Dalma Heyn, MSW, is the bestselling author of two books on marriage (The Erotic Silence of the American Wife and Marriage Shock: The Transformation Of Women Into Wives) and one on dating (Drama Kings: The Men Who Drive Strong Women Crazy). She is the former editor in chief of Health Magazine and executive editor of McCall’s, and has written widely on the subject of love. She has appeared both as author and social observer on "Oprah," "The Today Show," "Larry King Live," "The Charlie Rose Show" and "Good Morning America." Visit Dalma’s website by clicking here.

The lead story spread across the Science section of the Times Monday looked so familiar. "More people are cheating, new studies find, and younger women appear to be catching up with men," the blurb announced.  

"Soooo familiar," my husband said, as he often does when a similar story appears, handing me the paper. Maybe it was familiar because of a similar "surprising" article about the subject reported last year in — what was it, The Atlantic Monthly? Yes, I think so, but maybe it was another piece somewhere else — they appear so often now. But always they come as breakthrough, shocking news. I looked at this one: After stating that some studies understate and some overstate the amount of infidelity because of the difficulty in obtaining the truth from adulterers, the article said infidelity appears to be on the rise — and that, "notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap; younger women appear to be cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men."

Oh NOW I know why it sounds so familiar! I wrote a book saying just that 16 years ago! In 1992, inspired by letters from young women over many years for a column I was writing called "The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Sex," I wrote The Erotic Silence of the American Wife, in which I suggested that existing data were pointing to the fact that – yes — women appear to be having affairs nearly as often as, or as often as, men. (I didn’t use the word "cheating" then, nor would I now.) I noted that in the 1990 Kinsey report, 29 percent of wives and 37 percent of husbands had extramarital sex; and that Kinsey himself was the first to admit that his own figures on women’s adultery were hampered by women’s reluctance to speak up, while men’s were exaggerated by their eagerness to be counted as adulterous even when they’re not. 

But I’m not here to say, "I said it first 16 years ago," but to marvel yet again at our intense resistance to this information — as evidenced by the banner headlines each time it’s revealed, and at our surprise over each new, better, airtight study when it reveals it. We remain in deep denial: Our  belief that women are somehow innately, characterologically monogamous goes far deeper than we know, so deep that 16 years ago, I had to steel myself against some of the reactions I got for stating contrary information supplied by real women. (In fact, in an argument that will ring a bell, I often heard that women who had affairs weren’t "real" women at all. "Real" women were good women who wouldn’t dream of … and so forth.) I was called a witch on the "Larry King Live!" show by a listener who wanted to quite literally shoot this messenger of such heresy. I was thrown off a right-wing, family-values radio show for citing government statistics that displeased the evangelical host. (I think it was the evidence that adultery statistics don’t differ across religious lines.) Today, we’re not so violent in our responses to the news that young women, like young men, have affairs — God knows, we see it in every movie and on every TV show — but we still can’t quite take it in. "Really? Not just men? Women too? How could that be?"