A new book titled State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity reports, as Café Mom puts it, that “women are cheating on their husbands more and they aren’t the least bit ashamed.”

It turns out that many women still feel like their fundamental needs, whether it be sexual, emotional, or psychological, aren’t being met within their marriage, so they outsource it. Cheating is their alternative solution to being wholly satisfied while avoiding a divorce or a complex open-marriage situation. As a result, while there is deception, there is very little regret or shame in their extramarital affairs. It’s almost pragmatic.

Remember the romance-novel fad? Our town once had a used bookstore devoted to the pulp paperbacks. Somewhat above-average looking women clutched the bare chests of Fabio-like men whose appearances promised wild adventures in and out of bed. Once upon a time, married women pored over those novels with such zeal that you could literally grab the book by its covers, hold it upside-down and let the pages fall open to the sex scenes. As one friend explained, the reader would naturally pull the book open that much more and return to those pages much more often. Such was the extent of housewife/working woman infidelity in the ’80s and ’90s.

Now, books aren’t real enough. And the wives who cheat are okay with that. Why? According to sociologist Alicia Walker, these women are “subverting traditional heteronormative gender roles” by cheating. To put that in layman’s terms, she’s embracing Lifetime Movie logic: He’s a man, society rewards him, therefore it’s my turn to let the bastard suffer. Carrie Underwood would’ve just destroyed his car. These wives prefer to hit him where it hurts, even if he hasn’t done anything more than happily let his wife manage the household calendar and truck the kids to soccer practice.

The new trans-logic, that is, the idea of “breaking gender norms” to suit personal preferences, is now being used to justify the idea of marital infidelity in the straightest of senses. One expert politely refers to a woman’s choice to cheat on her husband as her way of “outsourcing” the sexual, emotional or psychological needs she feels aren’t met at home. Trans-logic permits the interpersonal to become impersonal in the pursuit of narcissistic pleasure. Screw his sexual, emotional or psychological needs. He can meet them somewhere else. What’s important is that, at the end of the day, the bills still get paid and the kids still get to soccer practice on time. Right?

Until, of course, those messy emotions get in the way. Maybe she falls in love with the guy she outsourced and he doesn’t like the idea of a corporate merger. Or her husband gets tired of not being valued sexually, emotionally or psychologically. And the kids, well… soccer can’t heal everything. Much like those recovering from gender dysphoria halfway through reassignment therapy, these families will have to face a lifetime of consequences for their actions. But, please, let’s listen to the experts who’d rather you justify such destructive, selfish choices as seemingly selfless moves to change “norms” that have been working just fine for thousands of years.