Love Affairs (Marriage & Infidelity)

I asked him: “What if you said to your wife, 'Look, I love you and the kids but I need sex in my life. Can I just have the occasional fling or a casual.
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Infidelity

Please try again later. Comments such as "a beautiful delightful women" with a "man with an 8th grade education" or an successful, high achieving man with a secretary. Or the "highly shocking sexual behavior" of a man and two women engaging in a sexual act together. This book is, at times, very well done and does come from a philosophical point of view, however, having been updated in , then again in , it would have been nice had someone suggested that the author not assume that the individuals who are engaging in the affairs necessarily contain at least one party who is "less than" in social quality than the spouse who was being betrayed.

The point that most of the relationships that are illicit are not as fulfilling as a marriage and that they are but a small part of the whole of a relationship were points well made. The reasons men stray were not really explored other than for egotistical needs and as stated before, more updated questions and less assumptions from the authors' own social bias may have made this reader give this pleasant read a higher score. One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful.


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One person found this helpful. I am the reviewer who wrote the previous review about how this was a disheartening but thought-provoking book. Let me just say now that this book has haunted me for my entire marriage 15 years. I can see more clearly now that the advice given in this book is entirely irresponsible and its contents should be rejected. Taylor makes the argument that your emotional needs and entitlement to pleasure are more important than your own integrity and commitment to the truth much less your own relationship to your spouse that you supposedly made a vow to.

I would just like to say to Taylor: Why not just say to your spouse who you supposedly love because after all you're not leaving "I'm having a love affair outside the marriage and it's fantastic! I'm having so much fun! I just thought I'd tell you so that you could have the opportunity to do so yourself! This is unconscionable behavior and you really are a scum-bag if you do it. If having an affair seems like your only option, think harder and either don't do it or leave your spouse so you can.

I found Richard Taylor's book very informative and helpful in understanding why married people cheat and choose lovers despite the fact they have no intention on leaving their spouse. I especially found the chapter Extramarital Fidelity interesting because I was in an illicit affair for 12 years and I learned that my lover was unfaithful to me as well in the end.

Love turns to hate very quickly when an affair goes bad and it guided me through all the emotions I felt as I was trying to comtemplate why this man did to me what he did after all I sacrificed for him for so long. I enjoyed the real-life scenarios and the comments that were shared from the people that gave Mr.

I definitely think it is worth reading. Akira Kenshin akenshin writeme. In the beginning I had sympathized with Richard Taylor about the obstacles encountered by his first book, Having Love Affairs. But now that I have finished his new book, Love Affairs, I now understand the feelings of people towards his first book First of all, it was a great book to start with. The first several chapters were good in the sense that they described the reality of a love affair - the pros and cons, and the reasons behind them. However, when he started to analyze, and inject his own "rules" into the situation, I then felt utter disgust for his work.

Richard Taylor advocates, in a way, love affairs because it is a by-product of normal human nature - because of an unfulfilled need in a marriage, because of a man's ego, and a woman's vanity. But then he condemns people when they react in a most natural way human nature as in, for example, entrapping a partner in the "act" as illustrated by Rule number 3 "Stay out of it.

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Human nature or not? He despises people when they react in an "animalistic" manner towards love affairs, but advocates it when they act on the basis of human nature - which is most certainly animalistic. All in all, I could say that this is a work of an idealistic philospher, not a scientist, most specially a psychologist; who resorts to "out-of-this-world" contemplation regarding situations such as love affairs.

But the problem is, this planet we live in, and the people in it are not "out-of-this-world. My suggestion to Mr. Taylor - keep your outworldy ideas to yourself.

Love Affairs: Marriage & Infidelity by Richard Taylor

If you don't like people acting irrationaly, then don't be irrational yourself. I've been reading a lot on the subject of desire v. I could also recommend "Monogamy" by Adam Phillips for a more agressive, non-committed point of view. Both very thought provoking See all 6 reviews. Factor in the crippling hack of cheaters' hookup website Ashley Madison last July — which saw the names, street addresses and sexual desires of 37 million user accounts leaked to the world — and it's clear that, despite societal censure, infidelity is completely pervasive.

We're drawn to people who are pretty in some way, who are appealing. Our brain lights up, our pupils dilate — everything. Brains gone haywire over pretty things: Research is finding that's the somewhat basic cause of most affairs. Most people don't cheat because of some dark defect in personality, O'Sullivan wrote in a study to be published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.

They don't even necessarily stray because they are unhappy in their relationships as Perel has warned repeatedly, "Happy people cheat". It's situational and has to do with opportunity, O'Sullivan explains. Meaning that just about anyone is vulnerable to cheating, not just your sociopathic ex.

At O'Sullivan's sunny Fredericton office, meticulously organized and scented with a freesia essential oil, a whiteboard divulges the provocative studies under way this past January: Topics include mate poaching, kissing, breakups and the inevitable pain that follows. Strikingly frank when she talks about sex, O'Sullivan loves stereotype-busting findings that betray our inconsistency. Her big question is why, if monogamy is so near-universally endorsed, is infidelity so common? What she's discovered is that we're getting more and more unrealistic in our expectations of fidelity.

The definition of "cheating" now goes well beyond sex to a whole array of threats that undermine people's faith in their relationships, O'Sullivan and her doctoral student Ashley Thompson wrote in a Journal of Sex Research article titled Drawing the Line. Emotional attraction to a work spouse, a partner masturbating solo to the porn stash he's bookmarked online, texts another partner occasionally sends her ex when she's drunk: These things all proved to be "ripples" in the love lives of study respondents.

Even seemingly benign behaviours riled them up. Respondents got insecure when their partners "liked" their exes' posts or got tagged in their photos on Facebook. Some were even threatened by a partner's celebrity crushes. What her findings have uncovered is that infidelity isn't just about sex, but about something far more privately needy. It's that all encompassing idea of, 'It's you and only you, baby. It sounds irrational but deep down, that's what we expect. Of course few people really like to clarify these concepts. Indeed, we are notorious in the West for our unease in discussing wants, needs and expectations with partners and spouses.

But also we're startlingly hypocritical about it all. People set draconian standards for their partners while conveniently letting themselves off the hook, O'Sullivan and Thompson write in a new paper titled I Can but You Can't, slated to appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Relationships Research. Especially when it came to grey areas such as having lunch, studying late, doing favours, providing emotional support or sharing secrets or gifts with someone outside of a relationship, the study respondents grew wary of their partners while justifying their own dicey behaviour.

Both women and men were equally self-righteous. With such telling research in hand, O'Sullivan's perspective on infidelity is somewhat clinical: She thinks we need to get real. Especially if indiscretions fall into those murky zones no one's quite clear on yet, she urges partners to be more "tolerant" of each other, and perhaps do a little perspective-taking if they're guilty of the same.

Moreover, she and other thinkers in the field are questioning the notion that there can be no greater betrayal than adultery. Why is it the worst thing? Neglecting your children or being abusive isn't a worse thing? Why is this the quintessential betrayal? This is culturally defined in our society," says Sandra Byers, who is chair of the University of New Brunswick's psychology department and sees couples at her private clinical psychology practice.

And yet infidelity remains a dealbreaker. It's a poignant question that shifts North Americans away from the range of responses they've long deemed normal after an affair: But the hows of getting over infidelity are another matter entirely. How to stop replaying the hurt and resentment in a toxic mental loop? How to regain trust?

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How to get on top of such primal betrayal, and why should couples even deign to try? In cases that do not involve multiple affairs, when the cheater expresses remorse and both partners are devastated, "Please don't get a divorce. This is an opportunity," Philadelphia couples therapist Edward Monte begs. When his couples tell him they want to rebuild, Monte asks them both to step it up: He also asks spouses to drill down into the dalliances. I want to know, what do you need that you now need to take home?

This technique echoes the difficult questions Perel puts to her couples. Instead of the classic, "Why did you do this to me? What did this affair mean? What were partners able to express there that they could no longer express with their spouses? How did it feel to come home? While there's no guarantee that this marital reset button will ensure monogamy for life, it can make couples happier. Today, Cristina and her husband have quit seeing their three therapists.

He also quit his job, where the other woman worked.

What Infidelity Means

We're more in tune," Cristina says. Before the affair, the kindness had fizzled out of their marriage. They'd grown apart and he felt there was no space for him at home after work. The other woman made him feel needed. Commitments get in the way. Schedules get in the way. You spend more and more time at work and that's what happened. It was a transition to a relationship in which he wasn't failing in any way. Today, the two focus on being thoughtful, grateful and kind to one another: They shower each other with compliments and surprise each other with gifts, like in the early days.

Cristina makes sure to ask her husband about all the "gory details" of his work day. He treats her as his confidant again. She's relinquished more control of the parenting, finding that he's been a more present father and husband since.


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  • As for trust, only time could reconcile that one, although Cristina feels she's had to learn to live with uncertainty.