Sometimes a young girl is really just an ashtray. And yes it matters whether an elected official blithely disregards the sanctity of an oath taken. Perjury matters. Poor judgment matters.
I think it's probably this much more often than the other thing, but I don't think people who cheat generally think it through in this way. People don't propose open relationships instead of cheating because they don't want open relationships. These cheating apologists like to talk about how people (or just men) aren't "wired" for monogamy because otherwise they wouldn't have an urge to just fuck everything there is, but to whatever extent that's true it's also true that we are wired for monogamy, because a certain degree of sexual possessiveness is built in to the way we react to sex and love. Obviously the degrees of both vary wildly from individual to individual, and both things can manifest themselves in both healthy and unhealthy ways, and it's up to the members of every relationship to reconcile the two in a way that works for all concerned.
Honest question, because I'm too lazy to do the anthropological research: We know there are cultures, past and present, that prominently feature men openly married to multiple women. Are there any that have women married to multiple men? If not, is that because men have sexual jealousy that would never allow polyandry to happen? Are women less inclined to WANT multiple husbands? Is it just good old-fashioned male dominance at work? I do find kind of fascinating the differences in the ways men and women are wired, although I don't consider those differences an excuse for the kinds of behavior some men think they should be able to get up to.
There are some, though we have much fewer records of those than the polygamy type. There are also some cultures that don't really practice marriage in the long-term sense at all, in a variety of combinations. The one where men visit the houses of women on invitation, but it's rude to acknowledge a specific man as the father of a specific child, and men consider their responsibilities to children to be towards their sisters' children, is what spring to mind immediately; that said, I know there are a few other variations where there's nothing like what we would call permanent marriage. Alas, I do not have useful citations at hand; other people will no doubt step in.
It's not that surprising-- it's likely that polygamy had it's origins in reproduction, right? One man can impregnate multiple women at once, but multiple men can't impregnate the same woman. Men become reproductively redundant in a way that women don't.
Compared to polygyny, polyandry is very rare in modern society, but it is found amongst various cultures including Tibet, India, China, Nepal and various tribes in Africa and Asia as well as some Celtic societies in the past. There have been other cases, but not a lot is known. Not surprisingly, religion plays a big part in why it is frowned upon. It's also not legally recognised in most countries that allow polygyny and most forms found are fraternal polyandry which is still considered to be socially acceptable in Tibet and Nepal despite China making it illegal in Tibet. It's most commonly found in the animal kingdom, but I never studied that side of things so I couldn't give an answer to why it occurs as frequently as it does other than my belief that successful reproduction rates increase as a result. There is also the possibility that the role of the "alpha female" or "queen" in the animal world has an effect.
I dunno - it seems like pretty much all male-female relationships are justified either during or after the fact as having a reproductive basis (just read some of the briefs in the gay marriage cases), but really I suspect that polygyny has its origins in men wanting the inalienable right to fuck a lot of different women and in not wanting the women to have that same right. Of course, I guess one could argue that the wanting to fuck a lot is a biological adaptation necessary to keep the planet populated, so...
I read the article. The style makes Arthur Rimbaud come off like a parking ticket. The central thrust of the article is an apology for men trapped in sexless marriages who get caught tending to their own needs. It must be hard to write an article telling women that they have to put out more without sounding like a rampaging ladyhater. This piece attempts to make its message more palatable through hyperbole and to that end it fails. The overblown language used in the article is suited more to the cafe scene in a shitty play about American graduate students not wanting to leave Paris. To revisit the previous sentence, yes, the play would be written and produced in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and no, none of them would have actually been to France. Yes, they are wearing scarves. What the article could have just said is; women like sex, men like sex, sometimes women who like sex marry men who don't really like sex, sometimes the situation is reversed. There is another circumstance, where the two people like to have sex with each other, but that desire goes away after awhile but only for one of them. These are all heartbreaking situations, and if it isn't happening to you, it is not your business. A lot of people read about how Tiger Woods would fall into bed with anyone who would have him. Before that it was Larry Craig and his unfulfilled longing for the touch of a man, before that it was Bill Clinton and his perky assistant. All the time husbands and wives spent obsessing over this endless parade of sad penis would have been better spent actually relating to each other. Holding cheaters to public ridicule does two things wrong. First, it supposes that the cheater didn't wallow away for month after month or even year after year trying everything they could do to revive a sexless marriage. It skips the part where flowers, back massages, romantic dinners, and even booze stop working. It glosses over the arguments that happen when one spouse gets sick of being shot down over and over and over and over. It traipses past the phase where one spouse starts deploying bullshit defenses like, "I would like to be the one to initiate, so if you stop asking, then I think I would feel more comfortable and I would ask you." It slides down over the six to ten months where some dummy falls for that line and stops attempting to initiate sex entirely and even starts to sit on a different couch in order to not accidentally start cuddling and then be accused of trying to get sex. Arguments and ridicule about cheaters, for instance, Bill Clinton, generally skip over major details like, what was it like for him, to be in a long term relationship and all of a sudden not get fucked on his birthday? What was his wife's excuse, did he believe her? Did he see it coming? Did he have his hopes up because they hadn't had sex in a while and I mean really, what kind of person won't fuck you on your goddamn birthday? What about the second time he didn't get fucked on his birthday? I know that telling spouses that they have to make themselves sexually available to their partners seems a little outdated, but I think that we can all agree that making someone promise to be with you for the rest of their life and then not fucking them on their birthday is Unconstitutional. The second thing that ridicule for cheaters does is compound the embarrassment of the spouse. Finding out you have been cheated on is bad enough, finding out that you are the last one to know is downright humiliating and it does not do much positive in terms of letting the spouses work the issue out. Not everyone who doesn't want to have sex wants to not want to have sex. Sometimes people go through rough patches and they act out in bad ways. Sometimes people go through rough patches, and they don't act out, but the person they love doesn't handle it well. I am sure you have all seen enough Lifetime movies to understand what I am talking about. If a real estate agent husband and wife team get stressed out and his penis stops working and she becomes a prostitute to cope with the end of her career as a famous athlete, that is their goddamn business and not yours. If he wants her back, and she wants to fix herself and be with him, having the rest of us stand around and point and say, "how could you do that to him!" is not helpful. I used to have to divorce people and when relationships go bad, there is always someone else. I don't know when the someone else shows up and I don't care. Cheating isn't a sickness, it's a symptom of a relationship in need of help. Unless, you know, we are talking about relationships less than six months. Those people are just horny.
snicker Surely that's not universally the case. You don't think that some cheaters are getting plenty at home but still don't think that's enough?
I'm sure some are, yeah. But generally speaking, I think Flowers is right that extramarital affairs don't typically just happen out of the blue without some surrounding context. That's not excusing anyone who cheats, of course - if your relationship is so bad that you're getting incredibly tempted by someone else, it's time to end that relationship. No relationship, no cheating.
Female absolutist monarchs* are often accused of having multiple lovers concurrently. I don't know how much of these stories reflects political besmirching and how much reflects the actual proclivities of the queens, but if true it appears that women having the power and opportunity to keep a stable of sexual partners have often done so, just like many men have in similar positions. *Like Catherine the Great or the dowager Empress of the Qing dynasty.
1. I giggled when I typed it. 2. Not in real significant numbers, and then only because they are playing into some off base male role they were taught. Also, brain injuries can cause those types of changes in behavior. But no, for the most part, because cheating is kind of a lot of work for people, they don't just go around doing it. Think about the average middle aged married man or woman. Nobody wants to have sex with that. I mean, not when hot, unattached happy people are out running around crotch first through supermarkets and bars on a daily basis. I mean, who is this sad piece of shit in a shirt from fifteen years ago trying to talk to everyone about MC SkatKat? No, I think for the most part, cheating is usually an act of desperation. I think there are a lot of unhappy people and only some of them have the stones and the people skills not to mention the opportunity to stray. It's my theory that the day husbands and wives start listening to each other and having sex with each other as often as they should, and in the novel and sometimes silly ways that they owe it to themselves to at least try, the strip clubs and the strip malls will be empty.
CAVEAT: I agree with the premise that the sexual foibles of celebrities and politicians are too much on our minds and on our screens. That being said: I'm not sure to what extent you're critiquing the essay and to what extent you're defending cheating because one isn't getting any at home, but to the extent it's the latter, I call Bull. And. Shit. And you will have to take me at my word that I am as qualified as Mr. Clinton to opine on the subject, birthday, Christmas Day or days when the earth rotates. As I said, I don't particularly need to know about the details of anyone's cheatin' ways, but they bloody well get no sympathy likes for their particular situation.
Should? Fucking should? How about "people should only engage in sex acts that they freely consent to because they wish to have sex, rather than desperately agreeing to unwanted intercourse in order to prevent being deceived and running the risk of getting venereal diseases from some asshole who doesn't have the guts to be honest in a relationship"? Because as soon as you start talking about how people should have more sex, because otherwise gee, someone will surely lie to them about monogamy, that is one damn nasty direction to start heading. People SHOULD have sex with each other as often as they BOTH want to, and if there is not an agreeable compromise to be found there in an honest way, they SHOULD not be in a relationship. At no point SHOULD someone have sex that they don't want in order to prevent their partner from secretly running out and having sex with someone else. But, hey, what do I know? Sometimes I go to the strip mall to buy groceries, and apparently I wouldn't need to do that if I were just having as much sex with my spouse (currently in another state for six months, which is gonna make that kinda difficult) as much as someone on the internet thinks I should be doing.
You may be reading a lot more into that one word than intended. But it's Flowers, so maybe not. See, this is the part that sucks.
a) That's a fifty DKP minus for using the word "blithely" when not referring to a Jane Austen novel. b) It only matters to the people involved in said oath.
Not only is the data uneven and frequently contradictory in terms of what it actually says about unusually powerful women across history and their alleged habits, it still does nothing to change the overarching context of differently patriarchal societies which prevent it from being "just like" men, and it is by definition not going to be comparably representative of "many". So while it's interesting as trivia especially with respect to the study of rumor, it's not going to provide what I think jerri was asking about. In that sense, I would imagine that you would have to start with anthropological (as jerri suggested) analyses of societies with different approaches to social structure (beginning with the not-opposite of patriarchy, matriarchy, in all of its variants) and see what you could extrapolate given the available data. But that's purely conjecture on my part, and may simply be differently problematic; nevertheless, I do think you have to go deeper than the historical level in terms of methodology in order to get relevant answers.
*mutter* It matters more than that if you're establishing a pattern and making a judgement call. In theory if someone robs three of his companies blind then it's a problem between him and those companies. But I should absolutely want to know about this during his job interview because it appears to be a pattern. It's not of interest to us if some movie star sleeps around because we have nothing riding on them being faithful or trustworthy. It is a bit of a matter if elected officials make a habit of breaking oaths and habitually lying in that we need to evaluate how trustworthy they are for re-election. In that case we really don't give a fuck about whose dick was where, we only give a fuck about the behaviors involved in both covering it up and after being caught as they may pertain to things we do have a stake in. edit: which is to say, I fault Clinton for lying under oath, with a bit of a pass in that it's something he shouldn't have been under oath for in the first place. But he didn't seem to make it a habit to lie under oath so rock on and apologize to your wife and work things out (they appear to have!). I have far less respect for people like Gingrich who was trying to nail Clinton to a wall about getting some on the side while getting some on the side himself and having a long history of doing so. Because he didn't seem at all phased by why that causes distrust of his motives and honesty. Meanwhile Tiger Woods can sleep with half the eastern seaboard and it's pretty much just between him, his wife, and his mistresses.
You should want to know about it because robbery is a crime. And you don't want him committing the same crime. Meh, I see nothing wrong with fucking with people when they ask questions they have no business asking. I'm of the opinion that the moment Clinton got questioned about the affair he should have simply said "Am I being accused of a crime? No? Fuck off, I'm going back to work and if you fucking bother me again I'll shove a brick up your ass." It's no different than if he'd have been called in front of Congress for breaking a New Year's resolution - and yes I am comparing wedding vows to a New Year's resolution - because neither of those have any legal or rational impact on the job he was elected to do.
But they're no more a new year's resolution than your oath of office. Both have legal consequences. Divorce isn't just a breakup, it's a legal function to untangle all your shit. That's why it matters to me. It speaks of a character flaw in that you're willing to run around breaking vows instead of figuring out if you should still be in that relationship. And that's why it matters if you're in a role where you need to be trusted. It may not matter, but it absolutely should be taken into account. Clinton got in legal trouble over perjury that should never have happened. But that's not really the problem from an electoral standpoint. The problem from an electoral standpoint is that he broke trust and everyone needs to make a judgement call if they think it was a one off situation, or if he's just not trustworthy. edit: just to be clear where I'm coming from, cheating is pretty much the only thing in my book of instant relationship enders. Simply because it breaks trust, and presents the permanent question of if they're still trustworthy or just lying to you more. That's not a healthy relationship and why it's such a damaging action compared to owning up to being unhappy and talking it out with your SO. If you need some space and want to see other people, let them figure out how they want to roll with that.
Ah, see. I don't conflate cheating on your wife with being bad at your job - which contrary to public opinion does NOT mean the public needs to trust you. That isn't part of the presidency at all.
You know, I had that happen to me. I was told straight up that when I tried to initiate sexy times, it was a huge turn off. Which was excellent for my self-esteem, believe you me. Yeah, I wound up cheating on him, and you know what? I was wrong. I was wrong to have done that. I should've dumped him instead of letting things get so terrible, and I should've realized the lack of sex was bound up in a whole bunch of other issues that made the relationship a crappy one. I should've pulled the plug on it way earlier than I did. The problem is we tend to think lack of sex isn't a reason we should dump someone. I don't know how to change that. And yes, I know it's much harder to divorce than dump a boyfriend. But while they'll have my "man, that is a shitty situation" sympathies prior to the cheating, the deceit involved is still not an acceptable solution to me, and I will still think the cheater is wrong and not to be pitied in the least. What their partner wants to do about it is their business, of course, and the main problem I have with the GRAAAAAH CHEATER stuff is mostly from that angle. Because yeah, it sucks to be cheated on, and having the world discuss how you were cheated on (and speculate on what YOU did wrong to "make" your partner cheat) is pretty fucking shitty.
Lack of sex can definitely be a reason to dump someone. But, hell, I believe in the Captain Awkward school of thought that we only get one life, and "This is not making me happy; I am going to leave it" is always valid. One should try to minimize the suck to the other person, but not to the extent of sacrificing one's life to a failed relationship, even if the failure isn't one of the Standard Accepted Reasons. ...I've also seen "I need you to stop initiating for a while so that I can do some initiation" work really well in one circumstance. But as with any approach to solving relationship problems, I imagine results vary widely.
The initiation gambit is so common that I think it is even listed in, "The Games People Play." When it comes to, say Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, you know that she's not having sex with him, and you know that she knows that he's having sex with other people. That is a marriage of political convenience at this point. With regards to regular folks who do not and never will have access to nuclear launch codes, I understand that people like fade and Jay want to see more people walk away from mismatched situations where people aren't fucking each other as often as they should.* Sadly, however, while these relationships may not have things like, "The Fate of the Free World," or "Al Gore's Candidacy," hinging upon their outcome, they typically feature the person with a low sex drive or no sex drive or whatever, pleading with them to stay. There are a lot of reasons to stay with someone, you like the same movies, you share the same values, you own a home together, you have children together, you get along amazingly well otherwise, you see eye to eye on chores and love each other's cooking, the list goes on. Someone not fucking you can be soul destroying, but you're not your sex life. You can feel like an asshole not getting laid on your birthday, and at the same time realize, well, apart from feeling like less of a lady, my husband makes a fierce carrot cake, which is my favorite, and we watched a movie I hadn't seen since I was a kid that I mentioned eight months ago, once, and only in passing, that I didn't even know anyone could find because I couldn't even remember the title and wow, I guess it was an alright birthday. *Should. As in, "you should clean this toilet before it gains the ability to solve math problems." Should. Some things you don't want to do, and you shouldn't have sex when you don't want to have sex, and I get that there is something beautiful about the gradual extinction of the Giant Panda, but you should want to have sex with the person you married. There you go, you should fuck someone because you want to fuck them and you should want to fuck them because they want to fuck you and you made them promise not to fuck anyone else. I understand that anybody telling anyone else that they oughta put out for any reason sounds pretty rapey, but I am not coming at this problem from a "Guide to Being a Proper Lady," perspective, rather from a more Cosmopolitan angle. As in Cosmopolitan the magazine. If your girlfriend watches sports with you and you know she doesn't like sports, you need to make an effort to do something with her that she likes. If she wants you to go to the mall with her for five hours straight, do it. If she wants you to have sex with her, just do it. If she wants you to put a dildo in your ass and call your old English professor to talk about Kevin Bacon's "The Following," make an effort. Google the son of a bitch, it's the least you can do. See if he's still teaching. See when he has office hours. Remember when she got you two U2 tickets? That was a good time. Speaking of good times, now would be a good time to see if you have any extra "D" batteries. Sex is special, and it helps people connect with each other and it helps everyone feel powerful and important and desireable and close and if you know what it means to your partner and you don't even make an effort you're a jerk. I get that there are reasons why people would be uncomfortable with sex or blah, blah, blah. I don't give a shit and neither should you. But the reason you shouldn't really give a shit about who is fucking who, and who promised who, is because while sex is a tremendously important part of a relationship, it's also not the end all be all of a relationship. It's just a part of the way people connect. You don't have to do it with anyone, but you should want to do it because you should want to do all types of things, like go horseback riding and pay your taxes on time and read the same book and just talk. That being said, almost nobody wants to do everything with their partner. I don't like watching lowbrow comedies with my wife because she rolls her eyes too much, and she doesn't like watching lowbrow comedies with me because I end up shouting angrily about how Gallagher was a true genius in the vein of Bertolt Brecht. A relationship without sex can work, just like a relationship with tons of sex can fail. Sex is kind of the grease in the contraption that is your relationship, and some machines require more than others. Also, if someone is not fucking you, and won't make an effort to fuck you, I put that in the same bin as that friend who always cancels on your plans to go skydiving or whatever. Eventually, you are going skydiving, whether your friend is there or not. Does that mean you are no longer friends? Only if the entirety of your relationship was predicated on skydiving together exclusively. Chairs stand just fine on three legs, and I don't think anybody has any business telling Bill Clinton that he and his wife have to get a divorce because their relationship has a different center of gravity and thus balance, than yours. The article and many posters place too much emphasis on sex. It is awesome, and during, eyes may roll, but afterwards, credits do not.
Yes and no. I don't think "I'm getting less sex than I want" or "My spouse wants more sex than I do" is automatic trigger for immediate divorce. But it's generally an important part of a relationship and problems in that area can be a critical issue, one needs to be addressed. Not addressing it will result in bigger and more painful problems in the longer run. And as you said, cheating is generally a symptom of a deeper problem. That problem may be a lack of desired sexual intimacy, which in itself may be a symptom of an even deeper problem than that. I don't want to see people automatically walk away because they're not getting enough booty, I want to see them at least try to resolve the problems that are leading to the mismatched desires for sexual intimacy.
I think people should walk away from relationships that they don't want to be in. If they're unhappy but still want to be in the relationship, then yes, work on it! Try to address the problems! Make things better! But I don't think there is an obligation to try to Fix The Relationship if a person in it doesn't want the relationship anymore. Maybe they don't want to be in the relationship because they're not getting as much sex as they want. Or because their partner is nagging them about sex. Or because they want to have kids and their partner doesn't. Or because their partner is dead set on moving to Kansas and they don't want to. Or because, well, it just isn't working anymore, sorry, bored now. Staying in a relationship because one feels one must and not because one still wants to save something in it is a terrible thing that goes well beyond any matter of having sex or not. I mean, I can see situations where cheating is a better option than breaking up, but they're kinda rare. "If I get a divorce my wife, who is dying of cancer, will have no health insurance and will die rapidly and in great pain, but I am so utterly distracted by my own genitals that I am no longer able to hold down the job that gives us health insurance unless I get laid by a real live human being rather than my hand, and even knowing this my wife is unwilling to give me permission to have sex with anyone else." Okay. Cheat discreetly. Better of two options. "If I break up with my boyfriend it will make me sad and I will lose some friends, but I want to have sex and my boyfriend doesn't want to have sex with me and he isn't willing to have an open relationship" means it's time to suck it up and either break up or deal with the lack of sex. It is not a magical "It's not really cheating because no sex at home!" card. I will, however, agree that consensual sex between adults isn't the business of the people who are not already in relationships with any of the people involved, except in cases of wild hypocrisy by politicians. Someone who votes to take rights away from GLBT folks while also having a gay sex on the side? Publish it far and wide, the exact same way we'd publish someone claiming to be Tough On Drugs while doing lines of cocaine at home every weekend.
Er... same here. I don't think anything I've written says otherwise. This seems so obvious as to go without saying.
Cosmopolitan the magazine is a steaming, festering pile of shit. Its only redeeming factor is reading it as though it were deliberately trolling its readership.
Ah, fair enough. And sorry that I misread it! I've seen enough iterations of "Unless your problem with the relationship is from these Approved Reasons, you are obligated to try to save it, and cannot break up until you've tried hard enough" in other places that I misattributed that to you in the discussion of things to do to solve problems. But since that's not what you're saying...yay! We are in some sort of violent agreement.
I wonder what Chump Lady would say. I agree that infidelity is a real deal-breaker. Hey, I promised my spouse that I would forsake all others. If my spouse cheats, for whatever reason, then I'd divorce because there is no way in hell I could trust my spouse again. Even if the spouse swears on a stack of Bibles, goes to counseling, etc.--well, I'd end up having to play marriage police. Spouse calls from work to say that s/he is working late. Really? Are you sure? You'd need passwords to the phone, the social media sites, etc. Even then, you'd not be sure your cheater spouse wasn't cheating because it's too damn easy to make new identities, create new accounts, hide money. I do buy that cheating indicates that something's wrong in the relationship, but it's not necessarily that one person isn't getting enough sex. I've known women whose husbands cheated on them, and men whose wives cheated on them. Not a lot of people--cheating tends to happen more frequently in non-marriage relationships--and while cheating involves sex, sex isn't the real issue. One of my friends was astounded when she found her husband was cheating. She'd tried to initiate sex for the first few years after they were married, but unless he initiated, he was too tired, too busy, too--well, whatever. Imagine her surprise when she discovered that her then husband started carrying on an affair with a former co-worker. Instead of losing her cool, she kept things together, didn't let on that she knew, and investigated the extent of the affair, even gaining access to his social media sites, where he was doing most of his messaging. She was even more surprised to learn that her husband thought she was cold, wasn't interested in sex--or at least this is what he told the other woman. Her take on it is that the guy needed some excuse for himself, so he blamed her for lack of sex. From what she learned of the affair, there wasn't much actual sex going on, and often there'd be a month or more before they could get together. The affair didn't last long after the divorce. She'd heard through the grapevine that the two split up. Her ex complained that the other woman was too whiney and demanding. The other woman said that her ex treated her badly and ignored her needs. My friend doesn't care. She is no longer married to a cheater, her life is good, her therapy was useful, and she's starting to date again.
Nope, I certainly don't think anyone is terribly obligated to stay in a relationship Just Because, though I think in a marriage the button for for the Ejector Seat should be significantly higher, assuming everyone knew and agreed going in that it's to be a lifelong exclusive commitment to one another. I think people should generally try to resolve problems before bailing (or cheating), that's all.
