In his remarkably comprehensive and readable Insatiable Wives, clinical psychologist and sex therapist David Ley made similar discoveries — couples who were into the cuckold/hotwife lifestyle, he found, varied in how exactly they practiced it, but what the successful ones had in common was impressive levels of connection and intimacy, enviable communication skills, and high levels of desire for each other compared to couples in monogamous unions. When he first stumbled across this lifestyle while reading responses to an online sex survey he had sent out, Ley thought people were having him on. There was virtually no academic literature on the topic. But exploring further, he connected with some hotwifing and cuckold-life practitioners and interviewed them at length. What he discovered surprised him. "I initially thought, This can’t be healthy," he told me when I interviewed him via Skype one morning. "And then I had to stop myself. Why did I assume that these couples, often in decades-long marriages, were necessarily unhealthy for engaging in sex behaviors outside the norm? I was allowing my social biases around monogamy, promiscuity, and female sexuality to intrude into my clinical judgment." Instead, Ley decided to listen. He found more participants to interview and was further surprised to learn that, like Alexis McCall and her husband, many of these couples had quite extraordinary levels of commitment, showed deep mutual respect, and communicated skillfully. A significant number also reported very high levels of marital satisfaction and sexual satisfaction after decades of being together, a rather unusual state of affairs.