Sex-starved married women
need a lover not a brother

By Cheryl Chow
Contributing writer

September 7, 2004



(Compiled by Masuo Kamiyama)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

First and best of all, you're not my hubby.

A romantic boom of sorts is sweeping through married women in Japan. Hearts aflutter, these women are basking in the bloom of romantic love. Just one catch: the object of their passion isn't their husband.

Yomiuri Weekly (9/12) interviewed 500 men and women between the ages of 35 and 45 to study this phenomenon.

And please, let's not call it adultery, okay? That's just oh, so seedy and negative, conjuring up images of illicit fornication and bitter divorce proceedings. The women prefer to think of it as "extramarital romance." What they have is a heart-to-heart connection, they assert. It's love, pure love.

Okay, so that involves having sex, but why should that prick one's conscience? Yomiuri Weekly's survey showed that just 39.7 percent of women enjoying extramarital affairs feel any guilt, compared to 53.1 percent of men who do. And one out of three of these women are carrying on with a married man.

What's the attraction? One woman explains, "Though I write my boyfriend really banal email like what I had for lunch today, he sends me message after message saying, 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' Now, my husband's a sweet man, but he doesn't set my heart throbbing the way my boyfriend does. And my boyfriend's married, so I don't have to worry that he might get obsessed with me and start stalking me."

In many cases, the women -- and men -- start extramarital activities to compensate for the lack of sex in their marriage. Like 38-year-old Masami. After she gave birth to their daughter at age 30, her husband announced, "You've become a mother, so I can't think of you as a woman anymore." No amount of cajoling could bring him to ever touch her again.

So two years ago, Masami started going out with a man she met at work. Their needs jived: he's a married man whose wife abruptly terminated their sex life as soon as she became Mrs. Mom.

Masami couldn't be happier about her affair. She says she's regained confidence as a woman; she can finally affirm the part of herself that feels sexual desire. "He tells me I'm his best partner, and I feel the same about him. But neither of us wants to break up our family. We're happy if we can continue to carry on in secret."

Mayumi, the director of a website sex and marital consulting business points out that extramarital romance is spreading. "It's not only women with flamboyant lifestyles or ones who are especially liberated sexually -- quite ordinary women are getting into it," she comments. According to her, there are several categories. A typical case is the wife who doesn't feel loved by her husband, and turns to adultery to fill her emptiness.

Or the woman may love her husband and he may be a top-notch provider, but their sex life is ho-hum. Then she finds a man who puts sizzle into sex, and she can't get enough.

The earlier generation of women felt obliged to put their families and children first. But wives under 40 don't want to lose their "sparkle" as a woman. And now hooking up is a cinch, thanks to the cell phone and the Internet. All it takes is the right tool to make that heart-to-heart connection.

Wow!