Via Broadsheet:

List of the Day has a series of photos in which scorned women get back at cheating exes. I feel a heady mix of emotions when I look at this compilation, which includes snapshots such as half a dozen hatchets buried in the hood of a car and other boil-the-bunny shockers: horror, amusement, sadness, shock. I feel hungry, but only because it’s nearly noon and I ate an early breakfast. Mostly I feel grateful that some combination of anger management, decent exes and propriety has prevented me from lashing out in such an operatic manner myself. Then again, I’m still young. Kind of.

Just one more thing — as promised — about John Edwards, now that BG is back from her trip to Elizabeth. I hesitate to add even this, given that we, as a blog (thanks, commenters!) and a nation, have said plenty. But just for the BG record, here goes.

Cheating is bad. GIVEN. No argument there, no intention of diminishing it on its face. Painful, too, is disappointment: finding out that those (dwindling few) whom we admire — for helping the humble! — have fallen slave to their own hubris.

But in the political, national, even human picture, this has only as much importance as we give it, which was way too much even before the maudlin mea-culpa-fest (which, huh, no one watched). It is not possible to name a political perpetration from the last eight-ish years that is less important than this. And yet we don’t hear Dick Cheney saying, “…All of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want: you know, like lie your way into war” while he wells up to Woodruff. “Also, the baby? I ate it.”

Okay? Done. Keeping focus, readusting priorities; moving on. But — on the subject of oldish news about politicians and their spice — I’ll be happy to talk about this (or, hey, this) anytime.

Crap.

More later. BG’s busy with Elizabeth.

Advertising Age reports that The Parents’ Television Council (PTC) is wagging quite the stern finger at broadcast networks for undermining marriage, they say, by making affairs look much more interesting. Networks show sex between married couples as “boring, burdensome or nonexistent, while depicting extramarital sex as positive,” according to the PTC. “[Prime-time] verbal references to nonmarital sex outnumber references to sex in marriage nearly 3 to 1, and scenes implying sex between unmarried partners outnumbered similar scenes between married couples 4 to 1.”

Sure: Shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lipstick Jungle, and Sex and the City certainly have their philandering plot lines, even if they end up with Carrie ending up with Mr. Big. Sunday’s episode of Mad Men showed Don Draper having ho-hum coitus with his wife, while sultry, unmarried Joan Holloway had anything but. And let’s not even get into the implications of Swingtown. Of course, in fairness to writers — TV and otherwise — a happy marriage makes a happy couple … but maybe not so great a story. (At least once the reality-wedding show ends.) But still: have we come so far that it is no longer risqué enough to merely say “Sex Sells,” but that “Forbidden Sex Sells”? And does it not just sell, but also, you know, drive us to seduce the pool boy?

(more…)

Adultery lurks everywhere, among celeb couples and political leaders, our neighbors and even, on a bad day, our own relationships. New York Magazine, following up on the Spitzer scandal in its own back yard, recently weighed in on the matter, with a lot to say about American culture and the perhaps untenable emphasis we put on monogamy.

According to writer Susan Squire, marriage wasn’t made to handle all this pressure in the first place. The average life span is far greater now than it was 100 years ago, and back in those days, marriage was a more formal institution for breeding and family purposes only. It’s becoming more and more difficult for partners in a marriage to get the variety and sexual attention that they need. The American burden is the ideal that marriage should provide romantic love forever. “Marriage involves routine, and routine kills passion,” Squire says. Sometimes partners see an affair as the only way out of that rut.

That’s why Mira Kirshenbaum, clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston, suggests that not all cheaters are evil trolls. (more…)

I just got an e-mail with the subject line: “Who’s sleeping with your husband?” But before I could say, “That bee-yotch!”, or remember that I don’t have a husband, I realized it was just a press release — a really depressing press release — for a Web site called MomLogic. Witness:

The other woman wants you to know–your husband is cheating and she’s loving it. Find out why. (more…)

In the naked city, two-timing ain’t always so black and white…

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“Mom! You’re totally embarrassing me! Next time you cheat on dad, get somebody cute, OK?”

According to a totally unscientific, self-selecting survey conducted by the prestigious research super-team Cookie Magazine and AOL Body, out of 30,000 respondents who self-identified as married women with children, 34% claim to be getting action between soccer practice and piano lessons, if you know what I’m saying. But this being the Internet, it’s also pretty likely that 33% of those 30,000 respondents are guys who really just like the idea of mom waiting for the UPS guy in lingerie while dad is…well, thinking about dad just ruins it.

While cheating is against the BG creed, thank God someone is at least paying attention to the sex lives of mothers, whether in actual practice or pure speculation. Though of course, actual practice would be much, much better. I mean a card on Mothers’ Day is nice, but after raising you, doesn’t she deserve a nice big, hard….hug?

Gal talking loudly on phone: “I’ve fallen in love so many times and they all have wives! It’s like, even if you can convince someone that you’re the one, they always have someone else. I wanna be like, ‘Why can’t you just annul your marriage so that you can sleep with me?’”

Another quickie from January 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,
I have a great guy, but he is known to play girls. He’s going to Las Vegas and I’m afraid he’s gonna cheat. He said he won’t — is he for real?
— Air-N

Dear Air-N,
Vegas? Girl, you’re the one who’s gambling.
Love,
Breakup Girl