Marital intimacy has become the sovereign antidote for lives of growing atomization.

It is actually a sophisticated self-protective mechanism known as trauma denial—a type of self-delusion that we employ when too much is at stake and we have too much to lose.

Once divorce carried all the stigma. Now, choosing to stay when you can leave is the new shame.

Must a secret love always be revealed? Does passion have a finite shelf life? And are there fulfillments that a marriage, even a good one, can never provide? How do we negotiate the elusive balance between our emotional needs and our erotic desires? Has monogamy outlived its usefulness? What is fidelity? Can we love more than one person at once?

It’s no surprise that this utopian vision is gathering a growing army of the disenchanted in its wake.

Hence we no longer divorce because we’re unhappy; we divorce because we could be happier.

All these carry an erotic frisson that makes us feel alive, renewed, recharged. It is more energy than act, more enchantment than intercourse.

writes. I suspect that Garth’s quest for sex on the outside is a

This kind of avoidance is not an act of idiocy but an act of self-preservation.