Good Lifestyle

Jane and Thomas were high school lover, and now their own children are in high school. A year ago, Thomas, 47, a financial agent of a large company, suddenly started volunteering to take his son at the practice of football on Sunday morning and started using his laptop at home. Jane noticed that he seemed to hide the computer from her, and he never used in front of her. He was looking for excuses to be alone; She became uncomfortable. One night, he made a low felted phone call while she was in bed. When he came upstairs, she asked who he was. He said he had nobody, told him that she was "to hear things", and said he had to be the TV. His refusal was she needed. She asked immediately if he had a bond, and quickly enough, he admitted that he was. Their world is collapsed.

The other woman is a co-worker who falls under him. She is 14 years old Jane's cadet and has, in Jane's words, "the secret body of a Victoria. Thomas agreed that he must put an end to the case, but for the last four months, the evidence indicates the opposite. Jane discovered enigmatic text messages on her husband's cell phone and there are regular hungry calls from a blocked number. Jane considered telling the other husband of the woman about the affair of his wife, but the woman of revenge could pursue Thomas for sexual harassment. This has the potential for bankruptcy of the family. Then cut. Each times Thomas late at work, Jane can not help, but accuse himself if she is in silence, just with a look of being unfaithful again. In their own house, Jane and Thomas are now in the impasse in conjugal misery, the fight against tears in the eyes and badly.

Does he be that way? A case must lead an inexorably couple to the divorce court or bankruptcy? Are other cultures deal with the circumstances of infidelity with different protocol and ethics? I asked these questions from Anna, 30 years old, an American with a European background and a look of the 1960s Art Italian film: a decadent face, a slim body, in a curvy pencil skirt in tweed. One night there is exactly one year, Henri, a Parisian client from Anna company, came to the city for a professional event. They have flirted without a shame throughout the evening. When she invited people to take a drink late at night, Henri remained. Even before embraced, he held his finger. "You see that I wear this ring," he said. Anna said she did. "You know nothing will change," he continued. She replied that she did not know.

"It was adult," said Anna. "He was respectful of me, somehow, and his wife, to ask that, and make that statement. The next morning he was soft and open. We hooked for hours. He did not run in shame. "

Henri is the fairy tale fornicator: European, sensual, not guilty. He is a figure we, the Americans look with wonder and terror, wanting to believe and desperately not to want to believe that (or she) exists. Because when we go too far to this Bachelor Party in Las Vegas or at the office holiday party, or with the Crémier or Boucher or the baker, we enter hysterics. We drink a bottle of Wild Turkey and training on our lawn and confess, Brail, to our spouse. We have reduced our thighs with an X-Acto knife. We left our work and full-time work for free soup. We enroll in specialized therapy of infidelity. We hate ourselves. We fall outside.

We finish at Jane and Thomas. According to the writer Pamela Druckerman, author of infidelity,Lust in translation, "Americans are the worst, both to have business and deal with the consequences. Adultery crises in America last longer, cost more, and seem to inflict more emotional torture than they do everything in any place I went. »

Druckerman for several years, an oldThe Wall Street newspaperjournalist, has surveyed married or engaged couples around the world, not only mapped international styles and cheating frequency, but also regarded the ability of each country for guilt and shame (or anger and revenge , depending on the role of the party) about infidelity. It seems that no other population does not suffer the same magnificent anxiety we do. The Russians consider cases like benign vice, such as cigars and scotch. The Japanese have institutionalized extramarity intercourse through clubs and wage lifestyles. The French, who do not cheat as much as we thought they had done, take the discretion above the occasional lie. In sub-Saharan Africa, even the threat of death by HIV has not created strong taboo on cheating. And God, well, he tried. As a father gently conferring his teenager, using the monogamy-is-cool approach, then resort to "you are at the land of life if you disobey me." But at the availability: even the fearful Muslims and devotees of God, Christians and Jews are always deceived and having business, still double parking on their spouses.

Why the Americans destroyed by business, I wanted to know. More than half of this country's marriages end with divorce, infidelity blamed at 17% or more. In 1970, the United States affirmed about 3,000 wedding and family therapists. In 2005, we had more than 18,000. And yet, on a large scale infidelity in the world, the United States remains junior varsity. We have about business at the same numerical rate as the French. According to the general social survey, the most recent statistical examination of spousal infidelity, about 4% of married men surveyed reported at least one sexual partner outside his marriage during the previous year; About 3% for married women. Compare this with the Ivory Coast of Africa, where 36% of married men lost, according to Drkherman.

Why are the fallouts here so brutal? In most other countries, an occasional affair is tolerated and even sanctioned (at least for men). Why do American Americans do we want to get caught, admit, crying? Compared to other mammals, only 3% are monogamous, we do very well. And as research in nature becomes more and more judicious, even the animals we counted in our little alliance for loyalty have recently been falter. Swans, this elegant emblem of loyalty, far from the sacred statistical minority; He came up with light they cheat and divorce too. Black-wing black couples thought they were devoted to surprise scientists who had given vasectomies to men for the control of the population; Females continued to lay hatch eggs. Somewhere, there is a Holiday Inn Blackbird with discreet parking.

I try to imagine allowing space in my ideology for love and infidelity. Tariq, 29, has parents from the Middle East and grew up in the United States, but he has experienced an international life in Lebanon, the Caribbean, and South America. Throughout, he maintained a relationship for eight years with a strong professional woman, he loves and respect - and he cheats them all the time. "He does not wear any reflection on her," he says, and when I look for his face, he looks in a strike, seriously.

"I inspire," he says, shrug. We are at lunch and he cuts a steak. He apologizes for his constantly buzzing phone, which stops from being because, on this oddly hot winter day in New York, he organizes a roof dinner for this evening. Most cultures where Tariq spent the time - in addition to ours - comply with the system in which his wife, his sister and his mother are treated in a way and "being spared" what a man saves for his mistress. We are discussing appetite. He says he is in fact satisfied by simple things, but a "complex mosaic of simple things". It has been raised to enjoy a great life.

Tariq is vigorous and alive, and it develops in a big world in a great, extravagant way. Before finishing lunch, he stressed that everything he talked about is unilateral. It is well aware that most women in the cultures he described do not have a divisor of this freedom. He believes it's not right, but he does not apologize.

It is also important to pay attention to the reason why infidelity can be thrilling. Lily, only one 31 years with powerful work in the media, has a story with infidelity and an open mind on the cheat. She was the other woman and she went astray in her own relationships. She has also engaged in something she calls "emotional cheating", relationships with men who are not physical but can feel "more intense than sex". From time to time, these platonic but heated cases can open it to the man she really sees. The emotional cheating makes it feel alive and brings this house, where it translates into an amazing sex.

Cheating broke one of his longest and most important relationships, but the power to take something that does not belong to it always captivating. "The two people feel that, and they are desperate and animal and strangely honest," she says. Lily compares infidelity to drugs, where there is a thrilling tower but a vacuum at the end. "If you win this man, you cheat yourself, and you are both the main person, you have lost the meaning of danger, you have lost everything that fed the experience."

I ask if she will always cheat. "I hope no," she says. "I would like to find someone I could commit myself. It's a sacred bond, is not it?" She asks the question of the question almost abundantly, then waits until I could have the answer. His tone is charming, as if she wants the two, there was a sacred obligation and simultaneously believes such a link is a sacred trap.

So, how were the Americans so rigid and demanding, not just our partners and from ourselves, but the conjugal relationship itself? The typical American - If there is a "Hapty Ideal" on the wedding, according to Joshua Coleman, Ph.D., a family expert and in relations. These ideal highs have passed from simple seeds, in his opinion. He points to the colonial start of this country, to the genesis of the New World. In the context of the desire to reduce the power of the throne and religious institutions, our ancestors pointed out that marriage and divorce should be governed by legal institutions rather than nuns. In the 18th century, people began to adopt the new radical idea that love should be the most fundamental reason for marriage and that young people should be free to choose their marriage partners independently. Prior to this time, marital partners were chosen by families for economic and political reasons, the same reasons for people get married for centuries around the world.

In the ideal American wedding today, we are told to watch a person for everything, sexual, spiritual, financial, intellectual, emotional - we need. Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education at the Council of Contemporary Families, recently wrote that more married Americans started "cocoon in the nuclear family". We have dangerously few friends, it warns and the atomization of society means losing contact with others. Coleman points out that, as recently that the 1960s, the Americans took place different and lower of expectations for marriage, forcing the matrimonial partner to play fewer roles at the moment and studies show that marriages show. Marriages Logically with more moderate expectations are more resilient.

It may be that the way our wedding perception has evolved leaves little room to grow. Adam Phillips, a psychotherapist based in London and author of Monogamy, said in a lounge.com interview that to support jealousy is important in a relationship. He asserts that it is essential to understand that "the others are independent of our desires for them". This statement celebrates autonomy as a virtue, a key factor in seductivity. Why do most Americans think that a sense of increased autonomy as a threat or anomaly?

Karen could have used more autonomy at the beginning of his conjugal life. She and Tony started as high school sweetheart. She caught him cheat during their commitment, but she forgives him and hoped that things would change once they said their wishes. Three children later, with a new baby in the manger, Karen discovered at a party when Tony was drunk and slid in front of friends and family - he "dragged" and doing drugs with the 27 years of Karen niece. The way his face is frozen after slipping, let everyone know that he was guilty. Without resources, Karen stayed with him for five years.

She started to deceive too much and she did not break this cycle. She is now with another man who does not trust, and for a leverage, she buys it with the idea she could also fight. She entered her AOL account a few weeks ago and found a correspondence with dozens of women. He encounters them through the business he owns, puts them on his "list of jokes", then reinforce the exchange of email to invitations for drinks and dinner. Then Karen also moves away from it. But with children to support, she tried to stand and stay. When I asked if she could have done things differently, she says, "I recommend people to receive their own life. Be financially independent. If good things come to you or go through your life, good. But you do not need it. "

During my first trip to Paris, I found myself intimidated by the feeling of calm of each. I was surprised at the way people who did not seem to otherwise seemed crazy. Someone explained the European psyche; They have a capacity developed to "converse" with themselves. Now, I wonder if this trust, this ability to count with one's own soul, is something that Americans are missing. We are compulsively to the media, society, to our partners for our own self-esteem, without ever stopping me from wondering how our value of oneself has ended up with someone else.

In the new world, we are recruits. Human beings elsewhere seem more conscious and less terrified because a person is born alone and dies alone - as if people become accustomed to this notion after hundreds of years of civilization. We, Americans, we look like a superior class about working in the real world, green enough socially to think that we will all be friends forever and that nothing will change.

Lust in Translation Author Druckerman calls for the vast landscape of therapists The "industrial complex of marriage" and it claims that it needs adultery the way the military industrial complex needs war. This particularly American idea - that all marriages can and should be fixed - have generated hundreds of websites where eBooks, consulting services and state-of-the-art leaves are sold and part of the literature spread a contagious paranoia. A book presents 829 signs of teller to cheat about 820 signs more than anyone needs. The "classes" business are decomposed like meningitis strains. Everything happens under the magnifying glass; Even Christmas gifts. Some gifts, we are told, will always give a cheater (perfume to a colleague).

The so-called experts reinforce this almost prejudice against privacy or sovereignty. They promise that if you, the spouse betrayed, read this e-book, "you will know it better than it does not know." There are strict rules in the industrial marriage complex. Almost all these sites require adultery to admit every act of sex, every phone conversation and every detail of each assignment. The principle is total transparency and unveiled, which is antithetic to ancient ideas of love - in the heart of what is a small mystery.

Adam Phillips says relationships are "non-technology". Like trees, they have an independent life that can be fed; Unlike cars, they can not be fixed with a plug and a key. But Dave Carder, Pasteur of the Fulllerton Evangelical Free Church of the First Free Church of Fullerton, and author of Torn Asunder: recovering extramarital business, proudly packs a grip and a key.

The carder advised families and couples in the United States and around the world. It is important in the fucked therapist that Druckerman describes and it's easy to smile at his almost algebraic formulas to recover from infidelity as well as the Albist tone in his writings. But it's hard to discuss with some of his points.

For example, when I ask if the thousands of dollars spent for infidelity therapy are worth it, it suggests that money is better spent there than on cases of divorce and custody. If problems can be resolved before going to the courthouse, it's better for the couple and for children. He states that the remarry of the statistical chances that the first marriages: the result of our negligence of our own psychological and pitfall foundations.

When I ask why we are the only country whose relationships often collapse immediately under the weight of discovery infidelity, it says that in other countries, women have fewer rights. Men cheat and women have no leverage effects to stop or complain. This is not a question of tolerance, but uneven freedoms. It reminds me that in some countries, women are stupid to death for adultery.

"So is not possible for couples and individuals to handle this crisis by themselves?" I ask.

"It's possible," he answers. "In Singapore, where there is no support system, they manage it themselves." I ask how. "With a staggering suicide rate," he answers.

Two years ago, when Bill discovered his wife, Eleanor, had an affair with a high school friend, he was forced to admit that he too was unfaithful. They were both devastated.

A year after the discovery, the couple was still at the heart of the size of an infernal marry marsh of discord, mistrust, regret and despair. They crossed an infidelity therapist, whose work of work and 12 weeks saved our lives, "says Eleanor. Above the 12 sessions, they undertook hours and hours of the therapist called "dirty work": letters of forgiveness and excuses and restitution. They confessed all the details of their respective affairs. They did trusted exercises. "Fortunately, we are retired," says Bill, as it was a huge time commitment. They took "love language tests" and now talk about "Love of Love" of everyone as if it's a common phrase. According to both, their marriage is booming and it's better now that it was never before.

As far as I sometimes ran Ruddy's Cowboy philosophies, world cowboys of self-help, it's part of the country's civil rights progress. The instructions of the Carder Plainspoken and Sultest are somehow the grandfarr (possibly illegitimate) of Thomas Paine'sCommon sense. These treaties both belong to the American identity.

Progress can be unmatched. Anna heard Henry six months ago, when he sent an email he came to town. And then he sent again by email. And even. Its ardor crossed the spontaneous premeditaist line. When he arrived, he kissed her in front of someone they knew both; It triggered a liability buzz-victory. Its body language betrayed an agenda and a tuning of guilt.

She took it home, but it was not the same thing. None of the parties admitted it, and they were always affectionate and open after, but the case was over. According to Drkcherman, if it is the prototype of a Frenchman, he is doing this without the need to confess, without a burning awareness, without the need to turn into a therapy for absolution - And the most important, without the subconscious desire to be caught. As Tariq told me, "No one is caught if he does not want to be caught." Henri will know that what he did was not totally just, but he will not beat his soul, believing that what he did was quite wrong. He will not see him as a reflection on his wife and how much he loves him, and perhaps, then that will never become a reflection on his wife and how much he loves him.

And so for Anna, Henri faded, bursting like a mirage that disappears when the heat finally leaves the height.

Ed Note: This story was originally published in the March 2007 issue of the best life.

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