Illicit affairs are about sex. And it strikes me that at some point we might grow out of their shallow gratification. I can see the jaws dropping.
But come on, sex is, well, sex. It’s two people getting naked — or naked enough — so that they can make sexual contact. It’s a primitive act that satisfies a biological need. I know, I know…it can be much more than that. We’re talking an artful, loving culmination of two souls brushing the heavens and finding oneness.
But, hey, let’s not exalt affairs to that status. Now the protests — don’t tell me…yours was different, right? Or at least you thought it was going to be different!
“Even when we do precisely what others do, we tend to think that we’re doing it for unique reasons,” says Daniel Gilbert in his bestselling “Stumbling on Happiness.” He explains that our mythical belief in our uniqueness prevents us from learning as much as we could from the experience of others.
So if need be, humor me here. Let’s assume affairs are basically about sex. After all, when we say somebody was unfaithful, we generally mean they had sex with somebody other than the person they were committed to.… More