Open Road

Told in women’s own words, this revolutionary book broke the silence surrounding women and adultery

Dalma Heyn knows that wives have affairs—and why. She’s spoken with hundreds of women who, desperate to break free of their quest to be the stereotypical “perfect wife,” have reluctantly looked outside their marriages to find the pleasure and connection that eluded them. Her extensive first-person interviews and compelling case stories present a nuanced view of women’s sexuality and marriage. Heyn contextualizes these stories with a critique of the cultural expectations placed on women by literature, experts, the institution of marriage, and themselves.

Shocking and revelatory, The Erotic Silence of the American Wife is a groundbreaking book as vital to understanding marriage—and its unspoken effects on women’s and men’s relationships—as it was when it was first published.

This ebook features an introduction by Dalma Heyn and an illustrated biography including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

ALTERNATE TITLES

The title in my proposal was Wandering Wives—which was pedestrian but vaguely provocative. After years of investigating wives’ reasons for wandering, though, and exploring their deepest feelings about the institution of marriage, my thesis emerged, and the new title was born.

For years I wrote a magazine column called “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Sex.” Young, newly married women wrote me about the confusion they felt over having extramarital affairs. Their experiences dovetailed with national statistics showing that all around the country, wives were having affairs. How could this be, when women wanted so much to be married—and believed so in fidelity? Were they were bored? Did they crave variety—those familiar explanations for men’s affairs? Why would wives risk losing everything, including custody of their children? What was going on in marriage that no one was looking at?