It's What You Think (When You Think about Cheating)

When we meet Shalem, a young woman in her late 30s, she is enduring small talk at a cocktail party hosted by one of her husband’s colleagues. One talks about her breast milk and her twins; another frets about the matronly ass of his girlfriend. Shalem has arrived at the age of no longer young but not old and balancing the in-between. What she wears isn’t cool. What she thinks isn’t cool. She loves her husband but wonders where the passion has gone. When she bumps into the hostess of the party, a writer who has been researching a new play, the playwright reports that experts say any couple still having sex after five years of marriage does so only because of an active fantasy life. At first, that notion is perplexing to Shalem, but the more she thinks about it, the more game she is. When she embraces the idea and fantasizes about a work colleague, it gets things going. But now Shalem has a new plight—navigating between her fantasy world and reality.