Providence Journal BY AVIS GUNTHER-ROSENBERG Journal Staff Writer quoted from http://listarchives.his.com/smartmarriages/2002-May/msg00026.html for those in rural or remote areas.
Suburban housewife Connie Summer (played by Diane Lane) -- who dresses in heels and slim skirts to work on her 8-year-old son's school fundraiser -- is battered about by a windstorm that makes the twister in The Wizard of Oz look like a light breeze.
Struggling through the New York City streets, she is blown past all the bored-looking businessmen, the bums and the homely folk, and right into the arms of gorgeous 28-year-old Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), a French rare-book dealer whose accent melts whatever his smoky eyes miss.
Although Paul breaks her fall -- she lands conveniently on top of him in a foreshadowing embrace -- Connie manages to scrape a bloody patch along her leg.
Gallantly, Paul invites her up to his nearby loft for tea and bandages. Connie walks past a taxi that might take her home, and up the stairs. She washes her knee and leaves, but not before accepting a book of poetry from her gracious host, who instructs her to open it to page 23, a poem about wine and passion.
"This moment is your life," he breathes before she walks out the door, and returns to her world of bedtime stories, dirty dishes and overcooked chicken dinners.
Several scenes later, family is left far behind, and she's going at it with Paul in the stall of a cafe ladies' room, while two of her suburban-housewife friends sip coffee and talk about how perfectly she's kept her figure.
"If people are looking for a realistic portrait of an affair, they're not going to find it in this movie," says Dr. Scott Haltzman, a Barrington psychiatrist who specializes in marriage and couples' counseling. "Most affairs don't happen by chance meetings."
Cheating statistics
Depending on which study you look at, infidelity occurs in up to 40 percent of marriages, Haltzman says. By age 45, two out of every five men and one out of every five women has had at least one affair.
For an overwhelming majority of spouses who cheat -- 80 percent -- the reason is not sexual, Haltzman says. Most simply seek validation, warmth, understanding or love.
"Feeling validated, heard and loved are exactly the same needs that make you fall in love with your spouse to begin with, but as a marriage progresses, you don't feel adored," Haltzman says.
"There are going to be times in every marriage when you don't feel you're getting your needs met. It just feels like everything is wrong in the marriage, like not only do I not love my spouse, but I hate them."
In Unfaithful, which opened last Friday, director Adrian Lyne deliberately made Connie's marriage to her husband Edward (played by Richard Gere) warm and loving.
Lyne -- whose steamy hits have included 91/2 Weeks, Indecent Proposal and Fatal Attraction -- was actually at odds with 20th Century Fox over the nature of Connie and Edward's relationship. The studio had wanted Lyne to paint the couple's marriage negatively, perhaps have them fight all the time or be bored with sex.
The moviemaker's intent
"For me, the whole point of the movie was the arbitrary nature of infidelity, the fact that you could be the happiest person on earth and meet somebody over there, and suddenly your life's changed," Lyne told a Chicago Tribune reporter.
"I thought, well, if it's a crappy marriage, why wouldn't she have an affair? Where's the drama in that?"
In fact, opportunity is an essential part of infidelity, Haltzman says.
"You have to meet someone to cheat someone. When movie stars announce their breakups and simultaneously announce their new romances, did you ever notice that it's the co-star of the latest movie they were in? "
Seventy-three percent of unfaithful men meet their mistresses at work. The statistics are lower for women -- less than 50 percent -- but seem to be growing as women spend more time at the workplace.
"Most people don't choose to have an affair," Haltzman says. "Some may even be morally opposed to affairs. Frequently it starts with a conversation. Then, it moves to a conversation about intimate issues and experiences in each person's own relationship.
"The distance between meeting someone and a first kiss is much longer than the distance between a first kiss and ending up in bed. It's a slippery slope, and you make choices all along the way."
Books in the works
Haltzman, 41, is the medical director of NRI Community Services in Woonsocket, and author/founder of the Web site www.secretsofmarriedmen.com
First-person stories collected by readers of the site will form the basis of a book Haltzman is writing called The Secrets of Married Men.
He's also co-authoring a second book -- Ways to Win Your Wife's Heart Forever -- with former Journal reporter John Martin, and recently appeared on The Today Show as an expert on infidelity.
What is typical about the Unfaithful affair, he said, is the sequence of events that led up to Connie's tryst.
Connie has just shooed her young son off to school, when she picks up the poetry book, and Paul's business card falls out. She calls him from a pay phone in Grand Central Station, ostensibly to thank him for helping her with her wound. He asks how she is, then beckons, "Come and see me. I'll make you some coffee."
Another time, she shows up with muffins, and when she admires his choice of music, he asks her to dance. Each step of the way, actress Lane's face registers an inner turmoil -- a mix of desire, confusion and guilt. If she just calls him, it's not so bad. If they have coffee, that's not cheating. A waltz is not an affair.
Mistakes and accidents
When things take an inevitable turn, she tells him, "I think this is a mistake," to which Paul replies, "There's no such thing as a mistake. It's what you do or you don't do."
Later, these words come back in a refrain when her son is upset about wetting the bed. "It's an accident," she tells him, her voice sincere. "Everybody has an accident."
But while bed-wetting is an accident, there is no such thing as an accidental affair, Haltzman says.
Every decision Connie made, from not getting in the cab in the first place, was a conscious decision. "She was surprised she was invited over. She was surprised he wanted to have sex with her. What did you expect? Excuse me, its the third time you've been in this guy's apartment!"
The bottom line is, affairs can be prevented, Haltzman says. It's all in the choices you make. "It should be a gigantic red flag the minute you tell yourself your spouse wouldn't be happy if they knew. You don't have a clandestine lunch with someone. You don't share intimate details with a co-worker you have some attraction to."
An affair is not something apart from the marriage, as Connie's friend says in the movie: "He wouldn't have to know about it. It would be something I did for myself, like taking a pottery class."
"This is exactly what's not true," Haltzman says. "People delude themselves into thinking that you only live once" so it's okay to live it up, but "I have never treated a couple where one partner was unfaithful where there weren't disastrous consequences."
Married sex is better
And it's not really worth it, Haltzman says. The steamy movie sex where Paul pins Connie's wrists in his hands, draws hearts on her belly as she sleeps, and takes her roughly in a public hallway is all Hollywood exaggeration.
"In general, extramarital sex is actually not as good as marital sex," Haltzman says. "On average, married couples have sex more often than any other group, other than couples who are living together, and married couples report the greatest satisfaction with sex."
Still, Haltzman concedes that the forbidden is titillating, which is why affairs typically lose their steam once they become public knowledge. "It is the secrecy that holds them together."
In his practice, Haltzman hears one theme repeatedly: "Marriages improve when a spouse learns to shift away from his or her own personal desires, and listen to the needs of the husband or wife.
"One of the main thrusts of my book is that most people recognize the need to communicate in a marriage. Really, the best way to communicate is to listen to what your spouse's needs are, make meeting their needs your main purpose.
"Marriages are about much more than whether I'm happy today," says Haltzman, who jokes that he would never be unfaithful to Susan, his wife of 14 years, because it would throw a serious wrench into his credibility as a marriage guru.
"You have to think back to your commitment. My happiness is going to come out of making this marriage work."
And while up to 40 percent of married people may have cheated, there is good news. Most spouses who have affairs don't do it habitually or repeatedly. In fact, in any given year, 95 percent of married men and women are monogamous, Haltzman says. "Most couples are monogamous most of the time."
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of the issues covered herein. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. 107, the material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in reading the information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
GO TO the navigation page for my pre-commitment Relationship Education study cycle