Slate article

Eleanor

New member
There is an interesting article in Slate about why happy couples cheat, with some input by the esteemed Esther Perrel (who is coming out with a new book!) I would love to post the link but I got burned from posting links being a newbie so I'll just say it's great, and if you are interested, google it.
 
I believe the link is:

http://www.slate.com/articles/doubl..._happy_marriages_cheat_and_americans_don.html

The rule of thumb I've always been able to use is if the link is poly-related and doesn't seem to be selling anything aggressively, I can post the link. If the mods send me a warning note due to this here post, I'll know that I need to modify my rule of thumb. :)

Re:
"Also most therapists in America will not work with secrets. Their attitude is, don't tell me anything I can't speak about with your partner. Either you end it or you tell your partner."

Hmmm, while I don't think it's the therapist's place to tell the spouse/partner, I do think that secret affairs have a tendency to either need to be admitted to, or at least to have some kind of timely exit strategy. I know the article is about cheating, but as polyamorists honesty is one of our top mantras.

I don't even protest the dishonesty per se of a secret affair, so much as I do the peril involved. If the cheated-on partner/spouse discovers the affair independently, there's going to be an explosive scene of trauma. I've heard many people say that it wasn't the affair that made them feel betrayed, it was the fact that their spouse/partner would hide it from them. I guess this is an endemic American problem? Do Europeans tend to assume more of a DADT dynamic in their partnerships/marriages?

But in all fairness:
Slate: "Would you ever recommend an affair?"
Perel: "No more than I would recommend cancer and yet a lot of people finally understand the value of life when they get sick."

Which summarizes Perel's perspective. She doesn't want to advocate cheating per se, she just wants to re-examine what it means and how we respond to it. Good interview overall.
 
The key is to not post links to sites that sell & not to post the same links over and over (which becomes spamming)
It is helpful to consider which area of the board any given links best fit too. ;)
 
Do Europeans tend to assume more of a DADT dynamic in their partnerships/marriages?

It might be this way on the continent, but I'm not sure. As for the UK, not in my own experience. That is, from what I've seen myself (I've thankfully never been cheated on, that I know of). I've seen a lot of marriages break down based merely on a suspicion of cheating, and the general attitude to it is very negative. There's even a gender war over it, about which gender is more likely to cheat: men or women?

RiverRose
 
Thanks for posting this article, I found it really interesting and related to a lot of it w.r.t. my own experience. I really loved what she said about having multiple marriages with the same spouse, and also this, oh wow:

Very often we don’t go elsewhere because we are looking for another person. We go elsewhere because we are looking for another self. It isn’t so much that we want to leave the person we are with as we want to leave the person we have become.

That really rang some bells with me!

Re: European practices, I can't speak for the whole continent, but the few polyamorous contacts I have communicate very openly with their partners about what they're doing (us included). The honestly and openness seems to be pretty important to them (to us, as well). I don't think I'd like a DADT policy for myself - I have a wild imagination that populates empty spaces with far worse fantasies than the reality could ever match! I much prefer things being open.

Amanita
 
Thanks RiverRose and Amanita, that is good info and something I kind of wanted to know.

And thanks LR, I like the clarification on a rule that can be hard to pin down. I do, by the way, think it helps if the member posting has been around for awhile and is known to not be a spammer. Not that the rule always applies, I'm just saying that when it's a new member posting a link (or some other thing that looks spammy), they're bound to be more suspect due to being a new member. Hope that makes sense ...

Re: the Slate interview ... worth mentioning perhaps is that the book "Sex at Dawn," like Perel, points out that humans are known (more than we tend to realize) to cheat even when they're totally happy with their marriages. Interesting concept that an affair symbolizes a point in life where one desires to change.
 
I am a big fan of the book Sex at Dawn, and also use it in my show. (which I am going to link to now, because, damn it, it's about polyamory! http://tinyurl.com/LUSTANDMARRIAGE)
For me, learning the scientific basis of the desire to have more than one sexual partner helped me feel a lot better about my husband wanting to be with other women. I was able to get over my "what's wrong with me?" story. Super useful. I've met Chris Ryan a few times (helped produce a talk he gave here in Portland) and I wish he'd written more in the book about how he uses this information in his own life. That's part of why I wrote the show. (And part of why i love this forum!) I want to hear more real life examples.
 
Sex at Dawn has become the first thing that pops into my mind when I hear someone ask, "Why am I not enough?" or, "How can I ease my spouse's/partner's feelings that he's/she's not enough?" Sex at Dawn establishes human tendencies that have nothing to do with whether this or that partner is "enough." We just tend to fall in love with more than one person -- that's all.

Anyway, I checked out your link and it looks alright by me. :)
 
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