They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin (2 Peter 2:14).
This week I’m overseeing Vacation Bible Study at our parish. It mostly consists of fetching materials for the kids.
Speaking of fetching….
My eyes can’t help but notice a few of the comely MILFs accompanying their kids. Mrs. Hansen, prim and proper as always, yet with a shapely behind. Mrs. Paisley, who with her long brown hair and black frame glasses resembles Tina Fey. Then there was Sasha, the yoga instructor who dropped off her kid on her way to teach her class. She came dressed for work — her skintight yoga pants left little to the imagination. (I couldn’t help but notice a few months ago when her chest expanded, obviously due to breast augmentation.) Her wedding ring only seemed to intensify her erotic appeal.
This year we’ve combined our VBS with another local Lutheran parish, which is pastored by “Rev. Lara.” She’s young, having received her first call just a few years ago. Wisps of brown hair frame her pretty face. She’s married with two small children.
I can’t take my adulterous eyes off of her, either.
“Women lust and women cheat.” So writes Wednesday Martin in Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free. Her most significant discovery is that women are no more “naturally monogamous” than men. Women, it turns out, are not evolutionarily programmed to be less sexually adventurous. The fairer sex is just as capable of “passionate, voluptuous pleasures and sometimes of tremendous risk-taking in the pursuit of sexual satisfaction.” Martin reports that more than one woman she interviewed told her, “I have a really strong libido. I don’t think I’m cut out for monogamy.” Martin relates her own struggles with monogamy. “Cheating was a lot of work, with a lot of stigma. But when we thought about or experienced the passion and excitement of being with someone new, or considered trying something we’d never tried before, it felt worth the risks. In fact, it felt urgently necessary sometimes.” Society applies a double standard to a woman who is open about her own sexual desires, despite increasing evidence that women are prioritizing sexual autonomy. One poll showed that the number of women admitting to extramarital activity has increased by 40% since 1990. In The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife, Alicia M. Walker interviewed dozens of married women (including regular churchgoers) who found partners on Ashley Madison. She discovered that most of them weren’t searching for love or intimacy. They were sexually dissatisfied with their spouses and sought sexual satisfaction elsewhere. (Perhaps this sheds light on the quality of sex in the matrimonial state. One survey reported that more than half of women had their “best sex ever” with someone other than their husbands.) Our sexual script that assigns a less active libido to women is being rewritten.
I adhere to a religious tradition that extols the sanctity of marriage. One of its ten commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” (Esther Perel notes, “It is the only sin that gets two commandments in the Bible, one for doing it and one just for thinking about it.”) And yet, despite being single, I find the taboo thrill of “cheating” highly arousing. Sex with the Deaconess was intensified by the engagement ring she always wore during our coupling. Some of the pleasure surely came from simply getting away with it. Neither staff nor parishioners nor her betrayed fiancee across the Atlantic knew about our extracurricular activities. Nor should the frisson of transgression be discounted. “Being bad is a pleasure,” says Perel.
In her book The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, Perel writes:
Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so too has the taboo against it. It has been legislated, debated, politicized, and demonized throughout history. Yet despite its widespread denunciation, infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy….In every society, on every continent, and in every era, regardless of the penalties and the deterrents, men and women have slipped the confines of matrimony. Almost everywhere people marry, monogamy is the official norm and infidelity the clandestine one. So what are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced?
I’ve written earlier about my own experience of defiling the marriage bed. Breaking the Sixth Commandment (according to Lutheran numbering) brought immense guilt. And immense pleasure. “Monogamy may not be a part of human nature but transgression surely is,” Perel says. “Whether we like it or not, philandering is here to stay.”
Lutheran Guilt 