“I don’t do flings. I don’t mess around, I don’t have affairs, I don’t usually go out on a date with a person unless they’re someone I think I could get serious about.”— Elle Parker, amazon.com
“What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part—there was no one to blame and no way to reverse.”— Miranda July, amazon.com
“It would be foolish not to take the circumstances into consideration. Was the person who cheated on you someone with whom you were in a long-term relationship and the cheating was a one-night stand under the influence of alcohol? That would be much different than if it was someone you'd only just st…”— Dr. Ruth Westheimer, articles.chicagotribune.com
“We don’t know the exact numbers because people lie about sex and 10 times more about adultery. But the vast majority of people we come into contact with in our offices are content in their marriages. They are longtime monogamists who one day cross a line into a place they never thought they would go…”— Esther Perel, slate.com
“All marriages are alike to the degree that confronting an affair forces the couple to reevaluate their relationship, but dissimilar in how the couple lives with the legacy of that affair. I already knew the marriages I was tracing in these follow-up interviews had survived; now I wanted to assess th…”— Esther Perel, estherperel.com
“After the revelation of an affair, some couples have the most passionate sex they’ve ever had. That’s a big, unspoken truth. There’s something about the fear of loss that triggers desire and a depth of conversation that helps some people access a new level of honesty.”— Esther Perel, insidehook.com
“Affairs usually start when a man feels misunderstood, like the areas of his life that are important to him are being criticized or deemed not important. Then he finds a woman appreciates him, who gives him something he isn’t getting from his primary relationship…and he strays.”— Sabrina Alexis, thoughtcatalog.com