Lust In Our Hearts

Xing hardly fits the stereotype of the cold-hearted adulteress. The petite 31-year old student from China is warm, intelligent, at times even a little shy, and prone to fits of giggling. Yet when she speaks of the two men in her life, her voice is calm and measured. There is no trace of coyness, self-doubt, or guilt. "Why should I feel bad about it?" she shrugs.

Every Sunday, Xing slips away for a few hours to spend time with her lover Scott, a dot-com executive whom she met at a party. Until recently, the two-year affair was almost purely sexual. "I told him maybe we should talk some more. Something more romantic, you know?" she laughs. While she has not explicitly told her husband Don about her affair, she describes her relationship with her sixty-two year old husband more as a friendship than a traditional marriage.

She doesn't expect to stay with Don forever, nor does she want to leave him for Scott. Though Xing plans on having a more "normal" (as she puts it) marriage one day, she does not exclude the possibility of having an affair. Xing does not see herself as a sexual adventurer, but rather as a woman who takes life as it comes. "I wouldn't go looking for it. But if it happens... " she trails off with a smile.

Xing's nonchalant attitude towards her relationships flies in the face of received wisdom on female infidelity. The traditional view of female philandering favors blaming the wife. In the classics, the fate of straying women -- even sympathetic characters like Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary -- was death. "Bad" wives seeking sexual thrills were portrayed as shallow, bitter hussies a la Mrs. Robinson.

Though vestiges of this just-say-no ethos are still with us, certain types of affairs are now condoned -- but only when the husband or the relationship is less than worthy. In this revised version, the straying wife is an unhappy woman looking for love. Take, for example, the overwrought and wildly sentimental movies like "The Bridges of Madison County" or "The English Patient." Big screen movies will allow the hero to dally with a woman married to an unsatisfactory mate. These days an adulteress is no longer the villain but she must always be a victim. It is the modern reworking of the Cinderella story with the husband playing the evil stepmother.

The Ideal Affair

The inner princess imprisoned by marriage who finds her release in infidelity is an image that recurs ad nauseam even in feminist books on female infidelity, except they tout self-fulfillment rather than love as the holy grail of female sexuality. Many feminists recast extra-marital affairs as a quest for sexual emancipation, self-discovery, or understanding. Infidelity becomes a symbolic blow against the tyranny of gender roles.

Feminists have a done a great job of reclaiming women's bodies when it comes to reproductive rights and premarital sex. But the standard feminist critique of adultery remains deeply flawed and even reactionary in effect if not intent. It has taken two basic tacks: challenge male philandering; justify female infidelity. But how can we do both without opening ourselves up to accusations of reverse-bias?

The feminist solution has been to argue that women simply cheat for the "right" reasons -- be it sexual or emotional freedom. This in turn implies that the most widely acknowledged cause for male adultery -- the desire for variety -- is simply "wrong." And by making some affairs okay and others not, this woman-as-victim discourse reinforces the very mechanisms of guilt it claims to challenge. We end up pinning women to a higher standard than men, insisting that we offer the right kind of excuses to validate our indiscretions. Oddly enough, we now have to offer "good" enough reasons to be "bad."