Suburban Sex - Part 2 of 7

Think the suburbs are too straight-laced to breathe? The next time you and your significant other dine out with another couple, consider this: odds are close that one of the four people at your table may have had an affair with someone other than their dinner partner. A national survey by The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) reported that 15 percent of wives and 25 percent of husbands have experienced extramarital intercourse. When emotional affairs or sexual intimacies without intercourse are included, the numbers rise to 18 and 30 percent respectively.

“The amount of extramarital affairs has increased in Westchester—as it has across the nation—because men aren’t the only ones doing it,” Dr. Robert Filewich, director of The Center for Behavior Therapy in White Plains, reports.

He has been treating sexual problems as a cognitive behavior therapist for 27 years and estimates that the ratio of men to women having affairs in the county is close to one-to-one.

Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus couldn’t agree more.

“More women are having affairs--and it’s not with their tennis instructor or personal trainer. It’s the guy working on their house! The contractor, the sprinkler guy, the plumber, the painter, the gardener.”

It’s not just the professionals who notice the up-tick, either:

“I’d say two out of five married people are fooling around,” says M, a hairdresser in mid-Westchester who insists on anonymity (as did several others interviewed for this article for obvious reasons). She adds, “I had one married guy proposition me—very seriously—while I was doing his hair!”

Read more about Suburban Sex in this seven-part series.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo