Marital survival: the exceptional side of adultery

[caption id="attachment_9500" align="alignleft" width="134" caption="Kathie Lee Gifford"][/caption]

Carol Forsloff - They celebrated their birthdays together on the Today Show recently, as Kathie Lee Gifford and her once-philandering husband Frank prove once again there’s love after an affair, something folks wonder about and discuss their own potential ability to forgive and go on.

While divorce remains a frequent happening among American couples, infidelity is at the top of the issues people discuss as that awful something they wouldn’t do or abide in a spouse.

Research shows that since Alfred Kinsey’s sex research of 1953 the percentage of unfaithful husbands, found at the time to be one-half to two-thirds who had had at least one extramarital affair, hasn’t changed much. On the other hand,  while Kinsey assessed women’s unfaithfulness at 6 percent to 16 percent, the figure now ranges from 21 percent to 54 percent.

 Studies show that during the last 30 years, the percentage of men who have been unfaithful has remained steady: One-half to two-thirds indulged in at least one extramarital affair. The number of philandering females, however, is on the increase. In 1953 sex researcher Alfred Kinsey concluded that 6 percent to 26 percent of married women had been unfaithful. Now the figure is way up, ranging from 21 percent to 54 percent.

A movie entitled Heartburn starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson explored the world of cheating, through the lives of a couple where the wife learns her husband has been unfaithful. The film is based on a book by Nora Ephron, an account of a four-year marriage to Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, who co-wrote All the President’s Men, that ended as a result of Bernstein’s affair with Margaret Jay, who at the time was married to Peter Jay, the British Ambassador to Washington. The heartbreak, accusations and sadness resulting from marital betrayal is played out in the bedrooms of America on a regular basis, often resulting in divorce.

A Gallup poll found in 2008 that 62% of those asked what they would do if their spouse had an affair said they would leave and get a divorce if they found they had been betrayed.  6% say they would publicly stand by their spouse, but according to additional statistics, this percentage reflects more women than men, as most men have trouble forgiving the sexual part of the adulterous relationship, while wives will be more interested in whether the husband loved the other woman or not. Apparently in the case of Kathie Lee, Frank’s pronouncements of continuing love have been enough to continue to share the marriage and a birthday celebration, theirs being an exception to what most couples do after an affair.

Should same-sex couples have equal laws applied on adultery?

by GHN Editor - While
the states are examining same-sex marriages, and a court in California
overturned a voter-driven bill to outlaw them, should these couples be
held to the same standards on adultery?

Peter Nicolas, Professor

at the University of Washington School of Law, has a paper written on
this very subject and has posted "The Lavendar Letter: Applying the Law
of Adultery to Same-Sex Couples and Same-Sex Conduct.  He tells fellow
lawyers on a blog
that his goal is to examine the question of adultery and whether it
should apply to same-sex couples.  He reviews his paper on the blog.

It
turns out there have been decisions that these laws of adultery do not
apply to same-sex couples.  So Nicolas looks at four different contexts
of adultery prosecutions that include fault-based divorce actions,
civil tort actions related to when another person interferes with a
relationship and murder cases based upon premises brought up by defense
on the issue of adultery.

Nicolas maintains that the decisions of the court made that same-sex conduct is not adultery do that based on out-dated understandings
about the nature of relationships.  They are based on the traditional
marriage concept between a man and a woman.  They are also based on
old-fashioned ideas that treat sexual indiscretions of men and women
differently.

These concepts of applying adultery concepts equally
to gay couples might produce a better equalization of the way men and
women are treated when it comes to the courts.

In other words, by
gays getting equal rights, and equal responsibilities, the cause of
women may be aided as well.  It can serve the cause of women in securing
their right to be treated with justice outside of gender in the courts
is Nicolas premise, and likely to be discussed within the intricacies of
court decisions.