Hey?!? Who Locked Up My Mojo?

[Orich]

Wow, that makes so much sense. In my case, Facebook and text messaging was how and is how W maintains contact with OM. Without those things, she might not have connected with him at all.

[AlexEN]

Wow, that makes so much sense. In my case, Facebook and text messaging was how and is how W maintains contact with OM. Without those things, she might not have connected with him at all.

Yep... Ah, the good old days...

[Orich]

Give me a corded, rotary phone and a ream of letter sized paper and a box of envelopes!

[aliveandkicking]

Technology always brings unforeseen (though foreseeable) consequences.

[Thinker]

Technology always brings unforeseen (though foreseeable) consequences.

Fortunately, it also brings DB Boards

[SmileysPerson]

Well, now. This IS a juicy burger.

Hate to burst everyone's bubble (nah, no I don't, it's what I do), but our notion of fidelity and marriage? Very, very recent. And always more of a "goal" than an actuality.

19th-century (i.e., "Victorian") British (and American) newspapers, popular magazines, weeklies, and novels -- and remember, in the 19th-century the novel was what the motion picture is today, a signifier and marker of a society's cultural touchstones -- were full, chock-a-block, overflowing with tales of adultery, divorce, laciviousness, and fallen women. Indeed, divorce courts were so packed, with dockets so full, that newspapers had regular columns simply transcribing the proceedings for the public's enjoyment.

And in our own (American) so-called "Wild West," the "whore with the heart of gold" is as much a part of the legend as Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. Historically, as often as not, that whore was, in fact, a married woman from Back East who'd fled to the frontier to escape abusive husbands. In Western society, moreover, those "whores" could be married to perfectly respectable men and be accepted into society without so much as a how-d'ye-do.

And of course in the classic sources of Western culture -- Rome, Greece, the European tribes (Huns, Visigoths, Vandals [who were, in fact, quite well-behaved people on average, despite our word "vandalism"], and Celts) -- monogamy was known but seldom enforced. It wasn't economically rational, among other things.

Monogamous marriage likewise evolved as a norm in Europe and elsewhere largely as a rational economic choice. European peasantry, as opposed to their Celtic, et al., forebears, were situated in an economic system that didn't provide sufficient resources to maintain multiple wives.

And after the Dark Ages following the Black Plague, during which time the authority and legitimacy of both monarchies and the Church were called into question -- the first real sexual revolution was during the Dark Ages (also the first time women went into the organized economy as labor) -- both the state and the church enforced monogamous marriage as part of the process of reasserting and maintaining their institutional power. Once one had to go to the state and the church to be married, those institutions could define what a marriage was and was not.

It was the mid-to-late Medieval period that the notion of "Christian marriage" came to predominate our cultural understandings. The first historian to seriously investigate this, nearly 50 years ago, was Christopher Nugent Lawrence Brooke, who noted that there is an inescapable paradox at the center of the notion of "Christian marriage":

" 'Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,' is a proposition to which most Christians would say heartily, Amen; but no Church has ever claimed to know, when man had witnessed a ceremony of marriage, whether in every case God had in fact joined the couple. This may seem at first sight mere casuistry, but a little reading in the case-law of the medieval Church...quickly shows that it is not."

Indeed, divorce and marriage have been hand-maidens since first there was marriage.

Is that a cheering thought? Clearly not. But one is tempted -- too easily, I believe -- to write off the myriad of reasons for divorce with sweeping generalizations about "disposable" social attitudes.

[AlexEN]

SP,

But, you wouldn't argue that anything you wrote is contrary to the notion that technology makes it easier to act on what is, as you point out, an age-old issue, would you? [Yeah, take credit off for the run-on sentence, but you know what I'm saying.]

I guess I don't see any inconsistency in stipulating all that you wrote with @Thinker's original premise that the opportunity to step outside the marriage is greater than at any time in history.

Casting aside all moral arguments, I suggested above that:

...(the Royal we) always had it in us (remember Jimmy Carter "lusting in his heart"), but now the tools to act on that perhaps natural instinct make it that much easier to make that misstep...

The truth is that ALL marriages go through ups and downs, but now, when they go through the downs, it's easier to hit the eject/send button on impulse...

Do you disagree, or is that not part and parcel of the bubble you are gleefully bursting?

-AlexEN

P.S. I apologize for all the double-negatives above... My head is still spinning from all the double-speak I witnessed when we celebrated my wife's Independence Day...

[Kettricken]

Perhaps. I find myself reminded, though, of some of Brian Wansink's (sp?) work on eating habits. The difference between induldging and refraining that results from fairly insignificant differences in proximity/ease of access are surprising. I have to wonder if the relative ease of divorce (not meaning that it's easy, I'm thinking about no-fault, lack of social ostracism in most cases, etc) has a similar impact. Maybe former social and legal difficulties attending divorce functioned to give a WAS just enough pause to let the affair glow (if relevant) fade and think, "Hmmmmmm, maybe it's not the panacea I envisioned."

ETA: Same goes for private email, texting, FB, etc. Ease of proximity just about hasta increase the odds of someone acting out their jones to stray that might have remained forever a yearning if it wasn't so pathetically easy.

[Puppy Dog Tails]

Incidentally, after a while when I finally really got sick & tired of the talking & texting to other people by my W (which included other men), I called the wireless provider and suspended the phone. The cellphones we have are both under my name (the account is in my name) and I had realized that I was enabling her to do these things and financing them at the same time, I felt so stupid that it took me that long to realize this. When I did end up suspending her phone so that it no longer worked she did get extremely mad at me ("how dare you?! why are you trying to control me?! etc.), I just replied in a calm fashion that me paying for a cell phone for her to use to speak & text other men was her controlling me, not the other way around. I told her she is free to get a cellphone of her own, buy one, lock in a plan and pay for it herself - that way I don't have to pay for a phone that isn't going to be used to call & text me.

We may not be able to stop our spouses from calling & texting potential affair partners because they can do whatever they want to do and it's in your best interests to promote their free will just remember to respect yourself enough to set a boundary that says "I'm not going to pay for you to be able to do this, you can pay for that yourself".

Hallelujah, and SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS!!!

I'm continually amazed at the excuses LBSs use for not having the 'nad to cut off their spouse's cellphones.

[aliveandkicking]

In a similar vein, divorce rates are going down because of the economy...most people who can't afford it hold off or work harder to stay together. Of course my H will pursue it regardless (where there's a will there's a way).

Convenience is a factor, of course it is. More temptation, less time to consider ramifications...