Posted on 09/02/2012 6:17:39 AM PDT by Loyalist
Catherine Hakim is a controversialist. She says prostitutes are role models, most women don’t want to work in career jobs and feminists are an elitist minority whose battles are irrelevant to all but a small group. In her latest book The New Rules: Internet Dating, Playfairs and Erotic Power, she argues in favour of adultery.
In what is probably the first academic guide to what she calls “good infidelity,” Hakim, a social scientist at the Centre for Policy Studies, says a love affair “requires some skill and savoire faire. A successful affair while married is one that makes both parties happier than they would otherwise be, but has no negative consequences for the two families and does not of itself prompt any divorces.”
Hakim analyzed the confessions of people who had had affairs via online chat rooms. She concludes that, thanks to the Internet, Britons are becoming more continental in their attitudes about adultery.
Past surveys have suggested about 80 per cent of Britons disapprove of affairs, Hakim says. By contrast, only two in five Italians regard affairs as unacceptable, while a quarter of Spaniards “do not regard sexual fidelity as fundamentally important.”
Now, however, according to Hakim, “the unforgiving Puritan Anglo-Saxon response to affairs ... with all the misery and trauma that entails,” is changing, as the Internet enables women to enjoy what she calls harmless “playfairs” — beneficial “holidays” from a marriage.
The New Rules, to be published next month, is, like several of Hakim’s works, likely to provoke fierce debate on publication.
Last year, in her book Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital, she argued that attractive people had an advantage in life that could be measured in terms of greater earning power.
Harness your erotic potential, she suggested, and you could not only land a partner but get ahead at work and in society as a whole.
Now she suggests that women should capitalize on their scarcity value in infidelity chat rooms, where willing females are a commodity in short supply. While men pay, it costs nothing for women to sign up to such sites. Extramarital affairs go wrong for women, Hakim says, only when they are really looking for love.
“I have always been baffled by the sour and rigid English view of affairs,” she writes.
Conversations with people who use social networks to cheat — none of whom, for obvious reasons, is willing to be named — suggest that Hakim is on to something. No-strings fun is what made one divorced man switch from normal dating sites to encounters of the more illicit kind. “John” works in marketing and described infidelity websites as: “Perfect for me. No strings. No hassle. I’ve given up on dating websites. I couldn’t stand the pressure. The women are all frightening, they’re box-ticking nutcases who make you feel like you are being interviewed for the job of husband.”
Women on infidelity websites, John says, are different. “These are frustrated, bored women who want to live life like Sex and the City, go for drinks, have fun, romance and lots of sex.”
Elena, 37, joined a website five years ago “because I was married to a wonderful man, living a picture-perfect bucolic life and was desperately unhappy. I joined the site because I wanted to gauge what I had, get scared of losing it and fall back in love with my husband.”
Things did not go to plan, and shortly after joining: “I met a man and fell deeply, madly and desperately in love. Within a month I filed for divorce and launched into an insanely passionate, life-changing affair. We are still together.”
That’s how infidelity websites are used, according to Sophie, who says extramarital affairs that are set up online are common among her set. “They are used literally, as a test bed. Doing it online, if a woman discovers the grass is not actually greener, she is protected from being found out and having her life shattered.”
Emma emails answers from her iPad while “hubby” watches television: “I would recommend this to anyone but I’m not sure many women are brave enough emotionally and you need to be to have a double life. I regret none of it. My marriage has survived because of my lovers. I would never leave my husband.”
As she sees it: “An affair is fun, frolics, dinner, cocktails, expensive hotels and passionate sex. It is not real life.”
The Times, London
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
What these immature slatterns call frustration and boredom is what adults would otherwise call real life and responsibility.
Marriage isn't all fun and excitement, but who should expect anything in life to be?
Then life can just be a non-stop party. The only problem is that the party does stop eventually, and then where are you? And where is society?
I've been married to the same wonderful beautiful women for 32 years...I would never consider breaking her heart be being unfaithful...to break such a trust is unfathomable...
I've been married to the same wonderful beautiful women for 32 years...I would never consider breaking her heart by being unfaithful...to break such a trust is unfathomable...
If it is not wrong, than why tell the hubby and see if he feels the same. I bet if she got caught she'd claim it was a big mistake and have plenty of regrets. Immature little sleaze bag.
Donchya just love the liberal “moral code”
It isn’t just that they refuse to grow up and be decent people.
No.
They have to find stupid ways to make it sound good.
Is that good enough?
No.
Then they find ways to tell all the grown ups they are the ones with the problem
If morality means nothing ...
If a stable home in which to raise children means nothing ...
Then life can just be a non-stop party. The only problem is that the party does stop eventually, and then where are you? And where is society?
I imagine that that attitude is just one more reason why Europe’s Birthrate is cratering. Play and party today, tomorrow can take care of itself.
Just like the fable of the Grasshopper and the ant. Only this time they are not preparing for the winter of their lives.
Proverbs 5
Until the unhappy guy who's not into sharing finds out and shoots them both. THEN it's real life. Until you bleed out.
A few years ago where I live, a Canada goose's mate was killed. The male would just walk up and down the street looking for her. He would hang out with other geese, but he still kept looking, some days just standing in one place waiting, other days wandering. I wonder if Hakim could understand this.
Hey, if you don't believe in an almighty, eternal creator...then let it all hang out.
But, when you draw your last breath on this planet, you better hope your standing right behind Jeffery Dohmer or Richard Rimerez.....might make you look....naw, doubtful. lol
Happy women have sex with one partner who cares for her and takes responsibility with her in raising children and grandchildren.
The promiscuous are always off on one sexcapade after another in search of the ultimate which they never find.
Committed marriages enjoy much better sex as a partnership reward for their hard work together and a release of tension which the challenges of life inevitably thrust upon them.
The promiscuous will never enjoy this ultimately satisfying electricity because they shun the responsibility for the very deep commitment which results from meeting the challenges and responsibilities which being married means.
People who have been married a long time know exactly what I am talking about. People who seek that type of deeply satisfying sex will never get it unless they experience it by shunning promiscuity in favor of a committed relationship.
LOL!
This is a parody? Absurdist performance-art?
"Continental", I presume, being a reference to mainland Europe.
How many tens of millions did other "continental attitudes" kill in the last century?
I don't see aspiring to "continental attitudes" as a good thing.
Without regard to immorality, infidelity in my marriage is unforgivable. I told my wife of many years that as long as we were married, I’d never cheat on her. I didn’t, she did, we divorced. My choice, your mileage may vary.
Funny she should mention Spain and Italy.
To the best of my recollection, both countries also have birth-rates of roughly one child per woman.
Which means that with each succeeding generation, the number of Spaniards and Italians will decrease by one half.
Most people would probably view that as a bad thing. Except for those who want to turn it into "Eurabia".
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
Written from the vantage point of 1919.
When you find out your wife of many years has committed adultery, it hurts. A lot.
And it takes a long time to get over it. Even if you’re a Christian and you’re supposed to forgive. SIGH.
These women complain about their lives lacking romance and sex, yet nearly every married guy I know complains about a lack of sex. Like literally every married guy I know well enough to talk about that sort of thing, save one (he’s a lucky man). Some have given an ultimatum, and it helps for the short term. Some bury themselves in work and activities with their kids. Some cheat, and even more are right on the brink of it. Generally, they have been rejected so many times that they have quit trying with their wives. Then an article like this comes out, or yet another sitcom portraying the frustrated, great looking wife whose husband won’t pay attention to her??? Yay, Feminism!!! /s
Nothing like a nice stable swinging relationship./s/
Who did you have sex with last night dear?
I dunno I didn’t get his name but he was built like a horse.
Nice Breakfast conversation there.
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