More on Virtual Love Affairs
For those who are so inclined, I want to mention that we have been having a spirited debate about virtual love affairs in the comments section of a post I wrote during the week. If you are interested in the question, you will find the comments and the debate illuminating.
I sort of thought it was a difference in perspective and experience - male and female. Women actually think that guys should be happy to have one woman, whether or not they still have agreeable sex while most men visit porn sites and fantasize, and if given an opportunity where they think they won't get caught, they'll take it.
ReplyDeleteIn this case I thought the wife knew her husband and knew he could get involved and that would destroy their marriage. She had an idea about other woman that was probably spot on, since she knows women too. So, if she wanted to save her marriage, she needed to act, and while shaming him seems rather unpleasant and possibly in the end not effective, that was I suppose her plan.
He knew that having sex would not mean he'd leave his wife, but he should have known that his cyber sex would end up in some real bed at some point and then he'd have two women who wanted more from him and that it would cause him problems.
So the point perhaps should be whether marriages are worth saving at any price, and that's not a call anyone else can make for them. But the wife did her best and her fellow went along with it, he must have some shaming fantasy somewhere.
Do you remember that film My American Uncle, where the wife pretended she had a fatal disease to get the other woman to back off, and in the end he tired of the other one too so he stayed with the one that made more financial and life-style sense. In time guys tend to tire.
but, you may wonder, why the wife wants a guy she has to keep an eye on, and why the husband wants a wife at all if he's interested in checking out the field. I mean, makes me wonder.
"So the point perhaps should be whether marriages are worth saving at any price, and that's not a call anyone else can make for them. But the wife did her best and her fellow went along with it, he must have some shaming fantasy somewhere.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember that film My American Uncle, where the wife pretended she had a fatal disease to get the other woman to back off, and in the end he tired of the other one too so he stayed with the one that made more financial and life-style sense. In time guys tend to tire.
but, you may wonder, why the wife wants a guy she has to keep an eye on, and why the husband wants a wife at all if he's interested in checking out the field. I mean, makes me wonder."
I think the issue here is the intersection of morality and obligation with various less positive impulses.
Perhaps it's not so much that the husband "wants a wife" as much as it is that it's morally reprehensible to "check out the field" and he is obligated to be married if he wants to have sex at all.
America is certainly colored by it's puritan heritage, which is an anti-pleasure morally harsh and inflexible worldview.
Here's a comment on the Puritans:
"Based on such [anti-worldly pleasure] biblical teachings, Puritans and other Christians often viewed laughter, happiness, and pleasure as suspect and undesirable. Making matters worse, they frequently tried to impose their doleful philosophy on others. As the nineteenth-century abolitionist and women's-rights activist Wendell Phillips reportedly said "The Puritan's idea of hell is where everybody has to mind his own business".
Interesting discussion on a topic that clearly resonates, perhaps because it is such quicksand.
ReplyDeleteFull disclosure - mine was the first post in this discussion so I am now twice guilty of remarking on a topic which I do not have a hope of understanding. Allow me to explain.
Despite what we think we may know/may not know about this unfortunate situation, I am reminded of what a Puerto Rican friend told me after we learned of the divorce of what had semed to be the "model couple". He quoted a Puerto Rican syaing "Only the chef really knows what went into the soup." This is especially apropos with regards to this story as our knowledge of the facts is only as deep as the WSJ article.
while the wife's treatment of the offending husband strikes us as unusually harsh and cruel, we cannot even guess what is turly their marriage, and its countless understandings and arrangements.
We are commenting on the beauty of the ocean without knowing what is below the surface...or even unable to imagine what may be below the surface.
Nevertheless, thank you Mr. Schneiderman for writing about this unfortunate affair in your inimitable style and making us all think.
Of course, Anna is right to point out that adultery by a man is not governed by the same rules as adultery by a woman.
ReplyDeleteIt's basic Darwin and we forget it too often.
I wonder whether the Puritans are getting too maligned. As I understand it they were among the first to overcome the European tradition of arranged marriage, accompanied by accepted adultery. True, they stigmatized adultery, but it was to favor intramarital sexuality, as I understood it.
Thanks to Anon for opening the discussion. I felt that the WSJ article was a highly distorted effort to sell the public with one way of resolving marital difficulties. I think that we need to challenge the full disclosure model, because otherwise it will become accepted.
It used to be that debriefing therapists recommended that trauma victims tell all, in a group, when they had undergone some extremely painful emotional experience.
Now, I am reliably informed, people studying resilience are saying that trauma victims recover better and more fully if they do NOT discuss what happened to them in the immediate aftermath of the trauma. Again, full disclosure and full airing out of one's dirty linen is not always the best idea.
I think I get your point, the 'one way' that shuts out thinking.
ReplyDeleteThere are various reasons to save marriages, but the one I usually like best is that you'll just get into another terrible marriage and it'll cost more, so why not keep this one? Men tend to disagree, they keep thinking the next one will be better. Women tend to say they'd rather be alone than in a bad marriage, or they stay because they know their lives will be worse if they're on their own, often with kids.
Is marriage romance or business contract? How can a woman give up her aspirations for a marriage if she can't trust that he'll be constant? How can a man have children with a woman who might decide she no longer likes him and his kids may then have a new 'father?' If the idea is romance, well that's not easy to sustain. If it's contract, what constitutes a lethal violation? Most women in time stop enjoying (or pretending to enjoy) hot sex, and it seems to catch most men by surprise. Most men check out women and enjoy watching pornography but somehow that also catches women by surprise. There are two sexes?