Recently, I heard about a Time Magazine article about marriage. One of the questions reportedly raised in the article is whether infidelity is ruining marriage. One of the 'revelations' of the article is that men actually do want to get married.
I will start with the 'revelation' first. Duh. So let us look at marriage. Men live longer if they are married. Being married makes a man appear to be more mature and ergo more trustworthy. From a biological standpoint, marriage allows access to procreation with a greater assurance of paternity. For centuries, men have wanted to get married. If the author of the Time article just looked around he (I believe the author is a man) would see numerous examples of men who not only want to get married but want to have children as well. Now, not all men want to stay married and men desire varying levels of in involvement with said children, but marriage is their goal.
Is infidelity ruining marriage? No. Never being home, constantly pursuing the next status symbol, not listening to ourselves and others, not being present in our lives, not taking care of ourselves emotionally and physically, etc. are the things that are ruining marriage. Marriage requires a realistic look at yourself, some humility, some introspection, and a whole lot of forgetting the bad and remembering the good. A psychologist named Gottman who wrote, what I think is, a very good book on relationships states that one of the things that dictates whether a relationship will last is how each partner responds to reconciliation attempts. If one or both of the people in a relationship cannot accept the other's attempts at making up, not euphemistically :), then there is a problem. Also, we do not know how to disagree as a culture and not take it personally. We do not value diversity of opinion and we do not see how to benefit from combining ideas and opinions.
I think infidelity is the one of the strongest ways to end a relationship that was already lacking in some way. The results of numerous surveys, I hope some of them used at least a modicum of survey methodology, show that one of the main reasons people have affairs is to feel good about themselves. The affair allows people to get away from the responsibilities of their lives. People desire to forget that the roof needs repair, that the children need braces, and that your spouse would rather surf the web than talk to you. Joy Behar of The View and sociologists posit that more marriages fail because in the past people died earlier. Child birth killed women. Farm accidents killed men. Spouses killed each other. The notion of romantic marriage is relatively new as well. We used to marry and do our best to love or fall in love. Now, we search for love, we get addicted to love. and the notion of romance while forgetting that some very mundane things are very romantic. I remember being at a dinner party and my wife telling the room how I had taken care of her when she was sick. My care was nothing spectacular let me assure you but it was adequate to the task. One of the other women remarked that her husband would not hold her hair when she was in the throws of nausea. Admittedly, this was because she drank too much alcohol, as did he, but you get the point. That spouse may give flowers to his wife but when she was down he was out. The same goes for wives. I have many times been very touched by the little and big things the Mrs. does for me. We recounted over the July 4th weekend how well we knew each other and how we have little interest in breaking in new spouses. Being familiar can be very romantic, in fact, many office affairs start because of familiarity because it can lead to emotional intimacy and comfort. If only people reminded themselves that they could have an affair with their own spouse. It is cheaper and presumably, you already know your spouse's craziness. If you switch to someone new, you have to find out about their crazy side and the craziness that runs in their family.
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