John Heidenry: Straight Talk

John Heidenry, executive editor of Forum magazine from 1982 to 1989, is also the author of Test Your Sex I.Q (Warner) and of Theirs Was the Kingdom: The Story of Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Readers Digest (W.W. Norton)

Tracy Quan: Is cheating inevitable where men are concerned?

John Heidenry: Men and women are a great sexual fit but they are not a great emotional fit. I think it's fair to say that men are constantly wanting to sleep around, subconsciously and often consciously. They are constantly appraising women sexually -- women they work with, strangers on the street. And men constantly need some kind of erotic hurdle to overcome. Most marriages reach a very comfortable plateau where there is no chase. When there are no more physical challenges in a relationship, a man begins to look afar -- for some kind of adventure with another woman who does represent obstacles, who has to be seduced.

TQ: And what's the solution to this state of affairs?

JH: During the last 30 years, a bunch of second-rate and third-rate pop sex manuals -- ranging from Alexandra Penney's How to Make Love to a Man to Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman -- have been selling women a false message. They try to lead couples to overachieve sexually, to sizzle up their relationship with this so- called "hot monogamy." All these Better Sex videos about how to put the sizzle back into your marriage are bunk. Monogamy was not designed as a perfect sexual state. A new partner is more exciting than a routine partner -- this is common sense. If you're talking strictly from a sexual point of view, there has to be a trade-off. Hot monogamy is a myth. It's much more exciting to have multiple partners.

TQ: Are the men who say otherwise just lying? Sexually naive?

JH: If a man wants to be faithful to his wife -- and many do -- he begins to adopt the woman's emotional agenda, and he may even develop real love -- which, I think, men have to work at. So they may be very happy and they may still have a satisfactory sex life but they don't have a great sex life.

TQ: So, do cheaters have better sex?

JH: They have better sex lives, but it's important to point out that they have a much poorer love life. A man who cheats on his wife routinely probably does not have the intimate bond with his wife that a non-cheating husband has. Men can be faithful but what they are doing is sacrificing a sexual goal for something else.

TQ: There are men who think: extra-marital sex with a hooker isn't infidelity; oral sex isn't cheating. Do you agree?

JH: There might be some guilt-ridden individuals who think that but they're clearly deluded. Men are capable of deluding themselves no end. God knows what any individual man is convincing himself of, but as far as I'm concerned, whether you go to bed with a prostitute or a friend, that's a form of infidelity. What's the difference? I'm not condemning them, by the way. And if a man has a kind of tacit or overt approval from his wife, then cheating has to be redefined.

TQ: Do you think class affects an American couple's attitude toward infidelity?

JH: I think blue collar women are probably a lot more honest about it. In the top income level -- starting at a million or so per annum -- men probably have terrific sex lives. A very small number of wives in that income bracket are the exclusive sex partners of their husbands. Six-figure people these days -- those in the bottom six figures -- are middle class, trying to put their kids through school, and they may look back nostalgically at some 25-year-old walking down the street. But they're family men -- maybe they'll cheat once in a while and maybe they won't.