and affair is a love or sexual story
between two people one of whom at least
is ostensibly committed to someone else
but more importantly in our times an
affair is a catastrophe pretty much the
greatest betrayal that can befall us
frequently the end of the marriage it is
violated and almost always an occasion
for fierce moralizing and the division
of participants into Goody’s who have
been betrayed and monsters who have
betrayed however we should grasp that
the way we interpret affairs today is
very particular to our own times we are
remarkably contorted about the whole
business as judged against the long span
of human experience we need in order to
gain a deeper picture of what we’re
doing when we look beyond our primary
relationships glance backwards into the
history as well as briefly forwards into
the future of affairs
quita modern day Ecuador 15:32
the Inca Sun King at a well / owns
private harem scattered across his
empire he is set of had affairs with
3,000 women few subjects appear to think
any the less of him for this all Nobles
have hundreds of concubines there are
official regulations concerning the
number of mistresses that anyone in
government is allowed a provincial
governor can have up to 20 the
administrator of a small village 8
having affairs is no sinful slip it is a
Versailles France June 1745 the 35 year
old French King Louis the 15th has been
married for 20 years to marry lijinsky
daughter of Stannis left the first the
deposed king of Poland a woman whom no
one expected him to love and whom he
duly didn’t now Louis has developed a
passion for the 25 year old beautiful
and gracious Madame de Pompadour who is
herself married she quickly becomes the
most prominent in a long list of Louis
lovers the court is delighted for Louis
and no one feels especially sorry for
the Queen who devotes herself to music
and reading and in time takes a few
lovers of her own a royal marriage is
understood in terms of political and
dynastic considerations just as at other
levels of society it is seen in terms of
property or business interests a way of
uniting two pieces of land or of
bringing a useful son-in-law into the
family workshop to marry for love is
judged an entirely irresponsible
eccentricity as well as a wasted
strategic opportunity the idea that a
person should spontaneously want to have
sex with their spouse once children have
been conceived is deemed bizarre and in
Leipzig Germany April 1774 Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe publishes the
sorrows of young Vetter which becomes
the most popular novel in Europe for the
next 30 years
it is the preeminent expression of
certain new romantic ideas around
marriage that one should only marry for
love and that to sleep with someone
outside of marriage is a grave offense
emotionally rather than religiously or
socially nevertheless the novel
acknowledges that it can be deeply
tempting to have an affair and that
desire doesn’t neatly follow legal rules
the hero of the novel has a flirtation
with a married woman but because he
cannot go further with her and yet is
overwhelmed by his longings ends up
seeing no other option but to kill
himself the novel emphasizes that an
affair or even the prospect of one can
be both a source of extraordinary
Paris France 7th of February 1857 the
French writer Gustave Flaubert is
narrowly acquitted on obscenity charges
brought against his novel Madame Bovary
the first detailed fictional description
of sexual infidelity the heroine of the
novel Emma Bovary is driven to have an
affair for a reason which her society
now thoroughly condemns she no longer
sexually desires her husband Charles we
are firmly in the era of romantic
marriage and Affairs have become a
palling phenomena because of the
expectation that marriages should be
lifetime unions based on enduring love
and continuous sexual enthusiasm by
insisting that a marriage partner should
be everything to their spouse co-parent
domestic manager erotic companion and
soul mate romanticism turns an affair
from a problem into a tragedy infidelity
becomes the core theme of all the
greatest novels of the second half of
the 19th century from Anna Karenina to
Middlemarch heroes and heroines have to
die or grievously compromised their
social positions following any forays
Miami USA Sunday May 3rd 1987 the Miami
Herald runs a story revealing that the
married Democratic presidential
candidate Gary Hart has been having an
affair with Donna rice a sales
representative for a pharmaceuticals
company up to this point Hart has been
the front-runner in the presidential
race but his campaign is upended by the
revelation of his affair and after a
week of meek protestations and contrite
apologies Hart withdraws the leadership
of the world’s most powerful country has
largely been decided on the issue of
infidelity an affair is not simply a
private matter it has become one of the
world-wide-web May 1992 the Usenet
newsgroup alt dot polyamory is created
and polyamory formally defined for the
first time as the practice state or
ability of having more than one sexual
loving relationship at the same time
with the full knowledge and consent of
all partners involved polyamory suggests
a remarkable break with the
uncomfortable tensions of the romantic
theory of marriage rather than have to
love only one person and then lie about
any subsequent desires one can as a
polyamorous be transparent and enjoy
multiple sources of affection the whole
idea of an affair promises to disappear
in a new wave of psychological openness
however a central objection to polyamory
is soon raised that it has with naive
utopianism entirely forgotten about the
Toronto Canada July 2015 the world’s
largest extramarital affair dating site
Ashley Madison is hacked and 25
gigabytes of customer data is stolen the
hack provides the media with an occasion
to consider the prevalence of affairs
and the response is one of predictable
outrage analysis of users of the site
reveals three central reasons why
affairs appeal firstly people love their
spouses are not properly committed to
their relationships secondly they can’t
help but be drawn to other people out of
a mixture of boredom passion and desire
and thirdly they know well enough that
their partners could not take this on
board without fury and immense hurt and
therefore they have to be deceived
unlike what the polyamorists would have
hoped for millions around the world the
dilemma is clear 1 both desperately
wants to be married and equally badly
needs to experience sexual intensity
with new people in the wake of the data
hack the consequences of this secret
tension become especially acute on the
24th of August 2015 a pastor and
professor at the New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary commits suicide
after being exposed as a user of the
site it becomes evident that under the
aegis of Romanticism humans have
collectively evolved a very lovely but
also very demanding set of thoughts the
view that a relationship should be
founded on love but also that having an
affair must be a direct denial of this
love and therefore one of the worst and
most hurtful things any person can ever
do at the same time quite a lot of
otherwise admirable people keep having
affairs or at least very much wanting to
humankind has reached an extremely
difficult impasse
Hellas Basin Mars 2150 humanity which is
now colonized other planets has moved to
a new stance on Affairs an implant into
the left temporal lobe of the human
brain has removed any tendencies towards
feelings of sexual exclusiveness and
jealousy it is now thanks to
neurosurgery possible to contemplate
one’s partner having a little sex and
some cuddles with another person without
being totally destroyed by the notion it
has finally become actually possible to
believe the phrase it didn’t mean much
like romantics people still get married
for love enjoying the continuity and
deep intimacy the tradition allows and
at the same time like Louie the 15th of
France or the Inca King at a well / they
can enjoy affairs without assuring in
tragedy from their condominiums on the
red planet humans look back with pity at
the risks that used to accompany
straying lovers in the Romantic Age as
well as shuddering at the mercenary
coldness of marriages in the era before
people got patrolled because they
genuinely cared for one another they
feel quite rightly that they’ve evolved
something far more complex and far more
humane we remain in our current
earthbound state a long way off
from such a frictionless utopia and with
plenty still to be tortured by
love is a skill that we can learn our
relationships book calmly guides us with
calm and charm through the key issues of
relationships our book on sex explores
how sex lives really work far from
thinking about sex too much we haven’t begun to think about it nearly enough
between two people one of whom at least
is ostensibly committed to someone else
but more importantly in our times an
affair is a catastrophe pretty much the
greatest betrayal that can befall us
frequently the end of the marriage it is
violated and almost always an occasion
for fierce moralizing and the division
of participants into Goody’s who have
been betrayed and monsters who have
betrayed however we should grasp that
the way we interpret affairs today is
very particular to our own times we are
remarkably contorted about the whole
business as judged against the long span
of human experience we need in order to
gain a deeper picture of what we’re
doing when we look beyond our primary
relationships glance backwards into the
history as well as briefly forwards into
the future of affairs
quita modern day Ecuador 15:32
the Inca Sun King at a well / owns
private harem scattered across his
empire he is set of had affairs with
3,000 women few subjects appear to think
any the less of him for this all Nobles
have hundreds of concubines there are
official regulations concerning the
number of mistresses that anyone in
government is allowed a provincial
governor can have up to 20 the
administrator of a small village 8
having affairs is no sinful slip it is a
Versailles France June 1745 the 35 year
old French King Louis the 15th has been
married for 20 years to marry lijinsky
daughter of Stannis left the first the
deposed king of Poland a woman whom no
one expected him to love and whom he
duly didn’t now Louis has developed a
passion for the 25 year old beautiful
and gracious Madame de Pompadour who is
herself married she quickly becomes the
most prominent in a long list of Louis
lovers the court is delighted for Louis
and no one feels especially sorry for
the Queen who devotes herself to music
and reading and in time takes a few
lovers of her own a royal marriage is
understood in terms of political and
dynastic considerations just as at other
levels of society it is seen in terms of
property or business interests a way of
uniting two pieces of land or of
bringing a useful son-in-law into the
family workshop to marry for love is
judged an entirely irresponsible
eccentricity as well as a wasted
strategic opportunity the idea that a
person should spontaneously want to have
sex with their spouse once children have
been conceived is deemed bizarre and in
Leipzig Germany April 1774 Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe publishes the
sorrows of young Vetter which becomes
the most popular novel in Europe for the
next 30 years
it is the preeminent expression of
certain new romantic ideas around
marriage that one should only marry for
love and that to sleep with someone
outside of marriage is a grave offense
emotionally rather than religiously or
socially nevertheless the novel
acknowledges that it can be deeply
tempting to have an affair and that
desire doesn’t neatly follow legal rules
the hero of the novel has a flirtation
with a married woman but because he
cannot go further with her and yet is
overwhelmed by his longings ends up
seeing no other option but to kill
himself the novel emphasizes that an
affair or even the prospect of one can
be both a source of extraordinary
Paris France 7th of February 1857 the
French writer Gustave Flaubert is
narrowly acquitted on obscenity charges
brought against his novel Madame Bovary
the first detailed fictional description
of sexual infidelity the heroine of the
novel Emma Bovary is driven to have an
affair for a reason which her society
now thoroughly condemns she no longer
sexually desires her husband Charles we
are firmly in the era of romantic
marriage and Affairs have become a
palling phenomena because of the
expectation that marriages should be
lifetime unions based on enduring love
and continuous sexual enthusiasm by
insisting that a marriage partner should
be everything to their spouse co-parent
domestic manager erotic companion and
soul mate romanticism turns an affair
from a problem into a tragedy infidelity
becomes the core theme of all the
greatest novels of the second half of
the 19th century from Anna Karenina to
Middlemarch heroes and heroines have to
die or grievously compromised their
social positions following any forays
Miami USA Sunday May 3rd 1987 the Miami
Herald runs a story revealing that the
married Democratic presidential
candidate Gary Hart has been having an
affair with Donna rice a sales
representative for a pharmaceuticals
company up to this point Hart has been
the front-runner in the presidential
race but his campaign is upended by the
revelation of his affair and after a
week of meek protestations and contrite
apologies Hart withdraws the leadership
of the world’s most powerful country has
largely been decided on the issue of
infidelity an affair is not simply a
private matter it has become one of the
world-wide-web May 1992 the Usenet
newsgroup alt dot polyamory is created
and polyamory formally defined for the
first time as the practice state or
ability of having more than one sexual
loving relationship at the same time
with the full knowledge and consent of
all partners involved polyamory suggests
a remarkable break with the
uncomfortable tensions of the romantic
theory of marriage rather than have to
love only one person and then lie about
any subsequent desires one can as a
polyamorous be transparent and enjoy
multiple sources of affection the whole
idea of an affair promises to disappear
in a new wave of psychological openness
however a central objection to polyamory
is soon raised that it has with naive
utopianism entirely forgotten about the
Toronto Canada July 2015 the world’s
largest extramarital affair dating site
Ashley Madison is hacked and 25
gigabytes of customer data is stolen the
hack provides the media with an occasion
to consider the prevalence of affairs
and the response is one of predictable
outrage analysis of users of the site
reveals three central reasons why
affairs appeal firstly people love their
spouses are not properly committed to
their relationships secondly they can’t
help but be drawn to other people out of
a mixture of boredom passion and desire
and thirdly they know well enough that
their partners could not take this on
board without fury and immense hurt and
therefore they have to be deceived
unlike what the polyamorists would have
hoped for millions around the world the
dilemma is clear 1 both desperately
wants to be married and equally badly
needs to experience sexual intensity
with new people in the wake of the data
hack the consequences of this secret
tension become especially acute on the
24th of August 2015 a pastor and
professor at the New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary commits suicide
after being exposed as a user of the
site it becomes evident that under the
aegis of Romanticism humans have
collectively evolved a very lovely but
also very demanding set of thoughts the
view that a relationship should be
founded on love but also that having an
affair must be a direct denial of this
love and therefore one of the worst and
most hurtful things any person can ever
do at the same time quite a lot of
otherwise admirable people keep having
affairs or at least very much wanting to
humankind has reached an extremely
difficult impasse
Hellas Basin Mars 2150 humanity which is
now colonized other planets has moved to
a new stance on Affairs an implant into
the left temporal lobe of the human
brain has removed any tendencies towards
feelings of sexual exclusiveness and
jealousy it is now thanks to
neurosurgery possible to contemplate
one’s partner having a little sex and
some cuddles with another person without
being totally destroyed by the notion it
has finally become actually possible to
believe the phrase it didn’t mean much
like romantics people still get married
for love enjoying the continuity and
deep intimacy the tradition allows and
at the same time like Louie the 15th of
France or the Inca King at a well / they
can enjoy affairs without assuring in
tragedy from their condominiums on the
red planet humans look back with pity at
the risks that used to accompany
straying lovers in the Romantic Age as
well as shuddering at the mercenary
coldness of marriages in the era before
people got patrolled because they
genuinely cared for one another they
feel quite rightly that they’ve evolved
something far more complex and far more
humane we remain in our current
earthbound state a long way off
from such a frictionless utopia and with
plenty still to be tortured by
love is a skill that we can learn our
relationships book calmly guides us with
calm and charm through the key issues of
relationships our book on sex explores
how sex lives really work far from
thinking about sex too much we haven’t begun to think about it nearly enough
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