is who made the promise? Not the "other woman". If the man married his wife with some protestation of fidelity, then he's the one who broke his word.

There are frequently good reasons for deciding to forego a particular married person, but that's a matter of judgment, not responsibility to the spouse of your partner.

But for whatever reason, the unattached partner in an affair is generally the one considered in the wrong. Makes all the sense in the world -- so long as you are rationality challenged.

Traister begins by characterizing O'Faolain's actions as "weird," then takes this admittedly unusual incident to halfway indict male philanderers. Who knows if they feel bad for the men and women they've hurt? How would we know? Evidently, the writer just has a hunch.

Penitance is rare everywhere; I'd be shocked if anyone callous enough to cheat on their partner multiple times expressed sincere remorse.

"What goes around comes around".

When I was in my early thirties, at the end of a year working as a 4/5th-time secretary to a research program I was interested to advance in, while also continuing studies in my earlier field, I gave notice to my boss because I could see there was no avenue for advancement there.

Then (what else?) my car got a flat and he drove me "home" (to my student-style one-room apartment. He was splat in or headed for his (first of several) "mid life crises". When he walked me to my door and saw the books on my bookshelf, he later told his (what else?) therapist: "there was my mind, spread out on her bookshelf" and he made a pass at me.

"I don't have affairs with married men," I told him so instead he took me out for supper to some restaurant or other where we dined on something he, from his Upper Bronx background adored, and I'd never heard of before. Then he went home, told his wife he was afraid he'd "fallen in love with this secretary" and confessed to her a whole string of affairs, throughout their entire (16-year) marriage.

This Fine Leddy quite deservedly, it seems to me, lost her

cool. Enter Soap Opera Chapter One. She went around doing things like bashing her husband over the head with a lampshade one night, tracking me over three states and I'll spare you the soggy (inevitable?) details.

These two had six children and everyone was talking about suicide (among other things). I was a certified teacher, with some trainings in psychology and, uncertain what had hit me, and partly because of the advice of the (inevitable) "counselors" that this woman would continue to track me down to harrass me, I left town. I told the guy "the best thing that could happen would be that the two of you can put your marriage back together, but if you don't, I will marry you (a perhaps dubious notion in which he had in his befuddled way expressed some interest). That was because the kids' mom was so sexuallisingly-slandering him, me and who knows who all else, I figured that seeing I was the then focus, it would be best for them to find out I was not Evil Carnality Incarnate.

Fast Forward.

Two years or so later we did (both of us ambivalently) marry. I did my best to give his kids the best step-mothering I could (is that an oxymoron?). For seven (or so) years, he kept his clothes on everywhere except in our home, but when the seven year itch hit him, a Frustrated Wench (as she later cheerfully crowed as though she were Mrs. Don Juan herself and delighted to have another notch in her belt) "seduced" him. ["It took nothing away from my marriage", he blandly assured the subsequent (inevitable?) "counselor". Our marriage was so afflicted by then (for too many reasons to go into) that my inner response at that time was: "you took from the marriage the only thing it had left".

Meanwhile, Mrs. Don Juan emboldened in her carnal glees decided (as she quite candidly put it) to try to "break up our marriage", and revealed this liaison to her husband, who was a high mucky muck in the same field of work as my (then) ?husband?. The guy (I kid you not) challenged him to a duel (fisticuffs only), everyone did more counseling and eventually, just as I'd received a guaranteed job promotion at the job he had requested I take (for financial reasons I was unpersuaded of), my ?husband? announced to me his plan to leave the area for a hoped-for job improvement where he wouldn't any longer have to work with the man he cuckolded. Our marriage eventually collapsed and he's on his third one now.

Apologies for the length of this post. I guess being a Premium member went to my head this morning (I'm "suffering" from spring fever, this Second Day of Spring). It's just that, editors' deadlines, need for brevity, etc. etc. "notwithstanding", it just did seem to me "embarrassed" wasn't, er um, exactly the word _I_ would have picked....

Manya, you and I see things differently, because I do believe I have a responsibility for marital health, not just my own. But the world may be a lot better off for there being people like you in it than if there were only stick-in-the-muds who Proclaim "I don't have affairs with married men". I was, after all, years ago taught "the double standard" (I just didn't want to have to be a participant in it. But people don't always get their druthers, obviously!).

Brad, my husband did indeed "show remorse", so maybe you should lower your "shock" beltline. He wasn't (and still isn't) adept at expressing his feelings, but to the best of his ability he did try to "make amends" both to his first wife and, subsequently, to me. I don't wish him any ill but do kind of hope (he's now in his 80's, and I'm 75) that he's sufficiently de-energised in sheer physicalities that there will be no need for him to "show remorse" in this his so far longest-lasting marriage -- to a very sensible down-to-earth gal who (to me) later described her part in their marriage as that of "childbride". I think she'll outlast him (which she realises and has been sensibly preparing for), and I think they have a marriage on the whole better and probably more stable than either of his first two was.

FINIS!! I will now SHUT UP!!

salonmarte