Letters to the Editor

• The 13-year itch

  [Read the article: My wife keeps cheating but we have two kids. Should I leave her?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  These folks have been married 13 years now, so they have had time to get used to each other.

  Sexual passion lasts about 6 months on average, then you have to settle for domestic cosiness or move on.

  So you get married and have kids.

  The thrill is gone, but sex may still persist for years even after the passion has gone, because of the propinquity factor.

  People get horny, and if they can get horny enough to have sex with themselves, then they can certainly get horny enough to have sex with the person they wake up next to. However, no matter what men may tell their wives, even if they swear on a stack of bibles, they do not fantasize about sex with their wives during this phase, at least not unless the fantasy involves another naked woman doing naughty things to the wife.

  Clearly by this time the LW and his wife have invested a lot in their life together. No doubt there is a home, furniture, cars, various in-laws, the children's college to think about. Sex is not quite the urgent prerogative it was when they were younger.

  We live in a sex obsessed society. We are surrounded by pornography and sexual images in advertising that constantly remind us that if we are not having great sex, then we are lesser beings, at least lesser than the beings on Sex And The City. (Actually I am waiting for the sequel, Sex Country Style, which should be much better.)

  So the wife has branched out a bit. Very naughty, but surely this does not have to be the end of the marriage if the family is happy in other respects.

  Tolstoy's most famous quotation is the one about happy families being all alike, but unhappy families are all different, but here is another of his bon mots.

  Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

  I'm not sure if he was recommending marital infidelity, though given his own personal track record, he may have been. But I think it is true that we are less likely to die unhappy if we have seized the moments of passion available to us.

  Salon readership, as I have pointed out before, is terribly concerned about the issue of "cheating", meaning any sex other than with the official partner. This is partly because we Americans are a people of The Law and tend to perceive all of life in terms of contractual obligations.

  But marriage is not just a contract, it is also a mystery.

  We only have the LW's side of this story. We don't know what these extramarital sexual experiences mean to the wife. Maybe these affairs are what gives meaning to her life, the experiences that make it possible for her to be nice to her husband and kids. Maybe she has no desire at all to break up her family. Maybe it will all blow over in time.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  During my life time I have had a number of outbreaks of monogamy. The first time I got married I still remember standing there is the church wondering if I would never have sex with another woman again, and so many tears came to my eyes that I had difficulty repeating the vows.

  Fortunately no one present was able to read my exact thoughts, though maybe some of the older men could read the signs, I don't know.

  It turned out differently. Now thirty years later, after literally scores of lovers, one night stands, vacation affairs, long term relationships , and marriages that actually included a spell of eleven years of monogamy and an eight year spell of impotence, both of which overlapped with one of my marriages, I can say that I don't regret a single one of my lovers, even the ones I have completely forgotten, because I am sure they were great at the time.

  ... all else is folly.

  There is something very primeval about sex that unites us with thousands of generations of our ancestors, who have all performed this basic human act so that we may exist. It is what evolution has crafted us for, so we will have to be excused for being so damn good at it.

  Now, I have nothing but admiration for those couples who mate young and monogamously and lifelong, like birds. My aunt and uncle are both 85 years old, have been together since they were 20, and never spent a night apart unless one or the other was in hospital. My youngest sister is 48 and has been with her husband since they were both 16. Same story.

  But they are the ideal, the pattern, the template, what we aspire to. No good beating up on ourselves if we aren't that way.

  Permalink Monday, November 19, 2007 02:21 PM