About eighteen months ago, my wife announced she had taken up a hobby—another man. She explained, quite reasonably, that perhaps we had simply outgrown the intimacy side of our relationship, the way one outgrows rotary phones or fondue sets. She saw no reason to abandon the hobby, and in fact suggested we modernize the marriage with an open model—her words, not mine—so I could outsource my needs.

I am nothing if not adaptable. I promptly rekindled a relationship with a French woman—beautiful, luminous, and eighteen years younger than my wife. I wrote her love letters and poems. I sent flowers, which, in France, are still considered a sign of civilization. I flew back and forth often enough to qualify for a minor diplomatic passport. Curiously, this arrangement, which had been presented to me as progressive, began to trouble my wife.

She eventually called a summit meeting. I was informed that I was obsessed, that the whole enterprise was about sex, and that I should consider therapy for what was diagnosed, without lab work, as a sex addiction.

I explained, as calmly as a man commuting to Paris can, that it wasn’t about sex at all. It was about romance—walking hand in hand down the boulevards, sitting in cafés long enough to be mistaken for furniture, candlelit dinners along the Seine, evenings at the ballet, and visits to art galleries and churches where we lit candles and negotiated with the saints.

It was about the emotional connection—holding her as she fell asleep in my arms like a small, well-behaved kitten. In short, it was about love.

For reasons that remain unclear, this clarification did not improve the situation.