Dennis Prager devoted an hour to this topic on his radio show yesterday.
He offered three main reasons:
* Infidelity won’t work. It won’t cure your urge to stray. "The next day or the next week, you’ll yearn for another female body as much as you yearned for one last week."
* You’re hiding a large part of yourself from your spouse
* Peace of mind
"Most men can conquer their emotions with a good argument. I don’t think you could make this generalization — a woman hears a good argument and that ends her feelings about an issue."
"Most women aren’t going to stray so that they can have the excitement of another male body. Women stray for love."
There are two reasons why men stray — for sex and for love. If he’s in an unhappy marriage, he may seek solace and comfort in another woman’s arms.
"Men are born yearning for sexual variety. It’s as true for homosexual men as heterosexual men… That’s the way men are built, including your husband. If he denies that, he’s either not in touch with himself or he’s lying."
Prager says Eliot Spitzer is proof that screwing around doesn’t satisfy. He had to keep ordering in prostitutes.
Prager doesn’t mention Spitzer by name, not wanting to further shame him.
A caller says Spitzer shows that some screwing around does work. It helped Spitzer stay married.
Prager: "It didn’t fill his sexual desire needs. He went to have another female body, a prostitute, and just wanted more."
Isn’t eating like that? It’s a temporary solace. All forms of solace are temporary.
Caller: "An occasional liason kept him in a sexually unfulfilled marriage. I assume he really loves his wife."
Dennis: "What kind of marriage is it when you have this large dark room that your spouse can’t enter."
"The more you hide, the less close you are. There’s no exception. If you hide one thing, you are one thing less close. You hide two things, you are two things less close. To any person in your life. That is why I believe in absolute openness to your best friend and to your spouse who should be your best friend. To think that you are sleeping with other women and have a terrific relationship with your spouse? I don’t get it. It’s not a terrific relationship."
"I don’t like the mockery of women who stand by their husbands after adultery. It’s mean. You’ll have to answer for your meanness to God. The hardest part is not the sex but the double life. I thought I knew you."
Joe emails:
Infidelity has been handled quite extensively in Kundera’s fiction. He argues that infidelity comes not out of a need for sex, a rather mechanical and repetitive function, but the need for excitement. (Nowadays, of course, this is attained through blogging!) I found a nice essay on a blog here: http://teksterogtaler.blogspot.com/2007/03/swimming-pools-in-milan-kunderas-novels.html
