What a woman needs in life
It is conventional wisdom that the primary emotional need of a woman is to be in a lifelong relationship with a man. Traditionally, this would be her husband. But even in Western Europe, where many people no longer get married, women still desire a lifelong partnership with one man.
I think the affinity for lifelong love relationships is in the nature of women, as it has resulted from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Thus, it is a matter of nature.
However, there also is a strong element of nurture. Women, of course, lose their sexual market value much more quickly than men do. When you are 20, you can have every man, even though it may only be for an episode. But when you are over 40, it is very difficult for you to enter a new long-term relationship with a man who genuinely prefers you over other women.
Yes, you may still be able to find a man. But either he is attracted to other qualities you can provide apart from yourself (e.g., the wealth of your family, or your own wealth), or he is with you because he is not good enough to get a younger woman.
“Younger” is the keyword. Youth, or the beauty of youth, has a magical power over men. And from the end of your 20s, you are discriminated against because of your age. And this is a discrimination that is much more difficult to legislate away than just lower pay for equal work. Because this discrimination is in the minds of men who feel sexually attracted to younger women. They cannot be forced by the law to be attracted only to women of the same age.
Of course, some women do look younger than they are. And cosmetic surgery can help. But then, when a man sees a woman’s passport (or any other ID), and realizes her real age, every year that she is older than she appears will downgrade her value. This is why I advocate that birthdates be eliminated from any official or non-official ID, just as race specifications have been eliminated. For administrative purposes, it would be sufficient to identify a person by a genetic sequence.
Anyway, for people who have achieved adulthood, no rights or obligations are connected to a person’s age, just as no rights or obligations are connected to a person’s race (and unlike to a person’s nationality).
Without any age specifications in any personal document, women could do a lot (which would include far-reaching cosmetic surgery) to maintain a youthful appearance, and thus a better sexual market value. And in such a scenario, women would not be under so much pressure to build a lifelong love relationship with a man of a comparable sexual market value at a time when their own sexual market value is high.
For it is not that a woman would not enjoy the thrill of a newly developing romantic relationship more than the routine of being married for the umpteenth year with a man who has lost much of his sexual interest in her. It’s just that, because of her more rapidly declining sexual market value, as well as social restrictions, the option of frequent repetitions of courtship is much less realistic than it is for men, not least because when she is getting older, fewer men of reasonable sexual market value are genuinely interested in her.
Thus, for married women in their 30s, it is, in most societies, not a realistic alternative to break up a working marriage just because they want to experience again the delight of a newly developing romance, and I would not advise a wife to give up easily a working marriage.
Instead, while the working marriage will satisfy the first emotional need (the feeling of security in a stable relationship), the second emotional need (the delight of a newly developing romance) is best met, in my view, by being unfaithful and having a lover. I am aware that this advice will not be understood by young women who are not yet married. As long as the first emotional need (the desire to have a man forever) is not met, most young women are not aware of the fact that their emotional needs may well diverge after some years. This is because, obviously, at the beginning of a romantic relationship between a young woman and a man she wants to marry, both needs are fulfilled in the same person (the romantic need and the need for the security that a lifelong union should provide).
For all the above reasons, and even though it will sound strange to some, and immoral to others, I proclaim that a woman needs more than just a husband to have a fulfilled life. She also needs a lover, and quite possibly more than once, especially if the woman is beautiful.
If a woman is beautiful, she sometimes needs to hear it from another man, not just her husband. Furthermore, because they involve a high level of secrecy, the romantic thrill of love affairs can bring back an element of excitement that typically is lacking in married life with a husband who usually feels so sure that he is the only possessor of his wife that he often no longer is attentive. And quite often, the lovers of married women are simply this: they are better lovers.
Many women who have affairs do so at the end of their 20s, often after having given birth to a child. And usually, they are more selective than their husbands. While husbands, even though they are seeking extramarital sex more decisively than their wives, usually only have sexual opportunities with women who have a lower sexual market value, young, beautiful married women can have virtually any man, if they make it sufficiently clear to that person that their intention is simply to have a sexual relationship.