I can relate to that, too. My fiancé moved to a different state recently, and soon I'll be joining her. I'll be freelancing and won't have health benefits, though she will via her job. We're getting married — one year before our actual wedding — so I can get insured, too."

Specifically, putting pressure on young people to marry sooner, frowning upon cohabitation before marriage, teaching abstinence-only sex education and making access to resources like emergency contraception more difficult all result in earlier childbearing ages and less-solid marriages from the get-go, Glass writes in the paper."

In the two decades preceding the Great Recession, the American prison population nearly tripled, according to the Pew Center on the States. And make no mistake: mass incarceration rips at the fabric of families and whole communities.

According to the 2011 book “A Plague of Prisons” by Ernest Drucker, a public health expert:

■ “The risk of divorce is high among men going to prison, reaching 50 percent within a few years after incarceration.”

■ “The marriage rate for men incarcerated in prisons and jails is lower than the American average. For blacks and Hispanics, it is lower still.”

■ “Unmarried couples in which the father has been incarcerated are 37 percent less likely to be married one year after the child’s birth than similar couples in which the father has never been incarcerated.”

In other words, Bridezilla = Divorcezilla. Don’t let advertisers fool you into spending your life savings on your wedding."

But a strange thing happened. Clinton wasn’t convicted by the Senate, and he didn’t resign. He didn’t show much shame at all. Oh sure, he apologized for lying, he bit his lower lip, the whole nine yards, but he more or less forged ahead. It worked. Voters knew—and it turned out they didn’t care. The highest approval rating of his presidency came around the time of his impeachment, and it stayed high, around 60 percent, for the rest of his term.

Clinton has lately become toxic, amid new focus on sexual harassment and assault, but its not his adultery per se that’s been his political problem. More damaging have been allegations of rape and sexual assault like those made by Juanita Broaddrick, as well as a focus on the exploitative dynamic between the president and an intern. There’s still not much reason to believe voters care about infidelity....

Because the public seems largely unbothered by infidelity, politicians are less likely to show shame; because politicians treat infidelity lightly, the public focuses less on it too. It is literally a vicious cycle: a cycle in which vice is encouraged."

The growing abhorrence of infidelity is linked to this more individualistic view of marriage. Just a few decades ago, divorce was scandalous; if your marriage came to an end you and your spouse were likely to face cruel gossip and painful social ostracism. The fear of the public humiliation that attended divorce kept people in unhappy marriages. That fear is gone, replaced by a growing anxiety about the more private humiliation of sexual betrayal. "I'd rather be left than lied to" is the prevailing sentiment that the polling reveals; it's not a stretch to suggest that the reverse would have been true just a few decades ago."

Our marriage was, to use Knot Yet's terminology, a "cornerstone" not a "capstone." Once that cornerstone was set during the semester break of my sophomore year of college, I transformed from a party girl into a budding scholar. I earned my college degree then two graduate degrees. My husband made music, built things, earned a teaching certificate, and became a teacher and coach. We lived in several towns, two states, countless apartments (and—for six long weeks, a relative's basement), owned a junkyard's worth of beat-up cars (including two, not one, but two Pacers), and held down numerous jobs on our way to financial and social stability. We were poor in those early years. Not food stamps poor, but poor enough to be given groceries by our church without having asked. The church gave us $200 once, too (which is exactly what that second Pacer cost). We held down terrible jobs and then got better ones. Like all couples, we worked and played and worshipped and prayed and travelled and fought together. And sometimes apart. We planned and prepared for children that naughtily never came. We offered our home instead to needy animals and stray college students, and eventually to my own aging parents. It was not the days of ease that made our marriage stronger and happier: it was working through the difficult parts. We learned to luxuriate in the quotidian, to take wonder in the mundane, skills that have become even more valuable in our prosperous years. We invested the vigor of our youth not in things to bring into the marriage, but in each other and our marriage....

Marriage actually works best as a formative institution, not an institution you enter once you think you're fully formed. We learn marriage, just as we learn language, and to the teachable, some lessons just come easier earlier in life."

·         In some states, pregnancy outside of marriage constitutes sufficient evidence to enable a woman to be convicted of adultery, targeting women.[2] 

·         In some states in which adultery prohibitions apply to both men and women in a way which is apparently equal, there are provisions which allow men to have multiple sexual partners as wives in polygamous marriages or in concubinage arrangements, without incurring liability for adultery, thus establishing a discriminatory criminal regime regarding marital infidelity for women and men.[3]

·         In some states, the crime of adultery (zina) includes non-consensual sex and in this context applies in a discriminatory fashion to women and girls who have been raped.[4]

·         A tragic example was reported by UNICEF: a 13 year old Somali girl, Aisha Duhulow, was stoned to death in a stadium of spectators in Kismayo on 27 October 2008 after having been found guilty of adultery. Reports indicate that she had been raped by three men while traveling on foot to visit her grandmother in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu. Following the assault, she sought protection from local leaders, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death.[5]

The Telegraph has the background on the 22-year-old woman in the video, and why she's being persecuted by the Taliban for adultery. Her name is reportedly Najiba: 

Provincial Governor Basir Salangi has already condemned the crime. "When I saw this video, I closed my eyes ... The woman was not guilty; the Taliban are guilty," he told Reuters. "

In taking a dual perspective on such an inflammatory subject, I’m aware that I risk being labeled “pro-affair,” or accused of possessing a compromised moral compass. Let me assure you that I do not approve of deception or take betrayal lightly. I sit with the devastation in my office every day. But the intricacies of love and desire don’t yield to simple categorizations of good and bad, victim and perpetrator. Not condemning does not mean condoning, and there is a world of difference between understanding and justifying. My role as a therapist is to create a space where the diversity of experiences can be explored with compassion. People stray for a multitude of reasons, I have discovered, and every time I think I have heard them all, a new variation emerges.....

The revelation of an affair forces couples to grapple with unsettling questions: What does fidelity mean to us and why is it important? Is it possible to love more than one person at once? Can we learn to trust each other again? How do we negotiate the elusive balance between our emotional needs and our erotic desires? Does passion have a finite shelf life? And are there fulfillments that a marriage, even a happy one, can never provide?

For me, these conversations should be part and parcel of any adult, intimate relationship from the beginning. It’s far better to address these issues before a storm hits. Talking about what draws us outside our fences, in an atmosphere of trust, can actually foster intimacy and commitment. But for many couples, unfortunately, the crisis of an affair is the first time they talk about any of this. Priya and Colin will have to negotiate these questions while also dealing with the ravages of betrayal, dishonesty, and broken trust.

Every affair will redefine a marriage, and every marriage will determine what the legacy of the affair will be. Although infidelity has become one of the prime motives for divorce in the West, I’ve seen many couples stay together after the revelation of an affair. I believe the odds are in favor of Priya and Colin’s marriage surviving, but the quality of their future connection will depend on how they metabolize her transgression. Will they emerge stronger as a result? Or will they bury the affair under a mountain of shame and mistrust? Can Priya step out of her self-absorption and face the pain she caused? Can Colin find solace in knowing that the affair was not meant to be a rejection of him? And will he get to meet the carefree, youthful woman Priya became in her parallel life?

These days, many of us are going to have two or three significant long-term relationships or marriages. Often when a couple comes to me in the wake of an affair, it is clear to me that their first marriage is over. So I ask them: Would you like to create a second one together?"

Hesseling, D., Miniatures de l'octateuque grec de Smyrne (1909) , pl. 78 (261)

So, as compassionately as possible, I said, “Mike, in my experience 100 percent of marriages come to an end, and you’ll never beat those odds.”

There was a pause before Mike stammered out, “What?” I tried again. “Well, your marriage will end in either death or divorce. There are no alternatives.” This time his face was blank."

In most of those states, including New York, adultery is a misdemeanor. But in others — Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin — it is a felony, though rarely prosecuted. In the armed forces, it can be punished severely although usually in combination with a greater wrongdoing.

This is yet another example of American exceptionalism: in nearly the entire rest of the industrialized world, adultery is not covered by the criminal code."

You might say that how and why we disapprove of adultery is as important as whether we do."

Adultery.

For all the nattering about a promiscuous society, when it comes to adultery, most Americans are old-fashioned in their judgments: extramarital sex is always wrong, say studies dating back to the 1970's.

But a growing number of people now say they are finding it in their hearts to forgive the sinner, if not the sin. Although it is hard to find anyone who praises adultery, it is no longer an automatic source of irredeemable shame and ostracism, nor an automatic reason for divorce.

When the Princess of Wales acknowledged in her November television interview that she had committed adultery as solace from her marital misery, she was besieged by letters from a sympathetic public. And even though Melanie Griffith, the actress, was accused by the wife of her lover, the actor Antonio Banderas, of "stealing" her husband, the public seems more fascinated than repelled by the romance. Compare that with the ordeal of the actress Ingrid Bergman in 1950 after she and Roberto Rossellini, the director, had an affair that led to an out-of-wedlock birth. They were denounced by Congress, and Ms. Bergman fled Hollywood."

-A New Level of Tolerance by Lena Williams, NYT 4 Jan. 1996

Enlightenment thinkers in this era were promoting the “right to personal happiness,” Coontz said.

Eventually, the development of a wage labor economy moved coupling away from economics. Women didn’t have to depend on their parents’ ability to put up a dowry, and men didn’t have to wait for their inheritance. Families moved away from farms into urban settings, so they didn’t need so many children. More options opened up.

That created a sea change for marriage in the mid-19th century, including the possibility of unions founded on love, Coontz said. “We convinced ourselves that was the traditional ideal.”

Awhile back, I told my story of growing up gay in the Christian south, one post per day for 44 days. Nearly 100,000 people have either read along (or listened) since then. It was an exciting, scary, healing, exhausting process, but I couldn't be more happy with how it turned out. 

I've learned there are things that don't define us, but that are definitely in the definition of us. That's kind of how I view the gay thing. It's just a part.

There's a lot more to the story . . ."

We’d like to thank our guests on this episode, and we encourage you to check out their work.

Caroline Lee, Artist and Photographer

Lisa Gungor, Artist and Author"