”How’s it going?” an interviewer for a highbrow morning show asked bluntly.

”So far, so good,” I responded. Soon after, I heard from colleagues, friends and long-lost acquaintances, wondering whether my relationship was on the rocks. ”Next time you are asked how your marriage is going, a simple ‘great’ would probably work,” a friend from university advised.

For the record I am happily married, and my husband takes great pleasure in telling people that his wife is an ”adultery expert.” But I drew the line when the editor of an American magazine asked to run our wedding photo alongside a story about the book. And when strangers ask what I do, I try to sound vague. I told the French photographer sitting next to me on a flight that I write about marriage. Still, I was more direct than my late grandmother, who told her elderly Canasta partners: ”It’s a book about love.”

What’s a girl to do when she’s asked to talk about adultery live on Al-Jazeera International? I wore a shapeless turtleneck, read up on infidelity in the Muslim world, and practiced replacing my usually gleeful descriptions of global infidelity with a disapproving scowl. But instead of moralizing, the interviewer pressed me for the secrets of Japanese sex clubs and philandering Frenchmen.

There was a brief attempt to make me a pin-up girl for the cause. The Independent (UK) anointed me ”Mrs. Infidelity.” The Observer said I was the sort of ”yummy mummy” who might ”set up a stall in a farmers’ market selling fashionable cupcakes.” But the magic fizzled when the paper hired a famous Brazilian photographer to take my picture. He took one look and decided I should pose directly behind a large plant.

Given the current political climate, I think foreign reporters liked the fact that I was an American criticizing my own country, for its odd rules of fidelity. They called from all over the world, often looking for a unique angle. An Argentine reporter wanted to know if there might be a connection between adultery and global warming.

Americans had the strongest reactions to the topic. Though I never claimed to have written a self-help book, some reviewers on Amazon.com posted warnings, such as “Please do Not look to this book for help . . . Do Not Trust Pamela Druckerman.” On tour back home, I was frequently mistaken for someone with actual wisdom to dispense. In Miami, a woman pressed me for details about exactly what kind of men were most likely to cheat (a 40-year-old traveling salesman from Togo, I concluded helpfully).

At least I’ve developed good radar for whether a person cheats. Just mentioning my topic — once I actually do — is a kind of litmus test. The faithful types usually feel safe asking follow-up questions. But those with secrets just say ”huh!” and change the subject.

Author Pamela Druckerman is a former staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and has reported from São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Paris, and New York.  She lives in Paris. She is the author of Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (Penguin Books). This article first appeared in the Financial Times. Reprinted by the author’s permission. Copyright (c) Pamela Druckerman.

In fact, although French presidents seem to have an infidelity record approaching 100 per cent, ordinary Frenchmen claim to be quite faithful. In a 2004 national survey, just 3.8 per cent of married men and 2 per cent of women said they had had more than one sex partner in the past year (the best approximation of infidelity) — fewer than in similar surveys in the U.S. and the U.K.

If France isn’t the world capital of adultery, which country is? I set off around the world to find out.

I quickly discovered that global sex research is patchy and incomplete. Even serious researchers can’t even agree on what to call infidelity. Nigerians prefer the term “sexual networking.” The Finns use the morally neutral term “parallel relationships.”  A French team uses an expression perhaps better suited for an accounting course: “simultaneous multi-partnerships.”

Then there’s the tricky matter of what constitutes cheating. A poll in one South African magazine had separate categories for men who cheat, and men who cheat “while drunk.” One American survey defined sex as “either vaginal or anal intercourse,” while another decided that sex is a “mutually voluntary activity with another person that involves genital contact and sexual excitement or arousal, that is, feeling really turned on, even if intercourse or orgasm did not occur.” Americans haven’t yet tried to count their so-called “emotional affairs,” in which the “cheaters”  might never meet.

Many countries simply have no reliable sex statistics.  National surveys are expensive, and many governments are either too prudish or too poor to help pay for them (private funding is seldom sufficient). America’s first representative national survey only got off the ground in the 1990s, after conservative members of Congress spent years trying to block it.  Hints of Japan’s infidelity levels come only from the enormous size of the country’s paid-sex industry, which is famously frequented by married businessmen. A legal loophole permits a man and a woman to strike a private agreement for sex. Understandably, the state would rather not be confronted with the details.

In Russia, just talking about sex research can be hazardous. Soviet governments barely permitted any public discussion of sex, let alone a survey that might embarrass the government by showing that Russians were engaging in banned activities like extramarital affairs.  And though the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia’s Orthodox church keeps the current government from funding practically anything related to sex.

“There were never and will not be in the foreseeable future national surveys,” said Igor Kon, a septuagenarian who’s Russia’s most prominent sexologist. When I visited him in Moscow, Kon showed me the pamphlet in which a group of Russian academics denounced him as a “danger to the Russian society and state” because of his calls for basic sex education and research. Earlier, hoodlums had attacked him while he delivered a lecture at Moscow University, and vandals defaced the door to his apartment. Kon was bothered least when he got a phone call threatening to bomb his apartment, since if the caller was serious Kon would already be dead.  “To kill someone in Moscow is not a big problem,” he explained.

Despite the lack of hard data, in Russia and elsewhere there are facts on the ground. In Moscow, women in their forties told me that, by necessity, they only date married men. That’s because, since the life expectancy for Russian men has fallen so sharply (to 59) that by age 65 there are just 46 men left for every 100 women.

And it was clear that Russian men flaunted this demographic advantage.  With the exception of a pastor (who was sitting with his wife at the time), I didn’t meet a single married man in Russia who admitted to being monogamous.  A family psychologist whom I had intended to interview as an “expert” boasted about her own extramarital relationships and insisted that given Russia’s endemic alcoholism, violent crime, and tiny apartments, affairs are “obligatory.”

Muslim countries tend to be even stricter about sex research.  It’s impossible to know how much cheating goes on in places like Iran, where convicted adulterers can be stoned to death.  But again there are facts — or at least impressions — on the ground.  In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country, the middle-class women and men I met said that adultery is absolutely wrong because the Koran forbids it.  Then they revealed that many of their married friends, and sometimes they themselves, had lovers.  In these circles, the attitude toward affairs seemed almost casual: local slang for a no-strings romp was “afternoon nap,” and a brief love affair was a “wonderful interval.”

I didn’t find evidence anywhere in the world that religious people are particularly faithful.  Within the social circles I studied in Indonesia, the fact that polygamy is legal seemed to legitimize the idea that a man won’t be satisfied with just one woman. “Polygamy is something that induces adultery, because before they get married for the second time there’s a period of adultery, ” said sociologist Paulus Wirutomo of the University of Indonesia. “Islam is not permissive, but there’s an emphasis on formality. ”

I did find that, all over, money shapes the rules of infidelity. Men in rich countries are generally much more faithful than their counterparts in poor ones. That’s in part because first-world cheaters tend to be punished more severely.  In America, a single affair can mean losing your marriage, your assets, your status and your self respect. Just 3.9 percent of married American men said they’d had more than one partner in the last year, according to the 2004 General Social Survey carried out by the National Opinion Research Center.  Even in wealthy countries where the taboo on cheating is weaker than in the U.S. — Australia, Switzerland and Italy, for instance — husbands claim to be quite faithful too.

Among women, it’s just the opposite. Women in poor countries say they cheat infrequently, perhaps because they have less financial and social clout than their husbands.  But in wealthier countries, where the status of men and women is more equal, levels of male and female infidelity — while still quite low — are fairly equal too.

While it’s impossible to get an exact measure of infidelity, there are some clues about where the most cheating goes on. Beginning in the 1990s, researchers tracking the spread of HIV began extensively mapping sexual behavior in sub-Saharan Africa. Their findings were astonishing: in the tiny West African nation of Togo, with a population of less than six million, 37 percent of married or cohabiting men said they’ve had more than one sex partner in the last year (the figure includes polygamists). Trailing just behind the Togolese were men in Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Mozambique and Tanzania. In South Africa, even the AIDS educator at a Cape Town metal company told me that of course he had a girlfriend as well as a wife.

And so the dubious title of world infidelity capital goes to a region: sub-Saharan Africa.  And with ordinary citizens cheating at such astonishing levels, one can only imagine what African politicians are up to. Surely they put even French presidents to shame.

Copyright (c) Pamela Druckerman.

Excerpted from Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee by Pamela Druckerman. Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) March, 2008.

Author Pamela Druckerman is a former staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and has reported from São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Paris, and New York.  She lives in Paris.

At least you acknowledge that the marriage has been having problems for a long time. Unfortunately, unresolved problems will only lead to more problems.

No, you won’t ever be the same. You may learn to forgive but you’ll probably never be able to forget. Counseling is an excellent step in the right direction; be honest with your counselor.

As far as the ongoing marital problems prior to the adultery, has there been any positive progress or is the marriage too far gone to save? It takes two people to repair a broken marriage. Are both of you willing to do whatever it takes?

Some marriages can survive adultery and even grow stronger. Can yours? Do you want it to?

These are just my thoughts. It’s your life, you have to do the work and make the decisions that you feel are right for you. ~ Pat G.

I said:

You’re very intuitive about the situation you and your husband share. Unfortunately, your understanding can’t be passed on to him. He will see and feel at his own pace, making his decisions as he must.

Perhaps he will leave, and perhaps he will regret leaving. He currently believes leaving is what he must do in order to be happier, regardless of how much pain it may cause you and other family members. He’ll never know that he made a wrong choice if he doesn’t go. Or, he might find that leaving was the right choice.

Do you put your life on hold waiting to see if he has a change of heart? And what if he doesn’t? Or what if he does, only it takes longer than you expected and you’ve already stopped waiting?

Where your husband’s personal growth will lead him only time will reveal. Use the time for your own personal growth and you may find that what you thought you wanted for the rest of your life isn’t what you really want.

It’s time to become a member of The Midlife Club and get the support of other women going through the same situation.

© Pat Gaudette. All rights reserved.