I am glad…
… that people are looking into Newt Gingrich’s marital infidelities.
I am not glad, however, that they are using the opportunity to mock and vilify open marriages. Everyone’s talking about it like the idea of an open marriage is a despicable thing. It’s not. It’s a lifestyle choice that two (or more) people can openly and honestly enter into and be happy with.
Gingrich may have wanted an open marriage, but he was never in one. Sleeping around on your wife, and then proposing an open marriage when she finds out about it is not how it works, buddy. Obviously his wife at the time was not interested in it. So he left her.
It’s perfectly fine to criticize Newt Gingrich for attempting to assuage his wife by proposing an open marriage. And it’s perfectly fine to mock him for attempting to live this lifestyle, and succeeding at being a guy who sleeps around and leaves his wife for a new one when he gets bored while at the same time speaking out about how the values traditional marriage are under attack (especially while being the driving force behind the Clinton/Lewinsky investigation). That’s all fine. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy.
But it’s not okay to make a mockery of the idea of open marriage itself.
We’re starting to see a trend where homosexuality is becoming more and more accepted into society (even among conservatives). Some say it’s the last hurdle in the civil rights movement, but there’s another one very close to it, and that’s the world of open relationships, polyamory and the like.
One day it may be perfectly legal for two men or two women to marry anywhere in the country, but the chances of that also including three-person marriages (or four, or five, etc) is highly unlikely. Hopefully after one, the other follows shortly thereafter.
Infidelity does not break marriages up; it is the unreasonable expectation that a marriage must restrict sex that breaks a marriage up. One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I’ve seen so many long-term relationships broken up simply because one had sex outside the relationship. But feeling victimized isn’t a natural outcome of casual sex outside a relationship; it is a socialized victimhood. I’m not advocating cheating; I’m advocating open and equitable sexual relationships. When both in the couple desire this, when both realize that extra-dyadic sex makes their partner happy, and they therefore want their partner to have that sex, a couple will have moved a long ways toward facilitating emotional honesty, while simultaneously withering at jealousy scripts, which can be very damaging to a relationship. But if one can’t achieve this with a partner that’s hostile to the idea, cheating is the reasonable action.
So voters leave Cain because they don’t like that he had an affair, and go to the guy who had two of them! I guess Newt Gingrich becomes the candidate for people who like Herman Cain, but think he was too monogamous.
Faster than Driving
- Whitney: Getting married is so dumb.
- Alex: Just cause your parents each got divorced three times doesn't mean that all marriages are bad.
- Whitney: Half of all marriages end. If half of all planes crashed, would you continue to fly?
- Alex: It's just so much faster than driving.
Is it adultery if I’m committing it at one end of a guy, and he’s committing it at the other end of that same guy?
