March 14, 2023 • 26 mins
In the past couple of years the media has positioned women’s exploration of sex, passion, and desire, as a form of "self-care" -- a wellness practice that helps them feel better about themselves. Today's guest "Michelle" breaks down how her affairs, particularly one with a sexy personal trainer, have become a form of self-care for her. She says they make her feel better and take better care of herself.
So, can an affair be another form of self-care, like yoga, meditation, or dry brushing? Is an orgasm with someone who isn't your spouse an actual wellness practice, or do women just need to justify their desires as self-care in order to fully realize those desires without shame? Alexandra Fine, sexologist and creator of Dame, a pleasure products company, weighs in.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We just instantly fell into very very comfortable, crazy sex
with each other. Let we'd scoop you up on the bed,
throw you clothes flying everywhere, like it was great. That's Michelle.
Like most of the women you've heard on this show,
(00:23):
Michelle isn't her real name, but everything else about her
story is completely true. Michelle is in her late twenties,
she's married, She lives in the Midwest, and she has
a two year old daughter with her husband, who she
was very happily married too until recently. Like our last guest,
Michelle never thought she'd be someone who'd have an affair,
(00:46):
but once she tried it, it changed her life for
the better in so many ways that she couldn't stop.
Not just because of the sex. Don't get me wrong,
the sex was good, but because having the affair made
her take better care of herself. Obviously, good sex is great,
but also especially when you're new on a relationship and
(01:08):
having sex for the first time with people, you make
sure that your legs are shaved really well and that
your skin is soft and your makeup done. Those little
self care things too, also make you feel really good
about yourself, and so I just found myself taking better
care of Me. I'm Joe Piazza, and you are listening
(01:29):
to She Wants More, the podcast where real women talk
openly and honestly about the extra marital affairs that have
completely changed their lives. I think people want to oversimplify it.
You have the sex addiction, or you're just selfish, But
there's so many things like it's self care, things like
(01:52):
that that people don't even think about. Listening to Michelle
sing the virtues of her affair in terms of improving
her self esteem and helping her take better care of herself,
I couldn't help but think of the recent movement to
equate sex with wellness and self care for women. How
all of a sudden, women exploring their sexuality, their passion,
(02:13):
their desires, both with and without a partner, has become
a wellness practice. I want to read you some recent
headlines as an example. Let me pull them up. Okay,
we've got this one from Refinery twenty nine titled It's
time to give your vagina the TLC it deserves. Here's
(02:35):
another in Vogue, Dakota Johnson is here to remind you
that sexual wellness is self care. And one last one
on the well and good site. Picture this one with
exclamation points and fireworks around it. The era of sexual
self care is here, fellok. I don't know if affairs
(02:58):
and finding pleasure really are a form of wellness or
if women just feel the need to say that sex
is a form of wellness in order to feel okay
with talking about and having sex. But I'm going to
tell you, after doing dozens of interviews with women who've
had affairs outside of their marriage, I do hear this
(03:20):
language over and over again that these affairs have given
the women the same kinds of benefits that you often
hear them talking about from doing meditation or yoga. It's
something that I needed, something I deserved. It really helped
me recharge my batteries. This was just for me. It
makes me less resentful, less fitful. I deserve to be happy.
(03:44):
I deserved it. Sell good. Are they talking about yoga
or orgasms? Could be either one. Cheating can be just
another drop in the bucket of self care, self love,
and wellness. The research backs this up. A recent survey
(04:04):
by Ashley Madison, the online dating service for people who
are married or in relationships, found that female users see
their affairs as a form of self care. In fact,
sixty four percent of women said they feel more confident
during an affair. Fifty four percent of women reported feeling
more desirable when they had another lover. Ashley Madison also reports,
(04:28):
and this sat is really fun, that fifteen percent of
women sent up for their sight the day after Mother's
Day as a kind of treat for themselves on their
special day. If there is anything that I've learned from
reporting on these past four episodes, it's that a lot
of women are not getting what they need from their
primary partner, So why not treat themselves to something better,
(04:53):
something that improves their well being in a way that
most of us don't feel comfortable talking about. But before
we get to that, I want us to dive into
Michelle's story. I want to learn more about how her
affairs started and then how it made her more attentive
to her own needs. That's after the break, we're back
(05:22):
talking to Michelle about both her marriage and her affair.
Tell me a little bit about your marriage. What was
your marriage like in the early days. So initially we
met online, and then as we started talking, we just
learned that we actually went to the same college and
lived really close to each other in the beginning. We
(05:45):
had a pretty solid relationship, pretty normal. We moved in
together pretty quickly, and then got engaged after about three
and a half years and married off for four years
together and then made the decision a couple of years
ago to move from Colorado out to Nebraska, and that
(06:07):
was where we started having our daughter and career changes
and that kind of stuff. Was that disruptive to your
relationship at all? In some ways, the move was, but
it also ended up being really good for us. My
husband was very, very close to his family and very
reliant on them and didn't have a ton of his
(06:30):
own independence, which was definitely something that we fought about.
And so when we got here and they weren't like
a fifteen minute drive away, he definitely sort of grew
up a little bit and it's helped a lot. So
talk to me a little bit about when you decided
you needed more from your marriage. My husband, he's a
(06:53):
wonderful person, but he was never a very sexual individual,
and also he had a lot of traumas that he
never never really acknowledged, and so he got to a
point where he just was very, very depressed. Her husband
(07:17):
wasn't taking care of himself, and he also wasn't taking
care of Michelle. So she took matters into her own
hands and decided that she was going to take care
of herself. And so there came a day where I
was folding this zillionth load of laundry and doing the dishes,
all while trying to work, and I just hit a
(07:38):
breaking point where I was like, I'm not having sex,
I'm getting yelled at all day by customers, i am
doing all the housework, all the cooking, all the cleaning,
and I need somebody to pay attention to me. And
so that was when I sort of just cracked and
I went online, and honestly, I'm pretty sure Shery just
(08:00):
did a Google search of like dating sites for married people.
That's how Michelle discovered Ashley Madison. And like some of
our other guests, she just signed up on a whim,
not even really sure what she was gonna do with
it or what to expect. Okay, so you go on
Ashley Madison. What was the first time on Ashley Madison? Like,
(08:22):
and what did you put in your profile? So the
first time, I know, I was definitely a little overwhelmed,
Like I started getting messages and acknowledgements and stuff like
right away, and so that was little more than I
was expecting. For sure. I kept my profile pretty minimal.
(08:45):
I think I had like one picture. I think it
basically just said married woman tired of not having sex,
looking for somebody to just kind of have fun with.
And was that catnep for men? I would think probably,
I think that. So how did you decide who to
(09:07):
meet up with first? So geography was a big thing
because if I was going to get involved as somebody,
I wanted somebody that it wasn't going to be like
a big to do to see them. Convenience. I just
want everything to be really easy in my life right exactly,
instant gratification. I want to get laid, and I want
to get laid now, not in a week after driving
(09:30):
two hours. So what was your first meeting? Like, who
did you choose? So he was a personal trainer. That
sounds hot just I don't know, I know nothing else
and it sounds like I know there's something about that
job title that you're just like, all right, yep. Yeah.
(09:51):
So we talked a lot before we ended up meeting,
just about our relationship situations and even just jobs, music,
some of that basic getting to know you stuff, but
then we also jumped really fast into sexual needs because
obviously both of us that was the biggest thing that
(10:12):
was missing in our relationships was good sex, and so
that was one thing we talked about really quickly, was
just to make sure we were even like sexually compatible.
So what did you both say about your sexual needs?
How did you express that? So we ended up both
being in very similar situations where we loved the people
that we were with and the friendship was great, but
(10:35):
sex was not what we were looking for. Both of
us ended up having really high sex drives on partners
with really low sex drives, and then he ended up
being the type of person that just is very alpha
male in bed, whereas I'm the type that really needs
to be with somebody that's that way. And so that
(10:56):
instantly for both of us was just it meshed very
very very well. Michelle decided the chemistry was there, and
she took the risk and met the personal trainer in person.
She was very careful to first choose a public place
where she could quickly escape get out of there if necessary,
(11:19):
So that first night that we met, we spent a
couple hours. We went to a park. We went for
a walk and we just talked for a long time.
We people watched, I would say, pretty quickly both of
us just were comfortable with each other. I got this
gut feeling that like, okay, not a serial killer, this
(11:39):
is okay. And kind of the same for him with me,
And so he walked me to his bar and we
almost did it in the trunk of my car, but
there was a car seat in it, so that didn't
work out very well. But after the failed first encounter,
they decided to meet again, this time at Michelle's house
on our lunch break when her husband was at work
(12:02):
and her daughter was at daycare. And what was the
next day, like amazing, So you Canda coming over on
my lunch break. We just like instantly fell into very
very comfortable, crazy sex with each other, like scoop me
(12:24):
up on the bed, throw you, clothes flying everywhere, like
it was great like movie sex. And after that, did
you do it again with this person or did you decide,
you know what, I'm going to try it with someone else.
We did have we yeah, a couple of times, and
then our schedules just kind of didn't mesh super well.
(12:47):
So I did end up with somebody else, but only
one other person, and he was very sweet. Was it
different in some ways? Yeah? With the second guy, there
was a little bit more of a friendship than just
like a let's go at it sort of relationship, which
was nice. The sex was also really good with him too.
(13:10):
How do you keep these kind of secret? How do
you keep it so that your husband doesn't find out?
So I work from home while he works in the office,
so during those work hours it's really easy for me
to kind of do whatever. It was also just pretty careful.
I didn't give out my phone numbers, so we did
use a messenging app and the evenings and stuff, I
(13:31):
would uninstall it from my phone, and I just was careful,
you know, if we were together, I wasn't checking my
messages or any of that kind of stuff, and so,
you know, I made it very clear that like evenings
and weekends, my daughter was always going to be my priority,
and so if I wasn't responding, I was likely with
my family. But my husband also was just very oblivious
(13:55):
to anything I was doing. Were you ever nervous about
him finding out? That's really in the beginning, But once
I sort of figured out what worked for me and
how I could easily cover it up not really at all.
How did have any affair make you feel? And how
do you think it improved your life? You know? I
(14:19):
think that in some ways it just was I mean,
it sounds terrible, but it was like a band aid,
Like I didn't have to deal with my marital problems.
It was kind of an escape of somebody paying attention
to me and just having fun for a little bit.
And so because I kind of had that stress relief,
holding this laundry didn't bug me as much. And especially
(14:43):
having had an affair, It's complicated, and I think people
want to oversimplify it into like you have a sex
addiction or you're just selfish, But there's so many things
self care eat things like that that people don't even
think about. I had to talk to someone who is
(15:04):
an expert in all of this, so we called up
Alexandra Fine. She is actually a Goop approved that is
a thing, sex educator and the CEO of sexual wellness
brand Dame, which makes everything from vibrators to gummies to libricants.
She also has a master's in clinical psychology from Columbia.
(15:26):
I was very excited for this conversation because I really
wanted to dig into this idea of the intersection of pleasure, sex,
and wellness. I think self care is about prioritizing yourself.
It's taking care of you. Women have a honestly a
sort of beautiful habit of putting other people first and
(15:48):
not necessarily putting themselves first. We have this idea of
sex as being bad, as being naughty, instead of considering
it to be core to our well being and something
worth besting our time into. And I think that's really
like the core of self care. It's just like taking
time for you. I think it's really important that we
(16:10):
fill ourselves up. When we fill ourselves up and we
know who we are and we love ourselves, we can
so much more easily love others and then show up
and be there for other people. But when we are drained,
we are not our best selves. Pleasure has a really
powerful place in self care because we are entitled to
(16:31):
it and need to make sure we're having space for it.
You can sleep better is like one. It's like good
for your stress level. Oh wait, are you telling me
all of the things that orgasms do for our bodies? Yes,
I don't know if I can list them all, but
it does impact our court soil level, so it reduces stress.
It makes it easier for us to go to sleep,
(16:52):
I can boost your immune system. It releases oxytocin in
your brain, which is that love bonding chemical. So it
has a lot of really positive physical impacts, both in
our minds and in our bodies. I think that masturbation, too,
has a really meditative quality to it, and that we
can lock into that if we're interested here. It is
(17:15):
right here, sex equaling wellness for women, and maybe it's true.
It might be true, or maybe just maybe it's the
only way that we feel like it's culturally acceptable to
talk about women having sex. But regardless, I love love,
love love. What Alexandra is talking about, sex is good.
(17:38):
Pleasure is good. Women deserve to feel good. We felt
bad for a long time in the history of the world.
We deserve this. We're going to take a short break,
but when we're back, we'll be hearing more of Michelle's
story and how she struggles with how her affairs have
made her life so much better with her devout Christian beliefs.
(18:06):
We are back. Michelle is a devout Christian. She loves
her faith, she loves God, but she also wants to
be happy and fulfilled. It's definitely something that I pretty
regularly rustle through and then also just these thoughts of like,
God didn't create me to be miserable, So if pursuing
(18:30):
something like this makes me happy, then I guess that's okay.
But then on the flip side of that, you're also
like it says adultery is so bad. It was definitely
something that I really really struggle with and still do.
But I just have to believe that if the God
(18:52):
I believe in truly did die for the sin of
the world, like they teach you in church, then he
eyed for that thin too. So that's sort of where
I land. And is it ideal? No, like, but you know,
it's it's where I'm in this stage of life. I mean,
(19:15):
there's no lack of affairs in the higher echelons of
Christian culture. If Jerry Falwell Jr. Has taught us anything, yes, yes,
I mean morality you can go essentially in circles and
it can get really complicated. But it sounds like you've
thought about it a lot. Affairs can be complicated, Morality
(19:41):
can go around in circles. And while we're talking to
a lot of women who found themselves feeling more fulfilled
and happier after having an affair, there are just as
many who feel the opposite, who've seen their marriages and
families ruined by affairs. It's all a great area and
there are no easy answers. That's one of the reasons
(20:04):
that women take so many precautions to keep their affairs
a secret. Do you have any rules or boundaries that
help keep the affairs from seeping into your life with
your partner and your child? So the biggest one is
just very much separation. They will never meet my daughter.
They know she exists, like obviously you can't come to
(20:26):
my house and not see its other explosion everywhere, but
they will never meet her. There will never be that
kind of overlap. I don't give out my phone number,
I don't give out personal information. Did you give my address?
But I don't give out the gate code or anything
like that. So I really try to kind of take
steps to make sure that I do have some personal security.
(20:48):
Do you think that there will be a point where
you'll stop cheating on your husband or do you see
this as something ongoing to kind of sustain your marriage.
I mean, I think truly it's going to kind of
come down to my husband if he starts making positive changes,
you know, taking care of himself, creating an environment where
(21:11):
we have a better sex life, things like that, than hopefully.
But I also I'm at a place where my needs
made to be met, and if he's not going to
meet them, I'm gonna get them met. Yeah, that's fair.
Have you told him what you wanted? Yeah, we have
(21:32):
tried talking about it. He gets very awkward about talking
about sex. We watched fifty Shades of Great together, which
is a dreadful movie, but it's really bad, so bad.
It's so bad. I wanted it to be good, but
it was awful. But we watched it together, and you
sort of hope that it sparked some interest in like, oh,
(21:55):
maybe I should like spack your ass a little bit,
But like nothing, He just is very awkward about it.
Very vanilla lifestyle, vanilla sex life like that, no real
desire to explore. So he would also kind of need
to grow up a little bit in that department. I
(22:17):
asked Michelle if she ever thought about her daughter when
she was thinking about her affairs and if she'd considered
what would happen if her daughter one day found out
about those affairs. You know, it's easy, especially in this
day age, even more so in Christian culture. Women are
very much put in a box. You know, you're supposed
(22:40):
to do X, Y and Z and be happy about
it at shut up and that's your life. And like
for her, I want more for her. I want her
to be happy. I don't want her to settle for anything,
and I want her to know that it's okay to
do what you need to do for you. And I've
(23:00):
that means that you go find someone and have wild
and crazy, amazing sex. Didn't do it like be safe,
have an exit strategy, but like, if that's what you
need in that moment, it's okay. As long as you're
not hurting people or doing drugs, it's okay to do
what you need to do for yourself. People really believe
(23:25):
that sex is bad and that they're going to go
to hell. We went back to sexual wellness expert and
Dame CEO Alexandra Fine to get her final take on
all of this. I can't tell you how many couples
come out to me or how many women feel weird
if they want sex more than their partner, like that
they feel like that's like not right. A lot of
you have a lot of shame too, Like to me,
(23:48):
I have found God through my sexuality, and I think
to so many people like that's a crazy idea. But
I think sex is sacred. But that's like such a
weird concept for people because that seems to trigger people
to think that they shouldn't have sex in some way.
And that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying it
is really beautiful and it's really powerful and we should
(24:10):
honor it. Just to be able to connect, to be
able to feel seen in that way. I think that
we're all entitled to that, and I think it's to me,
it feels very human to seek that. Look, I'm in
more of an open marriage. I think that it's really
sad and really tough to feel like you have to
(24:33):
betray somebody in order to do that. But that's so
inaccessible to people, and I totally realize that it's so tough.
This interview went in a different direction than I expected.
Alexander came on as an expert in sexual wellness, and
then we found ourselves talking about how she ended up
in an open marriage herself. The idea of open marriages
(24:57):
is very interesting too me and my producers, and we've
thought a lot about them while reporting on this podcast. See,
an open marriage isn't necessarily an affair, not if all
parties know everything that is happening. But we do think
it's really interesting to explore more of what an open
(25:20):
marriage means in this podcast because in some ways it
feels like the evolution of the traditional affair. And so
next week that is what we're talking about. We're talking
to Alice, a woman who says that opening up her
marriage may have actually saved it. And it all started
(25:41):
with an affair. I told him that I had had
a sexual experience with someone else, and so he and
I then really had our first conversation about what non
monogamy is, and he said he just wasn't a non
monogamous person. He understands that what I need to feel
also filled is to be connecting to other people. That's
(26:05):
next week this is She Wants More. I'm your host,
Joe Piazza. She Wants More was inspired by the book
A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish. It was
adapted for audio by executive producers Merrill Poster, Kara Pfeiffer,
and Susan Shapiro Bearish. She Wants More is hosted and
(26:25):
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.
Our executive producers for iHeart are Ali Perry and Nikki Eatore.
She Wants More as a production of iHeart Podcasts. For
(26:47):
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
We just instantly fell into very very comfortable, crazy sex
with each other. Let we'd scoop you up on the bed,
throw you clothes flying everywhere, like it was great. That's Michelle.
Like most of the women you've heard on this show,
(00:23):
Michelle isn't her real name, but everything else about her
story is completely true. Michelle is in her late twenties,
she's married, She lives in the Midwest, and she has
a two year old daughter with her husband, who she
was very happily married too until recently. Like our last guest,
Michelle never thought she'd be someone who'd have an affair,
(00:46):
but once she tried it, it changed her life for
the better in so many ways that she couldn't stop.
Not just because of the sex. Don't get me wrong,
the sex was good, but because having the affair made
her take better care of herself. Obviously, good sex is great,
but also especially when you're new on a relationship and
(01:08):
having sex for the first time with people, you make
sure that your legs are shaved really well and that
your skin is soft and your makeup done. Those little
self care things too, also make you feel really good
about yourself, and so I just found myself taking better
care of Me. I'm Joe Piazza, and you are listening
(01:29):
to She Wants More, the podcast where real women talk
openly and honestly about the extra marital affairs that have
completely changed their lives. I think people want to oversimplify it.
You have the sex addiction, or you're just selfish, But
there's so many things like it's self care, things like
(01:52):
that that people don't even think about. Listening to Michelle
sing the virtues of her affair in terms of improving
her self esteem and helping her take better care of herself,
I couldn't help but think of the recent movement to
equate sex with wellness and self care for women. How
all of a sudden, women exploring their sexuality, their passion,
(02:13):
their desires, both with and without a partner, has become
a wellness practice. I want to read you some recent
headlines as an example. Let me pull them up. Okay,
we've got this one from Refinery twenty nine titled It's
time to give your vagina the TLC it deserves. Here's
(02:35):
another in Vogue, Dakota Johnson is here to remind you
that sexual wellness is self care. And one last one
on the well and good site. Picture this one with
exclamation points and fireworks around it. The era of sexual
self care is here, fellok. I don't know if affairs
(02:58):
and finding pleasure really are a form of wellness or
if women just feel the need to say that sex
is a form of wellness in order to feel okay
with talking about and having sex. But I'm going to
tell you, after doing dozens of interviews with women who've
had affairs outside of their marriage, I do hear this
(03:20):
language over and over again that these affairs have given
the women the same kinds of benefits that you often
hear them talking about from doing meditation or yoga. It's
something that I needed, something I deserved. It really helped
me recharge my batteries. This was just for me. It
makes me less resentful, less fitful. I deserve to be happy.
(03:44):
I deserved it. Sell good. Are they talking about yoga
or orgasms? Could be either one. Cheating can be just
another drop in the bucket of self care, self love,
and wellness. The research backs this up. A recent survey
(04:04):
by Ashley Madison, the online dating service for people who
are married or in relationships, found that female users see
their affairs as a form of self care. In fact,
sixty four percent of women said they feel more confident
during an affair. Fifty four percent of women reported feeling
more desirable when they had another lover. Ashley Madison also reports,
(04:28):
and this sat is really fun, that fifteen percent of
women sent up for their sight the day after Mother's
Day as a kind of treat for themselves on their
special day. If there is anything that I've learned from
reporting on these past four episodes, it's that a lot
of women are not getting what they need from their
primary partner, So why not treat themselves to something better,
(04:53):
something that improves their well being in a way that
most of us don't feel comfortable talking about. But before
we get to that, I want us to dive into
Michelle's story. I want to learn more about how her
affairs started and then how it made her more attentive
to her own needs. That's after the break, we're back
(05:22):
talking to Michelle about both her marriage and her affair.
Tell me a little bit about your marriage. What was
your marriage like in the early days. So initially we
met online, and then as we started talking, we just
learned that we actually went to the same college and
lived really close to each other in the beginning. We
(05:45):
had a pretty solid relationship, pretty normal. We moved in
together pretty quickly, and then got engaged after about three
and a half years and married off for four years
together and then made the decision a couple of years
ago to move from Colorado out to Nebraska, and that
(06:07):
was where we started having our daughter and career changes
and that kind of stuff. Was that disruptive to your
relationship at all? In some ways, the move was, but
it also ended up being really good for us. My
husband was very, very close to his family and very
reliant on them and didn't have a ton of his
(06:30):
own independence, which was definitely something that we fought about.
And so when we got here and they weren't like
a fifteen minute drive away, he definitely sort of grew
up a little bit and it's helped a lot. So
talk to me a little bit about when you decided
you needed more from your marriage. My husband, he's a
(06:53):
wonderful person, but he was never a very sexual individual,
and also he had a lot of traumas that he
never never really acknowledged, and so he got to a
point where he just was very, very depressed. Her husband
(07:17):
wasn't taking care of himself, and he also wasn't taking
care of Michelle. So she took matters into her own
hands and decided that she was going to take care
of herself. And so there came a day where I
was folding this zillionth load of laundry and doing the dishes,
all while trying to work, and I just hit a
(07:38):
breaking point where I was like, I'm not having sex,
I'm getting yelled at all day by customers, i am
doing all the housework, all the cooking, all the cleaning,
and I need somebody to pay attention to me. And
so that was when I sort of just cracked and
I went online, and honestly, I'm pretty sure Shery just
(08:00):
did a Google search of like dating sites for married people.
That's how Michelle discovered Ashley Madison. And like some of
our other guests, she just signed up on a whim,
not even really sure what she was gonna do with
it or what to expect. Okay, so you go on
Ashley Madison. What was the first time on Ashley Madison? Like,
(08:22):
and what did you put in your profile? So the
first time, I know, I was definitely a little overwhelmed,
Like I started getting messages and acknowledgements and stuff like
right away, and so that was little more than I
was expecting. For sure. I kept my profile pretty minimal.
(08:45):
I think I had like one picture. I think it
basically just said married woman tired of not having sex,
looking for somebody to just kind of have fun with.
And was that catnep for men? I would think probably,
I think that. So how did you decide who to
(09:07):
meet up with first? So geography was a big thing
because if I was going to get involved as somebody,
I wanted somebody that it wasn't going to be like
a big to do to see them. Convenience. I just
want everything to be really easy in my life right exactly,
instant gratification. I want to get laid, and I want
to get laid now, not in a week after driving
(09:30):
two hours. So what was your first meeting? Like, who
did you choose? So he was a personal trainer. That
sounds hot just I don't know, I know nothing else
and it sounds like I know there's something about that
job title that you're just like, all right, yep. Yeah.
(09:51):
So we talked a lot before we ended up meeting,
just about our relationship situations and even just jobs, music,
some of that basic getting to know you stuff, but
then we also jumped really fast into sexual needs because
obviously both of us that was the biggest thing that
(10:12):
was missing in our relationships was good sex, and so
that was one thing we talked about really quickly, was
just to make sure we were even like sexually compatible.
So what did you both say about your sexual needs?
How did you express that? So we ended up both
being in very similar situations where we loved the people
that we were with and the friendship was great, but
(10:35):
sex was not what we were looking for. Both of
us ended up having really high sex drives on partners
with really low sex drives, and then he ended up
being the type of person that just is very alpha
male in bed, whereas I'm the type that really needs
to be with somebody that's that way. And so that
(10:56):
instantly for both of us was just it meshed very
very very well. Michelle decided the chemistry was there, and
she took the risk and met the personal trainer in person.
She was very careful to first choose a public place
where she could quickly escape get out of there if necessary,
(11:19):
So that first night that we met, we spent a
couple hours. We went to a park. We went for
a walk and we just talked for a long time.
We people watched, I would say, pretty quickly both of
us just were comfortable with each other. I got this
gut feeling that like, okay, not a serial killer, this
(11:39):
is okay. And kind of the same for him with me,
And so he walked me to his bar and we
almost did it in the trunk of my car, but
there was a car seat in it, so that didn't
work out very well. But after the failed first encounter,
they decided to meet again, this time at Michelle's house
on our lunch break when her husband was at work
(12:02):
and her daughter was at daycare. And what was the
next day, like amazing, So you Canda coming over on
my lunch break. We just like instantly fell into very
very comfortable, crazy sex with each other, like scoop me
(12:24):
up on the bed, throw you, clothes flying everywhere, like
it was great like movie sex. And after that, did
you do it again with this person or did you decide,
you know what, I'm going to try it with someone else.
We did have we yeah, a couple of times, and
then our schedules just kind of didn't mesh super well.
(12:47):
So I did end up with somebody else, but only
one other person, and he was very sweet. Was it
different in some ways? Yeah? With the second guy, there
was a little bit more of a friendship than just
like a let's go at it sort of relationship, which
was nice. The sex was also really good with him too.
(13:10):
How do you keep these kind of secret? How do
you keep it so that your husband doesn't find out?
So I work from home while he works in the office,
so during those work hours it's really easy for me
to kind of do whatever. It was also just pretty careful.
I didn't give out my phone numbers, so we did
use a messenging app and the evenings and stuff, I
(13:31):
would uninstall it from my phone, and I just was careful,
you know, if we were together, I wasn't checking my
messages or any of that kind of stuff, and so,
you know, I made it very clear that like evenings
and weekends, my daughter was always going to be my priority,
and so if I wasn't responding, I was likely with
my family. But my husband also was just very oblivious
(13:55):
to anything I was doing. Were you ever nervous about
him finding out? That's really in the beginning, But once
I sort of figured out what worked for me and
how I could easily cover it up not really at all.
How did have any affair make you feel? And how
do you think it improved your life? You know? I
(14:19):
think that in some ways it just was I mean,
it sounds terrible, but it was like a band aid,
Like I didn't have to deal with my marital problems.
It was kind of an escape of somebody paying attention
to me and just having fun for a little bit.
And so because I kind of had that stress relief,
holding this laundry didn't bug me as much. And especially
(14:43):
having had an affair, It's complicated, and I think people
want to oversimplify it into like you have a sex
addiction or you're just selfish, But there's so many things
self care eat things like that that people don't even
think about. I had to talk to someone who is
(15:04):
an expert in all of this, so we called up
Alexandra Fine. She is actually a Goop approved that is
a thing, sex educator and the CEO of sexual wellness
brand Dame, which makes everything from vibrators to gummies to libricants.
She also has a master's in clinical psychology from Columbia.
(15:26):
I was very excited for this conversation because I really
wanted to dig into this idea of the intersection of pleasure, sex,
and wellness. I think self care is about prioritizing yourself.
It's taking care of you. Women have a honestly a
sort of beautiful habit of putting other people first and
(15:48):
not necessarily putting themselves first. We have this idea of
sex as being bad, as being naughty, instead of considering
it to be core to our well being and something
worth besting our time into. And I think that's really
like the core of self care. It's just like taking
time for you. I think it's really important that we
(16:10):
fill ourselves up. When we fill ourselves up and we
know who we are and we love ourselves, we can
so much more easily love others and then show up
and be there for other people. But when we are drained,
we are not our best selves. Pleasure has a really
powerful place in self care because we are entitled to
(16:31):
it and need to make sure we're having space for it.
You can sleep better is like one. It's like good
for your stress level. Oh wait, are you telling me
all of the things that orgasms do for our bodies? Yes,
I don't know if I can list them all, but
it does impact our court soil level, so it reduces stress.
It makes it easier for us to go to sleep,
(16:52):
I can boost your immune system. It releases oxytocin in
your brain, which is that love bonding chemical. So it
has a lot of really positive physical impacts, both in
our minds and in our bodies. I think that masturbation, too,
has a really meditative quality to it, and that we
can lock into that if we're interested here. It is
(17:15):
right here, sex equaling wellness for women, and maybe it's true.
It might be true, or maybe just maybe it's the
only way that we feel like it's culturally acceptable to
talk about women having sex. But regardless, I love love,
love love. What Alexandra is talking about, sex is good.
(17:38):
Pleasure is good. Women deserve to feel good. We felt
bad for a long time in the history of the world.
We deserve this. We're going to take a short break,
but when we're back, we'll be hearing more of Michelle's
story and how she struggles with how her affairs have
made her life so much better with her devout Christian beliefs.
(18:06):
We are back. Michelle is a devout Christian. She loves
her faith, she loves God, but she also wants to
be happy and fulfilled. It's definitely something that I pretty
regularly rustle through and then also just these thoughts of like,
God didn't create me to be miserable, So if pursuing
(18:30):
something like this makes me happy, then I guess that's okay.
But then on the flip side of that, you're also
like it says adultery is so bad. It was definitely
something that I really really struggle with and still do.
But I just have to believe that if the God
(18:52):
I believe in truly did die for the sin of
the world, like they teach you in church, then he
eyed for that thin too. So that's sort of where
I land. And is it ideal? No, like, but you know,
it's it's where I'm in this stage of life. I mean,
(19:15):
there's no lack of affairs in the higher echelons of
Christian culture. If Jerry Falwell Jr. Has taught us anything, yes, yes,
I mean morality you can go essentially in circles and
it can get really complicated. But it sounds like you've
thought about it a lot. Affairs can be complicated, Morality
(19:41):
can go around in circles. And while we're talking to
a lot of women who found themselves feeling more fulfilled
and happier after having an affair, there are just as
many who feel the opposite, who've seen their marriages and
families ruined by affairs. It's all a great area and
there are no easy answers. That's one of the reasons
(20:04):
that women take so many precautions to keep their affairs
a secret. Do you have any rules or boundaries that
help keep the affairs from seeping into your life with
your partner and your child? So the biggest one is
just very much separation. They will never meet my daughter.
They know she exists, like obviously you can't come to
(20:26):
my house and not see its other explosion everywhere, but
they will never meet her. There will never be that
kind of overlap. I don't give out my phone number,
I don't give out personal information. Did you give my address?
But I don't give out the gate code or anything
like that. So I really try to kind of take
steps to make sure that I do have some personal security.
(20:48):
Do you think that there will be a point where
you'll stop cheating on your husband or do you see
this as something ongoing to kind of sustain your marriage.
I mean, I think truly it's going to kind of
come down to my husband if he starts making positive changes,
you know, taking care of himself, creating an environment where
(21:11):
we have a better sex life, things like that, than hopefully.
But I also I'm at a place where my needs
made to be met, and if he's not going to
meet them, I'm gonna get them met. Yeah, that's fair.
Have you told him what you wanted? Yeah, we have
(21:32):
tried talking about it. He gets very awkward about talking
about sex. We watched fifty Shades of Great together, which
is a dreadful movie, but it's really bad, so bad.
It's so bad. I wanted it to be good, but
it was awful. But we watched it together, and you
sort of hope that it sparked some interest in like, oh,
(21:55):
maybe I should like spack your ass a little bit,
But like nothing, He just is very awkward about it.
Very vanilla lifestyle, vanilla sex life like that, no real
desire to explore. So he would also kind of need
to grow up a little bit in that department. I
(22:17):
asked Michelle if she ever thought about her daughter when
she was thinking about her affairs and if she'd considered
what would happen if her daughter one day found out
about those affairs. You know, it's easy, especially in this
day age, even more so in Christian culture. Women are
very much put in a box. You know, you're supposed
(22:40):
to do X, Y and Z and be happy about
it at shut up and that's your life. And like
for her, I want more for her. I want her
to be happy. I don't want her to settle for anything,
and I want her to know that it's okay to
do what you need to do for you. And I've
(23:00):
that means that you go find someone and have wild
and crazy, amazing sex. Didn't do it like be safe,
have an exit strategy, but like, if that's what you
need in that moment, it's okay. As long as you're
not hurting people or doing drugs, it's okay to do
what you need to do for yourself. People really believe
(23:25):
that sex is bad and that they're going to go
to hell. We went back to sexual wellness expert and
Dame CEO Alexandra Fine to get her final take on
all of this. I can't tell you how many couples
come out to me or how many women feel weird
if they want sex more than their partner, like that
they feel like that's like not right. A lot of
you have a lot of shame too, Like to me,
(23:48):
I have found God through my sexuality, and I think
to so many people like that's a crazy idea. But
I think sex is sacred. But that's like such a
weird concept for people because that seems to trigger people
to think that they shouldn't have sex in some way.
And that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying it
is really beautiful and it's really powerful and we should
(24:10):
honor it. Just to be able to connect, to be
able to feel seen in that way. I think that
we're all entitled to that, and I think it's to me,
it feels very human to seek that. Look, I'm in
more of an open marriage. I think that it's really
sad and really tough to feel like you have to
(24:33):
betray somebody in order to do that. But that's so
inaccessible to people, and I totally realize that it's so tough.
This interview went in a different direction than I expected.
Alexander came on as an expert in sexual wellness, and
then we found ourselves talking about how she ended up
in an open marriage herself. The idea of open marriages
(24:57):
is very interesting too me and my producers, and we've
thought a lot about them while reporting on this podcast. See,
an open marriage isn't necessarily an affair, not if all
parties know everything that is happening. But we do think
it's really interesting to explore more of what an open
(25:20):
marriage means in this podcast because in some ways it
feels like the evolution of the traditional affair. And so
next week that is what we're talking about. We're talking
to Alice, a woman who says that opening up her
marriage may have actually saved it. And it all started
(25:41):
with an affair. I told him that I had had
a sexual experience with someone else, and so he and
I then really had our first conversation about what non
monogamy is, and he said he just wasn't a non
monogamous person. He understands that what I need to feel
also filled is to be connecting to other people. That's
(26:05):
next week this is She Wants More. I'm your host,
Joe Piazza. She Wants More was inspired by the book
A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish. It was
adapted for audio by executive producers Merrill Poster, Kara Pfeiffer,
and Susan Shapiro Bearish. She Wants More is hosted and
(26:25):
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.
Our executive producers for iHeart are Ali Perry and Nikki Eatore.
She Wants More as a production of iHeart Podcasts. For
(26:47):
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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