According to a new study by marriage counselor M. Gary Neuman, 1 out of 2.7 of us men cheat on our wives, and most of them will never find out. From which we can deduce one of two things: either its time for the rest of us to join the party because we aren’t going to get caught anyway, or that’s a really staggering percentage suggesting a great deal of unhappiness which needs to be addressed in a more positive way. Call me puritanical, but I am opting for door number two.
Actually, it’s not puritanical at all. 92 percent of the men who cheat, tell Neuman that sex is not the main thing in their extra-marital relationship. In fact, 88 percent of the men surveyed report that the other women were no better looking than their wives. And other studies have shown that the women, with whom men cheat, often bear striking resemblances to the wives on whom they are cheating. So, what is going on here?
We get bored! That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation which gets to one of the central features of our humanity, one of which we should not let go – we seek novelty. Most other creatures are entirely satisfied when their immediate needs are met. But we humans are harder to satisfy because as soon as one set of needs is met, we often start wondering about the new ideas, experiences, etc. that are possible. It’s not that we are ungrateful; it’s that unlike other animals, we have imaginations.
Ironically though, when it comes to cheating, what we seek is often a reconnection with the person we imagine we fell in love with. According to Neuman’s study, what most men want is to feel how they once felt with someone who may be very like the wives who once made them feel that way. So there is hope.

Nurturing novelty, a feeling of special-ness, and the kind of attention which we often pay one another early on in a relationship may address much of this problem. As is so often the case, novelty is the key to preserving continuity in relationships. But this is clearly about more than “date nights”. This is about really asking what would shake things up in your relationship enough that you would allow yourselves to start over, whether in bed or over dinner.
What do you recall about how it used to be and what are you willing to do to get your wife to be a part of that? Those are also questions of imagination, and unless we ask them, then we are just making excuses for new ways to get laid.
Here’s a useful exercise that can help you get what you REALLY want from your partner. Try sitting face to face and telling your spouse what you want. But after you articulate the what, explain the why. And then explain why that “why” is important to you. Keep doing that until there are no more “why’s” – until you feel that if you had that one thing, your relationship really would be more satisfying. It won’t make things perfect, but it will help.
We all have spiritual traditions which encourage us to be born again. Perhaps because the central one in Judaism is Yom Kippur and it starts Wednesday night, this seems like a good time to raise these issues. Perhaps if we imagine that we can be reborn, we can allow ourselves to see a spouse or a relationship as reborn also. With 25 hours and little else to do but reflect on our lives, how bad would it be to put questions like that on our list of things about which to think this Yom Kippur?