Daring Wives Insight into Women's Desires for Extramarital Affairs

Subjects:

• Psychology » Human Sexuality
• Psychology » Psychology (General)
• Law » Contemporary Law
• Health/Medicine » Health/Medicine (General)

Reviews:

• Praver investigates the various reasons that married women have extramarital sexual affairs. She explores how her patients' parental relationships and early life experience set up unconscious motivations that influence their behavior. Early chapters cover the history of sexual behavior and the influence of society's shift to sexual equality, a shift that extends to attitudes toward affairs. Seven of the 11 chapters provide detailed case studies of a variety of married and remarried women--younger and older, working and stay-at-home--and in these Praver relies heavily on interpretations not only of the patients' behavior but also of her own reactions to what is happening. One chapter covers same-sex affairs. The literary style echoes that of romance novels, and chapter references are mostly to popular literature rather than to scholarly works. As a result, the book is likely to be of most interest to general readers and professionals.
  —Choice October 2006
• The storyline of the frustrated wife having an affair has become more popular thanks to depictions in movies such as Unfaithful or Desperate Housewife Gabrielle, but what pushes married women into having an affair? Daring Wives sheds some light on the motives of these women. Psychologist and psychoanalyst Frances Cohen Praver, who specializes in couples therapy, womens issues and trauma, has plenty of colorful case studies to draw upon and gives an insight into their dilemma after all these clients are looking for help to rescue their marriage or seeking a solution which could help them in future relationships....A useful book for husbands in troubled marriages--especially husbands who want to be able to understand their wives motives better--and wives who have an affair.
  —BookPleasures.com May 9, 2007
• Not all are desperate, or housewives. Many seem to be successful, committed and happy, but in fact, something is missing. Psychologist and psychoanalyst Praver does not preach but instead guides wives and husbands to recognize and analyze their desires, motivations, roles and expectations and make positive changes creatively. Through a series of vignettes she describes situations ranging from working wives to those who stay at home, mothers and childless women, the young, the elderly and those in-between, those who are remarried and those who seek out same-sex extramarital affairs. She also examines the social and historical changes across the last ten decades that have changed attitudes from shock to, it seems, grudging admiration, and how couples must cope with outside influences as well as those that are the most intimate.
  —Reference & Research Book News August 2006
• [F]or a thorough treatment of the subject of wives' infidelity, this is the book to buy.
  —Palm Beach Post/Cox News Service April 22, 2006

• Endorsement From Lewis Aron, Ph.D.
  Director, New York University, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis
  author of A Meeting of Minds: Fran Praver has written a beautifully crafted, illuminating book that explores and transcends the topic of women's infidelity. This book, written with nonjudgmental warmth and humanity, explores the dangers and entanglements of love, romance, marriage and its disruptions. Praver draws on sociopolitical history, feminism, postmodernism, relational psychoanalysis, empirical research, statistical surveys, cultural analysis, and especially upon a broad base of rich clinical and personal experience as a therapist. This wonderful collection of clinical stories will help mental health professionals and the public to better understand and appreciate the desperate and daring lengths to which people may go in struggling with their passions and commitments.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Out of the Closet: The Fair Sex and Infidelity
• Drastic Double Standards and Daring Wives
• What a Difference a Century Makes: Female Infidelity and the Double Standard
• Not So Sweet Home: Stay in the Abode Wives
• Wanderlust while They Work: Working Wives and Outside Romance
• Young and Restless: The World's Their Oyster
• Older and Bolder: Under Cover with a Younger Lover
• Remarriages and Regrets: Out of Step with Stepfamilies
• Same Sex Affairs: Wives with Women Lovers
• Sex Goes Awry
• Conclusion: Implications for Marriage and American Society