Another reason to ask 'why' -- someone like John Edwards literally has beautiful women thrusting their bottoms in his face on a regular basis, if not quite literally daily. Any visit to lobby on Capitol Hill will confirm what I'm saying. As a Presidential candidate, I can't even imagine. Anyone that doesn't believe that women don't aggressively go after Alpha males are living in an incomprehensible fantasy land.

If this was John's one infidelity, then good on him. It actually speaks volumes about his character, in a positive sense, as well as the sadness of his situation in dealing with his wife's cancer.

It would be interesting to know the posters' ages and compare the comments. I suspect that those of us that are older are going to have different views on the subject than those that are in their 20s -- in part because we've seen our friends or ourselves pass through that stage, and the other reason being that,quite frankly, sex drives and their associated passions are more pronounced in younger people.

That's not saying adultery hurts less when you're older -- it's that while it may hurt, one develops more of a nuance toward it all by aging.

The real tragedy I read about when I see yet another technology to extend nubility is that there is NO good time in a woman's life to have a baby. It's the thing that infertility and teen-age pregnancy have in common.

The real truth is that we as a culture have wrapped our lives around work, instead of having work support our lives. As a result, we are more alienated, lonely and depressed than we ever have been. Our houses may be bigger, but our souls are more empty.

This is not to argue that having children will somehow cure all of this. It won't. But we might start looking at a more systemic solution to these larger problems than assuming one techno-fix is really going to make a difference.

It warms my heart to see some dissent in the 200+ letters written in this thread against the dominant notion that John Edwards should essentially be executed for his infidelity. We are a primitive culture indeed -- more in line with the Taliban than we realize.

Maybe one day we'll get a little more sophisticated -- I keep thinking of the Chinese quote -- "Every family has its own sutra," which essentially says that no one knows what goes on inside a marriage.

Whether we get there before we self-destruct is another issue entirely.

In my pet theory world, I've always linked neoteny and hidden estrus, as well as neoteny and shared female parenting.

Hidden estrus and the free provision of sex is the one thing that humans do/have done to keep a group of strong males in close contact without fighting. This is absolutely essential to having longer childhoods, which is vital for getting to the patterns of intelligence that humans possess, mostly uniquely among all animal species. Hook that in with the fundamental characteristic of many primates, humans included, to have a propensity toward males demonstrating infanticidal behavior and it all makes sense.

Multiple moms are the other part of the puzzle, and I think Hrdy is exactly right.

You put the last energetic demand of hidden estrus into the mix -- menstruation -- and it's iron demands -- and it's obvious how/why we came down out of the trees to hunt meat.

It's surreal reading all these letters -- like Yikes! said earlier, what a creative writing assignment.

Just out of a near-divorce-experience (NDE) where I ended up reconciling with my wife, I can't begin to talk about how complicated everything was. It sure wasn't as simple as most of the letter-writers seem to think. That's why divorce law now has shifted primarily to no-fault, except in cases of abuse, etc.-- because the courts, at least, have learned better.

Hi Trainman,

Point of fact (well, it was 20 years ago when I ww-kayaked extensively in the CO Rockies) -- if you buy a hunting license in CO, you are totally covered, mtn. rescue-wise, from a general fund that covers all hunters.

It's a great system, and then you can avoid the $10K rescue bill that so easily can find you in CA. No burden on society, either.

It's funny how many mediocre minds populate Capitol Hill -- very little profound that might be easily recognized is generated out of the majority of the cretins and their staff up on the Hill. Yet David Vitter, one of the more cretinous, has the inside track on one of the most powerful offices in the land because followed the common political wisdom and didn't videotape himself giving blowjobs for money.

I'll go with Stormy in a heartbeat. At least she's honest about her activities.