Why do Women Have Affairs? Interview with Susan Shapiro Barash

Did you know that 70% of women will have an affair at some point in their marriage? It’s a stunning statistic. Author Susan Shapiro Barash has written a book about it called “A Passion for More: Affairs That Make or Break Us” about this phenomenon. I interviewed her.

Watch our video interview!

Click on the player below.

Susan Shapiro Barish is the author of thirteen nonfiction women’s issue books that focus on the gender divide, how women are positioned in society, and their innermost feelings about themselves as daughters, mothers, sisters, friends, wives, mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, rivals, colleagues, and lovers.

What constitutes an affair?

There are four types of affairs and these can either be physically manifested or are affairs of the mind, which is also a form of betrayal.

Empowering affairs – Women have more opportunities today. They are in the workforce just like men with many in high positions. Those late-night meetings or weekend conferences make it easy for women as well as men to hook up and have affairs.

Sex-Driven Affairs – This is when the main motivation for having an affair is only about sex.

Love affairs – It may be that a woman is in a happy marriage but meets an old lover at a reunion and sparks fly. He may be the man that got away sometime in the past or an infatuation with someone who comes on like a thunderbolt.

Self-Esteem Affairs – A woman may not be getting what she needs from her relationship, is not being appreciated, or is being treated badly which takes a hit on her self-confidence. An affair can make her feel special and valued.

In Susan’s books, she reveals:

• How having an affair can help a woman remain in her marriage or current relationship
• How a woman gets what she needs from her spouse after breaking off with her lover.
• How a marriage can become better because of her affair.
• Why an affair may be what brings the couple to end their marriage/relationship.

Highlights from our interview

Susan did anonymous interviews with women all across the country who were of different ages, social strata, races, religions, and levels of education, and who lived in sophisticated cities, suburbs, and rural areas. She asked them how they felt about their marriages or long-standing monogamous relationships and why some of these convention-bound women embarked on extramarital affairs.

Women are good at keeping the affair secret and finding time to have one. These affairs include cyber chat sites, virtual meetings (during COVID), and workplace dalliances as well as physically meeting someone somewhere like a hotel.

Her study, which has gone on for years for other books, included women whose ages range from their early twenties through eighties.  She has dubbed affairs that involve older women as “The Gray Affair.”

Many women have told her that the affair was a personal journey for them. Often women seek someone who is the opposite of the person they are currently attached to because they aren’t looking for what they already have – they want something they don’t have. If the husband is intellectual, she may seek out a jock.

Tell-tale signs that a woman is having an affair are usually changes in appearance. She may lose weight, go to the gym more, get a new hairstyle, or buy new clothes.

Smartphones make it easier than in previous years to carry on an affair although some women may purchase a secret phone. They may also text cryptic messages that only the lover will understand.

Only about 35% of the women in Susan’s study ended up with their lover in the end. Having a lover is a wake-up call for a woman to discover what she has and does not have. It’s also about who she has become. She can look at herself realistically with some forgiveness.

You can purchase Susan’s book on Amazon here.

Visit Susan’s website here.

Listen to an iHeart podcast inspired by Susan’s book called “She Wants More.”

Update! New books

Susan writes novels under the moniker of Susannah Marren. Her latest one is “Maribelle’s Shadow” which is the story of a glamorous mother and her three adult daughters in Palm Beach. When Maribelle’s husband suspiciously drowns, this matriarchal family spins into a web of lies, secrets, social ambition, riches, and a final, staggering betrayal. It’s a story of how things get passed down by matriarchs, how women survive in Palm Beach, and even though they seem far better off than your average reader, how they face the same challenges faced by women everywhere.

She has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Post, The Chicago Tribune, Elle, ‘O’, and Marie Claire. She has appeared on national television including The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. She has been a guest on NPR and Sirius Radio. Several of her titles have been optioned by Lifetime and HBO. She has served as a literary panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a judge for the International Emmys, and as Vice Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Women’s Leadership Board at the JFK School of Government, and Harvard.