Marriage Undone

So call me crazy or naive, but I just don’t think most married folks *plan* to cheat on their spouse. I’m sure it happens some of the time, but it seems to me more often than not it is a fluke. A bad choice. An unfortunate stray in an unhappy life.

But apparently AshleyMadison.com is stirring up fears that adultery is just so inevitable, that folks might as well make money off it. According to a recent msnbc artile, “Ashley Madison is hardly unique.” In addition to the plethoria of websites available for married folks looking to hook up outside of their marriage, various newspapers have carried questionable want ads for years and years.

So why all the fuss?

This unfortunately reminds me of the few minutes I caught on Dr. Phil today…I’m terrible about hearing a few minutes but not really watching his show, but here’s what I could find that’s relevant from the website about How to Have More Sex, Less Fighting which featured Rabbi Shmuley, author of The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets for Reigniting Desire and Restoring Passion for Life:

When Dr. Phil asks for an example, Rabbi Shmuley says, “I think that husbands would be taken aback by the degree to which their wives fantasize about other men, and they hide this from their husbands because they don’t think the very brittle male [ego] can handle it.

And, later…

Rabbi Shmuley says one-third of all American marriages are platonic, just like Mark and Joy’s union.

Joy says she wants to change that. “I have a lot of desires that aren’t being met,” she says. “I’ll tell you what scared me. The night that I wrote in to Dr. Phil, I was watching TV, and one of those online dating things came on, and it scared me that it even entered my mind: I wonder if there’s somebody out there that would … and because of my spiritual background, I know that’s off limits, and I know I’m married to Mark for better or for worse. We’ve been through so much in our marriage that we have overcome.”

I think the part that caught my attention was in between these quotes, when the Rabbi asked Joy if there was a checkout boy at the grocery store or someone similar with whom she sometimes flirted in an effort to get the sexual attention she craved. He said (I’m pretty sure I heard this part accurately!) that if women were not getting the sexual attention they craved at home in their marriage, then they *would* find it elsewhere.

It’s not just the blantant advertising of sites like Ashley Madison. Even “mainstream” Dr. Phil, in a round-about-way, is making ridiculous excuses. And by the way, the text I quoted from the website above about Joy & Mark is really out of context from what I heard on the show - the Rabbi seemed to be trying to get Joy to admit she had fantasized about non-platonic sex - what she actually admitted is not that she wanted sex outside of her marriage, but that the possibility even entering her mind scared her and made her worried. I absolutely did not hear her say that “she wants to change that.”

I don’t know why I’m even bothering to talk about Dr. Phil…I liked his first few books, and I liked him okay on Oprah, but he seems like Jerry Springer’s slightly more well behaved brother to me these days.

I’m not of the opinion that adultrery is the unforgiveable sin, as I’m sure you know if you have read my previous blog posts or other divorce articles. But good grief! Do we have to keep accepting such simplistic excuses? I still personally believe that adultry has little to do with sex, and everything to do with an individual’s general unhappiness.