Monogamous marriage is unromantic. Not my words but the words of actor Hugh Grant while promoting the movie Florence Foster Jenkins. As he told radio host Howard Stern: I can see the lovely aspect if you marry exactly the right person — your best friend and it’s cozy and it’s lovely. But, people make so […]
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When I interviewed Eric Anderson, an American sociologist at England’s University of Winchester, a few years ago, when his provocative book, The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating, was published, I was disturbed by his claim that cheating is a rational choice for people constrained by the social dictate of monogamy. According […]
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Affairs have suddenly popped up in the national conversation, and honesty — who doesn’t like a good open discussion about the dishonesty of infidelity? OK, well maybe it’s just me … Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a pal of Donald Trump’s, recently suggested in a conversation slamming Hillary Clinton about Bill Clinton’s affairs that […]
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None of us wed thinking we’ll get divorced. Oh sure, most of us are aware that divorce is an option, but not for all, whether for religious beliefs, a desire to make it work no matter what (commitment being a commitment), fear of “failing” or perhaps good ol’ stubbornness. And then, stuff happens. Stuff happened […]
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I am not a fan of the self-help industry nor of most so-called relationship “experts.” Whenever people start spewing what someone should or shouldn’t do, I get nervous. Who can tell us what’s right or wrong for us? That said, some people often make sense in sharing their stories of their missteps and what they […]
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Let’s say you’re in a long-term marriage, one that’s pretty satisfying. You love your spouse, your spouse loves you, but you have a lot of things on your plate — work and kids and other things — and you’ve lost your sexual mojo. Would you tell your spouse, “Please have sex with someone else?” That’s […]
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I’ve long been a fan of the writings of Meg-John Barker, a psychology lecturer and sex and gender therapist whose book, Rewriting the Rules, is a must-read for those who question the romantic love script most of us tend to follow as if it’s the only path available to us. So I was not surprised […]
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You’ve consciously coupled. You and your spouse discussed everything from money to sex to children to in-laws to household chores. Maybe you even read The New I Do (hey, an author can dream, right?). I applaud you and support you. Still, I’ll bet there’s something you didn’t discuss, and it’s not because you’re oblivious. You’re […]
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Recently, an old Modern Love piece appeared in my social media feed. It was about consensual non-monogamy so of course I had to click on it. I suppose it was a popular piece, as most Modern Love essays are, but this one — “When an Open Relationship Comes at a Price” — irked me a […]
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You’re in a long-term happy, sexually active marriage and one day you discover that your spouse has been cheating on you — basically since Day 1. How do you feel? You’d probably feel heart-broken and devastated, which is how a man writing to author, LGBTQ activist and columnist Dan Savage signed off as in his latest […]
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