Secret Loves: Women with Two Lives

The adulterous wife emerges as the unlikely heroine in these revelations collected by Friedman, the psychologist host of CNN's Sonya Live , in interviews with 100 married women, aged 23 to 76, who have taken either male or lesbian lovers. Assisted by freelance writer Forsyth, Friedman credits the sexual revolution and Betty Friedan with helping to motivate wives to venture into what she calls the ``wife/wench'' double life, complicated by risk and gratuitous obstacles. However, the lovers in these cases--who are often family friends--still tend to give priority, Friedman stresses, to their roles as spouses and parents. And while sex and romance may remain vital to illicit love, the women claim it is the companionship offered by an affair that helps them ``tolerate'' their marriages--only a third of which end in divorce. Despite greater open-mindedness about taboo subjects, the authors conclude that exercising candor about such entanglements is still ``tantamount to self-destruction.'' (Feb.)