Gives insight into the many motivations and influences that spur women to take part in extramarital affairs, offering creative solutions to inspire change.

Riveting vignettes show the inner and outer lives of women engaged in extramarital affairs. In spotlighting the many influences that spur women to cheat—from marital discord, childhood histories and sociopolitical history to pop and postmodern culture—Dr. Praver neither condemns nor condones such affairs. Instead, she aims to help wives and husbands question their own desires and actions, recognize their own roles in marital problems, and become inspired to find creative solutions. This work is an intimate and comprehensive examination of wives' desires for extramarital affairs. It includes vignettes from younger and older wives, as well as working, stay-at-home and remarried wives, from those with and without children, and from those who turn to same-sex affairs. The authoritative and scholary underpinnings are presented in a reader-friendly style that will appeal to all women, as well as to clinicians and academics.

Readers who are involved in or considering extramarital affairs will feel supported, validated, and inspired to enter into a dialogue for change. This book and its vivid case studies, filled with dialogue that allows readers a front-row seat in the therapy room, inspire one to listen and learn without harsh perjorative judgments. While the issues here are profound, the book is always evocative and enjoyable.

Introduction
Out of the Closet: The Fair Sex and Infidelity
Drastic Double Standards and Daring Wives
What a Difference a Century Makes: Female Infidelity and the Double Standard
Not So Sweet Home: Stay in the Abode Wives
Wanderlust while They Work: Working Wives and Outside Romance
Young and Restless: The World's Their Oyster
Older and Bolder: Under Cover with a Younger Lover
Remarriages and Regrets: Out of Step with Stepfamilies
Same Sex Affairs: Wives with Women Lovers
Sex Goes Awry
Conclusion: Implications for Marriage and American Society

Reviews
Praver investigates the various reasons that married women have extramarital sexual affairs. She explores how her patients' parental relationships and early life experience set up unconscious motivations that influence their behavior. Early chapters cover the history of sexual behavior and the influence of society's shift to sexual equality, a shift that extends to attitudes toward affairs. Seven of the 11 chapters provide detailed case studies of a variety of married and remarried women--younger and older, working and stay-at-home--and in these Praver relies heavily on interpretations not only of the patients' behavior but also of her own reactions to what is happening. One chapter covers same-sex affairs. The literary style echoes that of romance novels, and chapter references are mostly to popular literature rather than to scholarly works. As a result, the book is likely to be of most interest to general readers and professionals.—Choice

Not all are desperate, or housewives. Many seem to be successful, committed and happy, but in fact, something is missing. Psychologist and psychoanalyst Praver does not preach but instead guides wives and husbands to recognize and analyze their desires, motivations, roles and expectations and make positive changes creatively. Through a series of vignettes she describes situations ranging from working wives to those who stay at home, mothers and childless women, the young, the elderly and those in-between, those who are remarried and those who seek out same-sex extramarital affairs. She also examines the social and historical changes across the last ten decades that have changed attitudes from shock to, it seems, grudging admiration, and how couples must cope with outside influences as well as those that are the most intimate.—Reference & Research Book News

Endorsements
Fran Praver has written a beautifully crafted, illuminating book that explores and transcends the topic of women's infidelity. This book, written with nonjudgmental warmth and humanity, explores the dangers and entanglements of love, romance, marriage and its disruptions. Praver draws on sociopolitical history, feminism, postmodernism, relational psychoanalysis, empirical research, statistical surveys, cultural analysis, and especially upon a broad base of rich clinical and personal experience as a therapist. This wonderful collection of clinical stories will help mental health professionals and the public to better understand and appreciate the desperate and daring lengths to which people may go in struggling with their passions and commitments.—Lewis Aron, Ph.D.^LDirector, New York University, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis^Lauthor of ^IA Meeting of Minds^R