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Floored!!

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Topics: Deep Thoughts

I turned on the Tivo today to see what was cookin’ and discovered an Oprah show from Friday that I hadn’t yet watched. It was titled “Swingin’ in the Suburbs.” I had no idea what I was getting into until I hit Play.

The show was about married women who cheat (apparently 17% of married women have cheated; 28% will cheat — that’s as opposed to the 50%+ of men who will cheat.) There was a familiar refrain from the women — “My husband didn’t seem to love or appreciate me, so I cheated…” It seems about half of them ended the marriage and half of them didn’t. Regardless of whether the marriage was still ongoing, everyone was pretty miserable (which echoes my recent experience.)

The other half of the show was devoted to couples who “swing” (voluntarily have sex with other couples.) This is the one thing that just floors me every time I hear about it. Why the heck do you marry someone only to go out and have sex with other people?! Swingers say it enhances their sex life. Oh, bullshit. If your sex life needs enhancement, you have more problems than going out and fucking other people will solve. I just don’t get this “answer” to that problem.

Statistically speaking, if I get married in the next 2 years, it only has a 55% chance of success. On average, a first marriage lasts only 8 years. This is completely and totally depressing.

Will it stop me from getting married in the future? No… but it will force me to take a long, hard look before I do. I don’t want to be involved in any facet of this hell in my future, and I especially wouldn’t want to be the person who was cheated on. And “swinging” as a solution to cheating/relationship problems? Blech.

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Posted on Sunday, November 21st, 2004

  • http://deleted Tet

    Swingers say it enhances their sex life. Oh, bullshit. If your sex life needs enhancement, you have more problems than going out and fucking other people will solve. I just don’t get this “answer” to that problem.

    Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I’ll agree that if you’re
    doing it because you have marital problems, then it’s not going to
    solve anything, and indeed will almost certainly make things worse.
    But that’s not to say it can’t have a beneficial effect if you go
    into it under other circumstances. Apparently, I’m polyamorous,
    rather than a swinger, in that I don’t have sex with random strangers,
    but am in multiple concurrent committed relationships. But there are
    similarities between the two. Whether your sex life *needs*
    enhancements or not, you’d have to be very narrow minded to believe
    that it *couldn’t* be enhanced. It’s not for everyone. But don’t
    dismiss it out of hand.

  • http://slashdot.org/~Organized%20Konfusion Organized Konfusion

    re: getting married.

    I have always disliked this tradition, it think is just encourages instutational sexism. The whole idea disgusts me, the father “giving away” his daughter.

    I am fine with a monotomous relationship. With kids, house, cars and the whole shabang.

    Thing is, I am a man – most people I explain this to normally say “why do you care?”, so now I stick to telling people I don’t want to get married and end up with no money if she devorces me – that usually satisfies them.
    Changing the girl’s surname.

  • yanigisawa

    Another stat I’d be interested in knowing about marriage is the percentage of people in marriages lasting longer than 8 years that are still happy in the marriage. I doubt you’d actually get good data, people probably aren’t going to tell a stranger that they don’t like their spouse they’ve been with for 35 years, but I think it’s a valid concern. It’s hard for me to imagine people not hating each other after living with the same person for so long.

  • kesuki

    My parents have been married since my dad got my mom pregnant in college, and they do have the occassional fight, But they’re still in love with each other…
    Of course, they haven’t always lived with each other*, but they lived the first 15 or so years of their lives living together, and they still loved eachother enough to have sex and get pregnant with me…

    Don’t get me wrong they’ve had fights, they’ve gotten mad at each other, but they’ve never even considered (for marital reasons) seperation or divorce any kind. When you’ve married someone it’s
    meant to last forever, even through trials and tribulations.

    *= Once I was old enough my mom went back and finished college, and when they both had to find jobs they had to move apart from each other from time to time to find work.