Affairs

 I posted this as a response to this article, arguing in favor of affairs. I will add that I understand what they are saying, and have honestly thought more than once that if prostitution were more legal, that it’s quite possible more marriages would survive.  I am no prude on this topic, but feel that in the end it is always best to subordinate your behavior, by and large, to principles you choose.  Perhaps I am mistaken, but feel one must be who one chooses to be, or one is at a minimum confused, and more likely self loathing.  Since the cure for self loathing is finding someone to tell you how wonderful you are, infidelity is in some respects a self reinforcing cycle.  I am in this case speaking of several people I know.

To live a secret life, you have to segment your personality.  You have
to learn to repress all spontaneous expressions, lest your secret be
revealed.  You have to learn to be cautious in what you say, and guarded
in how you interact with the person who, in the end, you are lying to,
either actively, or by definition by omission.

Your spontaneity you reserve for your lover.  How can this but diminish
the rewards of asking for and receiving the loyalty of someone over the
course of a life?

I do not think sex, per se, makes anyone happy.  I think it is the
opening up to spontaneous emotions, to the unity and presence of
momentary experience, to giving in a spirit of genuine generosity.  All
of these things are possible within marriage.  I think things do not get
old, at least if you are with someone with whom you have ever felt a
deep connection: rather, I think people get lazy.

In the end, then, I think this is a rationalization of laziness and torpor, for which the prescribed remedy is betrayal.

Clearly, there may be couples who can manage the complicated dance of
open marriages.  I suspect at least one partner in most such
arrangements feels secretly hurt, but out of love is willing to tolerate
the straying of the other.  This does, however, make the other person
selfish, since they are willing to hurt the other person.

Personally, I am divorced, and waiting for the right woman.  I have had
many short term sexual relationships, and have found consistently both a
hollowness in pursuing sex for its own sake, and an utter revulsion
with the idea of indulging in short term passions at the cost of my long
term, self defining principles.  To use people is to lower oneself,
also, to the role of an object.  I refuse to do it.