Sullivan on marriage and faithfulness (or lack thereof)
[M]oderate hypocrisy - especially in marriages - is often the best policy. Momogamy is very hard for men, straight or gay, and if one partner falters occasionally (and I don’t mean regularly), sometimes discretion is perfectly acceptable . . . . I think the post-seventies generation - those of us who grew up while our parents were having a sexual revolution - both appreciate the gains for sexual and emotional freedom, while being a little more aware of their potential hazards. An acceptance of mild hypocrisy as essential social and marital glue is not a revolutionary statement. It’s a post-revolutionary one. As is, I’d say, my generation as a whole.
May 31st, 2006 at 7:12 pm
I am going to write a sequel to Tom Brokaw’s book, it will be called “The Worst Generation.”
May 31st, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Sullivan is at bottom a hedonist and always has been. If such was his home, tt’s rather sad to think of what it must have been for him to grow up there, wondering if his parents’ wanderings would turn permanent and whether their hypocrisy vis-a-vis one another implied hypocrisy toward anything else, like him. It’s also rather inhuman, when you come down to it - the bottom line is that we should tolerate others’ violations of our trust because it helps them fulfill their immediate appetites and because it’s good for social cohesion. Lovely.
May 31st, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Yeah, a monogamy is ALWAYS a piece of cake for chicks. We NEVER think other folks are attractive (emotionally, physically, or otherwise), and we NEVER have guys hit on us. We NEVER get tired and frustrated with family obligations, and our men NEVER get on our nerves.
Oh wait, that’s not true at all. We have to work at it too, just like guys, and for some total sexist pig of a blogger to suggest otherwise just really burns me up. You don’t work at marriage/monogamybecause it’s easy– you do it because it’s right.
May 31st, 2006 at 9:23 pm
Oh, Andrew- The rare affairs of your parents do not excuse your cruising rest stops and public bathrooms.
May 31st, 2006 at 9:31 pm
So-
Sullivan wants legalized gay marriage so that gay spouses can enjoy the privilege of cheating on one another?
May 31st, 2006 at 10:43 pm
This is an excellent piece of advice–for the characters in an opera buffa. You know, the ones where the nice young people try to be sophisticated and worldly, fail miserably and end up happily engaged as the chorus laughs at the lonely, shame-faced cynic.
June 1st, 2006 at 12:16 am
“I think the post-seventies generation - those of us who grew up while our parents were having a sexual revolution - both appreciate the gains for sexual and emotional freedom,”
yeah, I was just thinking how my friends and I were glad that families broke up so that adults could have thier little freedoms. And now, as a family law attorney, I see that same cheer in the face of another generation watching thier security vanish so that one - or both - of their family can lose square conformity and seek “fulfilment.”
June 1st, 2006 at 6:53 pm
“And now, as a family law attorney, I see that same cheer in the face of another generation watching thier security vanish so that one - or both - of their family can lose square conformity and seek “fulfilment.””
There must be a lot of fulfillment in red america then.
June 3rd, 2006 at 12:13 am
Nobody said that divorce wasn;t a problem in red America. Unfrtunately, no-faul divorce isn;t confined to California and neither is the damage it causes.
June 5th, 2006 at 1:14 am
“Unfrtunately, no-faul divorce isn;t confined to California and neither is the damage it causes.”
Neither is a lackadaisical approach to getting marriage.