich (1985), Size of community of residence as a predictor of att.i.tudes toward extramarital s.e.xual relations, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 47(1), 173-178. Greater opportunity and Central City residence were a.s.sociated with a higher incidence of s.e.xual infidelity during the preceding twelve months in a national sample. Judith Treas and Deirde Giesen (2000), s.e.xual infidelity among married and cohabiting Americans. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 48-60.
12: The Story of the Affair Partner 1. Ann Landers (2001, December 27), column, The Oregonian, Portland.
2. In a dramatic departure from their usual way of choosing men, married women chose extramarital partners without considering age or employment, social, financial, or marital status. They based their selection on his body and his smile; his credentials as friend, lover, and nurturer; and whether he treated her respectfully, kindly, and as an equal. Dalma Heyn (1993), The erotic silence of the American wife, New York: Signet Books.
3. Jan Halper (1988), Quiet desperation: The truth about successful men, New York: Warner Books.
4. This study of "the new other woman" used a structured interview of two to five hours with fifty-five women volunteers who were age 24 to 65 at the time of the interview but 18 to 56 years old when the affair began. The median age was 28, and for the most part the men were older and better established. Laurel Richardson (1985), The new other woman: Contemporary single women in affairs with married men, New York: Free Press.
5. This e-mail from "Confused" was posted on my advice column "Reflections by Gla.s.s." It is published with permission by Oxygen Media, LLC.
6. Anthony Schuham and Waldo H. Bird (1990), Marriage and the affairs of the anxious man of prominence, American Journal of Family Therapy, 18(2), 141-152.
7. Laurel Richardson (1985), The new other woman: Contemporary single women in affairs with married men, New York: Free Press.
8. Most of the affairs began as innocent flirtations at work. Craig Wilson reported in USA Today (April 4, 1988) about an upcoming survey by Gail North on "the other woman" in the May 1988 issue of Woman magazine.
9. Emotional incest syndrome occurs when parents are overly dependent on a child to meet their own emotional needs. Patricia Love with Jo Robinson (1990), The emotional incest syndrome: What to do when a parent"s love rules your life, New York: Bantam.
14: Forgiving and Moving Forward 1. Alexander Pope (1953). Essay on criticism, in George K. Anderson and Karl J. Holzknecht (Eds.), The literature of England, Chicago: Scott, Foresman.
2. Jennifer P. Schneider and Burr Schneider (1999), s.e.x, lies, and forgiveness: Couples speaking on healing from s.e.x addiction, Tucson, AZ: Recovery Resources Press.
3. Fred Luskin (2002), Forgive for good: A proven prescription for health and happiness, New York: Harper Collins, 86-92.
4. Kristina Gordon and Donald Baucom (1998), "True" forgiveness vs. "false" forgiveness: Further validation of a cognitive-behavioral stage model of forgiveness, poster session presented at the annual meeting of a.s.sociation for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Washington, D.C.
5. Elizabeth Seagull and Arthur A. Seagull (1991), Healing the wound that must not heal: Psychotherapy with survivors of domestic violence, Psychotherapy: Theory/Research/Practice/Training, 28(1), 16-20.
6. Rona Subotnik and Gloria Harris (1999), Surviving infidelity: Making decisions, recovering from the pain, Holbrook, MA: Bob Adams Press.
Chapter 15: Healing Alone.
1. Laura Betzig (1989), Causes of conjugal dissolution: A cross-cultural study, Current Anthropology, 30, 654-676.
2. Annette Lawson (1988), Adultery: An a.n.a.lysis of love and betrayal, New York: Basic Books.
3. Harold S. Kushner (1982), When bad things happen to good people, New York: William Morrow.
4. Richard R. Peterson (1996), An evaluation of the economic consequences of divorce in L.A. County, American Sociological Review, 61, 528-536.
5. Janis A. Haywood (2001) read legal cases across the country and interviewed people who work in court services. She found that affairs seldom influence financial settlements or child custody awards. Child custody awards: Are parental extramarital affairs significant in the 1990"s?, www.affairs-help.com.
6. Herman M. Frankel, M.D. (2000), Dealing with loss: A guidebook for helping your children before and after divorce (available from author; see appendix).
REFERENCES.
Allen, E.S., & Baucom, D.H. (2001). Attachment styles and their relation to patterns of infidelity. Paper presented at Conceptualization and treatment of infidelity symposium, annual conference of a.s.sociation for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Philadelphia.
American Psychiatric a.s.sociation. (1994). DSM-IV: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Athanasiou, R., Shaver, P., & Tavris, C. (1970). s.e.x. Psychology Today (July), 37-52.
At.w.a.ter, Lynne. (1982). The extramarital connection: s.e.x, intimacy and ident.i.ty. New York: Irvington.
Balswick, J.O., & Peek, C.W. (1971). The inexpressive male: A tragedy of American society. Family Coordinator, 20, 363-368.
Barash, D.P., & Lipton, J.E. (2001). The myth of monogamy: Fidelity and infidelity in animals and people. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Betzig, L. (1989). Causes of conjugal dissolution: A cross-cultural study. Current Anthropology, 30, 654-676.
Bringle, R.G., & Buunk, B.P. (1991). Extradyadic relationships and s.e.xual jealousy. In K. McKinney & S. Sprecher (Eds.), s.e.xuality in close relationships. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Brown, E.M. (1991). Patterns of infidelity and their treatment. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Bruce, R. (1998). Strange but true: Improve your health through journaling. Self-help Magazine (www.shpm.com), May 29.
Buss, D. (1994). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. New York: Basic Books.
Buss, D. (2000). The dangerous pa.s.sion: Why jealousy is as necessary as love and s.e.x. New York: Free Press.
Buunk, B.P., & Bakker, A.B. (1995). Extradyadic s.e.x: The role of descriptive and injunctive norms. Journal of s.e.x Research, 32(4), 313-318.
Buunk, B.P., & Bakker, A.B. (1997). Commitment to the relationship, extradyadic s.e.x, and AIDS preventive behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27(14), 1241-1257.
Carnes, P. (1991). Don"t call it love: s.e.x addiction in America. New York: Bantam.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS.
Shirley P. Gla.s.s, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist with a diplomate in family psychology. She is also a licensed marriage and family therapist and a Fellow of the American Psychological a.s.sociation. The New York Times has referred to Dr. Gla.s.s as "the G.o.dmother of infidelity research." She has been conducting research on extramarital relationships since Jean Staeheli lives in Portland, Oregon. She is an experienced coauthor with several nationally acclaimed books to her credit. lives in Portland, Oregon. She is an experienced coauthor with several nationally acclaimed books to her credit.
*This quiz by Shirley P. Gla.s.s was first printed in USA Today (June 20, 1988) in an article by Karen Peterson, "When platonic relationships get too close for comfort," p. 6D.