I tend to write with tongue in cheek – or so I am told -- but this subject, which has crept into my consciousness for over the past two or three years, involves tongues but far deeper issues as well. These would be self-esteem, self-consciousness, self-involvement, and occasionally guilt. The kids serve up the guilt in most of the womens' minds; without it, most state without regret that “guilt” has nothing to do with it.
I know this is what they call “Mother-In-Law Research” in marketing and advertising but as far as I know (or as you may conclude, I am simply, coyly, “refusing to say” here in print -- on this web page) that I am one, and one alone, out of fourteen married women slightly over forty and some floating towards fifty who is NOT having an extramarital dalliance. Conversations over caramel mocha lattes, “you're breaking up” cell phones,
many, many email confessions (might be a good subject for a longer article)and in between moments at the pharmacy, dinner with our husbands when they duck out to take a phone call (hmmm, who might be calling for a quick exchange of highly charged emotion) or to find a taxi.
For the record, men have confessed many things to me, but only one (and he's a separate article) has coughed up the truth about his extramarital dalliance. More about him later.
Below, first, some statistics culled from my “over the hedge/Mother-In-Law” research”
• Women closer to fifty (could it be a different kind of biological clock ticking?) seemed to dive in quickly, without great weighing of options and risks, when the opportunity presented itself.
• Women closer to fifty (could it be menopause?) reported (to me) enormous sexual satisfaction.
• Women closer to fifty were looking to “fall in love” and “change their lives” more than their younger counterparts.
• Women closer to forty wanted to be “desired.” Demands from their jobs and or kids made them isolated and overburdened and “these affairs,” admitted one, “are a great way to forget it all for a while.”
• An erotic, hypnotic distraction…was definitely what almost all of these women sought and received from their relationships that were “secret.”
• Most confided in a good friend or relative to whom they felt close, mostly due to the others' observation that the woman in question was “looking particularly glowing” or seemed to lose weight. I am grateful that I was the good friend and relative to whom so many women chose to confide.
