Infidelity: Why Men and Women Cheat. By Kenneth Paul Rosenberg,
M.D. Da Capo. $26.
Sex gives pleasure. Genetically, some
people have higher pleasure needs than others. Those people are more likely to
seek sex with someone other than the person to whom they are married or
otherwise committed. End of book.
Well, no. More like “start of book.” Yes, Kenneth
Paul Rosenberg clearly states that “affairs of the heart and journeys of sexual
desire overtake the reward centers of the brain. New sex and love clouds or
subverts the frontal lobes’ decision-making abilities, and these biological,
evolutionarily adaptive processes are hard to surmount.” But there is more
here. Rosenberg fills 266 pages with examples, discussions, research reports
and analyses of the reasons people cheat, the consequences when they do, and
ways (he says) to mitigate those consequences. Rosenberg certainly has the
credentials to present all this: he is an addiction psychiatrist and sex-addiction
counselor with more than two decades of experience. And he writes well.
Nevertheless, there is something rather
unsatisfying about Infidelity. It is
not the research, such as the findings about dopamine and the brain’s pleasure
centers, including studies showing that some people really do have a genetic
predisposition toward greater needs for pleasure and therefore may be more
likely to cheat on a partner if that partner cannot provide the level of
stimulation the genetically inclined person needs. Actually, a good deal of the
science will be familiar to people who keep an eye on studies of human
behavior, but not everyone does this, and having the research collected in one
place and presented cogently is a big plus for Infidelity.
The minus comes from the fact that every
book analyzing human behavior and seeking to help people change and improve it
falls into two basic sections: descriptive and prescriptive. Rosenberg’s is no
exception. And while it is quite strong (if sometimes rather obvious) on the
descriptive side, it is much less useful on the prescriptive side – the “what
to do if this happens to you” portion. The prescriptive material is not neatly
gathered at the end of the book but is presented throughout, and the
comparative weakness of this material pulls down the overall effectiveness of
the book’s communication.
Thus, at one point Rosenberg writes that
for a cheated spouse or partner who learns of an affair, “Sleep is difficult.
The quiet darkness of night invites images of the affair, which you may have
gleaned through texts and emails or your own imagination, replaying over and
over through your mind.” This seems pretty obvious, despite Rosenberg’s attempt
to present the feelings empathetically. He then goes on to tell cheaters not to
“gaslight” their partners, meaning not to “deny and undermine your spouse’s
sense of reality in order to gain power in the relationship or win an argument.
…Not only will that approach fail, but it’s also a crappy way to treat someone
– especially someone to whom you’ve pledged your love.” Um, well, yes. And
Rosenberg then continues further, in a section called “What Do We Tell Other
People?” Here he gets to prescriptive matters immediately: “My prescription – Chill! – involves pausing before you
take steps that might cause further damage.” Again – um, well, yes.
Again and again, Rosenberg says things
that sound good and sound right, that showcase his experience of dealing with
infidelity and explain how people (cheaters and cheated) respond to it, that
indicate he knows how infidelity can wreck some relationships while eventually
strengthening others that have been repaired and have grown as a result of the
trauma. And Rosenberg certainly understands that in contemporary life,
attitudes toward sex – and emotional attachment – have been changing, not least
because of technology: “With so many choices available at the swipe of a thumb,
this app [Bumble] likely stimulates its users’ brain’s reward centers,
instilling in them the hope that the next swipe will be better than the last.
But what is ‘best’ anyway?”
The difficulty with Infidelity seems primarily to be that its prescriptive elements
make sense and appear to have a good chance of success only within a therapeutic context. That is, Rosenberg is able to
detail approaches that have worked for the patients he has seen, but trying to
apply those approaches – such as that exclamatory “Chill!” – without the assistance of a trained professional is
substantially more difficult than Rosenberg makes it out to be, if not
out-and-out impossible. In the swirl of emotions, recriminations, anger and
uncertainty likely to occur as a result of infidelity, the intercession of a
neutral third party seems crucial to putting a damaged relationship back on an
even keel. Not that all relationships involving infidelity are damaged:
Rosenberg discusses a decades-married couple, two people in their 50s, who
agreed to open their marriage, with positive results. “Through their consensual
nonmonogamy they not only became closer but also began having hot sex with each
other again. The long-married couple became more affectionate. …Both partners
thought the experience helped the marriage.” But these two people assert that what
they did was not infidelity, because
each knew what the other was doing and they “had rules” and “were very
thoughtful.” So this unconventional approach to sex with someone other than
one’s spouse or long-term partner is a bit misleadingly included in a book
called Infidelity, except insofar as
readers may interpret any sex outside
marriage or a committed relationship as meriting the book’s title.
Rosenberg has a great deal of scientific
and interpersonal knowledge on the topic of sexual function and dysfunction,
and in Infidelity he does well when
explaining why cheating (however it may be defined) happens and what its
results can be. But when it comes to discussing ways in which individuals, on
their own, can handle those results or change them from something negative to
something positive, or at least neutral, Infidelity
falls short. The ultimate take-home message from the book is that coping with
cheating on one’s own is extremely difficult, so it is important, if one
commits or discovers infidelity, to track down and work with an experienced
professional who can guide you through your options and potential responses –
that is, to track down and work with Rosenberg, or someone very much like him.
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