Ask the Adulteress

2008-06-05T15:36:00.000-07:00

South Africa checks in. "Safe sex" should be your mantra during an affair, and here's why. But there's an interesting analysis of primary and secondary relationships, the drive for which is at the heart of the adulterous urge.

http://www.plusnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=78602

Understanding Infidelity - Plus News

CAPE TOWN, 5 June 2008 (PlusNews) - "Multiple, concurrent partnerships" has become the latest catchphrase in the HIV/AIDS lexicon. It refers to the practice of having more than one sexual partner at the same time, which experts say is a key driver of Southern Africa's devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In a South African population-based survey in 2005, 40 percent of men and 25 percent of women aged between 15 and 24 reported having concurrent partners. To try and understand why, the Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication, a multimedia health promotion project, conducted research to find out how South Africans actually view these relationships.

Prof Sue Goldstein, a researcher at Soul City, presented the findings from focus groups of men and women across the country to delegates at the 4th Public Health Association of South Africa conference in Cape Town this week.

"Multiple, concurrent partnerships appear to be the accepted norm in many South African communities," she said. The attitudes and beliefs that perpetuated this norm were "astonishingly similar" across rural and urban divides, and even to those found in similar studies in other countries of the region.

A significant other

Both men and women talked of a primary, long-term relationship based on love, and of secondary relationships that fulfilled other needs. In the case of women the need was often financial, but sometimes it was sexual.

"You know if someone is boring in the bedroom, and you know when you have met someone who hits the spot," said one woman who participated in a focus group in rural KwaZulu-Natal Province. "You carry on with the other one if he gives you other things, but you know that he just doesn't do it for you sexually."

The men blamed their wandering eyes on regular partners letting their looks go, and being attracted to younger, "fresher" women who were less likely to challenge their authority. They tended to trust that their primary partners were faithful and didn't use condoms with them, even if they sometimes had unprotected sex with other women.

The women often viewed a partner's infidelity as a "natural" and unavoidable cause of men's uncontrollable sexual desires, and cultural expectations that they should have more than one partner. Some ignored infidelity because they did not want to break up their families; others took lovers of their own.

"I do my own thing and 'phone my "makhwapheni" [local term for someone who is hidden - a boyfriend] and laugh; then I won't worry about [her husband's]late-coming," said a woman in the Free State.

Many of the men spoke of their sexual desires being fuelled by alcohol, which also made them less likely to practice safe sex. Peer pressure was another major reason men gave for having multiple partners: "If I don't have sex then my friends will laugh at me. In that way, I will try to prove a point and get involved with more than one," said a man in the rural northern Limpopo Province.

The urge

Both genders described sex as a vital component of their relationships and their lives generally, with some even viewing it as essential for good health. Despite this, men as well as women had great difficulty communicating with their partners about sex.

Most of the focus group participants had a good knowledge and understanding of HIV and AIDS, but this did not prevent them from having a fatalistic attitude to the likelihood of becoming infected. "They say even if you do not ever get AIDS, the fact is, you are still going to die; we are all going to die one day," said a teenage girl in the Free State.

Goldstein concluded that risky sexual practices were not related to levels of knowledge, but to the level of control individuals have over their sexuality.

As one woman put it: "Even if you are faithful to your husband, you cannot guarantee that you will not be infected because you don't know what your husband does, and he could be infected during his outings. All you could do is to pray, and trust that God will protect you because he is the doctor of all diseases."

Soul City aims to incorporate the findings into a new five-year HIV prevention campaign.

ks/he/oa

2008-05-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

from the NY Post...

STRAYING DOGS

NY MEN TWICE AS LIKELY AS GALS TO CHEAT

By DAVID K. LI

May 19, 2008 -- More than one-quarter of New York men have been unfaithful - double the infidelity rate of Big Apple women, a new report reveals.

A poll conducted for New York magazine showed that 28 percent of Gotham men - who are either married or in a committed relationship - have strayed from their partners, compared to 12 percent of girlfriends and wives.

Women are more afraid of getting caught than men, according to the poll.

While 30 percent of men said they'd still cheat even if their affairs might be revealed, only 12 percent of women said they'd stray under the threat of being caught.

The magazine's poll and accompanying story were sparked by the prostitution scandal that drove ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer from office.

The survey, conducted by Global Strategy Group, polled 401 New Yorkers in all five boroughs. The margin of error was 4.9 percent.

Asked if they'd forgive a cheating partner, men and women were equally apt to issue marital pardons - men would forgive at a 53 percent clip, women at 48 percent.

New Yorkers are not really eager to find out if their partners are scoring on the side, according to the poll.

Only 14 percent said they've checked their partner's e-mail, 6 percent reported they've followed a suspected cheating heart, and just 1 percent admitted to hiring a private eye.

Meanwhile, the notorious seven-year itch is providing a temptation to scratch for more and more married couples, a relationship and sex author told the magazine.

"Marriage can be very satisfying, but it's not going to be this heady romance for 40 years," said Susan Squire, author of the upcoming historical look at marriage, "I Don't."

"Marriage has many benefits and values, but eroticism is not one of them."

Despite the desire of many men to stray, lifting society's puritanical barrier against extramarital affairs might not be the best answer, either.

"We understand that infidelity is a great source of stress and conflict and causes a lot of marriages to break up when discovered," University of Texas psychology Professor David Buss, a frequent author on issues of sex in society, told the mag.

"It causes a great deal of anguish. The Jimmy Carter model might be better: Lust in their hearts."

2008-04-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

Self-professed cheater looking to right his wrongs...what are the chances that ol' Dean got caught, can't get out of his marriage without giving away half of everything he owes and is trying to make a buck of making the best of it? Just askin'.

Signs-of-a-cheater.com Announces Its Plan to Help Those Affected By Infidelity

HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA April 09, 2008 Lifestyle News

(PRLEAP.COM) Dean Osborne is a self professed reformed cheater looking to right his wrongs. Signs-of-a-cheater.com was formed little over six months ago with one thing in mind. To help those that are going through the mental anguish of the thought of being cheated on, or others enduring the painful realization that they were cheated on.

There are a lot of sites today that cater to those looking for relationship advice, but only a few that completely devote its content to helping those hurting because of cheating or infidelity.

"It is unfortunate that the website is getting so many hits; because it can only mean one thing and that there is a lot of cheating going on. My goal is to help as many people as possible through my website. Its personal, but more importantly its real", said Dean Osborne.

The core and main focus of the website is exposing the signs of a cheater and pointing out many of the tactics that a cheater will use to cover their tracks. Suspect your cheating husband or wife? This website will bring to light what they don’t want you to find out. (Be careful out there, people!)

"We chose not to directly call out any sole individual that is cheating, but rather to help others make informed decisions about their relationship when it comes to cheating. You will not see any names of an actual cheater other than me" said Dean jokingly.

Signs-of-a-cheater encourages its visitors to contribute to the content of the website. They get a chance to add feedback to others going through difficult times because of infidelity.

Visit us at www.signs-of-a-cheater.com to join a community that is against cheating. We welcome your feed back on what we can add to our website.

2008-03-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Elliot Spitzer - truly the gift that keeps on giving, not to mention being an idiot. But the issue here is not his infidelity - he's been married, what 23 years? And has three daughters? Few men could tolerate living in that sort of environment indefinitely! And Dr. Laura could well be right. Who knows if "Silda" (there's a name for the ages - thanks, Dad) has been cutting him off or ignoring him sexually? The fact that the daughters go to private school in New York City certainly doesn't indicate that Spitzer and his wife have even been living together for the last few months, unless Spitzer is pulling the Arnie route and "commuting" in his Gulfstream (yeah, another "man of the people.")

No, the issue is that, like all too many lawyers, Spitzer considers himself better than the rest of us and above the laws that the rest of us are supposed to adhere to. He also took an oath when he was sworn in as a lawyer (not to mention as Governor) saying that he would uphold the laws of New York State and the United States of America. He didn't, so screw him!
From "LiveScience":

Surviving Infidelity: What Wives Do When Men Cheat

By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 14 March 2008 01:30 pm ET

Dressed in a black suit with a subdued silk scarf, Silda Wall Spitzer stood by her husband, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer as he announced his resignation to a room full of reporters. When the cameras stopped flashing, however, a husband and wife were left to deal with an alleged violation of marriage and above all, busted trust.

Gov. Spitzer has referred publicly to the alleged infidelity as a "private matter," but the experience is rooted in human behavior and family sociology. That means social scientists can to some extent get into the minds of the parties involved.

So, whether or not Silda Spitzer stays by her husband's side, she is likely considering a divorce, as most women in this situation would, sociologists and other experts told LiveScience.

Gov. Spitzer, 48, allegedly paid $4,300 for a prostitute to commute from New York to Washington, D.C., and meet him at a hotel there last month. News reports state Spitzer was tracked with court-ordered wiretaps. Spitzer was a repeat call-girl customer known as "Client 9," according to The New York Times.

"Some sociologists have argued that 'being faithful' is the central, defining norm of marriage," said Paul Amato, a professor of sociology at Penn State. "Although marriage implies multiple obligations, the obligation to be sexually faithful to one's spouse seems to carry the most weight."

He added, "In fact, infidelity is the marital problem most likely to lead to divorce."

Even so, Silda and Eliot could stay together. "After all you have Hillary and Bill [Clinton], and what hasn't Bill done to Hillary. Everything that could be done to a woman to humiliate and hurt her emotionally and a family, Bill has done," said Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle. "And yet Hillary and Bill have a tight connection that overcomes just about everything, maybe not anger and at some deeper level even hatred. But the attachment and the commitment seem to be inviolable."

When it comes to infidelity, research shows that men are motivated primarily by the lure of sex, while women trek outside the marriage due to emotional neglect and the need for emotional intimacy.

Though more men than women cheat, infidelity is on the rise among both in recent decades. For men and women, the ease of travel to cities where they are anonymous could partially explain the increase. And more and more women are less dependent on their husbands for financial and other stability, so there's less at stake if she does get caught.

Who cheats and why

The Spitzers are far from alone when it comes to fidelity issues. The prevalence of marital infidelity and extramarital sex varies widely depending on the definition of infidelity used and the survey referenced, ranging from about 10 percent of couples to more than half.

A 1994 study by sociologist Edward Lauman found that 10 percent to 11 percent of spouses had cheated in the prior year. Over a lifetime, that study revealed about 18 percent of women and 24 percent of men reported an extramarital affair.

While Americans have become much more accepting of premarital sex during the past several decades, they still view extramarital sex as somewhat intolerable, Amato said.

A 2006 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults revealed that nearly 90 percent of participants said it is morally wrong for married individuals to have an affair, which may or may not involve sex. About the same percentage said adultery is morally wrong.

That's one reason "it really shakes up a marriage," Amato said.

Will she leave him?

When deciding whether to go the divorce route or follow the winding roads of marriage-repair, many factors come into play. In addition to cheating for different reasons, men and women react differently to an unfaithful spouse.

"Typical reactions from both sexes include becoming enraged, sad, humiliated, and depressed," said David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. "There are large individual differences within each sex; men tend to focus more heavily on the sexual aspects of the infidelity; women more on the emotional aspects."

These differences may have deep evolutionary roots. "From a man's perspective, sexual infidelity historically jeopardized his paternity certainty -- 'mama's baby, papa's maybe,'" Buss said. "Male sexual jealousy is, among other things, an adaptation designed to solve the problem of genetic cuckoldry."

Women, on the other hand, are 100-percent certain they are the mothers of their children. And the most upsetting acts of infidelity from a female perspective involve the emotional ties their husbands may have formed with the significant or insignificant others. They are more likely to forgive their husbands if the affair "meant nothing" and involved no emotional intimacy. Overall, women are more likely than men to forgive a cheating spouse.

"So one-night stands and use of prostitutes is less threatening than is a long-term, emotionally bonded extramarital relationship," Amato told LiveScience. "Wives are more likely to forgive their husbands if their husbands were not 'in love' with the other woman."

Amato said men are not as concerned about the emotional connection between their wives and the third party. Even still, husbands "don't want their wives fooling around under any circumstances," Amato said.

Women also tend to take the family into account when pondering a split-up.

"Women are more likely to take into account their children, their economics, their general survival," Schwartz said. "Men are just crushed or upset about what happened to them. They won't think as quickly about their children as the first or second issue; but they will eventually consider that." She added that men generally experience a flooding of anger over the violation.

That rise in blood pressure could result from a guy's perception of cheating as something done to him more than something done to the relationship.

"Men are less willing to forgive," said Ruth Houston, founder of www.InfidelityAdvice.com and author of "Is He Cheating on You? - 829 Telltale Signs." She added, "Men view infidelity as a statement about their manhood, so it's such an affront to him that most men cannot get over this hurdle."

Practical concerns can also steer a woman in one direction or the other.

"Wives are also less likely to consider divorce if they are economically dependent on their husbands, have children or hold strong religious views," Amato said. "Nevertheless, most wives at least consider the option of divorce. And, in fact, infidelity is the marital problem most likely to lead to divorce."

The public eye

While such a transgression would rattle any relationship, those in the public eye — as in the Spitzer case — get a Hollywood dose of the marital misdemeanors.

"Many find the public humiliation the most upsetting aspect of a spouse's infidelity," Buss said. "When's it's played out in the media, as in the Spitzer case, Silda Spitzer must be going through psychological hell."

Schwartz agrees, and adds the amount of money that reportedly supported Spitzer's alleged call-girl habit makes this an "extreme situation" of public humiliation.

"There's also the question of whether she [Silda Spitzer] loved him and he loved her. We don't know that. If she did truly love him and he did truly love her but has a narcissistic problem, she may forgive him. All that said, she may go on and be with him," Schwartz said.

Trust time

No surprise — trust is damaged deeply after infidelity is out in the open.

"After the incident comes to light, husbands as well as wives are less happy with their marriages, report more marital conflict, experience elevated levels of psychological distress and increase their thoughts of divorce," Amato said.

"Many spouses never fully recover from their feelings of betrayal and anger, even if they stay together," he said. "Counseling can help, however, and some couples eventually manage to repair their relationships."

Couples should expect a lengthy process, as no quick-fix exists.

"Re-establishing trust takes time, of course," Amato said, "but if both spouses sincerely want the marriage to continue and are willing to work on it, then it is possible to have a healthy relationship again."

One recent study found that most couples stayed together after an incident of infidelity.

"Sometimes it's a real wake-up call for the relationship," Schwartz said in a telephone interview. "They have no excuses, but they realize they really have something they want to protect and they really commit themselves to it."

Relationship (emotional) recovery

For couples on the journey of patching up their relationships, Candyce Russell, a licensed family therapist, points out the importance of understanding the emotions following infidelity.

In her research, Russell found three emotional stages will follow an incident of infidelity:

Stage one (roller-coaster): a time filled with strong emotions, ranging from anger and self-blame to periods of introspection and appreciation for the relationship.

Stage two (moratorium): a less emotional period in which the cheated-on spouse tries to make sense of the infidelity, obsesses about details of the affair, retreats physically and emotionally from the relationship, and reaches out to others for help.

Stage three (trust-building): for couples who decided they wanted to stay together and make their marriage work.

"In the trust-building stage, showing commitment to the relationship was most important for injured parties to begin forgiving and building trust," Russell said.

2008-03-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

Rule #1, Governor, is "Don't get caught." :)

Prostitution advances in a wired world

By HILLARY RHODES, Associated Press WriterWed Mar 12, 11:09 AM ET

It may be the world's oldest profession, but prostitution is using some 21st-century tricks.

The prostitution scandal involving New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer lays bare some of the inner workings of modern-day sex work: text messaging to clock in the client, electronic fund transfers, a Web site featuring color photos, prices and rankings.

There's always been a distinction between indoor and street-level prostitution, and advances in technology have increasingly separated the two, said Ronald Weitzer, author of "Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry."

Not only can prostitutes and escort services now run more efficient businesses, but they can leverage word-of-mouth advertising in new ways to build their brands and troll for clients. Online social communities built around the escort and sex worker industries can solidify customer loyalty.

"It's commercial, but it's also social, so people do really form relationships," says Audacia Ray, author of "Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration" and a former sex worker.

"Clients become buddies," she said.

There are a host of online message boards where clients or potential clients can discuss, rate and exchange information about individual women.

A recent rating of one woman on the escort-review site http://www.bigdoggie.com reads: "She is the real deal. She's bright, funny, enthusiastic, beautiful, flawless body, really loves what she does."

Another woman got a bad review — not for her physical shortcomings, but for her communications etiquette: "... didn't return calls or e-mails. Irresponsible."

Such sites are natural places for escorts or prostitutes to advertise, linking to their own Web sites, a technique many sex workers use, Ray said.

Technology also eases the business-end of things, Weitzer says. While clients are surveying potential companions, escort-service managers can look into clients with a background check or even a simple Google search.

Payment is easier, too.

"It's often convenient to have an account established with a balance, so if you have the last-minute urge, you don't have to worry about getting money into the account," says Norma Jean Almodovar, executive director of the sex workers' rights organization COYOTE ("Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics") in Southern California.

Emperors Club VIP, the high-end prostitution organization Spitzer allegedly was involved with, was brought down when banks noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts and filed suspicious-activity reports with the Internal Revenue Service, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

The accounts were traced back to Spitzer, and public-corruption investigators opened an inquiry.

It's a long way from leaving cash on the dresser.

Cell phones are handy, too. According to court documents, some details of the alleged appointment Spitzer had with a prostitute were arranged via text message. She was even instructed by her home office to send a text message when he arrived so the office could start the clock ticking on his allotted time, according to court papers.

Devices such as Web cams also have created new opportunities, Almodovar said.

For instance, if a customer is traveling and wants to talk with a prostitute, "he can just go on the Internet and she can be in her home, and he can be in Europe, and they can have long-distance sexual dalliances," Almodovar said.

But even with so much electronic evidence, authorities permit a lot of prostitution to happen without repercussions.

"On the one hand, they're advertised, openly. So you know it exists, and you're letting it go. But then they're not taxed, or prosecuted, unless it becomes a quality-of-life issue or (involves) a public figure they happen to run across. Think of all that cash," said Assistant Philadelphia District Attorney Rich DeSipio, who is assigned to the sex-crimes unit.

And sex workers also can use high-tech measures to avoid getting caught.

High-end call girls might use bug- and camera-detection equipment to look for surveillance devices, said Jimmie Mesis, editor in chief of Professional Investigator Magazine.

Police often don't find the equipment until after they make an arrest, Mesis said. "They realize, 'Look at this. She has a bug detector. She has a hidden-camera detector. This is a pretty sophisticated set-up here.'"

But for every client who is revealed, no one knows how much prostitution remains hidden.

"The surprise should not be that (Spitzer) was a client, but that he got exposed," Almodovar said. "Despite the technology we have, 99 percent of them will never get discovered.

"If we didn't have so many clients, we wouldn't be prostitutes."

___

2008-03-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

Now this is fun...hypocrisy will out.

Spitzer Gets Spitzered

How Spitzer was brought down by the kind of investigation he pioneered.

Daniel Gross

Newsweek Web Exclusive

The stock market may be battered, the dollar may be plunging, and the economy may be tanking, but there's a bull market in schadenfreude on Wall Street this afternoon. Even as the Dow was on its way to notching another triple-digit loss, whoops of joy erupted from the dispirited trading floors today on news of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's disgrace. Spitzer, who rose to prominence as a scourge of Wall Street, uprooting corrupt practices, coming down hard on bad actors and establishing a new moral order, was laid low by reports that he had been involved in a prostitution ring.

Details are still emerging, and it's unclear how this will all shake out, but one thing is immediately clear: Spitzer has been hoisted on his own petard, brought down by the same kind of investigation he pioneered as a prosecutor. The analogies between Wall Street and prostitution aren't perfect. (On Wall Street, for example, the transactions involving favors for money are generally conducted when both parties are fully clothed.) But he may have fallen prey to the same types of circumstances and dynamics that led to his astonishing rise.

The unnecessary digital trail. Among Spitzer's biggest triumphs as New York attorney general was the investment banking research cases, in which he bludgeoned Wall Street's biggest banks into an expensive settlement of charges that they pimped out research recommendations in exchange for banking fees. The smoking gun: incriminating e-mails from analysts. Of all people, Spitzer should know that whether you're prostituting out investment analysis for the sake of banking fees or you're a governor using the services of expensive prostitutes, discretion is a paramount value. The first and last rule is not to create a paper trail—or, in this age, a digital trail—that can come back to haunt you. But he was reportedly caught on wiretaps discussing bringing a prostitute to Washington to meet him at a hotel.

Everybody does it, right? Many of the Wall Street figures Spitzer nailed were engaging in activities that looked skeevy when exposed to the public but were generally well known and accepted by the powers that be. Until Spitzer, investment banks giving buy ratings to their investment banking clients and spinning shares of hot IPOs to the personal accounts of executives who funneled investment banking fees their way were common practices at Wall Street's top firms. The executives nailed by Spitzer thought they were engaging in routine activity and never thought they could be indicted for it. The same holds, to a different degree, with high-end prostitution. In New York high-end prostitution is widely acknowledged and generally tolerated, though heavily cloaked in euphemism. Ads for high-end escort services fill respectable publications like New York magazine. Fancy gentlemen's clubs and strip joints (where all sorts of services are available upon negotiation or request) operate with full sanction of the law. Comparatively few of those involved in it are arrested, and the johns are almost never prosecuted. Spitzer likely thought that he too was engaging in a practice common among men of his social and economic class, and that the likelihood of prosecution was exceedingly low.

The law is an ass. Wall Street executives who ran afoul of Eliot Spitzer earlier this decade found they were in deep trouble because of a peculiar wrinkle in the law. They found their options limited because they happened to conduct their business in New York. Spitzer had at his disposal the Martin Act, a 1921 piece of legislation that, as Nicholas Thompson noted in this Legal Affairs piece, gives extraordinary powers and discretion to an attorney general fighting financial fraud. Thompson noted that "people called in for questioning during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. Combined, the act's powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state." In Spitzer's case, he may have landed in water that was hotter than it might have otherwise been because he decided to do some of his business in Washington, D.C. (on the night before Valentine's Day, no less). By allegedly arranging for a prostitute to travel across state lines from New York to Washington, D.C., Spitzer may have bumped up his indiscretions from a violation of state to a violation of federal law—a much more serious matter.

After-hours trading. One of Spitzer's signature crusades as attorney general was unearthing the scandals of late trading—in which mutual funds would allow favored clients (usually hedge funds) to enter and exit rapidly on terms not available to retail investors. When that happened, Spitzer demanded that the executives responsible, among them Richard Strong, founder and chairman of Strong Capital Management, resign and face lifetime bans from the industry. Now that he's apparently been caught trading illicitly after hours, the top executive of the state of New York may be forced to resign and accept a lifetime ban from his industry.

2008-02-11T17:15:00.000-08:00

Housewife's explicit blog gets 340,000 hits

Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A Taipei County woman now known as "Beibei, the Lusty Housewife," posted revealing photographs of herself on a blog site titled "The Lusty World of a 28-Year-Old Housewife" last month, along with alleged stories of her extramarital adventures, so far attracting over 340,000 "hits," or views.

In an interview with Taiwan media, Beibei was quoted as stating that "adultery is fun, stimulating and makes me feel just the same way as any man committing the same act."

The blog recounts Beibei's experiences of inviting men she met over the Internet to go out while her husband was out at work, caressing, kissing and having intercourse in the stairway leading up to her apartment.

One story tells of her husband inviting a co-worker over to their apartment. When the husband left to buy food and pick up their son, the co-worker began to make advances towards Beibei in the kitchen, which were interrupted by the returning husband and their four-year-old child. When her husband asked them what they were doing, Beibei replied that she was showing his friend around their home.

Due to being "someone's wife," Beibei has captivated the short attention span of the Taiwanese media, making the first page of yesterday's edition of "The Apple Daily," a Hong Kong-based newspaper.

According to Apple Daily, Beibei closed her blog after agreeing to an interview with the daily, while questioning "How can you expect someone to be satisfied if they have to have sex with the same person for the rest of your life?"

After being married five years, Beibei sees her sexual life as nothing to complain about, but the mother still finds her life lacks the stimulation achieved through committing adultery, since it is associated with such heavy taboos.

According to the interview, every one of Beibei's extra-marital experiences with 30 different partners was documented on the blog site, in the hope that she can look back in her old age at a time that was exciting and full of good memories.

Her previous partners include company managers, co-workers, people met over the Internet, and also friends of her husband. According to reporter Wang Chao-bin, Beibei suddenly asked him, "You're so curious about me, how about we have sex while you interview me? I've never slept with a journalist before." Wang alleges to have tried to change the subject while spending the rest of the interview feeling embarrassed.

The attention brought by the story toward society's view of adulterous women as opposed to adulterous men has incited new debate over whether it is more unacceptable if a woman commits adultery than if it is instigated by a male.

2008-02-07T14:04:00.000-08:00

Virtual Affairs: Real Life Mess?

(only if you let it become one by not obeying the rules!)

"Cyber sex is like the crack cocaine of cocaine addiction …it’s so powerful. It can develop into problems so quickly.”

Jennifer Schneider, Ph.D., M.D.
Sex Addiction Specialist

CYBER WORLD RELATIONSHIPS

CHATROOMS AND INFIDELITY: In her year long study of online infidelity at the University of Florida, Beatriz Avila Mileham recruited 76 men and 10 women who regularly visit chat rooms tailored to married people looking for a tryst. Most of the subjects told Mileham that initial online flirtation doesn’t count as cheating: 80 percent said they felt like they were just “talking with a computer.” However, online interactions can lead to real world relationships. Thirty percent said they had a face-to-face meeting with someone they met online. Twenty-four of those 26 people ended up having an affair.

FLIRTING VIA THE INTERNET: IS IT CHEATING? According to MSNBC, Women tend to view online flirtation as a form of cheating more than men. Seventy-three percent of women believe sending a sexually flirtatious e-mail to a co-worker is cheating while only 53 percent of men do. The cheating meter increases slightly for online talk or “webcamming:” 77 percent of women feel it’s cheating while 57 percent of men do.

SECOND LIFE: A GROWING COMMUNITY: In 2001, San Francisco software developer Philip Rosendale launched Second Life, a 3-D virtual world currently inhabited by 8 million users from around the world. Users live in this virtual world through avatars, graphical versions of themselves. Millions of real U.S. dollars are invested in this cyber community each month, with money being spent on clothing, homes, cars, and other luxuries. A recent Dutch study found Second Lifers are dedicating a significant chunk of their time to this virtual world: 57 percent spend more than 18 hours a week in their Second Life while 33 percent spend more than 30 hours a week. According to Gartner Research, by 2011, four of every five people who use the internet will participate in Second Life or some other virtual community.

Here's my favorite part:

SEX IN SECOND LIFE: The people who live in this online universe can form relationships and even have sex with each other. While avatars do not come complete with genitalia, they can be bought. Beds, other furniture, and even sadomasochistic devises can also be purchased along with software to animate a sexual encounter.

2008-01-30T13:51:00.000-08:00

yep...as nature intended

Your (naturally) cheating, deceiving heart

By: Jonathan Hanson

Posted: 1/28/08

I used to know a gentleman who was something of a "Ladies' Man."

Other than his abilities with women, he was pretty unremarkable. No movie star good looks, no loads of money, and I didn't find him to be particularly bright.

One day I asked him if he would ever consider settling down and getting married. He said, "The key to my success with girls is that I do what comes naturally."

When I asked him what he did, he told me, "I don't know, but whatever it is, it's the secret to what women want."

"Well? What's the secret?"

"Beats me," he said. "It's so secret, not even women know it."

He was either a misunderstood genius or a bum.

Either way, he had - or had the illusion of having - a keen understanding of human relationships. Namely that men, and to a growing extent women, are not monogamous material.

I say monogamy rather than marriage because I think it is important to separate the two into distinct classifications. While we may believe that marriage implies monogamy, the authorities do not support this.

The author of the book "The Monogamy Myth," Peggy Vaughan, said, "Most experts do consider the 'educated guess' that at the present time some 50 to 65 percent of husbands and 45 to 55 percent of wives become extra-maritally involved by the age of 40 to be a relatively sound and reasonable one."

Though exact figures are nearly impossible to pin down given the clandestine characteristics of infidelity, this hypothesis is supported by numerical research and data. But if the institution of marriage has been around for thousands of years, why are we suddenly seeing a spike in infidelity?

More likely than not, we aren't. Societies' outlooks on infidelity over the past millennia have differed widely ranging from the Romans (see Caligula) to the Puritans (see The Scarlet Letter), yet it's always been there.

But if we choose to marry rather than are arranged to marry - and if we think we're choosing monogamy over promiscuity - then why are we statistically prone to cheat?

Conventional wisdom says that men, and apparently women, are pigs. But if that were the case, then why the charade of marrying to begin with? I think a lot of it has to do with the conceptions people have about marriage and who they think they really are in the first place.

First published in 1935 with several subsequent editions published throughout the mid '60s, Drs. Hannah and Abraham Stone's "A Marriage Manual" says, "Men and women may marry for any number of individual reasons. Basically, however, they seek in marriage three main objectives: a stable, permanent association based on mutual affection, on love and companionship; the freedom and privilege of a sexual relationship; and the establishment of a home and a family."

It was true in 1935, and I think it's true enough in 2008.

While our reasons for marrying may be as valid as they were in 1935, our notions regarding what marriage actually is like have changed dramatically. Too many couples nowadays see marriage as the logical conclusion of a courtship, rather than a lifestyle choice that is extremely different from the one they've been living.

By viewing marriage as an extension of their dating era, rather than the beginning of an entirely new one, couples are woefully unprepared for the harsh realities that can set in after eight years - when most first marriages end.

And though our biologically promiscuous nature probably plays a major role in leading people to cheat, it's important to remember our baser instincts are affected deeply by our mental wants and desires. Psychologically, people grow and change all the time. No one reading this now will be the exact same person 10 years from now.

Take me, for example. Years ago, I was a briefs man to the end. Then one morning, I woke up and found them to be tight, constrictive and binding. I switched to boxers and never looked back. Someday I may return to briefs, or maybe boxer-briefs, or maybe swear off underpants all together.

In this way, people can be like underwear. You can grow into them, and you can grow out of them. If you're lucky, you grow with a person, but just as often, you can grow apart. Personally, the idea of waking up next to a woman one morning and realizing I barely know her anymore is almost as scary as knowing up front that she's a horrible person.

One often-cited theory behind infidelity is that one or both parties are simply unhappy or unfulfilled by their spouse. According to his book, "Stumbling on Happiness," Daniel Gilbert says we are poor at predicting what will make us happy.

"When we imagine future circumstances," he says, "we fill in details that won't really come to pass and leave out details that will. When we imagine future feelings, we find it impossible to ignore what we are feeling now and impossible to recognize how we will think about the things that happen later."

So perhaps when we marry, we imagine our lives will be one way when in fact they'll be drastically different - leaving a spouse or marriage to fail to measure up and a mistress or master to come into the picture.

In spite of the reasons for people to cheat, the divorce rate in America isn't as high as most people think - it's actually around 40 percent, not 50 - meaning lots of marriages seem to overcome infidelity. But one way or another, a cheating heart always will tell.

In the film "Moonstruck," an old, married Italian couple sits at the breakfast table when the wife, Rose, says to her husband, Cosmo, "I want you to stop seeing her." Realizing he's been caught, he stands up, slams his hand on the table and calmly says, "OK."

"And go to confession," she says.

Not looking at her, he replies, "A man understands one day that his life is built on nothing. And that is a bad, crazy day."

Rose looks at him and says firmly, "Your life is not built on nothing." And then she says, "Ti amo," and he says, "Ti amo," and all is well.

2008-01-09T16:01:00.000-08:00

Man spots wife during visit to brothel

‘I was dumbfounded. I thought I was dreaming,’ he tells Polish newspaper

updated 7:01 a.m. PT, Wed., Jan. 9, 2008

WARSAW, Poland - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees.

Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

"I was dumbfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22571847/

Of course, no questioning as to why *he* was there. :) But hey, at least she's earning extra dough!

2008-01-02T14:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22205238/

From MSNBC:

Let's be careful out there!

Tech aplenty for cheaters, suspicious spouses

Both sides in a partnership have many options for snooping, stepping out

By Athima Chansanchai

updated 4:26 p.m. PT, Wed., Dec. 12, 2007

When Elvis Presley sang "Suspicious Minds," he probably never realized he'd be forever associated with this affair anthem, which spoke to his hound dog side. He was the King — but he was also the rock icon cliche of the guy who stepped out on his wife.

Back in those days, Elvis was on the road and surrounded by a protective entourage. Priscilla’s options to spy on him would have been limited. A PI would probably have not been out of the question.

But today, technology would be in her favor. Spouses have discovered that snooping isn’t just for Homeland Security, it’s something they can pick up without ever having to leave home. They can arm themselves with GPS phones, voice-activated recorders, keyloggers and online cell phone accounts, among the range of resources available to them from spy stores and online that make it easy for the suspicious to do surveillance.

Conversely, those who want to stray outside of marriages and committed relationships have more tools at their disposal than ever before. Pre-paid cell phones, instant messaging, biometric access to computers and secret e-mail accounts are just some of the ways affair partners can carry out their trysts.

“The internet is the cheater’s best friend,” said Ruth Houston, who runs the Web site InfidelityAdvice.com. “Think about what a person would’ve had to do 15, 20 years ago to have an affair. They’d have to physically go out there to find a partner. Now they can sit comfortably in the privacy of own home. The Internet has removed all risk. People who may have entertained the idea 20 years ago can actually dabble at it until they feel ‘it’s not for me.’”

She’s not talking chat rooms and e-mail, either. That’s so 15 years ago. Now, sites like AshleyMadison.com and AdultFriendFinder actually facilitate discreet encounters. The Ashley Madison Agency even has a gasp-inducing slogan on the “Attached” sign-up page: “When Monogamy Becomes Monotony.” Switch over to the Single sign-up and the motto changes to: “Because the Best Men & Women Are Already Taken.”

“There are certainly windows of infidelity opportunity because of technology,” said Branden Henline, Ph.D., director of marriage and therapy programs at Northcentral University in Arizona. “It’s more than just opportunity, frankly, it’s solicited. It’s the cachet of consumerism, as well as the social network process.”

MySpace, Facebook and other social networks, he said, are all fertile ground for temptation. Ex-girlfriends, boyfriends, what-ifs, could-have-been’s, loves-of-your-life: they’re all just a click away. It’s a slippery slope from an emotional affair to sexual encounters.

Escaping detection nowadays is as easy as buying a device like the bill-free Tracfone, or wiping histories and texts clean off computers and phones. The stealth involved in these relationships is sometimes worthy of “Alias,” in that double lives might not exist so handily were it not for the ways to communicate without ever touching.

To catch a cheat, follow your gut. More than likely, it’s telling you something is off. There are tons of tips on the signs of straying, but some are universal. Your honey starts to take extra care in his or her appearance — buying new clothes, working out, new haircut. They start meticulously deleting sent messages and keep their inbox pristine. Sex is either feast or famine or just plain different. Their cell phone never leaves their side. You get the idea and then it starts to gnaw at you.

“The interesting thing, if it’s going on, you’re not going to get any peace until you know, confirm or disprove what you suspect,” said the Queens, New York-based Houston, who 15 years ago discovered her then-husband was cheating on her with three women. She’s interviewed thousands of investigators, therapists, academics, victims and perpetrators since then and wrote a book, “Is He Cheating on You?”

Her compiled numbers (which she takes from therapists and investigators rather than academic studies) are grim: 80 percent of all committed relationships (cyber, same-sex, marriages, live-ins, etc.) have experienced infidelity. She thinks these numbers are at their highest ever and she says technology does foot the blame to a large degree.

She’s all about the proactive approach: Catch him or her before it gets too deep. But what if you’re not sure and want proof before confronting?

I asked Tony DeLorenzo, spokesman for All State Investigations, Inc. (94truth.com), what kinds of resources the pros have in tracking down these objects of illicit desire. DeLorenzo’s dad started the company 55 years ago and they now have offices not only in New Jersey, where they started, but also in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania and New York. Infidelity is one lucrative business. Back in those olden days, private dicks used cameras with film and busted down doors to nab the guilty parties in flagrante delicto.

It’s still about surveillance, but now the technology provides his investigators with long-range digital cameras, GPS trackers (only on jointly owned vehicles), keystroke-capturing software and hidden mini-cams.

Infidelity doesn’t discriminate — couples affected are seemingly happy, straight or gay. DeLorenzo has some long-term clients who keep their spouses in sight if a pattern is established in their cheating behavior.

They follow men 55 percent of the time — down from 80 percent in his father’s day. Seventy-five percent of his female clients reconcile with their guys, while the same number of male clients dump their wives once they receive confirmation of their worst fears.

“There is no one out there we cannot catch,” DeLorenzo claimed. “They can only cover their tracks so much. Sooner or later they have to meet.”

And what if they never do? What if it’s all online?

“When you’re showing affection to someone else or doing anything you can’t do in front of a wife or girlfriend (or husband, boyfriend, live-in), that’s considered cheating,” DeLorenzo said.

If you’re not able to fork over the $500 to $1,000 it would take to engage a PI, there are ways to gather evidence with as much stealth as the wayward spouse.

Over at stores like SpyGear4U.com, there is a whole page of gadgets you can buy under the link, “Catch a Cheater.” On it: GPS (real-time trackers costing $599) or motion-sensitive digital videos hidden inside air purifiers and clock radios, and recorders disguised as pens. (Warning: check your state’s wire-tapping laws to make sure you’re not doing anything illegal if you go the surreptitious voice-recording route.) There’s even a semen test kit for use on clothing, for those inclined to go a little CSI.

Suspicious partners can also download keyloggers like E-Blaster, Acespy.com, Revealer and Spectorsoft.com to record every keystroke without their partner’s knowledge. Results can be e-mailed upon activity, which could provide some definitive proof, but warning: there is also potential for heartache in reading graphic or explicit sexual language in e-mails and instant messages (TMI!)

Pulling up histories on Internet searches can also clue in the betrayed to their sweetie's visits to dating services and personals. Options on IM programs and Google bars can also allow them to automatically keep a record of those conversations.

The betrayed also have forums online where they can gain support, advice and reassurance from others going through what they’re experiencing, such as SurvivingInfidelity.com, where investigative techniques are shared after a certain number of legitimate posts.

DeLorenzo is also launching Infidelity.com as an advice site with legal and investigative experts to help those in need.

The impulse to verify what the spouse is up to is strong, Houston said, but it must be met.

“The reason why you’d want to know, if it turns out to be true, you can’t afford to be last one to know,” she said. “You want to protect yourself sexually, legally. You want to find out if this is a fling or is this something serious, am I looking at a divorce somewhere down the road? You have to find out.”

2007-12-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

Personally, I am in the extreme skeptic camp when it comes to global warming...but this is clever nevertheless, showing the absurdity of the "offset" scam for all to see.

http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,140518/printable.html

Infidelity a Problem? Offset Your Cheating Online

Want the the chance to offset infidelity by paying random strangers to remain faithful? A Web site makes the satirical offer to highlight its view of carbon offsetting.

Andrew Hendry, Computerworld-Australia

Wednesday, December 12, 2007 04:00 PM PST

A Web site is offering people the chance to offset their infidelity by paying random strangers to remain faithful in a satirical bid to highlight its view of carbon offsetting as an "inadequate" and "misguided" response to climate change.

Cheatneutral began as a joke amongst three friends--Beth Stratford, Alex Randall and Christian Hunt - and works in two ways to tame fast females and philanderers.

Users can freely sign up to become a Cheatneutral "project", meaning they agree to remain single or monogamous in order to neutralize the cheating of somebody else. Or they can offset their own cheating by sponsoring a "project" with a one-time $2.21 payment.

Tongue Firmly in Cheek

The site suggests that jealousy and heartbreak are a natural part of modern life, and that no matter how hard we try to reduce the amount we cheat on our partners, it is just not possible to remain faithful.

"That's why we help you neutralize your cheating," the site says. "Your actions are offset by a global network of fidelity developed by us. By paying Cheatneutral, you're funding monogamy-boosting offset projects - we simply invest the money you give us in monogamous, faithful or just plain single people, to encourage them to stay that way."

Beth Stratford said Randall and Hunt came up with the idea one night in a bar.

"All winter we'd been talking about how carbon offsetting is such an inadequate and misguided response to climate change. We realized that launching an infidelity offset service - and then filming the public and media response - would be an entertaining and seductive way to draw people into the debate."

"Reassuringly (for human nature) we've actually had very few people signing up to offset cheating, we're not talking any great sum of money," Stratford said.

Each member of the team works in the environmental sector, but Stratford stresses that Cheatneutral is a project entirely independent of their day jobs.

Randall works for the UK's Centre for Alternative Technology, Hunt for the Public Interest Research Centre, and Stratford is currently working on a feature film about climate change.

The trio's inspiration stems from a belief that the carbon offset industry does more harm than good. They feel that even if the offset market was properly regulated and accountable, the culture of offsets would still present a significant obstacle to effective action in combating climate change.

"Why? Because, very briefly, it presents itself as a way that people can effectively deal with climate change while largely maintaining their levels of energy consumption. It masks the need for dramatic emissions reduction in the West, and instead seems to offer a license to pollute," Stratford said.

The group also believes that the primary beneficiaries of offset schemes are industries whose profit margins depend on delaying the transition to a low-carbon economy for as long as possible.

"From flights, to four-wheel drives, to petrol itself, carbon offsets provide a false legitimacy to some of the most inherently unsustainable products and services on the market," Stratford said.

Therefore Cheatneutral, as the site proclaims, "tries to make it seem acceptable to cheat on your partner in the same way carbon offsetting tries to make it acceptable to carry on emitting excess carbon. Having Cheatneutral's services could actually encourage you to cheat more. If the carbon offsetters persuade you that it is possible to offset your emissions, you will carry on emitting excess carbon rather than think about reducing your emissions".

While the site has attracted plenty of attention, not everyone seems to get the joke.

Stratford revealed that several North American radio show hosts showed interest in cheat offsetting as a serious method of reducing levels of heartbreak in the atmosphere.

"We also had a phone-call from Loving Links -- a 'major resource for extra marital affairs' - who wanted us to get into bed with them, so to speak, presumably to provide a built-in offsetting service for their philanderers," she said.

But Stratford said the group has also engaged in constructive dialogue with politicians, spokesmen for the offset industry, as well as "enlightened ex-offsetters".

2007-12-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

And in video gaming news...from Gaming Today. People - stop leaving evidence behind!

http://news.filefront.com/husband-finds-evidence-of-wife-cheating-on-wii/

Husband Finds Evidence of Wife Cheating on Wii

Posted by Jonathan on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Every console has a number of uses, but the Wii is thus far the only one I’ve heard of catching a cheating spouse. An unnamed soldier wrote an e-mail to GoNintendo recently describing how he went to serve overseas in 2006 and found out that his wife had cheated on him at one point in October. The infidelity apparently stopped, but when he returned home this past summer, his family and friends began telling him of further incidents. Eventually this all took a toll on the marriage and he moved out and filed for divorce. Recently though, he started casually going through his Wii to look over some of the Miis he had created:

As I go through the characters I see there is a Mii that I have not created. It’s a guy strikingly similar to PBA Bowler *name deleted*. To be sure of this, I went into the Wil Message Board and click on the Calendar option. Through this menu I was able to identify the many nights my wife’s Mii and this ‘other’ Mii Character played Wii Bowling. It became clearly obvious that she couldn’t explain her way out of this. Especially since she claims that she never had contact with him after her alleged ‘kiss’ in October 2006.

Ouch. Guess this kind of goes against the whole family friendly image Nintendo’s been going for.

Via GoNintendo

2007-10-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

From Electric News...

My grandson is my son.

Taiwanese man jailed for affair with son's wife

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,145616,00.html

IN a twisted case of adultery and incest, a grandfather from Taichung was convicted of adultery and fathering his own grandson after an illicit affair with his daughter-in-law, reported Apple Daily Taiwan.

The confusing web of relations started spinning five years ago when rice dealer Lai Yan Xiong, then 60, found a Chinese bride, 23-year-old Chen Mei Hua, for his mentally-disabled son.

All was well until three years ago, when his wife Mrs Lai Zeng Yu, now 65, caught Lai and Chen in bed.

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A furious Mrs Lai sued her husband for adultery, but the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.

She then entered a settlement with her husband, who gave her NT$40million ($1.8m) in cash and title deeds, to drop the case.

Not long after, Chen gave birth to a son. But Mrs Lai felt that the baby did not look like her son at all, and suspected her husband of fathering the child.

She took saliva samples from both her son and the baby and did a DNA test. The test results confirmed that her son did not father the baby.

Mrs Lai went to court a second time, but her case was declared void as Mrs Lai had already entered a settlement with her husband earlier.

FRESH EVIDENCE

Lai then sent Chen and the baby back to China. This move, however, was seen as a sign of guilty conscience by the prosecution.

They re-opened the case after receiving new testimony from the younger Lai who claimed that he 'saw Ah Pa (father) and wife sleeping together many times'.

A second DNA test proved Lai's paternity of his grandchild. And on Thursday, Lai and Chen were sentenced to three months' jail and fined NT$162,000 each.

2007-10-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

this is great...

from "The Daily Mail", Great Britain

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=486319&in_page_id=1770

Husband gets £870 life-size tattoo of his wife - then discovers she is having affair

After 15 happy years with his wife, Alan Jenkins decided it was time for the ultimate expression of love.

So, determined to prove his devotion, he had a lifesize image of her face - along with those of their two daughters - tattooed on his back.

The painful procedure took 20 hours and cost £870.

Unfortunately for the besotted Alan, it also backfired on a monumental scale after Lisa, 36, absconded with a 25-year-old Latvian hunk she had met at work.

Speaking last night, the jilted steelworker, said: "It's a real sickener. I thought she was happy.

"I had it because I thought we loved each other - I feel very betrayed."

Lisa met her new love, fitness instructor Kaspars Gavars, at work and now intends to move him into the family home in Port Talbot, South Wales, - once Alan has moved out.

"I didn't plan to fall in love with Kaspars - it just happened," she said.

"And I never wanted Alan to have my face tattooed on his back in the first place."

Alan, who has two girls Daniella, ten and Jade, 15, only grew suspicious after Kaspars started giving Lisa lifts to work.

He could be forgiven for wanting his wife off his back for good, but despite his heartache, he has no plans to have to tattoo removed.

"Lisa may have left me but she'll be on my back forever thanks to the tattoo," he said.

"But I've still got plenty of room on my chest if I get hooked up again."

2007-10-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

Finding consumer needs and filling them...

Marina-based adultery 'how-to' business appears on Montel Friday
By LESLIE ESCOBAR
The Salinas Californian (Oct. 3, 2007)
http://thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070927/NEWS01/70927041/1002

An unhappy husband decides to cheat on his wife and, not wanting to get caught, enlists the help of a private consultant to coach him on how to keep it secret.

It’s an unconventional scenario, yet it’s exactly what men (and women) considering having an affair can do with the help of the “Anne Noble” Web site at www.annenoble.com.

Marina resident Deborah Barnhart, who founded and runs the site, will appear on “Montel” today to talk about her company’s services.

She’ll be joined by the founder of The Ashley Madison Agency, a similar venture, and the couple behind the online advice column “Ask Dan and Jennifer.”

The 37-year-old Barnhart said she began brainstorming the idea in 1992. The site’s name was inspired by her maiden name, Deborah Anne Noble.

“That’s back when I was in the Air Force,” she said. “I did 10 years in the military. All my co-workers were men, so I heard a lot of stories from the guys being unhappy in their marriages but still loving their wives.”

Barnhart said she started researching topics such as human psychology, mating instincts and dating.

“I started to see how women and men just don’t mesh when it comes to sex, and how men … if they’re dependent on it, go elsewhere,” she said. “To them, it’s like eating; it’s something that they need and require. When they’re cut off from that, they just suffer in silence.”

Barnhart launched “Anne Noble” in July. Users pay a monthly fee of $499, which allows them unlimited e-mails and two 45-minute phone calls per week with a consultant. The consultant provides advice such as how to have an undetectable affair — or how to end one.

“We offer strategies and game plans to offer what they’re missing at home,” she said. “They don’t want to tear their family apart. These men — 99 percent of them — have already tried marriage counseling and have had bad experiences, or the wife refuses to go.”

Not that men are the only clients of “Anne Noble,” Barnhart said. She said she helped one woman fulfill her fantasy of having a sexual relationship with another woman.

Not surprisingly, running a Web site that helps people commit adultery has garnered plenty of criticism. However, Barnhart said most critics tend to side with the spouse who’s cheated on rather than try to understand the reasons why a husband or wife would stray.

“I don’t think that it’s any more right than a wife willing to withhold sex from her husband because she simply doesn’t want to,” she said. “Is he supposed to hold it in because she doesn’t want to?” (excellent question!)

2007-09-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

Cheats can now prosper in the new lovey dovey world of US politics

To understand how an adulterer can now be a presidential frontrunner, we need to peer inside Americans' bedrooms

Pamela Druckerman
Friday September 7, 2007
The Guardian

Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton were a picture-perfect couple as they campaigned together recently. Between political remarks they held hands, hugged and exchanged intimate whispers. And yet even some supporters were surely wondering: how on earth can they still be married?

Hillary Clinton's legendary endurance of her husband's extramarital trysts haunts her candidacy for president. But then, there's no shortage of adultery hovering over this election: Rudy Giuliani's awkward transition into his third marriage; John McCain's overlapping relationships with his first and second wives; and Newt Gingrich's "periods of weakness". Mitt Romney seems one of the few major candidates without marital baggage - save for a great-grandfather who was a polygamist.

Europeans are keen to know who their politicians are bedding, but that doesn't usually sway their votes. Nicolas Sarkozy sailed into the French presidency in May, even though gossip about his marriage is a fixture of Parisian dinner parties. In Britain, political sex scandals seem more like an industry than a moral matter. When newspapers reported last year that John Prescott, then deputy prime minister, had been involved with his diary secretary, it took about a day for the woman to hire a publicist and sell her story to the Mail on Sunday - but Prescott held on to his post for another year. David Blunkett, while home secretary, could probably have weathered the media storm over his involvement with a married mother, who then had his child, if only he hadn't fast-tracked a visa for her nanny.

In the US, the polls seem to be ominous for adulterers. In a Newsweek survey this year, 43% of Americans and more than half of Republican evangelicals said they wouldn't vote for a candidate who had an extramarital affair. A Gallup poll last year found that adultery was seen as worse than human cloning.

So why is Giuliani a frontrunner, with strong support from evangelicals? The answer isn't in the polls, where people say what they think they should - it's in bedrooms. The changing way Americans treat politicians' infidelities reflects the changing way they handle such affairs in their own lives.

Back when John Kennedy took women for a dip in the presidential pool without a peep from the press, Americans didn't automatically assume that cheaters had personality defects. On the contrary, their behaviour could be seen as glamorous or passionate. In 1973, slightly fewer than 70% of Americans said that adultery was "always wrong", compared with 82% in 2004. In the days when most husbands went to work while wives tended house, Americans were more comfortable with the idea that couples might keep secrets from each other; a man could even safely boast about his extramarital exploits. Lyndon Johnson so detested being in Kennedy's sexual shadow that he reportedly said: "I've had more women by accident than he's had on purpose."

America's fidelity rules, for presidents and ordinary people, began changing in the 1970s. No-fault divorce made marriage disposable. And as more women went to work, they had the means to walk away too. A generation of brides and grooms read one another the one-strike rule: cheat, and it's over. Couples therapy created an army of people preaching that an affair is a symptom of other problems, and that healthy couples don't keep secrets. (The new mantra became "It's not the sex, it's the lying".) In 1987, when Gary Hart spent the night with a blonde who wasn't his wife, he was out of the presidential race in a week. A cheating politician, like a cheating husband, was thought to be capable of any manner of sin.

It was no accident that the film Fatal Attraction - in which a man's affair spirals into a killing - came out a few months after Hart withdrew. Hollywood had embraced the new thinking about marriage and added its own twist: there's no such thing as a harmless affair. Aids sharpened the message that "promiscuity kills".

Britain was also waging its own battle with infidelity. Soon after John Major led a "back to basics" campaign in 1993, multiple members of his party were felled by adultery and other sex scandals (some suggested the campaign be renamed "back to my place"). Edwina Currie, who later published an account of the extramarital affair she had with Major in the 1980s, when the two were MPs, told me the British were always more concerned about hypocrisy than the risks of illicit sex. "When a politician in Britain stands up and says 'back to basics, family values', the rest of the nation says: 'Yeah, we'll agree with that. But let's just find out what you did last Sunday afternoon.'"

By the late 1990s, Americans increasingly viewed infidelity as evidence of a psychological disorder, with support groups for "betrayed spouses" and straying "sexual addicts". When Bill Clinton's dalliances with a White House intern became public in 1998, his antagonists in Congress tried to play a primitive game of gotcha. Clinton wisely followed the therapeutic playbook that Americans were following at home. First he confessed. Then he went on tour to apologise. Even the detailed disclosures in the Starr report mirrored the confessions Americans were offering in therapists' offices. Soon after the vote to impeach Clinton, his approval rating jumped to 73%.

The public still wanted to know why Hillary Clinton tolerated her husband's repeated infidelities. Marriage experts were flooded with phone calls demanding to know if the Clinton marriage was merely a political arrangement.

Americans may have now caught up with the Clintons, and could be edging closer to Europeans' more sanguine views on marriage. The latest thinking from American therapists and religious groups is that affairs need not be a marital death sentence. And as the many children of 1970s divorces hit bumps in their own marriages, they are rethinking the one-strike rule.

That, combined with the fact that we have been through it before, means that the death knell is less likely to sound for straying American politicians who confess and repent. This helps to explain why life has almost returned to normal for David Vitter. The senator from Louisiana apologised in July for "a very serious sin in my past" after his number appeared in the phone records of an escort service. But the Idaho senator Larry Craig remains in political limbo after pleading guilty to "disorderly conduct" in an airport men's room - allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover policeman - then claiming it was all a misunderstanding.

Although fidelity isn't strictly required of American politicians any more, a love story still is. In private life, the most accepted excuse for cheating is falling out of love with one person and into love with another. America's presidential hopefuls are taking heed. Giuliani takes pains to show that although the marriage to his current wife, Judith, may have been forged through infidelity, she is really the love of his life. No doubt Bill and Hillary were trying to make a similar point in Iowa. Given the patchy marital histories of many candidates, we can expect lots more lovin' on the campaign trail.

· Pamela Druckerman is the author of Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee; a version of this article appeared in the Washington Post.

2007-09-05T17:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.benningtonbanner.com/editorials/ci_6772349

Article Launched: 08/31/2007 04:44:04 PM EDT

They never learn. (Exactly!)

What is it about holier-than-thou public officials and seedy crimes and misdemeanors? Why do Re publicans have their own special brand of scandal and Democrats their own?

It seems that Democrats are always the ones tripped up by infidelity. Or maybe, in the old days, they got away with it, and their well-known penchant for playing around merely added to their appeal. We are thinking now of JFK, of course.

Later on, Sen. Gary Hart tried the same sort of thing, but the press was no longer compliant, and he sunk out of sight as a viable presidential candidate. Monkey business would no longer be tolerated.

Bill Clinton, incredibly, seemed to believe he could return to the Kennedy era, when everyone gave a wink and a nod but said nothing, but he wound up on Impeachment Row.

Republicans, probably because they are prone to moralizing and proclaiming their religious convictions to get elected, often seem to have repressed urges that become public knowledge because, at some point, they just couldn't help giving into them at an inopportune moment. They are closest to those infamous evangelists, like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, many of whom, coincidentally, are conservative GOP supporters.

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig appears to

be the latest victim of his own weaknesses, and suddenly is an embarrassment to the party, which is taking steps to push him off a political cliff.

Why do men in power - so far, few women seem to have these tendencies (or they are too clever to get caught) - keep pushing their luck until they wind up in mug shots and apologizing on "Larry King Live"? It really is a mystery.

As the undercover police officer who arrested Sen. Craig said to the senator at one point after the incident, "I expect this from the guy we get out of the 'hood. I mean, people vote for you. Unbelievable."

Exactly.

2007-08-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Good news, people!

Anne Noble, a Confidential Consulting Firm, Helps Unfaithful Men and Women

     Services Include Infidelity Strategies and Confidential Consulting

   MONTEREY, Calif., Aug. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Anne Noble Confidential
Consulting has launched a service dedicated to providing deception
strategies and seduction advice to married men and women seeking to cheat
and not get caught.
   The idea behind Anne Noble is simple: An upscale, confidential
consulting firm providing clients assistance in marital infidelity. "If you
don't want to get caught, get a consultant," said Anne Noble, the firm's
owner. "Professional men and women hire consultants for every aspect of
their business life, however, when it comes to an affair, they blindly
blunder through it and usually get caught."
   Anne Noble Confidential Consulting offers services exclusively tailored
to married men and women seeking advice on starting, maintaining and ending
extramarital affairs. Clients work one-on-one with a confidential
consultant who provides deception strategies, alibis, and acts as a
sounding board for clients seeking to stray outside their marriages.
   The firm's confidential consultants are compassionate and
non-judgmental professionals sensitive to a client's hidden desires and
revealing inner thoughts. "Clients are already leading a secret life, and
cannot maintain the secrecy any more without speaking to someone. We are
their sounding board," said Noble.
   "There is a demonstrated societal need for our services," said Noble.
"The more successful the client, the more he or she has to lose if an
affair is discovered. We offer peace of mind that a secret affair will
remain secret."
   Confidentiality is paramount to the firm. "Once a spouse finds out our
services are being utilized, our job is compromised," said Noble. From the
start, clients are given strict instructions on how to contact Anne Noble.
Stringent directions and tips are provided to assure their affair is
undetected by snooping spouses.
   The firm offers a variety of services, such as 3rd-party trip planning
and alibis for clients who wish to vacation anonymously with a lover. Also
offered are consulting services on catching cheating spouses, and guidance
on seducing both men and women, married or single.
   Anne Noble likens itself to "insurance" for affairs. For more
information, visit http://www.AnneNoble.com. The toll-free number is
1-800-430-8210, Ext. 3. (Due to the controversial nature of the service,
all calls are pre-screened and returned within 24 - 48 hours).
   Contact:
   Anne Noble
   1-800-430-8210
   ANoble@AnneNoble.com

2007-08-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

Be careful out there...

Florist reveals married man's infidelity

By staff writers

August 09, 2007 12:11pm

Article from:

A MARRIED man is suing an online florist for $1.15 million after it revealed his infidelity to his wife.

Leroy Greer of Missouri City asked 1-800-Flowers to send a dozen red roses to his mistress and to keep the order private by not mailing the transaction to his home or office, Fark.com reported.

However, months later, 1-800-Flowers sent a thank-you card to Mr Greer's home. Mr Greer's wife called the business for proof of purchase. 1-800-Flowers faxed her proof of Mr Greer's order of flowers for his mistress.

The fax included Mr Greer's card message which read: "Just wanted to say I love you and you mean the world to me! Leroy".

His wife has filed for divorce.

The case continues.

2007-08-07T15:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.theage.com.au/news/relationships/our-cheating-hearts/2007/08/02/1185648022772.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

Last year, A Gallup poll on moral issues revealed that Americans were more offended by adultery than they were by either polygamy or human cloning. Forget mortgages, politics and footy, the real dinner party stopper is talk of infidelity. But if it's so abhorrent, how do so many of us find ourselves caught up in it?

For Angus Black (not his real name), a brief affair three years ago highlighted some self-esteem issues. "I was feeling neglected by my wife.

Her career was powering ahead while I was stuck in a job I hated," Black says. He met a woman at his local pub's trivia quiz night and he admits he felt flattered by her attention. "My wife was travelling interstate a lot, so it was easy for me to kid myself that she didn't really care and that this woman and I were just friends." They exchanged numbers and before long he was seeing her several nights a week under the guise of going for a jog.

"Affairs become an intoxicating high, which is a fantasy and an escape," says Canadian Anne Bercht, whose Beyond Affairs Network (www.beyondaffairs.com) and Passionate Life Seminars provide support to people devastated by a cheating partner. Bercht argues that affairs don't involve all the minutiae of regular life that marriage brings. After her husband's philandering, she wrote a book entitled My Husband's Affair Became the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me, detailing the trauma and how their marriage survived.

Before emails and mobile phones came along, infidelity was generally imagined as extramarital hot sex, seedy hotels and naughty lingerie. Now the term is more ambiguous. Sure, if you are sleeping with someone outside your primary relationship, you've crossed a line. But are you really "just friends" with the woman from work, your flirty male pal at the gym or the "virtual" stranger with whom you've been exchanging emails? Where and when does cheekiness morph into cheating?

"From my perspective fidelity is about trust and being unfaithful is a betrayal of that trust and a betrayal of self," says Chris Meney, director of the marriage and family office for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney.

However, Meney also recognises we are fallible. "Temptations are a part of the human condition. We all have to confront and deal with those realities."

This challenging aspect of the human condition provided the rich material for a new book, Lust in Translation: the Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee, by former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent Pamela Druckerman.

Her survey investigates the varied practices of infidelity, globally. Every country has different terms and mores and plays out infidelity according to a different "script", Druckerman says. "Everyone has flaws in their marriages, things that aren't quite perfect," she told The Observer earlier this month. In the UK and the US, she says, if you want to justify your cheating, "you start complaining about your marriage, and that way, you're not some lousy guy who cheats on his wife because he wants sex, you're a puppy dog who's looking for love".

But other nations don't have the same guilt. "The French, for example, are much more comfortable with the idea that their affair partner is just that - an affair partner," Druckerman said.

According to Druckerman's research, Australians rate fairly well in the fidelity charts. In 2002, some 2.5 per cent of men and 1.8 per cent of women in Australia who were cohabiting or married, had had more than one sexual partner in the previous year (see table, next page).

Hard figures, though, can be difficult to collate. In Australia, while infidelity is recognised anecdotally as a key relationship buster, the Australian Bureau of Statistics collects solid data on marriage and divorce, but not on cheating.

Gary Banks, principal clinical psychologist at the Sydney Counselling Centre, warns that research into cheating is complicated. "There's an inherent [problem] in infidelity research," he says. "If we are dealing with a breach of trust, then research into the behaviour of secrecy and lying may be inherently flawed."

So with all this confusion about where to draw the line, how do we decide where infidelity starts?

Whether you meet and cheat in person or online, the general consensus is that infidelity is the same whether it's via protein or pixels. Last year, research by Dr Simone Buzwell and her colleague Elizabeth Hardy, from Swinburne's Australian Centre for Emerging Technologies and Society, revealed that of the 78 per cent of adults who used the internet, 13 per cent were using it to form online social relationships additional to their primary relationships. "It appears that the internet is replacing traditional routes to friendship and romance," Buzwell says.

For those wanting to betray, the internet has plenty of opportunities. "People don't come here looking for a scrabble partner," says David Miller, founder of Loving Links, a British extramarital dating service, now in its 12th year of business.

"In the old days we advertised in the quality press like The Guardian, and we run a forum that is terribly erudite," he says breezily down the phone.

"We also offer a one-to-one consulting service where we meet people and match them, and charge lots of money," he says with relish. Men are charged a hefty £1500 ($3500) but women only £350, an indication that male clients are easier to come by.

What does he think drives people to seek affairs? "Adults now don't want to grow up," he told The Guardian. "We're told that we should be having this, this and this, and we feel hard done by if we don't. It's also the case for the baby-boomer generation: we're all Peter Pans, and no one's yet sent us a letter saying we have to stop having fun and sex."

Others have found unconventional ways to resolve the desire to stray.

Sydney's Couples Club - an inner-city swingers' club - is going strong after 17 years. John*, its proprietor for the past five years, explains that the club allocates special nights for couples and women only, as well as "couples plus" sessions, which admit couples plus single men. John estimates about 15 per cent of guests are repeat visitors and believes that many people use a visit to the club to spice up their relationship, rather than splitting up and going their separate ways. "If people are playing together, are they being unfaithful to each other? I doubt it, because it's consensual," he says.

Many who want hard evidence of a partner's infidelity contact a private detective. Glenn Ryan is a licensed private inquiry agent who has made his living chasing down cheats. He switched from computing to detecting after being inspired by the TV series Magnum, P.I. His business, Caught in the Act Investigations, has attracted more than 2000 clients in the past five years.

He says: "By the time you have picked up the phone to call us, you have gone through stomach-churning events and a roller-coaster of emotions because you have found a number of clues that caused your suppositions."
Ryan says 99 per cent of his clients have already confronted their partners before contacting him and estimates that about 15 per cent of the cheaters are using sex workers.

"Jogger" Angus Black's affair came to an end when he was made redundant in the same week his wife endured a health scare. "I realised that it was my fault, not hers, that I was in a dead-end job," he says.
He immediately broke off his other relationship but, after an internal debate as to whether or not to confess, decided to keep quiet. "In the end I just didn't want her to feel worse," he says. "We were waiting on the biopsy results and I'd been pretty unsupportive of her career and detached; I guess I was jealous."

Black quietly undertook to counselling and, after a few "very confrontational" sessions, he concurs there was an element of self-preservation involved in his decision to keep his secret. "She would never trust me ever again if I told her," he says.

* Surname omitted by request.

Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee, by Pamela Druckerman, is available online and will be published here by Penguin in September.

2007-07-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

Who knows if this is true? But if it is, Lindsay Lohan ain't the only one!

http://thebosh.com/archives/2007/07/lindsay_lohan_bets_she_can_sleep_with_david_beckham.php

Linsday Lohan bets she can sleep with David Beckham.

These days Lindsay Lohan has a little more to worry about than who her next bedmate will be – you know, like jail time. But before she was arrested again for DUI, the starlet made a bet with her friends that she could bag Beckham. British soccer player David Beckham, that is.

In England, David and his wife, Spice Girl Victoria Beckham are like the unofficial royal family. Though rumors of David’s infidelity have plagued them in the past, the couple has maintained a united front and a close bond. But will their recent move to the U.S. provide Lohan with an opportunity to come between them?

According to the Sun, Lohan bet her friends about $50,000 that she could sleep with David before December. Says an insider, "Lindsay and her pals have been talking about the Beckhams' arrival non-stop. They all reckon David is gorgeous and Lindsay set the challenge to get stuck in. The rich girls all want to meet Becks."

Unless Lindsay manages to avoid jail time, which is looking more and more unlikely, she’s probably going to be out $50,000.

2007-07-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

And from the world of sports...

Bill Belichick's Girlfriend Barred From Moving Into Home He Bought for Her

Sharon Shenocca, the former Giants receptionist whose alleged romantic relationship with Bill Belichick has complicated her divorce proceedings and made her tabloid fodder, may not move her two kids into the $2.2 million townhouse the Patriots' coach bought for her.

New Jersey Judge Stephan Hansbury blasted Sharon Shenocca's request to bring her 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter to Brooklyn as "a whimsical dream," in a surprise decision released yesterday.

The 41-year-old blonde and her husband, contractor Vincent Shenocca, are in the middle of an ugly divorce, in which the husband has accused her of adultery with the three-time Super Bowl champion coach.

The judge's basic reasoning is that Shenocca shouldn't move her kids into a home she can't afford, because if Belichick ever changes his mind about allowing her to live there, her kids will be left without a place to live. Belichick has not commented on his relationship with Shenocca.

(Nice!)

2007-06-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

Oy.

CHEATERS BEWARE! The Grannie Detective Warns "How to Tell if Your Spouse is Cheating"

Laura Lanfield

LAURA LANFIELD is the author of the new book, BAIL BONDS BABYLON and has been one of the most sought-after and successful female private investigators in the country for over 25 years.

June 22, 2007

Ever wonder why he's too tired to make love? Do you get hang up calls late in the evening? Is he too busy or preoccupied to play with the grandkids? Help with homework or listen to their problems?

Maybe, just maybe, chances are he's having an affair. So how can you ladies check him out? As a former bail bonds lady I can tell you that cheating spouses are usually full of guilt. So, handle the situation very carefully. I am currently a private investigator and have been for the past 25 years. This is a very sensitive and potentially dangerous situation and must be handled with all due care.

First, it is important to document all details so that evidence may be gathered correctly. You never want to falsely accuse someone, therefore you must be very careful that there really is an infidelity situation which can be documented in several ways. I would never recommend that a woman try to be her own private investigator and try to follow a possibly cheating spouse. You would probably end up hurt and embarrassed and most certainly frustrated. No, girls we private investigators can do it for you and we know how, and how important it is to you.

I have techniques that rarely fail. Again, your job is to gather evidence of infidelity, check his "story". Was he at work? Look at his credit cards statements any sexy underwear? What about flowers? Did he send red roses to someone but it was not you? Your own long distance bill can document personal calls but when it comes to cellular phone bills you’ll need a P.I. armed with a subpoena or a court order.

There are very reliable private investigators, many of whom are women whom I find have a more sensitive approach to this delicate matter. Don't hesitate if you think he is cheating, you'll find out and if he's not, well, you can love him even more.

2007-06-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

From the AP...more baloney from hoops-playing astronaut wanna-be Hillary Clinton. When it comes to creepy Bill cheating on her, the only real question is, what the hell took him so long?

Clinton: Faith Got Me Past Marital Woes (Faith in what? Socialism? Her own self-righteousness?)

By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer

June 8, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a rare public discussion of her husband's infidelity, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she probably could not have gotten through her marital troubles without relying on her faith in God. (pu-leeze...faith in Mammom more likely. )

Clinton stood by her actions in the aftermath of former President Clinton's admission that he had an affair, including presumably her decision to stay in the marriage.

"I am very grateful that I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right, regardless of what the world thought," Clinton said during a forum where the three leading Democratic presidential candidates talked about faith and values.

"I'm not sure I would have gotten through it without my faith," she said in response to a question about how she dealt with the infidelity.

The forum, sponsored by the liberal Sojourners/Call to Renewal evangelical organization, provided an uncommon glimpse into the most personal beliefs of Clinton and rivals John Edwards and Barack Obama. The three candidates were invited by Sojourners founder Jim Wallis; most of the other Democratic candidates appeared on CNN later Monday to discuss their faith.

The most intimate question came about the Clintons' relationship, one of the world's most debated marriages but one that the husband and wife rarely speak openly about. (That may be because the only time a Clinton ever lies is when his/her mouth moves.)

Clinton said she's "been tested in ways that are both publicly known and those that are not so well known or not known at all." She said it's those times when her personal faith and the prayers of others sustain her. (Anger, rage and revenge more likely.)

"At those moments in time when you are tested, it is absolutely essential that you be grounded in your faith," she said.

Edwards revealed that he prays - and sins - every day. The crowd gasped loudly when moderator Soledad O'Brien asked Edwards to name the biggest sin he ever committed, and he won their applause when he said he would have a hard time naming one thing.

"I sin every single day," said Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee. "We are all sinners and we all fall short."(Silky Pony chimes in, he of the $400 haircuts and $55,000-a-pop lectures on poverty. Ass!)

Edwards, wearing a purple tie to match Sojourners' signature color, promoted himself as the candidate most committed to the group's mission of fighting poverty. He said he doesn't feel his belief in evolution is inconsistent with his belief in Christ and he doesn't personally feel gays should be married, although as president he wouldn't impose his belief system on the rest of the country.

"I have a deep and abiding love for my Lord, Jesus Christ," Edwards said, but he said the United States shouldn't be called a Christian nation.

He said he has been going to church since he was a child and was baptized as a teen. He said he strayed from his faith as an adult and it came "roaring back" when his teenage son died in 1996.

"It was the Lord that got me through that," Edwards said, along with both of his wife's cancer diagnoses.

Clinton acknowledged that talking about her religious beliefs doesn't come naturally to her. (No doubt because she has none...although on the other hand, she has been called "an uncommonly good liar.")

"I take my faith very seriously and very personally," she said. "And I come from a tradition that is perhaps a little too suspicious of people who wear their faith on their sleeves."

Each candidate was given 15 minutes to appear before the packed auditorium at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium and a live audience on CNN. They were questioned by O'Brien and by church leaders across the country.

Obama's appearance focused more on policy than the personal. Asked whether he agreed with President Bush's portrayal of the current global struggles in terms of good verses evil, Obama said there is a risk in viewing the world in such terms.

He said he believes that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were the result of evil. But he said that the United States' treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay is unjust.

"The danger of using good verses evil in the context of war is that it may lead us to be not as critical as we should about our own actions," Obama said to applause. (That what they taught you in the madrassah?)

2007-05-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

from The Sun Online, UK...all about your cell phone, and how it's the way so many cheaters get discovered. Be careful out there!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007220569,00.html

Love cheats having a flingtone

HALF of love cheats are caught out by their mobiles, a survey reveals.

Tell-tale texts are the biggest giveaway, according to the study of adultery divorce cases.

And some two-timers have accidentally sent racy messages to partners instead of their lovers.

Cheaters often buy a second mobile for their secret relationship — but get caught when they bring it home by mistake.

Mobile phone technology means private detectives are often no longer needed to expose adultery, says the law firm study.

Extra-marital affairs are the main reason for marriage breakdowns — 32 per cent in 2006.

2007-05-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

http://newsbusters.org/node/12640

I hate Hillary, not least because of her hypocritical attitude towards Boy Clinton's behavior.

Newsweek Finds Hillary's Pinnacle of Moral Purpose: Tolerating Bill's Intern Adultery?

Posted by Tim Graham on May 9, 2007 - 17:15.

This week’s Newsweek cover story on political courage ("Wanted: A New Truman") is truly baffling. Evan Thomas has a strange way of assessing what marks courage in our presidential contenders. He easily acknowledges that John McCain’s long tenure as a prisoner of war trumps everyone else. But he writes "All the candidates will use their life stories to show a sense of moral purpose." How did Hillary display her sense of moral purpose?

You may not believe it, but Thomas claimed: "Hillary Clinton had a stark moral choice: whether to stay with her husband when President Clinton's philandering with Monica Lewinsky was exposed. Her decision to stand by him could not have been easy." (Moral choice? It was all about politics -- what B.S.! I hate the mainstream media too, defending this vile woman.) Inside the media-Democrat complex, moral courage is not displayed by condemning adultery. It is displayed by tolerating adultery and maintaining political viability for the party in power – not to mention nicely setting up your own senatorial and presidential campaigns down the line.

Thomas also implied that Hillary showed courage in "her refusal to apologize for her pro-war vote in the Senate in the fall of 2002 as a matter of principle." When it came to Barack Obama, Thomas argued he demonstrated his political courage by standing up to liberal bloggers who scorn him as a centrist. John McCain’s faced down Vietnamese captors and is boasting of fighting Osama bin Laden to "the gates of Hell," but Obama is courageous for standing up to the Daily Kos crowd. He’s also brave for starting out modestly in Chicago politics before he started making millions in book royalties:

Barack Obama was an early opponent of the war at a time when most Democrats were still with Bush. Favorably compared to Bobby Kennedy, Obama does have an air of authenticity—he writes his own books and seems to speak from the heart. Giving up a corporate job in Manhattan, he went to work in Chicago as a low-paid community organizer. He will take on liberal bloggers who criticize him as too centrist. But there is a something of the raging moderate about Obama: he never sticks his neck so far out that he can't pull it back in.

Thomas doesn’t mention that Barack Obama was an obscure state senator in Illinois in 2002. The reader would be forgiven for assuming he was a high-profile Washington figure at that time.

Thomas had first turned to Romney when he started on the moral-purpose line. It’s not surprising that he used the paragraph to pluck out young Romney’s memories of drunken frat boy George W. Bush:

All the candidates will use their life stories to show a sense of moral purpose. After partying at Stanford, Romney says, he found purpose on a Mormon mission to France and came back to finish college at Brigham Young. At Harvard Business School, Romney says he "didn't hang out much" with his schoolmate George W. Bush. "I was married at the time with two or three children," he told NEWSWEEK. Bush was a single guy in his " 'young and irresponsible' period ... I longed for the chance to get at the books and study and learn."

It is precisely at this point that Thomas introduced his Hillary whopper. Bill Clinton didn’t have a "young and irresponsible period." It ran all the way through his presidency. (And we're still all paying the price.)

2007-04-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a book that may be of interest...a review from the NY Observer.

http://www.observer.com/20070423/20070423_Michael_Washburn_culture_books2.asp

Global Adultery Hooks Up With American Guilt
Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity From Tokyo to Tennessee by Pamela Druckerman, The Penguin Press, 291 pages, $24.95.

By: Michael Washburn
Date: 4/23/2007

“It’s not the cheating, it’s the lying”—or so goes our national post-affair mantra. But of course, it’s the cheating. The cheating is the lying, as much as it’s the sex. (If you aren’t lying, you’re not cheating: You’re swinging.) We know the distinction between the physical act of sex and the illocutionary act of lying is false, yet this is the first line in the last act of every American domestic tragedy. It’s what betrayed spouses are supposed to say when confronted with their wayward partners, and it sets the stage for scenes filled with apology, contrition and, oddly, the detailed recitation of each liaison. It’s like this everywhere, right?

Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee, former Wall Street Journal reporter Pamela Druckerman’s witty, engaging exploration of comparative infidelity, answers this question with an emphatic No. Every country has its adulterers—some more than others—but each culture’s cuckoldry has a flair all its own.

“Infidelity,” Ms. Druckerman writes, “isn’t just ubiquitous, it’s revealing.” From the status-anxious cafés of the Upper East Side to Moscow’s bureaucratic institutes of sexology to the stimulacra of Tokyo’s “pervert trains,” she exposes styles of infidelity as varied as the names used to describe them—“going strange,” “pinching the cat in the dark,” “a tied-up mare eats, too,” “standing in two boats at once.” Ms. Druckerman dramatizes the desire-driven lives of, among others, Williamsburg’s frustrated Hasidim, Indonesia’s bored wives and the torpid yi lais who inhabit China’s concubine villages.

Variations in styles of cheating make sense, but why would one culture, say Russia, breed more cheaters than others, like France? Although more entertainment than analysis, Lust offers a compelling if incomplete answer to this riddle: money. “The key factor of infidelity is living in a poor country,” she writes. The emphasis here is on poor countries, not people. The wealthy cheat as much or more than their fellow citizens, but countries with lower standards of living have higher rates of infidelity.

Ms. Druckerman is less amusing when the topic is South Africa, where infidelity promotes serial transmission of H.I.V. That the story of a country so ravaged by AIDS shares space in a book that revels in the novelty fact that one South African survey distinguished between those who cheat and those who cheat “while drunk” is bad enough. But to write “South Africans [by which the author means black South Africans] would rather die than be monogamous” is insulting and patently absurd.

Lust in Translation presents itself as cosmopolitan, but the book’s heart remains true to the U.S.A. According to Ms. Druckerman’s numbers, Americans cheat about as much as other First World nations. We just don’t deal well with the consequences. Only in America, where the taboo of adultery transcends otherwise impervious political and economic divides, do people so completely separate the act of sex from the attempt to cover it up; and only in America do people demand absolute disclosure about their affairs upon discovery.

These stock American reactions to the discovery of an affair aren’t natural: They are the received wisdom of the Marriage Industrial Complex, Ms. Druckerman’s name for the constellation of self-help books, recovery groups and marriage therapists that have multiplied since the 1970’s, the golden age of American divorce. The confrontations, “cry-talks” and demoralizing feelings of guilt demanded by our conventional wisdom create an intimacy that couples rarely experience. As a result, Ms. Druckerman finds herself interviewing spouses devastated by affairs—photos shredded, guns pointed, police called—who nevertheless wax nostalgic about their shared suffering.

Insights such as these into America’s twisted affair with adultery make Lust in Translation undeniably alluring.

Michael Washburn is the assistant director of the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY. (CUNY used to be a good school, until liberals got hold of it.)

2007-04-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

I'd call it "naiveté " too. Nitwit.

Adultery: Does country code dictate moral code?

http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Stories/Tips-Techniques/Love-Advice/Story~292932.aspx

Monogamy. Who knew that putting together a type of wood and a synonym for boredom would give us such an enduringly fascinating subject?

As a newlywed, my continued interest in the feasibility of monogamy probably terrifies my husband and mother-in-law, but come on - it's a juicy subject!

This time my interest was re-kindled by a couple of articles I read discussing adultery across cultures. The basic sentiment put forth was that we, as Americans, make too much of it. That in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, wives almost expect their husbands to cheat. It doesn't result in divorce, custody battles or Jerry Springer confrontations. It's simply a part of life.

In Japan, one article said, love matches are the exception, not the rule, and both partners are expected to stray. I guess if we worship different gods, eat different foods and spend different currencies then it's not so crazy we'd have different expectations regarding our marriages.

But should we? And who's right?

A few months ago I got crucified for mentioning swinging as an emerging trend in the marriages of my (American) contemporaries. My conclusion was that it's fine for them, but not the choice I'd make once married. At the time, I honestly had no idea I'd be married so soon!

So here I am, newly married (yet planning a wedding in October in a foreign country- whole other story) and now I'm ready to be judgmental. I feel bad for the Japanese, French or whoever that agrees to stay together in sickness, health and infidelity. I'm not about to start circulating a petition to reinstate public stonings for adulterers, but I do think that trust and faithfulness are critical to a happy marriage.

Even one of my swinger friends is coming around. They recently said they wished they were married to someone they'd want to be faithful to. Strong words.

But, alas, it's not that simple. It's easy for me to sit here amid my newlywed glow and say that I would never so much as look at another man, let alone touch. The marriage veterans are probably laughing at me right now; calling me naive. But what they call naivety, I call being right.

How I feel about my husband is something I hope everyone experiences in their relationship. And let me tell you, these feelings don't involve pushing an affair under the mat.

If the article's point was to try to sway its readers that Americans make too much of affairs, they've failed. They convinced me that we make too little of them. If 70 percent of marrieds are cheating - and those are the most recent numbers I've seen - we are doing something very wrong.

Maybe it's getting married before graduating college. Maybe it's spending more time planning our weddings than planning our goals together. Maybe it's spending $2,000 on a wedding dress when financial reasons is the #1 reason for divorce in the U.S.

It looks as if I don't like any country's perception of adultery and marriage. I guess I'll have to start my own blissfully married nation. I think I'll call it Newlywed Island. (Better to call it Fantasy Island.) Care to join me?

2007-03-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

Some silliness from MSNBC...if your husband has cheated on you five times in 11 years (that you know about), he's an idiot for letting himself get caught, but the wife's a bigger one for hanging around knowing that she can't deal with his behavior. Buy a clue and either get out, or accept who the guy is and stop whining.

Can this marriage survive serial cheating? TODAY contributor offers tips

By Dr. Robi Ludwig

TODAY contributor

Updated: 11:58 a.m. PT March 26, 2007

Kevin and Sue have been married for 11 years, but it hasn't been wedded bliss. Kevin, a serial cheater, admits to having five affairs over the course of their marriage. Consequently, Sue no longer trusts him. Enter Dr. Robi Ludwig, a psychotherapist and author who in the premiere of TLC's "One Week to Save Your Marriage," will counsel the couple. Kevin and Sue along with Ludwig were invited to appear on TODAY. Here is an article on infidelity and marriage written by Ludwig.

To love, honor and betray

When most people hear the words infidelity and marriage, they tend to think, that marriage must be over. In some ways that thought is true. The marriage, at least the one that existed before the affair took place is over. The naiveté that existed in the marriage is gone forever, and the trust level will never be the same, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship is over, or should be over. Now granted, infidelity is a very hurtful and painful event, but as a therapist, I want to understand what the motivation for the affair was and what the affair meant to the person who had the affair. I suppose one could easily get on their moralistic high horse and say, “That’s wrong!” but that is too easy. Everyone knows having an affair is wrong. What is not understood is why it happened in the first place, and what if anything can be done about it.

An affair is a behavioral communication; a conversation that never took place in the marriage. People have affairs for all kinds of reasons and not necessarily because they don’t love their spouse. Sometimes it’s done for the thrill. Other times it’s done as an ego boost. Some spouses have affairs during major turning points in their lives or use it as a mood regulator; like medication, to suppress uncomfortable or unwanted feelings. It can even be used to seek revenge or prove one’s lovability.

Marriage is about reality, and reality is not always fun or sexy. Affairs are more about fantasy and escaping that reality. But reality is something that one needs to deal with successfully if one wants to be married in a happy and mature way. Now, I’m not making excuses for cheaters, but I do think it’s important to understand the motive for the cheating behavior, especially if a couple wants a shot at healing their relationship.

The good news is an affair doesn’t have to mean the marriage is over. It is not necessarily a death sentence. In some cases couples can come out even stronger than they were before. However, this place of strength does not and will not happen over night! It’s a process, and in some cases a very, very long process. What is most important to know initially is that an affair does not have to equal a divorce. Like the saying goes, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Sometimes the unfaithful spouse can come out wiser and more grateful about his or her life than they were prior to the affair. Each day carries with it the opportunity to learn, grow and change.

An affair is never forgotten; a person does not get over an affair like a bad cold. It is a very painful event that needs to get incorporated into the storybook of the marriage. Two people can only get over the infidelity if they understand and accept that these scars will remain, but that it is possible to move beyond the pain. Both partners need to be willing to work at repairing the damage that has been done. This is especially true for the cheating spouse. The spouse, who was unfaithful, needs to make it their primary responsibility to take charge of the healing process. It’s their job to move the relationship forward. They must be willing to make a total commitment to heal the marriage and their spouse, no matter how long it takes.

Here are some of the things unfaithful spouses should do:

They must be honest about the affair, and that means honest about everything.

They must be willing to answer questions about the relationship; no matter how many times these questions have been asked.

They should be empathic and fully understand the pain their infidelity has caused, not only for the spouse but to the family, which includes children as well.

They must stop all contact with the other person.

They must prove their love by being patient and understanding.

They must understand why they had the affair in the first place, so they are not vulnerable to it happening again.

For the betrayed spouse:

They need to give their spouse some time to prove themselves and their love again.

They need to share and be open about their feelings.

They need to not take responsibility for their partner’s affair; it’s not their fault!

Ask the questions they feel are important; especially if they feel it will help them to move on.

Check up on the spouse until a feeling of trust has been rebuilt.

Both couples need to be willing to seek counseling at any time during the healing process. It’s easy to get stuck, and that’s what counselors are there for, to help two people manage through the anger, pain and seemingly hopeless times.

There is no one path to reconciliation. This is something that takes time to achieve. Like anything worth achieving, it happens one day at a time. Couples should not expect too much of themselves too soon. It’s a grieving process. The relationship that existed prior to the affair is gone and needs to be mourned before a new one and hopefully healthier relationship can emerge. Granted, it is a tough road, but it is a road that might just be worth the effort.

Oy vey!

2007-03-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Ouch. I used to be married to a meat-cutter, and the good ones keep their knives very sharp.

Butcher convicted of hacking wife to death on the street over suspicions of infidelity

NEW YORK (AP) — A butcher who hacked his wife to death on a Manhattan street with a boning knife because he believed she was cheating on him could now face life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder.

The jury took less than two hours Tuesday to convict Sergio Parra, who had been accused of fatally slashing and stabbing Jahaira Parra in their Washington Heights neighborhood on Sept. 16, 2004.

Police said shortly after Parra's arrest that he had gone into the barbershop where his estranged 27-year-old wife worked as a cleaner and asked to speak with her. Once outside, police said, he stabbed her more than 20 times, striking her in the chest and eyes while bystanders watched.

A volunteer police officer in the area grabbed Parra and held him with the help of several passers-by until more police came.

The wife, a native of the Dominican Republic, was pronounced dead less than an hour later at a hospital.

Parra's lawyer, David Blackstone, had acknowledged that his client killed her but said he did it while suffering extreme emotional disturbance because she had left him.

Parra, 28, could face 25 years to life in prison when Justice Michael Obus sentences him April 6. If the jury had found he acted under extreme emotional disturbance, the conviction would have been for first-degree manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years.

Witnesses told police that Parra suspected his wife was having an affair after she disappeared for several days.

2007-03-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

From 12 News in Arizona...

Adultery conviction in Arizona

12 News
Mar. 1, 2007 04:26 PM

It may sound unbelievable but a man and woman in Arizona have been convicted of adultery. (What's actually amazing is that adultery doesn't even raise an eyebrow anymore.) Investigators busted Traci Beltcher and Steven Parker of Payson for having an affair.

Under an old state statute, if a spouse complains, you can have the alleged cheater arrested.

That is what happened here. Mrs. Parker demanded deputies arrest her husband and his mistress.

Gila County Judge Dorothy Little says that it is not something she sees everyday in her courtroom. "It did make the local paper here. But it wouldn't be for me to make a determination on a law. The cases are filed here and I'm going process them."

Both parties in the case paid a fine.

2007-03-09T13:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a timely and thoughtful article from WIRED News, by Regina Lynn...

**

The Internet Makes Us Naked

I wonder if one reason people are so wary of the intersection of sex and the internet is that it exposes us so completely.

It's the flip side of what many of us point to as one of the internet's great strengths -- we discover we are not alone in our desires, finding community and connection even as we learn more about ourselves.

For individuals, this sexual self-discovery has been largely positive. But for Americans as a whole, this self-knowledge has not been comfortable to accept.

We're learning that our behavior does not match what our culture tells us is "right" or "moral." And we're having a hard time accepting that our behavior has changed only to the extent that technology makes it easier to break the rules, and makes rule-breaking more accessible to larger numbers of people.

Infidelity and pornography are not new. It's just that in the past, we could keep our peccadilloes secret and still lead socially acceptable surface lives. Or, if discovered, we could be treated like deviants and pariahs and Made Examples Of -- meanwhile, everyone else breathes a sigh of relief that they hadn't been caught, too.

Now, our sexual behavior is documented and searchable and potentially duplicated for all the world (and our loved ones) to see. Given the potential for our online explorations to be misunderstood, taken out of context, used against us, published by accident or design and otherwise warped, it's sort of amazing that millions of us do it anyway.

I think that says something about the power of the urges that drive us to connect online -- and sometimes, from there, offline as well. It's not just physical desire, as obviously online sex has no skin-on-skin touch. Our reasons are more complex than bodily need: Most people seem to be seeking some combination of understanding, a sense of belonging, excitement, pleasure, novelty, stimulation, validation, romance or even just temporary escape from the demands of ordinary daily life.

Last year, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey (.pdf) to find out how many Americans judged various behaviors -- overeating, cheating on taxes, adultery -- as "morally wrong." The demographic with the most education and the highest income, the same group that has the most high-speed internet access at home, tended to be less likely to declare a behavior unilaterally "wrong" than other groups.

Yet on the question of extramarital affairs, the answers line up almost exactly across all ages, genders, marital statuses and political and religious affiliations. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said adultery is morally wrong.

That doesn't stop us from doing it, in some form or another.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly how many people have affairs, as it's not something we like to admit, even (or especially) as anonymous subjects in surveys. Researchers say that men often exaggerate their sexual exploits while women often downplay theirs. Surveys suggest that 20 to 50 percent (and up) of married folk stray at least once during their marriage; the date-a-married-person site Ashley Madison has 1.2 million members.

Add in the number of intimate involvements that never leave cyberspace and it makes you wonder just how "normal" our social expectation of sexual monogamy is.

I'm not talking about biology here, which -- to oversimplify for brevity -- suggests that we are hardwired for non-monogamy but able to overcome those instincts and mate with only one partner. I'm just noting the gap between what we preach as "right and good for everyone" and what a good many of us (the majority?) actually do. Because we can't pretend anymore that we don't.

Online porn gets even more attention of late than internet-enabled infidelity, perhaps because of its added overhead of protecting the children and perhaps because no one wants to risk having the spotlight turned on their own affairs.

Like infidelity, our behavior around porn is based on its sudden, giddy availability. We dive into an overwhelming range of explicit content, jumping from pinup to penetrated to peed-on with the speed of a mouse click -- and we see our own desires reflected back at us, sometimes in extreme or uncomfortable ways.

And we're not content just to watch. Women especially are not just collecting our own porn but participating in its creation, becoming stars in webcam communities and in play-for-pay businesses. Now you can work from home, control your flexible schedule, make extra money and have your sexual attraction affirmed by hundreds of men every week -- even if you're middle-aged and fat, which seems to be an even greater affront to society than doing all the same things when you're 22 and slim.

How does this trend fit into the social expectation that sexual performance is inherently degrading to women, never mind that men like to look and women like to be appreciated? How do we reconcile a political war on porn with a widespread interest not just in watching explicit material, but in creating and sharing it?

And how do we pretend that we're a vanilla-sex society when our pornography has shown us possibilities that even Sex Drive readers hadn't thought of before?

It's no wonder we're in turmoil, demonizing the internet as if it invented unconventional sexual behavior. It's easier to blame the new technology, be it telegraphs or telephones or telecommunications, than to admit to cheating on a partner or being turned on by images we think might be taboo.

But I think all we've lost by this transparency is our innocence. Or more accurately, our hypocrisy.

Perhaps I'm simply in a whimsical mood, but it makes me think that something will have to change, profoundly, to align our cultural standards and our actual behaviors more closely, lest we implode. And that the change that is happening, slowly and subtly and inexorably, and so frightening to the conservative religious, is a recognition that there are other possibilities around love and sex than our one-size-fits-all tradition.

2007-02-20T16:26:00.000-08:00

I am honored...really. :) When Tony Thomas, some "pastor" I've never heard of either, calls your book worthless, you're onto something. What are the qualifications for being a "pastor", anyway? Are there any?

2/16/2007

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GUEST COLUMNIST: Love the one you are with

By TONY THOMAS

I learned early on that many of our presidents were all too human. From 1952 to 1974, all our presidents had extramarital trysts. Athletes weren't much better. Ever hear of Mickey Mantle? He grew up three miles north of my hometown and he had a string of girlfriends from northeast Oklahoma all the way to centerfield in Yankee Stadium.

NASA seemed to be the last bastion of integrity. In the early days, the major networks covered every launch, almost always during school hours. As a result, our astronauts were revered, just behind God. Apollo 8 took Bill Anders, Frank Borman and James Lovell to the moon and back and while they orbited, they read from the Bible.

Those feelings might explain the disappointment of many in hearing the news of Lisa Nowak, the astronaut-obsessed mission specialist who drove her car for 900 miles in diapers to allegedly murder the woman dating her Cape Canaveral crush. The 43-year-old Naval Academy graduate and married mother of three had seemingly managed career and motherhood, but somewhere between Houston and Orlando, Nowak jettisoned reality.

Letterman, Leno and the media have been merciless. Question: how long does it take to drive from Houston to Orlando? Answer: that Depends. Letterman's February 6 list was titled, "Top Ten Signs An Astronaut Is Trying To Kill You." Humor can be therapeutic, but making fun of a person's misery at her own expense isn't funny. It's cruel.

Stephen Stills wrote, "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with." That's why Nowak divorced her husband, attempted to pick off Colleen Shipman, flushed away her career, and in the process became the butt of late-night jokes. She forgot to guard her heart.

Judith Brandt wrote a worthless book in 2002 titled, "The 50-Mile Rule: Your Guide to Infidelity and Extramarital Etiquette". Labeled as the ultimate handbook for cheaters, Brandt claims that "...a successful affair is an undiscovered affair. Let the 50-Mile Rule show you how to best stray so that you don't have to pay."

In the movie "Spanglish", Adam Sandler married Tea Leoni, a self-absorbed and small-minded control freak that accepted no responsibility for her own problems. Her selfishness eventually led her into an affair. Cloris Leachman played the mother who eventually intervened in an attempt to remind her daughter of what she was throwing away. Leachman told Leoni that her actions had been "dumb".

Stunned, Leoni replied: "You've done it again, mother. You made me hate myself."

Leachman turned around to say, matter-of-factly: "Honey, lately, your low self-esteem is just good common sense."

The seventh commandment reads, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," (Exodus 20:14, KJV). God gave that commandment to protect man's intimate relationships by enforcing a ceiling, limiting how far we can go with another person's heart. "Above all else," writes Solomon, "guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life" (Proverbs 4:23, NIV).

When common sense makes good sense, seek no other sense. And love the one you're with.

Tony Thomas is senior minister at Woodland Heights Christian Church.

2007-02-05T17:41:00.000-08:00

From "The Local", Sweden's news in English...

Cheating partners given away by DNA (not really any new technology...but a timely reminder.)

A Swedish company makes it possible for people who suspect their partners of being unfaithful to have their suspicions either confirmed of allayed. The website pappatest.se primarily offers DNA tests for potential fathers or family members. But if a sample is provided the company will also be happy to carry out an infidelity test.

"The technique gives customers the possiblity to find out if their partner has been unfaithful," spokesman Bo Erlandsson told The Local. He is quick to add that the website has not yet been bombarded by hordes of jealous lovers."We have just had a couple so far. This service is not something we beat a big drum about," said Erlandsson. Any customers harbouring suspicions of infidelity on the home front must first be able to provide some form of evidence.

"There must be a reason to come to us. For example, a man might suspect that his wife is unfaithful. "If he finds stains in her underwear he can send it to us. We can then determine if it is sperm. "Then we can find out if it comes from another man or from himself," said Erlandsson. The company then sends the sample to a lab in the USA and the hypothetic husband will know within two weeks whether or not he has been cuckolded. Regardless of whether the result gladdens or saddens him, it will cost him 2,590 kronor.

The service is of course available to both sexes; the company also analyses stains believed to contain female DNA. But Erlandsson points out that a saliva sample from a cigarette may be enough to find out if there have been unexpected visitors in a customer's home.

(Sheesh - if you smoke, maybe you should move to Sweden.)

2007-02-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

From "The Scientist" online --

Why you can't smell infidelity
Posted by Brendan Maher
[Entry posted at 30th January 2007 08:33 PM GMT]

Some data have shown, not quite conclusively, that the major histocompatibility complex profile of a man plays some role in the type of woman he attracts. Women prefer non-matching MHC profiles, sometimes, but not all the time. These preferences haven't been followed up much in those aspects that go beyond simple mate choice.

A newly published study in Psychological Science looked at 48 couples in long-term relationships (median 17 months, range 1 month to 12 years). Based on a genetic test and questionnaires, they found that as MHC sharing at three alleles increased, females were less sexually responsive to their partners and reported more sexual partners outside of the relationship. The effect was stronger when the women were in their fertile period and extended from such things as whether a woman found their partner sexy, to how often they rejected a partner's attempts to initiate sex, to how many orgasms they experienced with their partners. MHC sharing didn't predict these behaviors for male partners, interestingly enough. (C.E. Garver-Apgar et al., Psych Sci, 17:830-5, January, 2006.)

It's been proposed that women choose MHC-mismatched mates based on scent. In a feature this past September, Nick Atkinson wrote about this as part of a larger story on the biological rules of attraction. Mice can detect MHC profiles in the scent of urine. Women given sweaty tee-shirts have been known to choose the mismatch, and the theory goes that the preference may be an adaptation to suppress inbreeding and/or increase heterozygosity and immune competence in offspring. Men, in the dark when it comes to many things including histocompatibility, just don't seem to have the nose for it. (My dogs do, I bet. :)

2007-01-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

Now this is taking a love rivalry to extremes...from timesonline.co.uk, Jan. 25, 2007

Skydiver charged with murder after love rival fell 13,000ft to her death
David Charter and Rory Watson in Brussels
Victim's headcam filmed her death
Parachute looked sabotaged, say police

A married woman who was having an affair with a fellow skydiver plunged 13,000ft to her death after her love rival and best friend tampered with her parachute, police say.
Els Van Doren, 37, fell to earth in a garden in front of a group of onlookers. Els Clottemans, 22, has been charged with her murder.

Minutes earlier the pair had joined hands in a star formation with two other skydivers including Ms Clottemans’s boyfriend, a Dutchman named only as Marcel, who police say was having an affair with Mrs Van Doren. While he and Ms Clottemans broke away at 4,000ft when their parachutes inflated, Mrs Van Doren, a mother of two, was unable to open either her main parachute or the reserve and crashed to her death in the town of Opglabbeek, Belgium.
Her final moments were filmed by her own head-mounted camera.

Wally Elters, a witness at the aerodrome from which the fatal flight departed, told Le Soir: “I was working on my plane when I heard someone on the ground screaming and pointing to the sky. “I looked up and saw a black spot falling quickly to the ground. It was wriggling about and it was pretty obvious it was a person. Above it were three people in parachutes coming down slowly. Then it hit the ground. It was an appalling moment.”

Police say that video footage taken by Mrs Van Doren as she tried to open her parachute provided evidence that led them to suspect that a fellow club member had sabotaged the equipment. A spokesman said: “A close inspection of the parachutes leads us to believe they had been meddled with.” An employee at the airfield in Zwarteberg added: “It is very rare for one parachute not to open, but for two to fail is virtually unheard of.”

At Mrs Van Doren’s funeral, about 1,000 people heard her sister deliver a bitter eulogy. “You did all you could during that final jump to save yourself,” she was quoted as saying in the Belgian press. “But someone did not want you to live.”

Ms Clottemans was arrested and charged after a two-month investigation. She denies the allegations but is being held in custody before a court appearance later this month.
Police became increasingly suspicious of Miss Clottemans after discovering the affair between Mrs Van Doren and Marcel. All three had skydived togther for several years. Ms Clottemans, a secretary, is understood to have attempted suicide hours before being brought in for questioning by detectives for a second time last month. She is said to be suffering from a personality disorder and is receiving treatment.

Police have also disclosed that Ms Clottemans had previously been arrested for attempting to run over an American boyfriend. (Busy, isn't she?) He escaped injury and she was released without charge.

According to the Belgian media, Marcel tried to arrange his liaisons so that neither woman found out about the other. (Didn't work, apparently!) His affair with Ms Clottemans began a year ago and he would spend Friday evening through to Saturday morning with her. In the afternoon, he would meet Mrs Van Doren after she had spent the morning working in her husband’s jewellery shop. Their relationship had begun some years earlier and the two would spend the night in nearby Eindhoven, before returning to the skydiving club the next day.

Despite Marcel’s precautions, Ms Clottemans appears to have found out about her rival, although Mrs Van Doren was unaware that he was also involved with her close friend.
A statement from the public prosecutor said: “A thorough investigation of the available evidence and analysis of the motive provide sufficient reason for arresting the suspect. The investigating magistrate charged her with murder, issued an arrest warrant and had her locked up in Hasselt prison.

“In order not to jeopardise the smooth running of the investigation, no further information will be supplied. As has already been suggested in the media, the motive for the crime is most probably in the passionate area. The accused denies the charges.”

Yikes. What a way to go...and to be filming your own death too. That's cold.

2007-01-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

Who said "the law is an ass?" Here's more proof. From the Detroit Free Press, Jan. 18, 2007

Adultery could mean life term under Michigan felony statute, court declares

DETROIT - In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punish- able by up to life in prison."We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion.

"Technically, any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I (the most serious sexual-assault charge in Michigan's criminal code)." No one expects prosecutors to declare open season on cheating spouses.

The ruling is especially awkward for Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office triggered it by successfully appealing a lower court's decision to drop CSC charges against a Charlevoix defendant. In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship. Murphy's opinion initially received little notice. But it has since elicited reactions ranging from disbelief to mischievous giggling among Michigan lawyers.The ruling grows out of a case in which a Charlevoix man accused of trading Oxycontin pills for the sexual favors of a cocktail waitress was charged under an obscure provision of Michigan's criminal law. The provision decrees that a person is guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct whenever "sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony."

Charlevoix Circuit Judge Richard Pajtas sentenced Lloyd Waltonen to up to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to two felony counts of delivering a controlled substance. But Pajtas threw out the sexual-assault charge against Waltonen, citing the cocktail waitress's testimony that she had willingly consented to the sex-for-drugs arrangement.Charlevoix prosecuting attorney John Jarema said he decided to appeal after police discovered evidence that Waltonen may have struck drugs-for-sex deals with several other women.

Cox's office, which handled the appeal on the prosecutor's behalf, insisted that the waitress' consent was irrelevant. All that mattered, the attorney general argued in a brief demanding that the charge be reinstated, was that the pair had sex "under circumstances involving the commission of another felony": the delivery of the Oxycontin pills.

The Attorney General's Office got a whole lot more than it bargained for. The Court of Appeals agreed that the prosecutor in Waltonen's case needed to prove only that the Oxycontin delivery and the consensual sex were related. But Murphy and his colleagues went further, ruling that a first-degree CSC charge could be justified when consensual sex took place in conjunction with any felony, not just a drug sale.

Whoa. Good luck with this one, guys.

2007-01-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

Don't exhibit any of these signs, people!

from a PR.com press release...spelling counts, doesn't it?

Knowing the Truth About Your Spouse - Can You Handle It?

Infidelity is a growing trend as Divorce rates soar across the nation. With more than 50% of all marriages ending in divorce, Infidelity being the root of the problem accounts for approximately 98% of all divorces. Knowing the truth will surprisingly bring the needed closure and resolution that people need. Statistics show that the deceit is actually more damaging than the actual affair. Magnum Investigations leads the industry via specializing in Cheating & Child Custody Investigations.

Morristown, NJ, January 09, 2007 --(PR.COM)-- Have you ever suspected that your spouse has been engaging in an extra-marital affair? Does your “gut” tell you something is wrong? Has your spouse been acting strangely? If you have answered yes to any of these question you are not alone. (No, you're not. In fact, you're in a big honkin' crowd.)

Infidelity is common trait amongst our society and is even glamorized in Romance Novels, movies, sitcoms, and in some cases amongst friends. Unfortunately, adulterous affairs exist and grow for quite some time before the spouse becomes suspicious. Even though most cheaters are eventually caught, most can remain undetected for months and even years.

These relationships usually are relationships of high passion and sometimes convenience. It is not uncommon for the adulterers to both be married; these relationships are all the more difficult to detect because it is a “no strings attached” relationship and both parties are often more careful because they both have something to loose. (They have something to lose, too.) Magnum Investigations, LLC Specializes in Cheating Spouse and Child Custody Investigations. This agency is the only agency licensed and bonded in New Jersey and Pennsylvania that specializes in such cases.

The unique thing about this agency is that they exercise extreme caution in each case and they provide results without getting caught. The owner of the company is a retired New Jersey Police officer and has years of experience in dealing with the Family Courts in NJ. We interviewed him and asked why it is important for people to know whether or not their spouse is cheating.

“Despite what some investigative agencies might tell you, simply because your spouse is cheating does not necessarily mean you will get a better divorce settlement. I would rather be upfront and honest with my clients because i am not looking for a quick buck. Most clients benefit from the Peace of Mind they receive by knowing the truth; it undoubtedly will provide the resolution that so many people are deperately seeking. It is one thing to know your spouse is cheating, and it is a whole other thing to see it.”

Magnum Investigations are innovators in the industry in terms of providing results without getting caught. (Please note! Do you know whether or not you're being watched? Be discreet and careful.) “It is not uncommon for clients to call us and tell us that they hired XYZ Company and the investigator got caught.” said Mr. Halscheid. “You can never follow someone with one investigator or you are destined to get caught. Most investigative agencies stay away from Domestic Investigations because they are very difficult.”

In fact, many investigative agencies sub-contract these cases to Magnum Investigations. If you suspect that your spouse is cheating there is no benefit of you confronting him/her because he/she will likely deny it anyway. A cheater is not going to confess upon your accusations and will often lie ‘till the end. (Smart ones do, anyway.) Video-surveillance is the best proof you will ever obtain.

“I tell people that they deserve to know the truth. I am so confident that if a spouse is cheating we will obtain the proof.” He also added, “We handle the most difficult of cases. If you are price shopping and looking for the cheapest company then we are not the company for you; on the other hand, if you want Results without getting caught, then Magnum Investigations is Your Information Solution!”

10-Common Warning Signs of a Cheating Spouse (are you exhibiting these behaviors? Stop!)

Do you suspect that your significant other is cheating? Does your boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife or soul-mate exhibit any of the following warning signs?
1) Suddenly Working Late or unaccountable time?
2) Suddenly interested in going out with “friends”?
3) Suddenly wearing perfume or cologne?
4) Suddenly interested in appearance- (Exercising, dieting, new hair style, dressing differently)
5) Constantly on the internet, email, or chat-rooms?
6) Says it’s in your imagination or even accuses you of cheating?
7) Hiding Cell phone bills, avoids answering phone when you are around, cell on vibrate?
8) Lack of interest in sex or introduces new sexual behavior in bedroom? 9) Starts arguments just prior to leaving the house.
10) No longer wears wedding ring or says he/she lost it. (For guys, a wedding band is often a chick magnet, so put it back on!)

Your significant other may exhibit some or all of these signs; the more signs that you see the more likely he/she is cheating. However, the most important indicator of cheating is not even a warning sign… it is your instinct. If you “feel” that it is happening, it usually is! (That's true, so watch what you're doing.)

2007-01-03T16:26:00.000-08:00

Amen, brother - from AGI, in Italy.

News for Arab Countries, Special service by AGI on behalf of the Italian Prime Minister's office

SADDAM. CALDEROLI: INCREDIBLE HYPOCRISY IN ITALY(AGI) - Rome, Dec.29 - "This country is unbelievably hypocrite (sic): it is outraged by the sentencing to death of an international criminal such as Saddam Hussein and doesn't lift a finger when a women is stoned to death for adultery or when Catholics are beheaded because of their religion, as often happens in some Islamic countries", said Northern League MP Roberto Calderoli. "The death penalty is a regular procedure in Islamic countries, but why doesn't anyone say anything when unknown people are sentenced to death?".

Good question.

2006-12-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

In the interest of full disclosure, here's a news release about the other side of the adultery story...with comments, of course.

All Roads Don't Lead to Adultery, Says Author of 'Adultery: 101 Reasons Not to Cheat'
Adultery victim claims it is a disguised detour en route to personal demise. (Nothing enhances 'personal demise' like being stuck in a bad marriage.)

December 15, 2006 -- If you are even thinking about cheating on your spouse, Paul Davis has 101 good reasons why you shouldn't. His book, Adultery: 101 Reasons Not to Cheat, which he likens to spiritual sustenance, is a weapon with which to war against the enemy, thereby securing your matrimonial bliss. (Uh, good luck with that. Adultery isn't always a response the marital unhappiness, for one thing. For another, staying faithful has nothing to do with "securing matrimonial bliss." It's not like if you don't cheat, a bad marriage will be made good.)

Readers are forewarned about the dangers of adultery and the living hell thereafter, they glimpse the repercussions of adultery, and they learn the consequences of immoral behavior, how to guard their own hearts, and what it means to value their marriages--something lacking in a society in which more than half of all marriages end in divorce. (Pick your poison, people.)

Says Davis, "I have been the victim of adultery and know experientially the personal hell it is to endure emotionally. As a traveling man, I have both encountered sexual temptation and know how to overcome it. Adultery makes up a big part of the divorce rate. TV shows and movies portray adultery as acceptable in society. Adultery is unacceptable and promises a judgment to follow." (At least a judgment is sure to follow from this guy, if you care.)

A minister whose wife had an affair, Davis says his book will "scare the hell out of you" because adultery is a living hell and divorce is akin to death. (Really? Is that why men have been known to say, "Why is divorce expensive? Because it's worth it.") Instead of becoming another casualty of careless infidelity, be forewarned and forearmed concerning the dangers of adultery. Or, as Davis puts it, "Be armed for battle to overcome temptation. Arrest the adversary before he beguiles and destroys you."

Paul Davis resides in Orlando, Florida. He has worked as a master NLP practitioner and life coach, licensed minister (International Foursquare Church), and pastoral counselor. (I have about as much faith in someone who's a "licensed minister" as I do in one of those funky "flying imams," who get their designation via a vote. Nothing like a bunch of ignoramouses voting for another ignoramous to lead them, Nancy Pelosi being a prime example.)

2006-12-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

Here's my latest news release...read it, learn it, live it! :)

MARRIED AND HOPING FOR A HOLIDAY HOOK-UP? FIRST, KNOW THE RULES

It’s Christmas and holiday time, that special time of year when the frustrated, the bored, the sex-deprived and the married converge at oh-so-festive office and industry parties looking to make an extramarital hook-up. Logical? You bet…but not too smart, according to Judith E. Brandt, author of THE 50-MILE RULE: Your Guide to Infidelity and Extramarital Etiquette (Ten Speed Press, $12.95, 1580084141).

“Smart adulterers – those who want to go about their business without alerting their spouses – follow the rules,” says Ms. Brandt, whose brand of unconventional advice to the married-but-lovelorn has earned her the title of “the Bin Laden of love” from conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. “In this case, it’s the 50-mile rule – that spouse and lover should live at least 50 miles apart – that applies in a big way. You should never have an affair with anyone in your work or social circle, no matter how tempting the situation…and no matter how strong the beer goggles you’re wearing.”

Why? Because office and same-industry affairs generally lead to nothing but trouble you can do without. “One of the keys to successful affair management is knowing that actions have consequences, and office affairs can lead to all sorts of consequences, most of them bad,” says Ms. Brandt, whose book offers not just tips on how to keep both your marriage and extramarital activities running smoothly, but how to extricate yourself from an affair gone sour…although happy results aren’t guaranteed.

And affairs at work, even one-night stands or broom-closet blitzes, can lead to all sorts of complications. “For one thing, it’s hard to keep an active affair off the radar screen of your co-workers. If nothing else, body language will give you away. And what happens when you're sick of the account exec down the hall, but she’s still crazy about you? At the very least, you might have to change jobs…or fend off a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

There are no secrets in modern offices, either. “Cel phones, the internet, e-mail, Ims, Blackberries…there are all sorts of ways that someone who has it in for you professionally can get the goods on you personally. That cel-phone video of you half-drunk and groping the guy from accounting isn’t going to stay in memory for long. It’s going to circulate, probably to your boss and maybe to your husband. It’s just not worth it.”

Which is not to say that having an affair is necessarily wrong, says Ms. Brandt. What IS wrong, is going about it in a sexual, emotional or drunken daze, with no thought to what happens if you’re discovered. “Affairs can rekindle feelings and emotions in you that you may have believed long buried. For some people, they’re the only things that make a long-term marriage tolerable. But successful cheaters play it smart, realizing that affairs, no matter how intense, often amount to little more than detours off the matrimonial highway.” After all, THE 50-MILE RULE author claims, once you start to cheat, you generally want to continue, and that’s hard to do if you’ve got an aggrieved spouse cracking the whip over some discovered indiscretion.

So play it smart this holiday season. “Office romances are convenient, but that’s the only thing they’ve got going for them. The successful affair is the undiscovered affair. Don’t go out of your way to advertise your infidelity to the people you have to work with every day. Your secrets aren’t safe with them.”

:) :) :)

2006-12-04T20:54:00.000-08:00

from the UK News, Dec. 4, 2006 --

Women Confess Infidelity to Hairdressers -- (probably not of the "Supercuts variety. :)

More than two-thirds of women having an affair tell their hairdresser before they tell anyone else, a survey revealed today/Sun. But the survey also showed that fewer than a third of men will share their secret while having their hair cut.

Nearly 600 members of extra-marital dating website IllicitEncounters.com were asked: "Who would be the first person you would tell if you were having an affair?" Nationally, hairdressers came top at 73 per cent for women, but only 29 per cent of men felt comfortable sharing their secret with their’s. Second for women was a complete stranger, third a parent, fourth their best friend, fifth a work colleague, sixth a solicitor, seventh their partner, eighth a male friend.

For men, top of the list was best friend, followed by work colleague, solicitor, parent, a female friend, their hairdresser, a complete stranger and, finally, their partner.

Regionally, hairdressers came top across the country in all but Northern Ireland, the Scottish Islands and Mid-Wales, where they were all third, with 81 per cent of women in Surrey putting hairdressers top. Only two per cent of men in the north-east of England and south Wales told their hairdresser or barber first. Members were also asked who they would first tell if they were considering having an affair. Hairdressers came top for women (89 per cent), and best friend top for men (61 per cent).

A spokeswoman for IllicitEncounters.com said: "Affairs in this context relate to an utterly secret life, not as something that will lead to the breaking up of a marriage or family. The range of reasons for conducting an affair is vast – some people know that time is passing, their relationship is dead or lacking, and that this is perhaps the best way for them to have a life while not upsetting others. (a great point - people don't necessarily want their spouses to know that they -- the spouse -- may no longer be that interesting, attractive, or appealing. In this kind of situation, secrecy is a kindness.) The vast majority of members are normal people who are not getting from their partner what they need - that can be basic attention, a little romance, fun, travel, or, candidly, safe sex." (amen to this list.)

"Sometimes affairs erupt from simply meeting and hitting it off with a workmate or somebody they meet at a party, or for any number of chance reasons. But there are a great number of people who think very hard before carefully researching the concept of having an affair, plan in detail how they’re going to conduct it and then look very deeply at the sort of person with whom they want to have an affair." Males having or wanting an affair are most likely to come from London, the West Midlands, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Surrey, Kent, West Yorkshire or Cheshire, while the least likely are from Northern Ireland, the Scottish Islands, the Scottish Borders, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight or Anglesey, the survey showed.

For females, the most likely are from London, the West Midlands, Surrey, Essex, Kent, Lancashire, Hampshire, Cheshire, West Yorkshire or Hertfordshire. The least likely are from Northern Ireland, Powys, Gwynedd, the Isle of Man and Scottish islands.

IllicitEncounters.com is now running a pilot scheme in the Luton area, inviting hairdressers to introduce their clients to IlicitEncounters.com. A spokeswoman added: "We’re not looking to promote affairs, but we want to ensure anyone who needs us finds us." (smart marketing! :)

2006-11-14T16:26:00.000-08:00

From an Indian newspaper...IANS

Virtual affairs souring real relationships

NEW DELHI: With more men and women having cyber affairs, Internet infidelity has arrived in India. Spouses are trying to catch their techno-savvy unfaithful partners in cyber space, some by keeping pace with technology, others by reading self-help books. Some others are seeking professional help to cope with their agony. (interesting choice of word there.)

Casual e-affairs, which usually last up to a few weeks, are increasingly souring real-life relationships. Anoop works from home on his PC and promptly logs off around 7 p.m. when it's time for his wife to get back home.He insists that the women he chats with are just "friends"."Once in a while I may also flirt with them," he said. Excessive use of Internet is also becoming a reason for break-up of marriages. Adil, 48, who lives with his wife and two teenage children in east Delhi, has posted fake profiles on almost all matrimonial sites. He interacts with prospective brides trying to pass off as a 30-something groom and often exchanges phone numbers. "He spends most of his leisure time on the Internet," said his wife, who is seeing a marriage counselor. (as opposed to spending with you - is there a message there?)

"His other 'hobby' is to surf adult sites. The kids use the same computer and often we find indecent pictures of women popping up on the PC," she said. "We called in an engineer and installed filters to stop such pop-ups, but he keeps removing the filters. He doesn't care about the children. It is too early for the kids to be exposed to such adult stuff," she added. (no kidding, but you've got to wonder about a guy who would expose his kids to porn and not care, doncha think?)

Ariestotle (chat name) is a film production assistant in Mumbai who usually works 15 days a month. "I usually chat with women," admits Ariestotle, who is logged on to the Yahoo and MSN messengers round-the-clock. "The only time I am not logged in is when my brother wants to use the PC or I am not at home. I use my cellphone to interact then," he said.

It's not just the husbands and boyfriends- the wives and girlfriends are not far behind. Anita, 29, by her own admission is addicted to the '30-something-room' on a popular Indian chat site. "Even when I am at work I have to just log in and be there. I may not be participating actively, but the compulsion to log in is immense," she said. Anita has befriended quite a few friends in the cyber world. "I have had a few showdowns with my husband over this. So I am a little careful now. I chat and even call up friends when he is not around."

Anita can discuss everything from books to films to her married life with her cyber friends and most of her discussions are on-camera. "I am very thick with these friends. In fact, they are my best friends. They cheer me up when I sulk and are always around when I need them."As rebuilding trust after an episode of Internet infidelity may not be easy, plenty of websites are offering tips to deal with it. They ask spouses not to go online unless there is a purpose, and not to sign in if they are bored, lonely or had an argument with their spouse. (Wow, impressive. Now that's advice!)

2006-11-07T17:22:00.000-08:00

From Fox News...

Having trouble with the lady in your life? Blame it on her brain.

Experts are finding with increasing frequency that men and women are … wait for it … different — right down to their individual brain cells, The New York Post reports.
"People assume that men and women are interchangeable, and that's just not so," Dr. Marianne Legato, founder of the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University and author of the 2005 book "Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget" told The Post.

What is it exactly that makes the lads and ladies so distinctly divided?
Legato's research indicates that variations in individual brain cells may prove some time-honored stereotypes to be closer to the truth than you might want to believe. For example:
Women remember things better — even things the guys have long forgotten.
Men are more adept at reading maps.

Men prefer to do things on their own, while women are more likely to enjoy talking and doing things in groups. And the groan factor doesn't stop there — Legato says women's brains are, in fact, about 10 percent smaller than those of their more manly counterparts, even after their more diminutive statures are taken into account.

But before that news prompts the guys start dancing in the end zones, know this: Legato says that even though the ladies' brains might be smaller, they have more activity between neurons, meaning they "get more brain bang for the buck."

And it seems the differences in the male and female brains may affect everything from the mating game to how a couple fights to whether one's partner is likely to have a wandering eye.
Legato says guys are attracted to a woman with full lips, bright eyes and big hips — all signs of fertility, whereas women dig the dudes with strong jaws, deep voices and a good sense of humor.
"Humor bespeaks intelligence, and health, as in a lack of depression," says Legato.

Read 'em and weep, feminists.

2006-10-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

Don't let this happen to you! From Salon.com --

I think my baby is my ex's -- and my husband doesn't know. The truth could destroy our marriage -- should I do the DNA tests anyway?

Dear Cary,

I had a one-night stand with my ex. I took Plan B, life carried on as normal, I told my husband what had happened. It was tough but we got through it. (never tell your spouse what you did. Stupid! If you don't think you can handle the guilt, don't cheat.)

That month I skipped my period. I went for a lot of early scans, which date the embryo to the day. The dates and the fact I took Plan B made me as sure as I could be that the pregnancy was a result of my husband rather than my ex. I lied about the dates, though I had confessed to cheating. We decided to continue the pregnancy.

Then we found out, at 20 weeks pregnant, that the baby has club-feet and dislocated hips. My ex was born with these conditions and there is an extremely strong genetic link. There is no history of either of these conditions in my or my husband's family.

So the baby is probably my ex's. My husband doesn't know that my ex had these conditions, and it's unlikely (though possible) he will find out. Finding out the baby is not his will destroy our relationship -- which was floundering at the time I conceived, but during the pregnancy has become an incredible, strong unit. Not a unit that could withstand being founded on a lie, though. (Attention! You cannot get away with this kind of thing anymore, and women trying to pull the wool over guys' eyes is one of the reasons that DNA testing at birth should be mandatory. Who would want to be married to a woman like this?)

The baby is due in a week. I don't know what to do. Have a DNA test done and find out for sure? Never mention it and hope the baby doesn't look too obviously like my ex? (If your husband has a brain, he will do the testing himself, given your idiocy in telling him about you and your ex.) I can't imagine spending my life with my husband raising a child who isn't his and never telling him -- but I can't imagine raising the child on my own either, and I am pretty sure that's how it'd end up. I don't want my husband to leave me. (Should have thought about that before.)

My ex is now happy with someone else and has made it clear he'd rather forget we ever had a relationship, let alone the interactions we did earlier this year.

Facing a Big Choice (More like, Stuck in a Mess that I Created.)

Dear Facing a Big Choice,

I do believe that your husband has to know the truth. You will want to choose the time and place in which to tell him. But he does need to know. So at some time after the baby is born, yes, I think you ought to have the necessary tests performed.
You don't know for certain yet whose sperm created this child, but you do know whose child this is: This is your child, certainly and without question, no matter what the genetic heritage.

This is also your husband's child, no matter how he came into being. (Uh, not really. A man should have a choice and a say in such matters. It has always seemed odd to me, how many men leave their biological children in one relationship, to go raise some other man's kids in another marriage while his OWN kids are being raised by some OTHER guy, but that oddity of life aside, men generally feel pretty strongly about genetic ties, or should. To deceive him in matters like this is tantamount to fraud and should be treated as such by the courts.)

He is your husband and you are giving birth to a child that is his (legally, but not genetically, which makes a huge difference.) He is the father of all your children, whether his sperm gave them genesis or not. The children deserve no less. They had no say in this. They deserve to be loved no matter whose genes they carry. (True. Which is why you need to be super-careful in an infidelity situation to avoid pregnancy, whether a man or a woman.)

That is the way I would look at it. The fact that you lied to him is unfortunate. If you have the ability to look deeply at your own behavior and find a way to change, I suggest you do so. It seems that you lied out of fear, and out of a mistaken belief that lying would make things better. (Saving her own ass, more likely.)

But I'm not suggesting you be cast out in the street and stoned. People can get pretty emotional about these things, but throughout history the species has renewed itself in just such ways more times than we need to count. Babies want to be born; the species wants to endure; it finds ways to make more of itself. It uses us in spite of ourselves. Give it an opening and life will sprout. There are powerful forces at work here.

You did not really do the right thing, but it was understandable what you did. The right thing would have been much harder, and sort of counterintuitive. But none of us is perfect. We do stupid things. Sometimes the stupid things we do don't matter. Sometimes they matter in the most profound and unalterable way. (Here's a situation that qualifies.) You can't always tell in advance -- though I would say that in matters of birth and paternity, it can be assumed that any action we take has a better than average chance of falling into the profound and unalterable category.

I think your husband will be profoundly upset to learn what has happened. Powerful and cogent arguments can be made that genetic provenance is not just an abstraction but is, on the contrary, to many people, utterly central to their reasons for marriage and procreation. (Duh - how much are they paying this moron?) So I will probably get many letters this time, urging this or that more uncompromising solution.

My own bottom line is this: Your husband does have to know if this child owes its genetic existence to the other man. Maybe not right away. But soon. (How about today, bitch?) He needs to know that you haven't told him the truth. I hope that doesn't destroy your marriage. It doesn't have to. There is no law that says your marriage has to fall apart. People live through all kinds of things. You made a mistake. But now there's a situation that calls for compassion and commitment. (A big price to extract from a guy -- 18 years of raising another man's child because you made a "mistake," which was probably more a situation of sperm warfare - let the best swimmer win!)

That said, will you allow me just a short musing? The reason I do not place so much importance on the genetic inheritance of the child is mainly because I myself do not expect to earn any kind of immortality by producing children that carry my genes (and because you're an idiot as well, don't forget that part.) I do, however, if I am honest with myself, have some such expectation that my work will be read by people after I am gone and that a part of me therefore will live on in that way. (An advice column on Slate? Dream on!)

Fate has dealt you a difficult hand, and in trying to make things a little better, you appear to have made things a good deal worse. (To the contrary, you dealt yourself your own hand.) I suggest you come clean soon and endeavor to make the best of a trying situation.

__

Arrghh! There's a statistic from the 90's that says that one in ten kids born into marriage situations are not the children of the legal father. There are certainly genetic, financial and other reasons why having children by other men makes sense in the aggregate - genetic variety, children with different skills, capabilities and interests, the opportunity to get more resources from more men.

But in a practical sense, all of that goes out the window in these days of DNA testing. You can't get away with it, girls, so stop trying.

2006-10-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

More cautionary tales...and more reasons why "The undiscovered affair is the successful affair."

Private Eyes Catch Those Who Cheat & Lie

The book "Confessions of a Love Dick - How Private Eyes Catch Those Who Cheat & Lie" was written by a former lady private eye, B.J. Morgan, aka pseudonym "Beth Whaley" - the name she called herself when making pretext phone calls to gather information as a former "dick-tective of love."

Morgan spent five years specializing as an infidelity investigator and now runs a coaching business, MateChecks.com, helping those who suspect their mate is stepping out on them. If infidelity is occurring in a relationship, her book may offer a unique look at how she secured evidence of affairs in progress.

Anyone suspecting their mate of inappropriate behavior should spend $17.95 now to order the book (to read the list of warning signs of unfaithfulness and tips on how one can secure the evidence of an affair in progress) BEFORE shelling out a thousand dollars or more for the services of a private investigator, marital therapist, or divorce attorney.

At last, a former Lady Private Eye has decided to pierce the veil of "How Private Eyes Catch Those Who Cheat & Lie" in her book "Confessions of a Love Dick" to educate and inform those who have a gut feeling that something is wrong in their romantic relationship but do not know where to turn for help or answers. After reading this highly revealing, albeit controversial, self-help book, the reader will be armed with incredible knowledge should they decide to conduct "romantic espionage" on the home-front.

Reading "Confessions of a Love Dick" is the first step suspicious mates need to take - which may very well help to uncover concrete proof of cheating and give them reason to hire a private investigator, marital therapist, or divorce attorney.

MateChecks.com also can acquire information like criminal and court records, marital status, sex-offender registration and warrants for arrest in their "Investimate Background Check" through a discreet and private process. Many prenuptial investigations have revealed adultery as having been the grounds for divorce in the subject's past. Morgan also has seen a direct correlation between domestic violence and adultery and other deceitful behavior and believes it is a wise and smart investment to check out someone's past.

The book (and services offered at MateChecks.com) is designed to help both women and men secure evidence in circumstances fraught with emotion, anxiety, and bitterness. According to Morgan, her profession is one dedicated to assisting the public in making "better life decisions regarding their personal relationships." (In some circumstances, having an affair IS the better life decision!)

2006-10-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article, with some sobering information...proving once again that the successful affair is the undiscovered affair. Once your spouse is suspicious, you've got problems.

If you're gonna spy, do it cost effectively and legally
By ALISON BERT
From THE JOURNAL NEWS, Sept. 30th

Legal or not?

• Legal: Following your spouse and filming them in public
• Legal in New York: Recording a conversation you are having with your spouse without telling them.
• Not legal: Installing an audio recording or listening device on someone's phone or property to eavesdrop on third-party conversations you're not involved in.

**

Never have there been so many ways to spy on a spouse — and so many pitfalls. The Internet is awash with gadgets, from hidden cameras inside smoke detectors to audio recording devices disguised as pens and watches. But there's an art to getting evidence of a spouse's infidelity without coming under federal scrutiny or depleting your life savings.

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro (a pity she was such a loser potential candidate against the Hildabeast), a candidate for state attorney general, sought to engage in illegal eavesdropping. In a phone conversation last year with friend and former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, Pirro suggested bugging her husband's boat to find out whether he was having an affair. When news of the conversation and investigation broke this week, Pirro insisted that she never followed through with the idea and that she was speaking from a state of anger.

Plenty of people in the Lower Hudson Valley likely relate to Pirro's desire to find evidence on her spouse. Private investigators get calls constantly from men and women. So, to do things in the most economical manner that is legal — here are some things to consider before setting out to confirm your suspicions.

Will evidence pay off?

Before investing money in surveillance, ask yourself what you want to gain from it — and whether the evidence will truly pay off. In many cases, people want evidence of infidelity to get a divorce. "In New York, you must prove fault to get a divorce," said attorney Arthur J. Ferraro of Ferraro Zugibe LLP in Garnerville, explaining that fault can take the form of adultery, cruel and inhuman treatment, abandonment, incurable insanity, imprisonment for more than three years or a spouse's refusal to have sexual relations for a long period. In the absence of the other instances, evidence of adultery is a good option.

When it comes to getting a more lucrative divorce settlement, however, that videotape of your spouse with a paramour will mean little to a judge, Ferraro said. "Generally speaking, fault is not an issue, unless the fault is egregious," Ferraro said.

"There have been cases that have been decided in which a husband hired a hit man to kill his wife unsuccessfully or a husband beat the hell out of his wife, things of that sort."

The evidence can help with custody battles, however, in which a judge considers the "relative merits" of the mother and father. Adultery is one of various factors that would be considered, but it would be a "much more important factor if it could be proven that the child knows about the adultery," he said. (Interesting how standards have changed on this issue.)

And there's still another instance in which having such evidence can be a good investment, Ferraro said. "What if you had a husband who's a pillar of the community, a businessman, a church-goer, a synagogue-goer, whose wife has hired a private detective who's gotten videos of the husband," he said. "The car's parked outside a motel. The other car belonging to the paramour is there. He has pictures showing them going in, staying for an hour and then coming out and kissing. ... Well, the wife could say, 'Hey, honey, look what I have. You don't want me to spread this around and let our children know and then let the rabbi know — you wouldn't want that, would you? So let's get a fair settlement, honey."

But in other instances, the desire to know is out of the legal realm."There's a lot of reasons why people want to check on their spouses," said Gil Alba, the founder of Alba Investigations in Somers. The retired First Grade Detective for the New York Police Department refers matrimonial cases to other investigators after finding out what the callers are looking to gain.

"It's a lot deeper than just wanting them caught," he said. "It's a whole psychological thing depending on how the two are getting along. Maybe they want to confirm the fact that they're fooling around for themselves (or) confront them and maybe try to get them to stop."

The cost of sleuthing

Private investigators must be licensed in New York. In this region, they typically charge $75 to $200 an hour for surveillance by two to four investigators. A client usually pays a retainer from which fees and expenses are drawn.

At 1st Class Investigations Inc. in Pomona (www.1stclassinvestigations.com), run by two retired NYPD officers, retainers tend to range from $2,500 to $6,000, depending on the length of the investigation and what's involved. The standard investigation requires between 20 to 30 hours of surveillance, said Frank DiMaggio, a retired captain.

Before hiring an investigator, there are things you can do to confirm your suspicions or get information to make the investigation easier, Alba said. He suggested trying to check your partner's cell phone to see which numbers were called and received, checking phone bills and E-Z Pass statements or installing a GPS tracking system under a mutually-owned vehicle that tracks its whereabouts.

Your spouse may get careless and leave e-mail on the computer desktop or neglect to clear Web search histories. But Alba warns against using special software to find your partner's password or decipher messages from key strokes. And he warns against calling their cell phone service provider pretending to be that person in order to get access to his or her phone records.

These methods are illegal, he said. Also illegal: eavesdropping with cell phone bugs. They're probably the most common type of bug, according to Skipp Porteus of Sherlock Investigations Inc. in Manhattan, which specializes in bug detection and other surveillance.

"A specially prepared cell phone can be left on a desk, taped under a conference table, placed in a plant, or under a car seat," he writes on his company's Web site (www.sherlockinvestigations.com). "The eavesdropper can call at will and listen to the conversation in the room or vehicle." The phone doesn't ring but turns on a sensitive microphone.
In New York, it is legal to record conversations you are having without telling the other person. If your spouse confesses to having an affair, the recording is admissible in court, Ferraro said.

Amir Muhammad of Yonkers, who runs Mount Vernon-based CL Investigations with his partner, said he's had clients install hidden cameras in their homes that are concealed in teddy bears, smoke detectors and wall clocks. Although people are allowed to install surveillance cameras in their own home, the laws governing their use fall into a gray area depending on what is being filmed and its purpose. (Sheesh, you have to wonder whether the female operatives in his firm wear burkhas when they go out on assignment. Talk about undercover.) Before buying anything, of course, it's crucial to know the law.

Tips from private eyes

Private investigators have their stories of do-it-yourself sleuthing gone awry. And it can make their job even tougher.
Muhammad said one woman's husband spotted her car as she and her sister were trailing him. Then when she hired his firm to take over the investigation, the job took much longer than it should have.

"Now, every time the person comes out of their house, they're going to be looking over their shoulder ... for strange cars following them for too long," he said.

In some instances, he said, people become violent when they discover that their spouse is following them. André Barry, a retired NYPD lieutenant with 1st Class Investigations, recalled an instance in which a woman showed up while he and his partner were conducting surveillance on her husband outside his workplace. "She was so anxious to get an answer that she just couldn't wait for us to do the job and get back to her," he said. "She almost compromised the investigation because her husband, of course, knows her car."

Barry also advises against confronting your spouse."If a spouse accuses their partner of being involved in another relationship," he said, "the first thing that person's going to do is to terminate their relationship, even if it's only temporary just to show that, 'Honey, you're wrong. You could have me followed.' "

His partner, DiMaggio, advises people to follow their intuition.
"If they think that there's something going on, we have come to realize, usually their suspicions are correct," he said. (Correct! Remember - don't give *yourself* away.)

2006-09-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

Proving again that youth really is wasted on the young...from the ASU "Web Devil" website. ASU is, of course, known as a major party school. Laura here must not have gotten the memo. Oh, and it's in part about a movie called "The Last Kiss" which I have no intention of seeing - ever - so I don't care if there are spoilers or not. :)

Opinions: Cheaters' actions leave no room for interpretation, excuses
by Laura Thorson published on Tuesday, September 26, 2006

I went to the movies last weekend and saw "The Last Kiss." I'll try not to give away anything that wasn't implied in the trailer, but consider yourself forewarned of spoilers.

Overall, I liked the movie, and thought the actors did a good job of being believable characters. But I have never left a movie so utterly hateful of a certain group of people - cheaters. (Ohmygosh, I'm so, like, busted! Laura the poli sci major hates me!)

The movie is about a man named Michael (Zach Braff) on the verge of committing to a set path in life. Right at the moment when he thinks he has everything in his life exactly how he always planned it with his girlfriend Jenna, (Jacinda Barrett), (which includes the unplanned pregnancy, by the way - some planning) he meets Rachel Bilson's character, Kim. She is a young, flirty coed who makes him second-guess everything he has ever desired. (Meeting the person who may be just right for you at that point in your life can do that.)

I cannot understand guys who cheat on their girlfriends. (That's because you're immature and naive and don't know anything about human nature. Wait a few years, you'll get it.) And I cannot fathom why women seduce men they know are in a relationship. (Because they can!)
The same goes for girls who cheat on boyfriends and the boys who knowingly seduce those girls.

There is a multitude of excuses cheaters use, I'm sure. (There are more than you've listed here, that's for certain.) They wanted more sexual variety or excitement. Or like Ross' infamous infidelity on "Friends", some cheaters might say they were "on a break."Cheating men might fault their supposed biological drive to sleep with as many women as possible. Women might cite unmet emotional needs. Or college students in general might make the excuse that they were drunk and it was an accident. (Of course there's the classic, "I forgot that I was married.")

Excuse me while I get up on my high moral horse for a moment, (the moment we've been waiting for) but these justifications won't fly with me. They pale in comparison to the emotional and mental anguish that a cheater puts their significant other through (assuming that person gets caught. There's a reason that "The successful affair is the undiscovered affair.") According to a study in 2000 by Marty E. Zusman, a sociology professor at Indiana University Northwest, and his associates, 38 percent of the 620 undergraduates surveyed admitted to having been unfaithful in their current relationship.What a disgrace. (Yawn.)

If you feel sexually or emotionally unfulfilled, you should talk to your partner first so you can either work things out or end things before they get messy. If you are on a break, you better make sure you qualify the terms of what being on a break means and whether or not it allows philandering. If you feel the need to spread your seed, you better wake up and smell the monogamy. (Wow, that's clever...not.) It's the 21st century, gents, and while our divorce and infidelity rates hover at about 50 percent or more, the official word is that polygamy is out and two-person relationships are in. (Actually, polygamy may be very much in, if the gay rights lobby succeeds in redefining marriage.)

And last but not least, if you are getting so drunk that you cannot control who you are kissing, much less sleeping with, then it is time for you to get some substance abuse help. Seriously. (Finally, a valid point.) And while the cheaters probably shoulder the most blame because they are intentionally doing something that will devastate someone they supposedly love, the "cheatees" who knowingly help them do it are just as much at fault. (There's no time like college to see what's out there - and you'll never be in a better position to meet people and test the waters. That's why having girlfriend/boyfriend relationships in college is just plain dumb. There's no point in tying yourself to one person when a dozen others may be hovering on the horizon. There's plenty of time after school to get that starter marriage going!)

Ladies and gentlemen, if you know someone is in a relationship, keep your hands off. You have no right to make a move or even to reciprocate if you're approached. (Sure you do. Until you sign on the dotted line, you're a free agent, and so is the person you're approaching.) Be the bigger person, think how you would feel if you were the cheated significant other, and use a little self-restraint. Some of you might think you can't help yourself, that he or she is just too hot to resist, but trust me, I speak from experience, you can say no if you know they're in a relationship, and you should. (Obviously Laura got dumped by someone trading up. Given her pompous holier-than-thou attitude, that's hardly a surprise. What guy would want to put up with this?)

Besides, why would you want to be with a cheater anyway? You know sooner or later you'll be left in the same way.The bottom line is that being unfaithful is mentally and emotionally destructive for your loved one - not to mention the STDs you could be exposing them to.

I think I've scolded enough for now, so I'll leave you with some parting wisdom from Stephen, the character who plays Jenna's father in the film. Stephen addresses Michael after discovering that Michael cheated on his daughter by saying, "What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you say you love - that's what matters. That's the only thing that counts." (Thanks for the Zach Braff wisdom. I know I feel better now. I bet his character in the movie does too, having banged Rachel Bilson. :)

2006-09-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

From a blog called "7 days" from the UAE, of all places...
http://www.7days.ae/2006/09/21/adultery-can-it-survive-technology.html

Can Adultery Survive Technology?

For UAE-based security expert Said Kiwan, one of the first things a cheating wife or husband should do is check their car. “You should look under the hood or inside the trunk,” he says. “Generally people put a GPS recorder in the same place.” It’s advice British DJ Chris Tarrant could have used. After seeing another woman for ten years, he was finally caught out when his wife put a tracking device on a car and discovered his secret “love nest”.

And his divorce is part of a wave of similar breakups. Adultery may have been around as long as there have been adults - but in the cyber-age it is getting a lot more technical and a good deal harder to pull off. “Technology has made it harder to cheat,” says Simon Smith, a mobility specialist with a background in surveillance. (Actually it CAN make it more difficult. There are plenty of people out there with no technological savvy at all. But you do need to be careful.)
“In the UK, it is even quite easy to trace someone’s movements from their mobile phone.” In the UAE, unfaithful wives and husbands are safer. Here, paying an expert to investigate your partner is totally illegal (although some companies have applied for the necessary permission).

But even here, adultery, which is illegal, is getting riskier. With modern gadgetry it requires only a touch of dedication to check out your partner yourself. “The technology has evolved to the point where you can walk into a spy shop in the UK and buy a state of the art surveillance system,” says Kiwan, director of operations of Dubai-based high-tech company MVP Tech.

Among the many traps for unfaithful spouses are cameras disguised as part of a smoke detector or an AC unit. For an outlay of around dhs100, software will make a PC reveal each keystroke. There are also plenty of ingenious ways to make a phone spill all its secrets. “With a mobile you have to be a bit more knowledgeable,” says Kiwan. “But there are chips and voice recorders you can fit inside.” (Yikes! NEVER throw out an old cell phone. Crush it, run over it with a truck, hit it with a sledgehammer. But don't just ditch it. There's too much information in there to be accessed.)

Still, the technological race between suspicious and guilty parties is hotting up. One encryption expert says his customers are already taking high-tech steps to protect their privacy. “People in this part of the world are extremely serious about members of their family not having access to their phones,” he says. “Not having their wives check their phones is one reason customers are keen.” Ayman Majzoub of Pointsec, an encryption company specialised in phones, also has customers eager to protect their personal life as well as their business dealings.

“More and more people are using phones to store a lot of information - not just SMS messages but their entire lives,” he says. Perhaps the need for vigilance makes it harder to commit adultery. On the other hand, the technology that catches cheats also seems to inspire them. “I think that could be the part of the problem,” says one security expert. “Messaging and e-mails seem to make it easier to have an affair. That’s true. But people forget that these are also the easiest way to get caught.” (Let's be careful out there!)

2006-09-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

More from the progressive front...

Islamists claim victory on rape laws
September 15, 2006

ISLAMABAD: Human rights groups have accused the Pakistani Government of caving in to pressure from hardline Islamists after it agreed to water down planned amendments to controversial rape and adultery laws.
The President, Pervez Musharraf, has sought to use the measure, the Women's Protection Bill, to burnish his credentials as a modern and moderate Islamic leader before his visit to the US this month. (good luck with that.)

Under the Hudood Ordinance, enacted in 1979 by the military ruler, General Zia ul-Haq, thousands of women, in particular the poor and illiterate, have been jailed for adultery on the flimsiest evidence, often when a former husband refuses to recognise a divorce, or even when a woman has reported being raped. The original proposal was to remove rape from the jurisdiction of Islamic law, and make it a crime punishable under the penal code. ("Islamic law" = justified barbarism.)

Accusers in adultery cases would have to appear before a court, rather than just lodge the case with the local police. The draft also raised the age of consent to 16 and stated that four adult witnesses were required to prove adultery, rather than the traditional four male witnesses.
But under a compromise struck this week between clerics from the government side and the religious alliance, women who have been raped will remain subject to the same punishments as those accused of adultery. (Because, of course, rape is the same thing as adultery in the primitive mind.)
The Law Minister, Wasi Zafar, defended the concession by saying: "If a woman has four witnesses she can file a case under the Hudood law, or if she does not have witnesses she can file a case under the penal code."
Islamist parties claimed a victory. Hafiz Hussain, an MP, said: "They have acknowledged that the amendment was in conflict with the Koran."
Rights advocates said the changes in the bill would only cause further injustice and exploitation of women. (Amen.)

Are we holding our breath until women's groups in THIS country stand up for exploited Islamic women? Ahh, no. NOW and its ilk are too busy excoriating George W. Bush and lionizing former first rapist Bill Clinton. But don't worry, they'll get around to it sometime, I'm sure.

2006-09-11T22:54:00.000-07:00

We remember, and will ALWAYS remember, you bastards.

2006-09-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

Another reality TV relationship bites the dust.

LOS ANGELES, CA, United States (UPI) -- Former Miss USA Shanna Moakler has denied every being unfaithful to her husband, rocker Travis Barker, and claims to be a good mother to her children. (did she actually take a LOOK at the guy before she married him?)
People magazine said that during a recent interview, the former Playboy Playmate said her husband`s allegation last month that he was filing for divorce due to her infidelity and child neglect was untrue.
The 30-year-old model said she is very active in the lives of her three children -- including one from a prior relationship with boxer Oscar De La Hoya -- and has no problem sharing the children with her husband despite his comments. (another idiot woman having a child with a man to whom she is not married...of course, De La Hoya probably has some serious cash, so the reason why Moakler opted to have a kid with him is probably self-evident. Why support yourself when you can get some chump to do it for you?)
Moakler said that after having their 2004 marriage covered on the MTV reality series 'Meet the Barkers' last year, she and Barker began to have problems six months ago.
'I think what happened was that he was surrounded by a lot of really bad people,' she told People. 'When you have a lot of people kissing your butt all day, and then you come home to the big negative all the time, after a while it takes its toll.' (I'd love to know the definition of 'the big negative' - it probably involves whining, nagging and otherwise tyrannizing her husband, which definitely is not conducive to marital bliss...)

2006-09-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

NEWSFLASH! MSM discovers that cheating is easier during the computer age. Stop the presses!

INTERNET, CELL PHONES MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND AND MAINTAIN ILLICIT AFFAIRS
By Mark de la Vina, Mercury News

Call it crazy, paranoid or cynical, but the next time you peruse the personals on Craigslist or scan profiles on MySpace, consider this: There's a good chance you just ran into a cheater.
Just as purchasing concert tickets or checking baseball scores has become as simple as logging onto a computer, infidelity is a simple keystroke away.

Cheating is on the rise because technology eases the search to find a willing partner, according to therapists, researchers and relationship experts. The unfaithful no longer have to scour bars or cultivate workplace relationships. Cheating has increased along with the growing use of text messaging and cell phones, chat rooms and online dating sites, some exclusively targeting the polygamous.

``The Internet has greatly removed the barriers,'' says Ruth Houston, founder of Infidelityadvice.com and author of ``Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs'' (Lifestyle Publications, 192 pp., $29.95). ``If you are a married person who wants to cheat, you can now go online and maintain an affair even while your spouse is in the room. Everything has changed.'' (It changed the minute the internet became ubiquitous - that's easily ten years ago.)

Jill, 45, an elementary school teacher from Mountain View who asked that her last name not be used, learned of her partner's infidelity when she came across his open e-mail account, which he had failed to log off on their home computer. (Stupid stupid stupid. This is the primary way that people get caught - this and not deleting their online history. Make sure you're surfing anonymously and shut everything down when you're done.)

She was shocked to read that he had done ``everything from soliciting hookers to making dates with others'' via the Internet, she says.
``I saw that he does this all day at work. I even posed as someone he had been conversing with, and he e-mailed me 30 times in one day!'' When Jill revealed her identity, he downplayed his online trawling, which ``ruined our romance,'' she says. (If he was e-mailing hookers and looking for other women with that sort of diligence, there was no romance. Wake up.)

No reliable figures exist on the increase in cheaters who use technology, but computer forensics expert John Lucich says the rise is undeniable. The president of Network Security Group, a firm in Union, N.J., hired for computer-related legal issues, says that 95 percent of the cases his company handles involve men and women who set up secret e-mail accounts for the purpose of cheating. (Never assume that your on-line or e-mail activities are secret - they aren't.)

Online dating sites play a key role in connecting people searching for extracurricular activities. While mainstream services such as Match.com and Yahoo Personals ban married people from posting profiles, the dating sites can't stop users from lying. (D'oh!) Other companies are happy to pick up the slack. Private Affairs (www. philanderers.com), an online dating site based in Toronto, targets users looking for what it calls EMRs, or extramarital relationships. Another service, Ashley Madison Agency (www.ashleymadison.com), boasts 1.03 million members in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. With its tag line ``when monogamy becomes monotony,'' the company, also founded in Toronto, has seen its membership double annually, says operations director and founder Darren Morgenstern.

``We're finding that it's just not going away,'' he says. ``People are looking at the plausibility of using the Internet to have an affair, and it just works for them.''

Once the connection is made, technology also helps the affair to thrive. Cell phones and PDAs give cheaters the chance to communicate privately and coordinate with their side dish.
Caryn, 37, a West Valley College student from Morgan Hill, knows this all too well. Like many wired people in Silicon Valley, she used to contact a former boyfriend almost exclusively on his cell phone. (A 37-year old JC student? Too dumb to play in this league, most likely.)

``After several months, I found out he was married,'' says Caryn, who also asked that her last name not be used. ``Much later, he even informed me that on several occasions I had even paged him during his marriage counseling sessions.''

Statistics on cheating vary widely because of the way pollsters word questions, says Infidelityadvice.com's Houston. The data also is muddied by dishonest responses. And as people debate the definition of sex, they similarly debate the definition of cheating.

Sexologist Shere Hite in 1988 shocked Americans when she reported that up to 70 percent of women married five or more years have sex outside of marriage. Other surveys have concluded that anywhere from 38 million to 53 million men in the United States have cheated on their wives at least once, Houston says. (There's no way to know the truth, because people will lie either to inflate their egos as in, "I cheat all the time because plenty of men/women are interested in me," or they'll downplay their actions for fear of being revealed.)

But such ``studies,'' as well as research reported in popular magazines and advice columns, often inflate figures, according to Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. His 2004 study, ``American Sexual Behavior,'' which polled more than 10,000 people over 22 years, found that 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once.

Technology has helped the cause, prompting the curious to make the jump from fantasy to philandering, says Brian Person, a marriage and family therapist in Los Altos.
``Some people, given the proper social boundaries, would be less likely to cheat than they are now,'' he says.
Network Security Group's Lucich is convinced that the rise in advertising and e-mail spam that hype cheating sites entice people to cross those boundaries, he says.

``I truly believe that there are people out there who have not thought about infidelity and then get spam messages or hear about online cheating and dating sites on the radio,'' says Lucich, whose book ``Cyber Lies'' (StarPath, 212 pp., $35) details how to easily check a partner's cell phone or computer to discover if he or she is cheating. ``In a weak moment, they say, `Let's just take a peek.' Then they start going further and further, and the next thing you know, they're cheating.''

There is some small consolation in the rise of high-tech infidelity, Houston says, because cheaters are often unaware that they have left evidence of their affairs on their PCs or cell phones. E-mails are reportedly how Christie Brinkley found out her spouse was cheating on her with a local teenager.
``There are programs you can put onto a computer so you can see everything your mate is doing online,'' Houston says. ``You can even put a GPS device in your mate's car to find out where they are going. It might be easier to cheat, but it's also a lot easier to get caught.'' (Which is something to keep in mind. Technology makes certain aspects easier, but it's best to avoid it when carrying on an affair. Sometimes the old ways are best.)

2006-09-02T14:32:00.000-07:00

Words to the wise from the occasionally accurate AP --

Selling your cell phone? Don't be betrayed by it!
WASHINGTON (AP) - Don't tell your cell phone any secrets. It might not keep them. It turns out that when you upgrade to a new cell phone and get rid of your old one, those old text messages may go with it. Resetting the phone to clear the slate can be a lot more difficult than owners think, meaning the new owner can get a look at a lot of sensitive information. A Virginia company bought 10 different phones on eBay this summer to test phone-security tools it sells for businesses. The phones surrendered credit-card numbers, banking passwords, business secrets and even evidence of adultery. Most manufacturers offer instructions on how to completely erase cell-phone data, but in one case it involves pushing so many buttons simultaneously, that it's a two-person job. One security expert says the best thing to do may be to heave the old phone under a truck.
**
Cell phones are a boon in a lot of ways, but your best adultery phone bet remains a phone card and -- yes -- a regular land-line phone booth, if you can find one. Too much incriminating information is stored on your cel- not to mention that it's virtually a GPS when it comes to pinpointing your location. Cheat safe people!

2006-08-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Polygamy in the news, from the left-leaning AP...

Fugitive life of polygamist leader ends with stop in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS - After three months on the FBI's Most Wanted List and two years on the lam, the fugitive life of the leader of a polygamist religious sect ended with a routine traffic stop and a hint of resignation.
"Once the FBI got there ... he gave his full name, Warren Jeffs, and kind of gave a sigh," said Eddie Dutchover, the Nevada Highway Patrol trooper who Monday night stopped a sport utility vehicle with Jeffs, his brother, and one of his numerous wives inside.
Warren Steed Jeffs, 50, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was wanted in Utah and Arizona on charges of arranging two marriages between underage girls and older men.
Jeffs was being held in Nevada's Clark County jail, awaiting a court hearing Thursday. Federal and state law enforcement agencies will determine whether Jeffs should be sent first to Arizona, which filed the charges first, or Utah, where Jeffs faced more serious charges including two counts of rape as an accomplice.
He eluded authorities for two years and had been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list since May, with a $100,000 reward offered for information leading to his capture.
He is said to have at least 40 wives and nearly 60 children. Jeffs claimed to be invincible, protected by God from capture, with bodyguards who promised to fight to the death for him, authorities said.

There's more, but why bother? What a disgusting human being, to sexually abuse children, which is essentially what this is all about. He should fry.

There is of course something about polygamy that is very attractive to guys in particular...having a range of women to choose from who are also at your beck and call; and of course it's great if they all work so you don't have to.

In the end though such arrangements never work out, mostly because the one thing even the "strongest" patriarch can't control is jealousy. Several wives vying for control is worse even than several girlfriends - to live in that kind of environment must be akin to hell on earth. To paraphrase the old saying, "You want a wife but you get a woman." And women can be pretty much impossible to live with under the best of circumstances. Having a crabby harem around 24/7 could make someone suicidal. Maybe that's why this idiot Jeffs gave him self up - maybe jail is preferable to dealing with 40 idiot wives (only an idiot would put up with such crap) and 60 kids. Yikes!

2006-08-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

From the CBC (that's the thoroughly PC Canadian Broadcasting System) --

Boycott Clinton speech, Catholic bishop says
Last Updated Thu, 24 Aug 2006 07:35:16 EDT

A southern Ontario bishop is urging Catholics to boycott an upcoming fundraiser featuring former U.S. president Bill Clinton, saying his views don't reflect the church's beliefs.
Bill Clinton speaks at the 16th World AIDS Conference in Toronto on Aug. 15. (CBC)
Clinton is set to deliver a speech Nov. 8 during a $500-per-seat fundraising lunch for the Catholic Family Counselling Centre in Kitchener.
But Rev. Gerard Bergie, the auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Hamilton, says Clinton is an inappropriate guest speaker, the Waterloo Region Record reported.
Clinton's support for abortion, his marital infidelity and promotion of condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS go against Catholic Church doctrine, said Bergie.
He says he's received complaints from Catholics across the country.
"They find it difficult to reconcile the fact that an organization that calls itself Catholic has extended an invitation to an individual whose views … go against the Catholic church," he told the newspaper.
Cathy Brothers, a spokeswoman for the centre, said it is a non-denominational agency and that the fundraiser is "not about our Catholicism."
Clinton is a regular on the guest-speaker circuit, drawing as much as $350,000 per speech. Brothers wouldn't say how much it cost to bring Clinton to Kitchener.
The counselling centre plans to use the money raised to expand services for victims of domestic abuse.

**

Inviting a rapist to speak in order to raise money for victims of domestic abuse is the kind of rich irony that our modern world abounds in!

2006-08-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

From The Sunday Herald, Scotland:

Late night e-mails ‘sign of infidelity’

By Judith Duffy, Health Correspondent

IT could be viewed as an innocent chat in cyberspace, but sending e-mails late at night and revealing personal details of your life are signs of betraying your partner, according to new research.
Psychologists from Glamorgan University have carried out an investigation to try and define the point at which online exchanges are perceived as emotional infidelity.
The study revealed that sending messages late at night and revealing intimate information are the key factors that will cause your partner to believe you are having a virtual affair.
The popularity of websites such as Friends Reunited and dating chatrooms have been blamed for helping to fuel a rise in divorces in recent years.
According to leading counselling group Relate, one in 10 people seeking help from them now complain about the impact of the internet on their relationship.
Dr Martin Graff, psychology lecturer at the Glamorgan University, said there was now the potential for people to engage in “virtual” infidelity alongside face-to-face relationships, yet the issues around this had not been explored.
“I guess we have a definition of sexual infidelity, but this involves more emotional infidelity and we just wanted to see what people thought,” he said. “Chatting online is fine, but where do people start seeing it as not quite right?”
The research, which will be presented at a British Psychological Society conference next month, asked a group of men and women in their early 20s to judge varying scenarios involving internet communication and rate what they believed constituted online infidelity.
Certain factors were deemed to be irrelevant, such as whether the correspondence was through e-mail or instant messaging services or the gender of the person who initiated the online conversation.
But Graff said: “People who interacted online later at night were perceived as possibly more unfaithful than those who interacted during the day. I guess it is seen as being more surreptitious if you are online late into the night.
“The amount you disclose to people is also generally perceived as being a lot more unfaithful, as it signals a degree of intimacy with someone.”
Denise Knowles, a counsellor for 16 years with Relate, said that a major problem with the internet was that it could cause a distance in relationships.
“The time spent on the internet is time spent away from the primary relationship,” she said. “A few people have said to me that when their partner is doing this and they are talking to other men or women on the internet, it is almost as if they are having an affair where the third party is under their roof.
“Because they are sitting in the corner of the room – or worse, in their bedroom – it is very intrusive and they can often feel quite violated.”
Knowles pointed out another difficulty was that often the person who was carrying out the internet activities was unaware of the harm it was causing.
“People say ‘I don’t know what you are going on about, I haven’t actually seen the person and I don’t intend to’,” she said. “But the real problem is the fact that there is time being spent talking and sharing intimacies with somebody else that really ought to be shared with your partner.”

Ah, talking and sharing intimacies with your partner. That's supposed to be the purpose of marriage in part. But one of the most seductive aspects of dealing with a new person online or in person is the fact that they aren't bored with your stories, your adventures, your opinions, and all the stuff that your spouse has heard a hundred times and couldn't give a rat's ass about anymore if they ever did.

Within most long-term relationships, "intimacy" is more wishful thinking than anything else, which is one of the many many many reasons that adultery is always going to be with us.

2006-08-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

I have absolutely no use for the insane freakazoids currently residing in the Middle East, and here's an example of why...

BAGHDAD, 16 August (IRIN) - "Defending the rule of law and women's rights is costing some Iraqi lawyers their lives. Since October 2005, 38 lawyers have been murdered and hundreds attacked for defending cases which their enemies say are "against Islam", according to the Iraqi Lawyers Association (ILA), a nationwide organisation.

Salah Abdel-Kader, 56, a well-known lawyer and professor in the capital who had handled cases of honour killings and custody battles, was shot dead in his office on 29 July. A note found near his body said, "This is the price to pay for those who do not follow Islamic laws and defend what is dreadful and dirty."

He had been threatened many times this year, said his widow, Suheiyla Muhammad. "He was a brave man and always defended what he believed was correct under the law," she said. "Unfortunately some families cannot accept it… He was a victim because he cared about legal processes."

Lawyers who have been attacked had handled cases that challenge Iraqi traditions or certain interpretations of Islam.

Cases involving inheritance and the division of assets in a divorce have also led to violent attacks on lawyers.

In Iraq, as in some other countries in the region, women who are accused of having sexual relationships outside of marriage are sometimes killed by their husbands or their own family members, who say they are defending the honour of the family.

Although honour killings have been practiced in countries around the globe and predate Islam by centuries, some killers say their actions are justified by Islamic law. According to Islamic law, adultery is a crime punishable by death, but only if four male witnesses testify that the act occurred. With such a heavy burden of proof, most Muslim countries do not enforce the death penalty in adultery cases.

"Most lawyers in Iraq today are worried about taking on such cases because they have to evaluate how much they will affect their safety," said Safa'a Farouk, a lawyer and spokesperson for the ILA who has already received six threats since February.

Because there are fewer lawyers willing to take on these cases, it can cause delays in the justice system "in a country already so greatly affected by the lack of justice for women and poor people", Farouk said. People requesting a lawyer from the ILA often have to wait more than a month to get a referral, he said."

One can hardly decide where to begin with this one. "Adultery is a crime punishable by death, but only if four male witnesses testify that the act occurred?" Getting four of these nerfballs together to claim *anything* that gives them an excuse to kill or maim women sounds pretty much like a slam-dunk. What a pathetic and grotesque "culture." There's plenty not to like about the excess of the West, but in comparison...well, there is no comparison. Vile is really the only word that comes mind when reading about the way women are treated in Muslim countries.

2006-08-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

For anyone who wonders why guys in particular are tempted to stray, read this article From THE AUSTRALIAN. Frankly, it makes you wonder about the guys who *don't* eventually cheat. :)

Libido lags for ladies in luck
Maurice Chittenden and Roger Dobson
14 August 2006

"THE female sex drive starts sputtering to a halt as soon as a woman has got her man, according to a new study.

Researchers have found that women's libido plummets so rapidly when they believe they are in a secure relationship that after just four years the proportion of 30-year-old women wanting regular sex falls below 50 percent.

There are few things that appear able to keep a woman sexually interested, the study found, but living apart for extended periods can help.

The findings for women contrast with those for men, whose sexual appetite hardly flagged at all up to 40 years after marriage.

The study, by researchers at Hamburg-Eppendorf University in Germany, challenges the popular image of modern women as equal to men in sexual appetite.

"Female motivation matches male sexual motivation in the first years of the partnership and then steadily decreases," concludes Dietrich Klusmann, the medical psychologist who conducted the study.

"Male motivation remains constant regardless of the duration of the partnership." Dr Klusmann questioned more than 500 people about their sex lives in order to measure changes in their libido.

He found that within a year of a relationship starting, female libido moved into steep decline.

While 60 per cent of 30-year-old women reported wanting sex "often" at the start of a relationship, the figure fell to below 50per cent within four years and to about 20 per cent after 20 years.

Dr Klusmann, whose work will be published this week in the journal Human Nature, has compared his findings to the sexual habits of prairie voles andoffers an evolutionary explanation.
He believes that women, having found a man with whom to procreate, keep "resources" scarce to keep the man interested. Men, on the other hand, maintain a higher sex drive in the hope of keeping their mate faithful and other men at bay.

The Germans found, however, that living apart slows the decline in female libido, confirming the maxim "absence makes the heart grow fonder".

Women whose husbands or boyfriends have higher educational qualifications than their own also maintain their sex drive. This, speculates Dr Klusmann, is because such men are regarded as a "valuable mate of choice" by other women.

The German study is reinforced by an investigation by Mary Carole Pistole of Purdue University in Indiana, whose work suggests the healthiest relationships are among people whose loved ones live hundreds of kilometres away.

Dr Klusmann's findings were, however, attacked by Irma Kurtz, the agony aunt for Cosmopolitan magazine, who said: "Of course women in their 30s with children, careers and the house to run are too busy and tired for sex, but they have a great capacity for tenderness."

Petra Boynton, a sex psychologist, agreed: "Surveys like this don't always tell the real truth.

"Women are more likely to divulge their problems while men feel under pressure to say they are good in bed because their masculinity requires it."

But Paula Hall, a sexual psychotherapist with Relate, a couples guidance service, backed the German study.

She said that in the first two years of a relationship both partners produced phenylethylamine, a natural amphetamine that has been called the chemical of love.

"After those two years the woman's sexual drive changes," said Dr Hall. "She becomes receptive rather than proactive and unless there is a trigger she will prefer to have a cup of tea and watch Coronation Street."

Dr Klusmann's researchers also asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement "I just want to be tender".

On this measure, men's performance fell off as quickly as women's sexual desire.

Women's desire for tenderness remains an almost constant 90 percent whatever their age and regardless of whether they have been with the same man for one year or four decades.

Men claim to be just as doe-eyed as women at the start of the relationship, but this wears off very rapidly. Only a quarter of 30-year-old men who have been in a relationship for 10 years are still seeking tenderness.

"Cuddling is important for women and they may say they want tenderness because they do not like to express sexual desire and can only do so from the dialogue of romance," said Dr. Boynton.

****Yikes**** Good luck out there. :)

2006-08-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

From Radio New Zealand:

Private investigators may be given more spy powers
Posted at 6:34pm on 09 Aug 2006

"The (NZ) Government is considering a law change which would see private investigators allowed to carry out covert surveillance.

The proposal is contained in briefing papers obtained by Radio New Zealand.

Private investigators are currently prohibited from recording people without their consent.

Associate Minister of Justice, Clayton Cosgrove, says the proposal under consideration is a balance between privacy rights, and letting private investigators carry out their jobs.

The new law would apply when only private investigators are investigating cases of possible criminal activity."

Apparently in NZ prior to the 60's, adultery had to be proved before a divorce could be obtained, so PIs kicked down doors or jumped through windows to catch people in the act. In 1974 came a law prohibiting PIs from filming or recording people without consent.

First of all, who knew there were PIs in NZ? I've been there. It's beautiful. Crime (not that adultery is one) shouldn't exist.

Anyone who's ever tried to hire a PI in the states knows that they are highly restricted in their activities, and much of what they do is computer-based too, which takes all of the fun out of it, CHEATERS notwithstanding. Sounds like the pendulum is swinging back to giving investigators more leeway to be aggressive in pursuing the extracurricular activities of their clients' spouses.

Be careful out there!

2006-08-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

The contention from those not in the know is that having an affair always leads to guilt and that such guilt always becomes something that affects your everyday life in a negative way.

Apparently no one has told Mets catcher Paul Lo Duca that...he's undergoing a nasty, public divorce case with plenty of infidelity undertones and is still batting .430. Who knows whether or not the adultery contention is true - those kinds of claims are a typical divorce gambit, but still...he's nowhere near as cute as Mike Piazza but hey! The guy's a player, maybe in more ways than one. :)

2006-08-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

Now here's something interesting, from a news release off PR Web...

(PRWEB) August 7, 2006 -- It may not pass scientific muster, but a leading private investigator has developed a theory linking financial hardship such as that experienced during a recessive economy, with an increase in marital infidelity.

There are obviously smaller examples of this, but I don’t look into every increase from every area. There are clearly layoffs, factory closings and fires and other disasters all over the country. I’m sure the theory is exemplified in those situations, as well.

Likening it to other actual, proven science, the recipe for Mark McAlpin’s adultero solatium (adultero: the Latin word for unfaithful marriage partner and solatium: a Latin word meaning compensation, or solace) theory combines raw numbers from his own investigative practice with a bit of arm-chair psychology and an unmeasured pour of biochemistry. Admittedly a scientific lay person, the PI says he has been rolling this theory around in his head for years, and the numbers have consistently evinced his hypothesis.

The theory basically builds on the well-known reliance of stressed or distressed people on the relief found in their indulgence in 'comfort food.'

"The human body wants to feel good. When people face physical, emotional or even mental pain or stress, they normally engage in activities that will either remove the pain or counter it with pleasure. Chocolate, ice cream, booze, a hot bath or log message, illegal drugs, pick your poison," he said. "Diluted to it’s simplest explanation it’s all about brain chemistry. The serotonin effect is a pleasurable response to a situation. People naturally want to feel good. The worse they feel, the greater their desire to feel good. People who are stressed out, upset or worse, actively seek out pleasure to dull the pain. The worse the pain, the more powerful the trigger for pleasure. The most powerful triggers are associated with the greatest pleasures: food, drugs and sex. This theory is only different from the accepted psychological responses in that it rightly includes the sexual and/or emotional pleasure sought from people other than the afflicted’s significant other."

Amen, bro. I recently got a query from a very upset young mom whose husband is currently on a long naval deployment. "He's cheating! How could he?" Frankly, how could he NOT? There are few stressors like being in a potential combat situation, being stuck on a ship with nowhere to go, AND being stressed out on a ship with nowhere to go and dozens of young women around feeling exactly the same pressures. In many such cases, sex is a stress reliever, nothing more - or less.

The PI quoted above has got the call exactly right. Infidelity increases when people find themselves in traumatic situations, be those situations financial, emotional or physical in nature. And while one can take issue with whether or not the person under stress *ought to be* taking their stresses out via infidelity (um, good luck with that!) the basics presented by the PI above ring 100% true.

2006-08-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

I came across a release today from a therapist who writes a lot about adultery - from the other side of the fence. “Summertime is the most active season of the year for men who cheat on their mates,” she says. “Infidelity, adultery and extramarital affairs flourish during this time of the year.”

Well, maybe. In the late 19th century, and certainly throughout much of the 20th century, the wives of wealthy men would trundle the kids off to "summer homes" outside of the city limits, leaving the husbands free to do whatever. It was easier to cheat in many ways because people were untethered by the kinds of technologies we have to today - computers, cell phones - that are in many ways double-edged swords.

The 21st century has seen an astounding rise in the number of people who have huge sums of money that can be spent sending the family elsewhere, but I doubt that adultery "flouishes more in the summer" than during any other time of year. Yes, freedom from adult supervision, as it were, can lead people to do things that they aren't necessarily free to do when their wives or husbands are relatively close at hand.

But embarking on an affair requires more than just proximity to likely affair partners and some free time. While the summertime is indeed a good time to put "The 50-Mile Rule" into play, affairs are as likely to flourish during football season, the holidays, or springtime as they are now. In fact, as depressed as many people get when the holidays come around, I'd say they're more likely to seek out sexual and emotional options during that time of year than during the summer. Thoughts?

2006-08-03T20:51:00.000-07:00

Hey, am I the only person fascinated because Pakistan may change its laws so that people accused of adultery aren't stoned to death any more? There'd be no one left in Malibu or the Hamptons if that were the law here, that's for damn sure.