Esther Perel

But millions of people can't all be pathological.

The logic goes like this.

If you have everything you need at home, then there is no need to go looking elsewhere, assuming that there is such a thing as a perfect marriage that will inoculate us against wanderlust.

But what if passion has a finite shelf life?

What if there are things that even a good relationship can never provide?

If even happy people cheat?

What is it about?

The vast majority of people that I actually work with are not at all chronic philanderers.

They are often people who are deeply monogamous in their beliefs, and at least for their partner.

But they find themselves in a conflict between their values and their behavior.

They often are people who have actually been faithful for decades, but one day, they cross a line that they never thought they would cross, and at the risk of losing everything.

But for a glimmer of what?

Affairs are an act of betrayal, and they are also an expression of longing and loss.

At the heart of an affair, you will often find a longing and a yearning for an emotional connection, for novelty, for freedom, for autonomy, for sexual intensity, a wish to recapture lost parts of ourselves, or an attempt to bring back vitality in the face of loss and tragedy.

I'm thinking about another patient of mine, Priya, who is blissfully married, loves her husband, and would never want to hurt the man.

But she also tells me that she's always done what was expected of her.

Good girl, good wife, good mother, taking care of her immigrant parents.

Priya, she fell for the arborist who removed the tree from her yard after Hurricane Sandy.

And with his truck and his tattoos, he's quite the opposite of her.

But at 47, Priya's affair is about the adolescence that she never had.