February 21, 2023 • 35 mins
Affairs have always been more dangerous for women than men. Throughout history women have faced persecution, shame and sometimes even death for cheating on their husbands. But are women still judged more harshly than men for cheating? In this episode, Jo is joined by cultural critic and anthropologist, Wednesday Martin, to explore the origins of shame surrounding female sexuality. We then meet "Catie," who had to move to a new city and get a new job to escape the fallout from her affair with her husband's best friend.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When I look back on it now, I'm like, I
put myself in this very dangerous situation on purpose, and
I think that no regular relationship could even ever be
that exciting because there was so much risk and danger.
And I mean the danger was to my marriage, and
the danger was to my identity and self respect. This
(00:24):
is she wants more. I'm your host, Joe Piazza. Last week,
we heard from a woman named Nikki about the twelve
years that she's been cheating on her husband. This week,
we're going to hear from Katie. Katie risked everything in
her life for her affair, and she ended up losing
most of her friends and having to move to a
(00:45):
new city just to escape the fallout. The implication was
that I hopped from person to person and that I
didn't care about people's feelings. People that I thought I
was close with called me like four the names. It
really puts this perspective on like, am I selfish? Do
(01:05):
I not care about others? Extra marital affairs, especially for women,
have never been without risk. In many countries and cultures,
including this one. It has historically been illegal for women
(01:26):
to commit adultery, and through the years, the sentences have
been harsh. Women could either get slut shamed or get
murdered for exercising sexual autonomy and having an affair, or
saying I don't want to be a monogymous. That voice
(01:47):
you heard is Wednesday. Martin Wednesday is a feminist author,
an anthropologist, and a cultural critic. She is also a
woman who loves nothing more than talking about female sexuality
and pleasure. Her book Untrue is a deep dive into
the topic of women and non monogamy. High Wednesday. When
(02:10):
I decided as doing a podcast on women and adultery,
you were the only person I wanted to talk to.
Thank you. I'm very honored because I've been studying this
full time for seven years now, and it's such a
universal topic in many ways, and it's so personal to people,
(02:30):
Like what could be more dishy or delicious or devastating
than affairs? And so many great novels have been written
about affairs, so many great scripted series and movies. It's
almost like it's in our blood. It's in our blood.
I think it is in our DNA that we just
(02:51):
we want to know more, we want to know everything,
and a lot of us who have not had affairs
really want to hear about and from people who have
had affairs or who are non monogamous. When we watch
a scripted series like The Affair, or when we read
Anna Karinina, we get a thrill from watching another woman
(03:17):
have an affair because maybe we secretly really want to,
but it's not an option for us because it's too
dangerous for us physically, or there's too much of a
risk of stigma in our community. I mean, that's something
we want to touch on in this podcast. Can you
(03:37):
talk a little bit about some of the ways that
women are still shamed for their affairs. Yes, most women
do not have the option to be openly non monogamous,
so they kind of have to be on the deal.
This is a culture where we have TikTok's and I
g reels about women doing what we call the walk
(03:58):
of shame. Right, We really stigmatized female sexuality even when
it's monogamous. So yeah, the reason that so few women
seem to be openly non monogamous is simply because we
don't really give them the option. We make it dangerous.
(04:20):
I mean, I know a lot of feminists who will
make jokes about the walk of shame and I'm like, so,
a woman's being autonomous, and we literally call it the
walk of shame. A woman is walking around in an
outfit that says, yes, I had sex, or we presume
means that I presume. There's a lot of assumption, there's
a lot of storytelling. The walk of shame is just
(04:43):
one classic example of a way we judge women we've
never really thought twice about. When it comes to infidelity,
we judge women way more harshly than we judge met
scholars have looked into this and it gets dark and
Lynn was beheaded. Medieval scholars have found that guilty women
(05:04):
were often expelled from their homes and their heads were shaven.
They were forced to parade through the streets. Yeah, it's
just like that episode of Game of Thrones. Women in
Sudan even today can face death by stoning for adultery,
and in America more recently, women aren't sentenced to death,
(05:26):
but they've definitely been judged more harshly than men. Just
take a look at pop culture. Yoko Ono and John
Lennon were actually both married when they began their affair,
but it's always been Yoko who has been publicly shamed
and vilified not only as the person who broke up
John's marriage, but as the person who broke up the Beatles.
(05:51):
We are still judging women more harshly than we judgment
Take Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles. Male directors have always
been having affairs with their actresses and no one says
much about it, whether they're married or not. But when
married director Olivia Wilde allegedly slept with her actor Harry Styles,
(06:14):
it was all we could talk about. Then there's Katie's story.
This story, the one you're about to hear, is a
classic example of a woman being judged more harshly than
a man, and you'll hear all of it. After a
quick break, we're back with she Wants More Now. Before
(06:44):
we get into Katie's affair, we're going to start with
her marriage. Katie fell in love in college when she
was just nineteen of the baby. But you know, I
felt so sure then at that time, you feel like
you kind of own the world and know everythinging we
became adults together, we got our jobs. I was like, Okay,
this is adulthood, and I think I didn't even realize
(07:07):
how much more growing up I had to do. Katy
had grown up in New Jersey, and her dream had
always been to move to California. Her and her husband
fulfilled that dream when they moved to Los Angeles together,
and to save money, they became roommates with Katie's husband's
best friend. This becomes a huge part of the story.
(07:28):
So I asked Katie to tell me just a little
bit more about that. My husband had this really close
high school friend who had an apartment, and he was like,
come moving with me. It'll be great. I'll show you
around the city. And it sure was great, and we
had a wonderful time together. I started exploring new things
about myself in a new city, and I felt kind
(07:50):
of free, and I almost felt like I wasn't married anymore.
And I did a lot of exploring alongside this friend
of my husband's, and he was kind of guiding us
in this new place. And it took me a really
long time to realize that I was growing very attached
to him, and that I was drawing away from who
I was and developing into someone new, and it didn't
(08:14):
include my husband as much anymore. I asked Katie who
this new person she was turning into actually was. How
was she becoming different than the person that met her
husband at age nineteen. I think there's a lot of
things about my female identity that I was coming into.
I had one idea about myself that I wasn't a
(08:36):
very sexual person. And it's so interesting because I'm not
sure why I developed that idea or how long I
held it, but I just was like, well, I'm not
really interested in sex. I don't feel like exploring in
that arena. And then I started kind of just feeling differently,
like no, maybe I am a sexual person. I just
(08:56):
haven't explored with different partners, and maybe that's what I need.
And I had a lot of these thoughts and I
didn't know what to do with them, And also, what
the hell does anyone know about sex with our nineteen
years right? Nothing? And just like the relationship, I also
thought that you shouldn't have to try at that either.
(09:16):
I just was like, well, I'm lucky I found this
great partner, he's really nice to me, we have some
things in common, we live in this great city. Why
should I want more? But I did want more? Did
you feel guilty for wanting more? Oh? So guilty? And
I just thought, you know, I have these feelings. I
have these wants and desires, but I can just push
(09:36):
them down because that's just what we're supposed to do
in life. And I think I didn't really start feeling
guilty until I really wanted to act on them. When
I really started being like, oh, I have to do
something about this, then that's when like the big guilt
set in, and it really changed who I thought I was.
(09:57):
I thought I was a good person and a girl
and someone that was faithful and loyal, and I didn't
know what to do with the desires that went against
these thoughts I had about myself. What were some of
the fantasies that you've started having. I think mostly it
was about like being desired and desiring, and that was
(10:22):
something that I felt like was no longer happening in
my current marriage. And I want to do things that
are scary, and we'll teach me about myself. So Katie
was having all these fantasies about her husband's best friend,
who was also their roommate at the time. Eventually, Katie
(10:44):
and her husband moved into their own place, thank god,
but her feelings didn't go away. We started to push boundaries,
like we would always be sitting next to each other.
We would hold hands, would put our arms around each other.
We would have like intimate conversations while the rest of
the group of friends, including my husband, were doing other things.
(11:05):
No one seemed to be bothered by this. No one
seemed to notice or care. Has been never brought it up.
But I was starting to feel like this tension building.
So I said to Phil, what are we going to
do about this? Phil is the roommate's name, by the way.
And he said, well, nothing, We're not going to do anything.
(11:26):
And that seemed safe enough, but it was just growing
and growing. And the next day he called me and
he was just like, you have to come over here,
like I have to see you. And I was like,
I know. And that was kind of just how the
affair started. I can picture that night like it was
a war evening in Santa Monica. I held his hand
(11:50):
when we walked into his apartment and he kissed me,
and that was just like the crossing of the boundary.
And it was like all the fantasy that I had
made up in my head were coming to fruition. And
I was scared, but it felt so comfortable because I
had built a relationship with this person over basically two years.
(12:11):
When I look back on it now, I'm like, I
put myself in this very dangerous situation on purpose, and
then I just kind of kept escalating the level of
the danger. And I mean the danger was to my marriage,
and the danger was to my identity and self respect.
And it almost felt like a relief to finally have
(12:33):
some kind of actual intimacy with Phil because it had
just been growing and growing and growing. It was all
terribly exciting, and I think that no regular relationship could
even ever be that exciting because there was so much
risk and danger. Right when you say regular relationship, you
(12:54):
mean something that's not unfair. Yes, the regulars, the normal,
just the regulars that are like going on normal dates
and they're both single life. What do you think made
it sexier just because it felt forbidden, It felt like
what we assumed to be bad. I think so. And
I think it also because it challenged who and what
(13:17):
I thought I was, So that kind of felt dangerous,
and I, you know, I have like some kind of
excitement desire living on the edge thing in me. I
was a competitive gymnast growing up, and that's a pretty scary,
dangerous sport. And like even things like surfing. I like
these risks that push the boundaries of what you're comfortable with.
(13:37):
It was definitely like a high. I mean, I know
love can be such a high, and it's just a
really interesting phenomenon. You feel like you're not in control
and there's just this other worldliness to the situation. Was
it living up to the fantasies? Yes? I think it
lived up to the fantasies in that I felt so
(14:02):
excited and desired and full of desire in a way
that I never had before. I mean when I started
my relationship when I was nineteen, we had that for
a little period of time, but it's I was so
immature then and so uncertain in my own body, and
so I think that being twenty nine and feeling that
(14:23):
was entirely different. And we also were just very connected
and we knew each other very well, so it was
really really passionate and exciting, and like we just wanted
to be, you know, intertwined at all times and couldn't
stop thinking about each other, and when we were near
each other, we were just like all over each other.
(14:44):
I Mean, if I saw people on the street acting
this way, I would just feel like, what is wrong
with those people. Yeah, like, no one wants to see that,
but feeling it is a really interesting experience. And then
I also think that as soon as our affair started,
I knew that we were actually in love with each other.
(15:05):
And that was when I started to kind of break
down because I realized what that meant. And so it
was really exciting and fun for a couple of weeks,
and then it was fairly devastating because it was real
and I knew that it was gonna uproot my life
and change who I was. And then I started being
(15:29):
kind of honest about it and being like, I'm going
to see Phil and my husband would say, okay, have
a fun afternoon, and he just wouldn't ask what was
going on. Her husband was oblivious. He thought that Katie
was just hanging out with a mutual friend. But eventually
Katie felt so guilty that she had no choice but
(15:51):
to come clean. And a couple of weeks like that,
and I started saying things to him like I'm having
a problem. I'm having really big feelings for your friend
and I don't know what to do about it, and
he was kind of like, well, we'll get through this.
Do you want to go to therapy, and I was like, sure,
(16:11):
but there was a huge level of denial from his part.
And I also think he just trusted me so much
and he thought I was a good person that would
never betray him. Katie couldn't imagine ending things with her husband.
It just seemed like something so out of the realm
of possibility. I had to hurt someone I loved, and
(16:37):
I had to hurt myself, and I didn't want our
time together to be over. He was my best friend
and I had been through my whole twenties with him,
and he held my hand while my father was dying.
The last thing I wanted to do was hurt this person.
And so then it really puts this perspective on like
am I selfish? Am I just going after what I
(16:58):
want in this life recklessly? And then I just got
to a point where I started definitely lying. I was
making up places that I was and I was kind
of withdrawing, and it was getting very hard for me
to be around him. Interestingly, in the beginning, maybe like
(17:20):
the first two months, my sex life with my husband
got way better, and I reflect on that and it
was almost like I found my sexuality. And then it
could be applied to other situations as well. Tell me
everything about that. I just felt more confident, more sexual,
(17:41):
And I think it was probably very confusing because in
one hand, I was kind of out all the time
and constantly going to see his friend. But on the
other hand, like our sex was better than it had
been in years, and I felt like I wanted to
have sex with him again, which I hadn't in a
few years. It was as if it like enlivened my
(18:01):
whole sexual being, and there was a part of me
that at that time desperately wished I could just be
in a relationship with both of them, which obviously was
not realistic. Wow, So I would it have actually worked
if you could have had both men in your life
at once? Don't there's any situation, any scenario where that
could have happened. I mean, like I think it would
(18:25):
have worked for me. I don't think it would have
worked for either of them. Um. I mean what happened
for me to leave him is he gave me an ultimatum.
He said, you need to not see Phil anymore, Like
I just don't see him anymore and then we'll be fine.
And I said, I'm so sorry. I don't want our
marriage to be over, and I don't want to lose you,
but I can't do that. And I wished deeply that
(18:48):
I could have made a different decision. It wasn't the
decision that I wanted to make necessarily, like if I
had put a pros and cons list, But I felt
I couldn't not see Phil anymore because we were just
passionately in love and obsessed with each other, and it
just I would have been depressed and sad and yeah,
(19:08):
so you know, I think maybe if we had been older,
if we had had kids, like I wonder how much
that would have changed my decision in that situation. But
as it was, I couldn't do it. And so he said, Okay,
then then it's over. I never want to see you again.
And that was awful. So he took the hard line,
he said, I never want to see you again. Yeah. Wow,
(19:32):
how did that fail? Oh? It broke my heart. I
mean I I was fully broken hearted. Katie moved out
of the apartment that she shared with her husband. She
moved in with Phil. She cried and cried for weeks,
and after a couple of weeks, she ended up getting
(19:53):
into this accident that she was convinced she completely deserved
because of everything that she had done. I broke both
of my feet in a random accident jumping into a pool,
and so then I was just fully broken. I felt
like it was what I deserved, and I felt like
it was appropriate to literally not be able to stand
(20:15):
on my own two feet and also like figuratively to
feel that I had dissolved as a person. Um it
was like my rock bottom and took me years to
kind of rise back up into owning who I am
and what I am and understanding myself again. Choosing Phil
(20:37):
cost Katie everything. Both Phil and I lost friends. We
were super judged. You know, people people that I thought
I was close with called me like horrible names and
just you know, the implication was that I just like
hopped from person to person and that I didn't care
(20:59):
about people's feelings. And also that, um so, you know,
because when I broke my feet, I couldn't coach gymnastics.
So then Phil was like taking care of me physically
and financially. So there was like a lot of mean
money words too, like that I was like that I
used people, and you know that I that men took
(21:19):
care of me and like these things that made me
just feel really horrible about my female identity. And I
think that some people thought that I wasn't like thinking clearly,
like that Phil had cast some kind of spell on
me and I was just being dragged around and it
wasn't really my decision, and that also felt bad, and
(21:43):
ultimately I ended up leaving Los Angeles because it just
felt too negative, and I had coworkers that had been
part of our group of friends that didn't want to
talk to me anymore. We just felt really like none
of our friends would see us anymore because they all
show was the other side the hurt party, which I
understood and I didn't hold it against them, but it
(22:05):
felt really negative, and I ended up taking a job
in San Francisco as soon as I could walk again.
Doing The fallout was as bad for Phil was it
was for you. I think a lot of the times
women get judged more harshly, but in this scenario, because
he had been friends with my ex husband for so
(22:26):
many years, they had like this larger network of high
school buddies that pretty much all stopped speaking to Phil,
and that was really hard for him and sad. They
kind of just saw him as someone that came in
and stole someone else's wife, and they would, you know, like,
why why didn't you get your own girlfriend? Why do
you have to steal somebody else's wife, that sort of thing.
(22:47):
So I do feel like it was equally harsh and judgmental. However,
I think that people were more surprised about me. They
were kind of shocked, whereas to him they were like, oh, yeah, happens.
Why do you Why do you think people were more
shocked about you because you were the married woman. I mean,
I think just because I'm a woman, I'm a woman
(23:07):
who is a nice person and people consider me, you know,
I'm nice to people that I don't try to hurt
people's feelings, like I tried to be a positive human being.
And yeah, I think that just like be it being
good and nice and married, and a woman doesn't like
equate with you know, passionately falling in love or leaving
(23:27):
your husband or things like that. I started to think
about the way that Katie was judged, the shock of
it all, compared to the way philm was judged, which was, hey,
you're an asshole, but we'll get over. And I wonder
if it's because we expect this kind of behavior from them.
(23:49):
Maybe maybe not. But one thing I think we do
have to acknowledge is that women have the same desires
for sex, for passion, and for fulfillment as dudes do.
Despite what society may have historically told us. We have
listened to all this hogwash science for decades, even centuries
(24:13):
that tell us that men are more naturally sexual than women.
What do we know based on more recent sex research data.
We know that women and men's libidos are very closely matched.
That's Wednesday again. If we look at data across many countries,
what we find consistently is that in long term, exclusive
(24:38):
cohabiting relationships, women get bored of monogamous sex with their
long term partner they're living with more quickly than men do.
On average, a woman who is living with her male
long term partner in an exclusive arrangement will experience a
(25:01):
steep drop and desire in years one to four, whereas
a man's desire will add more slowly over nine to
twelve years. It has to do with evolutionary biology. It
has to do with the fact that in our evolutionary prehistory,
having multiple partners was really advantageous. For female hominence and women,
(25:25):
and it was disadvantageous for male hominence and men. And
that's another lie of science is that, oh, men can
just spread their seed and create a million babies, but
a woman can only create one, and that's why women
are monogamous and men are promiscus. Nope, that's also untrue.
It's very hard to hit a woman if you will
(25:50):
at exactly the right moment to impregnate her. So if
you're a dude and you're pumping and dumping, as some
people say, you're just going and having sex with all
these different women, what's the likelihood that you're going to
get them at the right point in their menstrual cycle
where they're ovulating. Very slim chances, Whereas if you're with
(26:13):
one female partner and you're having sex with her, it's
more likely. Right. So there's one reason that monogamy and
exclusivity were more advantageous for males and many species. Second thing,
there were a lot of benefits to being what scientists
sometimes called promiscuous. Say you're some female mammal and you're
(26:35):
doing it with one male. What if he is infertile
m what if he just has kind of crappy sperm motility.
What if you guys are too closely genetically matched so
(26:57):
that you don't have enough genetic differences that you will
create a robust pregnancy and offspring. If you're with this
one male, you're decreasing your chances of getting high quality sperm.
So my view is an evolutionary biologist, is the software
is still in there. We have changed up the ecology
and now women could either get slut shamed or even
(27:21):
shot in the face right in the United States, get
murdered for exercising sexual autonomy and having an affair or
saying I don't want to be a monogamous So we
have changed the ecology, But the long wiring, all the
advantages that promiscuous behavior confirmed for thousands and thousands and
(27:45):
thousands of years, is still in there. And I believe
that that is the reason that monogamy is a tighter
shoe for women than it is for men. When we
get back, we'll find out more about what happened after
or Katie and Film moved out of l A to
escape the fallout from their affair. We're back after the
(28:11):
fallout from their affair and leaving Los Angeles. It was
really hard for Katie and Phil to get back that spark.
We had a really hard time for like three years.
We broke up for like a really short period in there,
because we're just like, this isn't this isn't working, We're
not committed, we're not good. And after we broke up,
(28:33):
I think we both quickly realized that we really loved
each other and that even though it had started in
a negative and difficult way, that didn't mean that we
weren't compatible and that we weren't in love. Then we
started doing like hard adult work and like just really
trying to grow as people together and separately, and I
(28:56):
think that was kind of like the start of our
actual adulthood. I think that's really when I took responsibility
for who and what I was and he did too,
and we were like, we want to be together, we
want to have a family. We love each other, so
let's just work hard. And we've been doing that ever since.
Katie and Phil eventually got married, and I had to
(29:18):
ask her what her ex husband's reaction was when he
found out they had finally settled down together when we
were broken up. I guess he had known just because
through the Grapevine situation, and he actually was willing to
exchange a few emails with me during that time, and
then as soon as we got back together and then
(29:38):
got married, he would no longer respond to me in
any way again. So that's I guess all the information
I have. Did you and Phil ever have problems with
trust because of how you got started? Yeah, at the beginning.
I remember his father one time asked him. Phil's father said,
and why do you think that she won't just cheat?
(29:59):
Done you? And that's harsh, and I'm sure a lot
of people had that thought, and that that made me sad.
But I think that ultimately Phil didn't think I was
that kind of person, and he saw the ways that
I hadn't fostered, you know, my sexual connection in my
(30:23):
previous relationship, and we are very intentional and work really
hard at continuing to foster that in our relationship because
that piece is scary and I don't want to lose
that again. And then I mean, there was trust issues
from my end two because I felt like, well, maybe
he just did this with me because it was an
(30:44):
affair and it was really exciting and this kind of high,
and that didn't mean that he actually wanted to be
with me and didn't actually love me. So I think
my fears came from kind of that place. Do you
think that because of how you guys started, your marriage
is actually stronger, your relationship is actually better now? I
(31:08):
think in some ways, I think we learned so much
going through that situation. And even though Phil didn't get divorced,
I got divorced. He went through the divorce with me,
you know, and he was by my side and it
was hard and he saw that firsthand, and even you know,
(31:29):
experienced it a little bit. So that is interesting to
like start your relationship with someone by going through divorce
and like a really hard, sad divorce. And I think
that that just made us realize how hard you have
to work to be in a relationship that's successful, and
that as the years go on, you have to work
(31:49):
harder and harder. Not the opposite. Katie and Phil are
happier than ever before. Their marriage is solid, and they
recently had a baby. I'm a mom of a two
year old little girl and she's the best. And Katie
says that everything that happened between her and Phil and
after the affair has ultimately made their bond even stronger,
(32:13):
and frankly, it's helped her grow in ways she never
would have been able to if she hadn't acted on
her feelings. Sometimes, taking this scary leap in your life
in a variety of ways, this is one of them,
propels you into growth and understanding and compassion for other
people who are imperfect, because we are not perfect and
(32:35):
we have so much growing and learning to do. I
think at all parts of our life and I don't
regret being daring, and I don't regret following things that
filled me with passion and excitement. Of course, I regret
ever hurting someone else, but I hope that he was
able to grow in his own ways eventually from the
(32:58):
experience as well. Of the four categories of affairs that
researchers Susan Shapiro Barrish told us about in the last episode,
Katie's is a great example of a love affair, and
thankfully her love story worked out for eventually. Next up,
(33:19):
on the next episode, we have a very different kind
of affair, and this one is going to make you
rethink everything that you thought you knew about women and
their appetite for sex. Let's just say you like to
play tennis and you're really good at it, like really good.
(33:39):
And at some point you go to your partner and
you say, you know what, I really need to play
tennis with somebody who plays tennis at my love one.
Nobody would say, oh no, don't go find that person
and be like, yeah, I probably get it. You know,
you love this. This is one of your favorite things
in the whole world. Go find somebody who's this into
it as you are. If you take out tennis and
say really fun, really great sex, yeah, and suddenly it's
(34:04):
not the same kind of activity. That's all in next
week's episode. This has been She Wants More. I'm your host,
Joe Piazza. Thanks for listening. She Wants More was inspired
by the book A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish.
It was adapted for audio by executive producers Merril Poster,
(34:27):
Kara Peiffer, and Susan Shapiro Bearish. She Wants More is
hosted and 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 i Heeart are
Ali Perry and Nikki Eatore. She wants more as a
(34:50):
production of i Heeart podcasts. For more podcasts from my Heart,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Two
When I look back on it now, I'm like, I
put myself in this very dangerous situation on purpose, and
I think that no regular relationship could even ever be
that exciting because there was so much risk and danger.
And I mean the danger was to my marriage, and
the danger was to my identity and self respect. This
(00:24):
is she wants more. I'm your host, Joe Piazza. Last week,
we heard from a woman named Nikki about the twelve
years that she's been cheating on her husband. This week,
we're going to hear from Katie. Katie risked everything in
her life for her affair, and she ended up losing
most of her friends and having to move to a
(00:45):
new city just to escape the fallout. The implication was
that I hopped from person to person and that I
didn't care about people's feelings. People that I thought I
was close with called me like four the names. It
really puts this perspective on like, am I selfish? Do
(01:05):
I not care about others? Extra marital affairs, especially for women,
have never been without risk. In many countries and cultures,
including this one. It has historically been illegal for women
(01:26):
to commit adultery, and through the years, the sentences have
been harsh. Women could either get slut shamed or get
murdered for exercising sexual autonomy and having an affair, or
saying I don't want to be a monogymous. That voice
(01:47):
you heard is Wednesday. Martin Wednesday is a feminist author,
an anthropologist, and a cultural critic. She is also a
woman who loves nothing more than talking about female sexuality
and pleasure. Her book Untrue is a deep dive into
the topic of women and non monogamy. High Wednesday. When
(02:10):
I decided as doing a podcast on women and adultery,
you were the only person I wanted to talk to.
Thank you. I'm very honored because I've been studying this
full time for seven years now, and it's such a
universal topic in many ways, and it's so personal to people,
(02:30):
Like what could be more dishy or delicious or devastating
than affairs? And so many great novels have been written
about affairs, so many great scripted series and movies. It's
almost like it's in our blood. It's in our blood.
I think it is in our DNA that we just
(02:51):
we want to know more, we want to know everything,
and a lot of us who have not had affairs
really want to hear about and from people who have
had affairs or who are non monogamous. When we watch
a scripted series like The Affair, or when we read
Anna Karinina, we get a thrill from watching another woman
(03:17):
have an affair because maybe we secretly really want to,
but it's not an option for us because it's too
dangerous for us physically, or there's too much of a
risk of stigma in our community. I mean, that's something
we want to touch on in this podcast. Can you
(03:37):
talk a little bit about some of the ways that
women are still shamed for their affairs. Yes, most women
do not have the option to be openly non monogamous,
so they kind of have to be on the deal.
This is a culture where we have TikTok's and I
g reels about women doing what we call the walk
(03:58):
of shame. Right, We really stigmatized female sexuality even when
it's monogamous. So yeah, the reason that so few women
seem to be openly non monogamous is simply because we
don't really give them the option. We make it dangerous.
(04:20):
I mean, I know a lot of feminists who will
make jokes about the walk of shame and I'm like, so,
a woman's being autonomous, and we literally call it the
walk of shame. A woman is walking around in an
outfit that says, yes, I had sex, or we presume
means that I presume. There's a lot of assumption, there's
a lot of storytelling. The walk of shame is just
(04:43):
one classic example of a way we judge women we've
never really thought twice about. When it comes to infidelity,
we judge women way more harshly than we judge met
scholars have looked into this and it gets dark and
Lynn was beheaded. Medieval scholars have found that guilty women
(05:04):
were often expelled from their homes and their heads were shaven.
They were forced to parade through the streets. Yeah, it's
just like that episode of Game of Thrones. Women in
Sudan even today can face death by stoning for adultery,
and in America more recently, women aren't sentenced to death,
(05:26):
but they've definitely been judged more harshly than men. Just
take a look at pop culture. Yoko Ono and John
Lennon were actually both married when they began their affair,
but it's always been Yoko who has been publicly shamed
and vilified not only as the person who broke up
John's marriage, but as the person who broke up the Beatles.
(05:51):
We are still judging women more harshly than we judgment
Take Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles. Male directors have always
been having affairs with their actresses and no one says
much about it, whether they're married or not. But when
married director Olivia Wilde allegedly slept with her actor Harry Styles,
(06:14):
it was all we could talk about. Then there's Katie's story.
This story, the one you're about to hear, is a
classic example of a woman being judged more harshly than
a man, and you'll hear all of it. After a
quick break, we're back with she Wants More Now. Before
(06:44):
we get into Katie's affair, we're going to start with
her marriage. Katie fell in love in college when she
was just nineteen of the baby. But you know, I
felt so sure then at that time, you feel like
you kind of own the world and know everythinging we
became adults together, we got our jobs. I was like, Okay,
this is adulthood, and I think I didn't even realize
(07:07):
how much more growing up I had to do. Katy
had grown up in New Jersey, and her dream had
always been to move to California. Her and her husband
fulfilled that dream when they moved to Los Angeles together,
and to save money, they became roommates with Katie's husband's
best friend. This becomes a huge part of the story.
(07:28):
So I asked Katie to tell me just a little
bit more about that. My husband had this really close
high school friend who had an apartment, and he was like,
come moving with me. It'll be great. I'll show you
around the city. And it sure was great, and we
had a wonderful time together. I started exploring new things
about myself in a new city, and I felt kind
(07:50):
of free, and I almost felt like I wasn't married anymore.
And I did a lot of exploring alongside this friend
of my husband's, and he was kind of guiding us
in this new place. And it took me a really
long time to realize that I was growing very attached
to him, and that I was drawing away from who
I was and developing into someone new, and it didn't
(08:14):
include my husband as much anymore. I asked Katie who
this new person she was turning into actually was. How
was she becoming different than the person that met her
husband at age nineteen. I think there's a lot of
things about my female identity that I was coming into.
I had one idea about myself that I wasn't a
(08:36):
very sexual person. And it's so interesting because I'm not
sure why I developed that idea or how long I
held it, but I just was like, well, I'm not
really interested in sex. I don't feel like exploring in
that arena. And then I started kind of just feeling differently,
like no, maybe I am a sexual person. I just
(08:56):
haven't explored with different partners, and maybe that's what I need.
And I had a lot of these thoughts and I
didn't know what to do with them, And also, what
the hell does anyone know about sex with our nineteen
years right? Nothing? And just like the relationship, I also
thought that you shouldn't have to try at that either.
(09:16):
I just was like, well, I'm lucky I found this
great partner, he's really nice to me, we have some
things in common, we live in this great city. Why
should I want more? But I did want more? Did
you feel guilty for wanting more? Oh? So guilty? And
I just thought, you know, I have these feelings. I
have these wants and desires, but I can just push
(09:36):
them down because that's just what we're supposed to do
in life. And I think I didn't really start feeling
guilty until I really wanted to act on them. When
I really started being like, oh, I have to do
something about this, then that's when like the big guilt
set in, and it really changed who I thought I was.
(09:57):
I thought I was a good person and a girl
and someone that was faithful and loyal, and I didn't
know what to do with the desires that went against
these thoughts I had about myself. What were some of
the fantasies that you've started having. I think mostly it
was about like being desired and desiring, and that was
(10:22):
something that I felt like was no longer happening in
my current marriage. And I want to do things that
are scary, and we'll teach me about myself. So Katie
was having all these fantasies about her husband's best friend,
who was also their roommate at the time. Eventually, Katie
(10:44):
and her husband moved into their own place, thank god,
but her feelings didn't go away. We started to push boundaries,
like we would always be sitting next to each other.
We would hold hands, would put our arms around each other.
We would have like intimate conversations while the rest of
the group of friends, including my husband, were doing other things.
(11:05):
No one seemed to be bothered by this. No one
seemed to notice or care. Has been never brought it up.
But I was starting to feel like this tension building.
So I said to Phil, what are we going to
do about this? Phil is the roommate's name, by the way.
And he said, well, nothing, We're not going to do anything.
(11:26):
And that seemed safe enough, but it was just growing
and growing. And the next day he called me and
he was just like, you have to come over here,
like I have to see you. And I was like,
I know. And that was kind of just how the
affair started. I can picture that night like it was
a war evening in Santa Monica. I held his hand
(11:50):
when we walked into his apartment and he kissed me,
and that was just like the crossing of the boundary.
And it was like all the fantasy that I had
made up in my head were coming to fruition. And
I was scared, but it felt so comfortable because I
had built a relationship with this person over basically two years.
(12:11):
When I look back on it now, I'm like, I
put myself in this very dangerous situation on purpose, and
then I just kind of kept escalating the level of
the danger. And I mean the danger was to my marriage,
and the danger was to my identity and self respect.
And it almost felt like a relief to finally have
(12:33):
some kind of actual intimacy with Phil because it had
just been growing and growing and growing. It was all
terribly exciting, and I think that no regular relationship could
even ever be that exciting because there was so much
risk and danger. Right when you say regular relationship, you
(12:54):
mean something that's not unfair. Yes, the regulars, the normal,
just the regulars that are like going on normal dates
and they're both single life. What do you think made
it sexier just because it felt forbidden, It felt like
what we assumed to be bad. I think so. And
I think it also because it challenged who and what
(13:17):
I thought I was, So that kind of felt dangerous,
and I, you know, I have like some kind of
excitement desire living on the edge thing in me. I
was a competitive gymnast growing up, and that's a pretty scary,
dangerous sport. And like even things like surfing. I like
these risks that push the boundaries of what you're comfortable with.
(13:37):
It was definitely like a high. I mean, I know
love can be such a high, and it's just a
really interesting phenomenon. You feel like you're not in control
and there's just this other worldliness to the situation. Was
it living up to the fantasies? Yes? I think it
lived up to the fantasies in that I felt so
(14:02):
excited and desired and full of desire in a way
that I never had before. I mean when I started
my relationship when I was nineteen, we had that for
a little period of time, but it's I was so
immature then and so uncertain in my own body, and
so I think that being twenty nine and feeling that
(14:23):
was entirely different. And we also were just very connected
and we knew each other very well, so it was
really really passionate and exciting, and like we just wanted
to be, you know, intertwined at all times and couldn't
stop thinking about each other, and when we were near
each other, we were just like all over each other.
(14:44):
I Mean, if I saw people on the street acting
this way, I would just feel like, what is wrong
with those people. Yeah, like, no one wants to see that,
but feeling it is a really interesting experience. And then
I also think that as soon as our affair started,
I knew that we were actually in love with each other.
(15:05):
And that was when I started to kind of break
down because I realized what that meant. And so it
was really exciting and fun for a couple of weeks,
and then it was fairly devastating because it was real
and I knew that it was gonna uproot my life
and change who I was. And then I started being
(15:29):
kind of honest about it and being like, I'm going
to see Phil and my husband would say, okay, have
a fun afternoon, and he just wouldn't ask what was
going on. Her husband was oblivious. He thought that Katie
was just hanging out with a mutual friend. But eventually
Katie felt so guilty that she had no choice but
(15:51):
to come clean. And a couple of weeks like that,
and I started saying things to him like I'm having
a problem. I'm having really big feelings for your friend
and I don't know what to do about it, and
he was kind of like, well, we'll get through this.
Do you want to go to therapy, and I was like, sure,
(16:11):
but there was a huge level of denial from his part.
And I also think he just trusted me so much
and he thought I was a good person that would
never betray him. Katie couldn't imagine ending things with her husband.
It just seemed like something so out of the realm
of possibility. I had to hurt someone I loved, and
(16:37):
I had to hurt myself, and I didn't want our
time together to be over. He was my best friend
and I had been through my whole twenties with him,
and he held my hand while my father was dying.
The last thing I wanted to do was hurt this person.
And so then it really puts this perspective on like
am I selfish? Am I just going after what I
(16:58):
want in this life recklessly? And then I just got
to a point where I started definitely lying. I was
making up places that I was and I was kind
of withdrawing, and it was getting very hard for me
to be around him. Interestingly, in the beginning, maybe like
(17:20):
the first two months, my sex life with my husband
got way better, and I reflect on that and it
was almost like I found my sexuality. And then it
could be applied to other situations as well. Tell me
everything about that. I just felt more confident, more sexual,
(17:41):
And I think it was probably very confusing because in
one hand, I was kind of out all the time
and constantly going to see his friend. But on the
other hand, like our sex was better than it had
been in years, and I felt like I wanted to
have sex with him again, which I hadn't in a
few years. It was as if it like enlivened my
(18:01):
whole sexual being, and there was a part of me
that at that time desperately wished I could just be
in a relationship with both of them, which obviously was
not realistic. Wow, So I would it have actually worked
if you could have had both men in your life
at once? Don't there's any situation, any scenario where that
could have happened. I mean, like I think it would
(18:25):
have worked for me. I don't think it would have
worked for either of them. Um. I mean what happened
for me to leave him is he gave me an ultimatum.
He said, you need to not see Phil anymore, Like
I just don't see him anymore and then we'll be fine.
And I said, I'm so sorry. I don't want our
marriage to be over, and I don't want to lose you,
but I can't do that. And I wished deeply that
(18:48):
I could have made a different decision. It wasn't the
decision that I wanted to make necessarily, like if I
had put a pros and cons list, But I felt
I couldn't not see Phil anymore because we were just
passionately in love and obsessed with each other, and it
just I would have been depressed and sad and yeah,
(19:08):
so you know, I think maybe if we had been older,
if we had had kids, like I wonder how much
that would have changed my decision in that situation. But
as it was, I couldn't do it. And so he said, Okay,
then then it's over. I never want to see you again.
And that was awful. So he took the hard line,
he said, I never want to see you again. Yeah. Wow,
(19:32):
how did that fail? Oh? It broke my heart. I
mean I I was fully broken hearted. Katie moved out
of the apartment that she shared with her husband. She
moved in with Phil. She cried and cried for weeks,
and after a couple of weeks, she ended up getting
(19:53):
into this accident that she was convinced she completely deserved
because of everything that she had done. I broke both
of my feet in a random accident jumping into a pool,
and so then I was just fully broken. I felt
like it was what I deserved, and I felt like
it was appropriate to literally not be able to stand
(20:15):
on my own two feet and also like figuratively to
feel that I had dissolved as a person. Um it
was like my rock bottom and took me years to
kind of rise back up into owning who I am
and what I am and understanding myself again. Choosing Phil
(20:37):
cost Katie everything. Both Phil and I lost friends. We
were super judged. You know, people people that I thought
I was close with called me like horrible names and
just you know, the implication was that I just like
hopped from person to person and that I didn't care
(20:59):
about people's feelings. And also that, um so, you know,
because when I broke my feet, I couldn't coach gymnastics.
So then Phil was like taking care of me physically
and financially. So there was like a lot of mean
money words too, like that I was like that I
used people, and you know that I that men took
(21:19):
care of me and like these things that made me
just feel really horrible about my female identity. And I
think that some people thought that I wasn't like thinking clearly,
like that Phil had cast some kind of spell on
me and I was just being dragged around and it
wasn't really my decision, and that also felt bad, and
(21:43):
ultimately I ended up leaving Los Angeles because it just
felt too negative, and I had coworkers that had been
part of our group of friends that didn't want to
talk to me anymore. We just felt really like none
of our friends would see us anymore because they all
show was the other side the hurt party, which I
understood and I didn't hold it against them, but it
(22:05):
felt really negative, and I ended up taking a job
in San Francisco as soon as I could walk again.
Doing The fallout was as bad for Phil was it
was for you. I think a lot of the times
women get judged more harshly, but in this scenario, because
he had been friends with my ex husband for so
(22:26):
many years, they had like this larger network of high
school buddies that pretty much all stopped speaking to Phil,
and that was really hard for him and sad. They
kind of just saw him as someone that came in
and stole someone else's wife, and they would, you know, like,
why why didn't you get your own girlfriend? Why do
you have to steal somebody else's wife, that sort of thing.
(22:47):
So I do feel like it was equally harsh and judgmental. However,
I think that people were more surprised about me. They
were kind of shocked, whereas to him they were like, oh, yeah, happens.
Why do you Why do you think people were more
shocked about you because you were the married woman. I mean,
I think just because I'm a woman, I'm a woman
(23:07):
who is a nice person and people consider me, you know,
I'm nice to people that I don't try to hurt
people's feelings, like I tried to be a positive human being.
And yeah, I think that just like be it being
good and nice and married, and a woman doesn't like
equate with you know, passionately falling in love or leaving
(23:27):
your husband or things like that. I started to think
about the way that Katie was judged, the shock of
it all, compared to the way philm was judged, which was, hey,
you're an asshole, but we'll get over. And I wonder
if it's because we expect this kind of behavior from them.
(23:49):
Maybe maybe not. But one thing I think we do
have to acknowledge is that women have the same desires
for sex, for passion, and for fulfillment as dudes do.
Despite what society may have historically told us. We have
listened to all this hogwash science for decades, even centuries
(24:13):
that tell us that men are more naturally sexual than women.
What do we know based on more recent sex research data.
We know that women and men's libidos are very closely matched.
That's Wednesday again. If we look at data across many countries,
what we find consistently is that in long term, exclusive
(24:38):
cohabiting relationships, women get bored of monogamous sex with their
long term partner they're living with more quickly than men do.
On average, a woman who is living with her male
long term partner in an exclusive arrangement will experience a
(25:01):
steep drop and desire in years one to four, whereas
a man's desire will add more slowly over nine to
twelve years. It has to do with evolutionary biology. It
has to do with the fact that in our evolutionary prehistory,
having multiple partners was really advantageous. For female hominence and women,
(25:25):
and it was disadvantageous for male hominence and men. And
that's another lie of science is that, oh, men can
just spread their seed and create a million babies, but
a woman can only create one, and that's why women
are monogamous and men are promiscus. Nope, that's also untrue.
It's very hard to hit a woman if you will
(25:50):
at exactly the right moment to impregnate her. So if
you're a dude and you're pumping and dumping, as some
people say, you're just going and having sex with all
these different women, what's the likelihood that you're going to
get them at the right point in their menstrual cycle
where they're ovulating. Very slim chances, Whereas if you're with
(26:13):
one female partner and you're having sex with her, it's
more likely. Right. So there's one reason that monogamy and
exclusivity were more advantageous for males and many species. Second thing,
there were a lot of benefits to being what scientists
sometimes called promiscuous. Say you're some female mammal and you're
(26:35):
doing it with one male. What if he is infertile
m what if he just has kind of crappy sperm motility.
What if you guys are too closely genetically matched so
(26:57):
that you don't have enough genetic differences that you will
create a robust pregnancy and offspring. If you're with this
one male, you're decreasing your chances of getting high quality sperm.
So my view is an evolutionary biologist, is the software
is still in there. We have changed up the ecology
and now women could either get slut shamed or even
(27:21):
shot in the face right in the United States, get
murdered for exercising sexual autonomy and having an affair or
saying I don't want to be a monogamous So we
have changed the ecology, But the long wiring, all the
advantages that promiscuous behavior confirmed for thousands and thousands and
(27:45):
thousands of years, is still in there. And I believe
that that is the reason that monogamy is a tighter
shoe for women than it is for men. When we
get back, we'll find out more about what happened after
or Katie and Film moved out of l A to
escape the fallout from their affair. We're back after the
(28:11):
fallout from their affair and leaving Los Angeles. It was
really hard for Katie and Phil to get back that spark.
We had a really hard time for like three years.
We broke up for like a really short period in there,
because we're just like, this isn't this isn't working, We're
not committed, we're not good. And after we broke up,
(28:33):
I think we both quickly realized that we really loved
each other and that even though it had started in
a negative and difficult way, that didn't mean that we
weren't compatible and that we weren't in love. Then we
started doing like hard adult work and like just really
trying to grow as people together and separately, and I
(28:56):
think that was kind of like the start of our
actual adulthood. I think that's really when I took responsibility
for who and what I was and he did too,
and we were like, we want to be together, we
want to have a family. We love each other, so
let's just work hard. And we've been doing that ever since.
Katie and Phil eventually got married, and I had to
(29:18):
ask her what her ex husband's reaction was when he
found out they had finally settled down together when we
were broken up. I guess he had known just because
through the Grapevine situation, and he actually was willing to
exchange a few emails with me during that time, and
then as soon as we got back together and then
(29:38):
got married, he would no longer respond to me in
any way again. So that's I guess all the information
I have. Did you and Phil ever have problems with
trust because of how you got started? Yeah, at the beginning.
I remember his father one time asked him. Phil's father said,
and why do you think that she won't just cheat?
(29:59):
Done you? And that's harsh, and I'm sure a lot
of people had that thought, and that that made me sad.
But I think that ultimately Phil didn't think I was
that kind of person, and he saw the ways that
I hadn't fostered, you know, my sexual connection in my
(30:23):
previous relationship, and we are very intentional and work really
hard at continuing to foster that in our relationship because
that piece is scary and I don't want to lose
that again. And then I mean, there was trust issues
from my end two because I felt like, well, maybe
he just did this with me because it was an
(30:44):
affair and it was really exciting and this kind of high,
and that didn't mean that he actually wanted to be
with me and didn't actually love me. So I think
my fears came from kind of that place. Do you
think that because of how you guys started, your marriage
is actually stronger, your relationship is actually better now? I
(31:08):
think in some ways, I think we learned so much
going through that situation. And even though Phil didn't get divorced,
I got divorced. He went through the divorce with me,
you know, and he was by my side and it
was hard and he saw that firsthand, and even you know,
(31:29):
experienced it a little bit. So that is interesting to
like start your relationship with someone by going through divorce
and like a really hard, sad divorce. And I think
that that just made us realize how hard you have
to work to be in a relationship that's successful, and
that as the years go on, you have to work
(31:49):
harder and harder. Not the opposite. Katie and Phil are
happier than ever before. Their marriage is solid, and they
recently had a baby. I'm a mom of a two
year old little girl and she's the best. And Katie
says that everything that happened between her and Phil and
after the affair has ultimately made their bond even stronger,
(32:13):
and frankly, it's helped her grow in ways she never
would have been able to if she hadn't acted on
her feelings. Sometimes, taking this scary leap in your life
in a variety of ways, this is one of them,
propels you into growth and understanding and compassion for other
people who are imperfect, because we are not perfect and
(32:35):
we have so much growing and learning to do. I
think at all parts of our life and I don't
regret being daring, and I don't regret following things that
filled me with passion and excitement. Of course, I regret
ever hurting someone else, but I hope that he was
able to grow in his own ways eventually from the
(32:58):
experience as well. Of the four categories of affairs that
researchers Susan Shapiro Barrish told us about in the last episode,
Katie's is a great example of a love affair, and
thankfully her love story worked out for eventually. Next up,
(33:19):
on the next episode, we have a very different kind
of affair, and this one is going to make you
rethink everything that you thought you knew about women and
their appetite for sex. Let's just say you like to
play tennis and you're really good at it, like really good.
(33:39):
And at some point you go to your partner and
you say, you know what, I really need to play
tennis with somebody who plays tennis at my love one.
Nobody would say, oh no, don't go find that person
and be like, yeah, I probably get it. You know,
you love this. This is one of your favorite things
in the whole world. Go find somebody who's this into
it as you are. If you take out tennis and
say really fun, really great sex, yeah, and suddenly it's
(34:04):
not the same kind of activity. That's all in next
week's episode. This has been She Wants More. I'm your host,
Joe Piazza. Thanks for listening. She Wants More was inspired
by the book A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish.
It was adapted for audio by executive producers Merril Poster,
(34:27):
Kara Peiffer, and Susan Shapiro Bearish. She Wants More is
hosted and 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 i Heeart are
Ali Perry and Nikki Eatore. She wants more as a
(34:50):
production of i Heeart podcasts. For more podcasts from my Heart,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Two
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