Can a Marriage Be Saved by Adultery? : Relationships: More women are having affairs. Or at least more are saying so. Now, a book claims that extramarital sex may save marriages.

Laura seemed to have it all. She was smart and attractive. She had an intelligent, loving husband, two beautiful children and an interesting career.

But that was not enough. She wanted excitement and passion. So for 11 years she carried on an extramarital affair with a longtime friend, a married lawyer. It was during their forbidden, secret moments together that Laura (not her real name) got “the rush” she was seeking.

“The secretiveness and the lust of the affair alone became addictive,” she recalls. “It was risky, and it was exhilarating. It was an incredible high--like when you first fall in love.”

Laura’s story reflects in many ways what author Dalma Heyn observes in her book, published this year, “The Erotic Silence of the American Wife.”

More women today, Heyn says in the book, are rejecting the role of the loyal, self-sacrificing “perfect wife” and are finding pleasure and escape through extramarital relationships.

Although Heyn, executive editor of McCalls, insists she is not advocating adultery, her research and interviews with hundreds of women who strayed outside their marriages led her to conclude that in some cases, infidelity in the ‘90s may even enhance and save marriages.

Many experts in the field of marital relationships warn, however, that adultery isn’t all fun and games. It’s a dangerous violation of trust that shatters marriages and causes enormous pain to children. Some women who have been unfaithful say that after the thrill is gone, their lives are left a shambles.

Cathy, an Orange County doctor’s wife who fell in love with one of her husband’s colleagues, disagrees that adultery can improve a marriage.

“My advice to married women is: Don’t fool around. Having an affair and living two lives may be fun at first. But you pay for it later. Too many people get hurt.”

Even Laura admits she deluded herself for years into thinking she had the best of two worlds. Eventually the fantasy began to crumble, and her marriage was left in tatters.

“An affair does not enhance your marriage; it detracts from it,” she believes. “It was an escape. A way for me to avoid facing things in my relationship with my husband.”

Some marriage and family experts, as well as divorce lawyers, agree that they see more women today who admit that they have been unfaithful to their husbands.

But women have always had affairs, they say. So it’s debatable whether an increasing number of women are actually doing it or whether they are just more willing to talk about their indiscretions.

San Juan Capistrano psychologist John Paul Gray, president of the Orange County Psychological Assn., believes that “more women today are giving themselves permission to have affairs when they think they have a dead relationship (with their husbands).”

“They are beginning to view it as men do,” observes psychologist Everett Jacobson, who counsels married couples at his Yorba Linda and Long Beach offices.

In what he views as “one of the more negative aspects of women’s movement,” Jacobson says some women believe they “can act out and do all the terrible things men can do.”

“There seems to be a breakdown of trust and commitment in marriages, and it’s a reflection of what is happening in society,” says Jacobson.

The statistics on infidelity among women vary greatly.

The latest report from the Kinsey Institute in 1990 estimated that 29% of American wives have had extramarital sex at least once. In contrast, researcher Shere Hite surveyed 5,000 married women in 1987 and found that 70% of them had been unfaithful to their husbands.

Most women who are having dalliances are doing so for the same reasons as men: They feel neglected or their sex lives are not good, according to Claremont psychologist and family therapist Marcia Lasswell.

As more women enter the work arena and begin reaching equal job status with men, they have more opportunities to meet professional men they find interesting and with whom they may share career goals and interests, according to Shirley Glass, a Baltimore psychologist noted for her national research on issues involving marriage and sex.

An affair, whether it is strictly emotional or sexual, is bound to bring some excitement because “you don’t have to live with the realities of life,” Glass points out. “An affair is fantasy.”

Lasswell, president-elect of the American Assn. of Marriage and Family Therapists, agrees. “You don’t have to deal with backed-up garbage disposals, kids with measles or paying the bills.”

During her affair, Cathy recalls, “I could get all dressed up, leave the kitchen and kids behind and enter my pretend world. This man made me feel good about myself. He really paid attention to me and talked to me.”

Often, when marriages or relationships have passed the initial magical phase of romantic passion, people complain that something is missing, and they may seek satisfaction from someone else, say family therapists.

Yorba Linda psychologist Lois Gobrecht says she often hears women describe their extramarital affairs as like “having a new best friend.” The psychologist says the women usually add, “My husband doesn’t treat me like that anymore.”

But Gobrecht and others doubt Heyn’s theory that some women can really be in love with two men at the same time.

When a husband and wife “are passionately in love, they only have eyes for each other,” says Gobrecht. “An affair is a symptom of a poor relationship with your husband.”

Heyn’s book is based on her research involving interviews with primarily white, upper-middle-class professional women between the ages 20 and 60.

The book has drawn fire from some corners and support from others.

“Dalma Heyn shows us a new reality and a tantalizing hint of the future--and neither women nor marriage will ever be the same,” says feminist Gloria Steinem in her endorsement on the book cover.

Critics of “Erotic Silence” challenge Heyn’s unscientific method based on interviews with friends and acquaintances. And they say she fails to seriously address the negative effects affairs have on children and husbands.

Lasswell and others say there’s no such thing as a guiltless affair. Most men and women she sees in her practice view what they have done as wrong. And women, more than men, anguish over the pain the affair causes their spouses and children, she says.

Heyn has also been taken to task for ignoring the risk women may run of getting AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases if they stray outside the marriage.

When Heyn was on the talk-show circuit plugging her book, she encountered angry men and women who chastised her for advocating infidelity for women. “It’s an incendiary topic,” Heyn admits during a telephone interview from her home in New York. “I’m not advocating adultery; I’m saying let’s not stone the women (for doing it).”

Heyn, 45, is married and says she has a “monogamous relationship.”

Much of the wrath over the book comes from people who believe that “women aren’t supposed to need anything outside of marriage,” she says.

“There is this underlying fear that if women depart from marriage and really pursue pleasure, there will be chaos,” says Heyn. “They are afraid everything will go to hell and family bonds will fall apart.”

That won’t necessarily happen, says Heyn. “I’m not saying affairs will always be good for marriages. More often they blow them up. But if the wife can be rejuvenated by an affair and bring that (feeling) back into the marriage, then it can be positive.”