{Adultery for adults}[20th May 1967]

[Redbook0:5-6][19670520]{Adultery for adults}[20^th May 1967][Age 15]

 20.V.67.

            “Strikes me” that half the trouble about divorce, adultery and all the other charming marital problems of today arises from quite a different cause than that which people usually attribute it to. The mouthpieces of the people are very fond of “new lax morals” speeches, denouncing the new generation for being loose and not appreciating. But surely the trouble is that we are taking it all too seriously.

            In earlier times people often married the wrong person, someone whom they later discovered that they didn’t love – sometimes they did it on purpose.  The answer was quite simple: if you were a husband, you took a mistress; if you were a wife, you took a lover.  Husband and wife often knew about the other’s situation, and accepted it quite easily.  Thus divorces weren’t necessary, which prevented all today’s problems like children from broken homes.

            Nowadays, as husbands and wives become more jealous, so it becomes more difficult to hold together a marriage which doesn’t work.  Divorce is simply the only outlet for a couple whose marriage hasn’t “clicked”.  People are drawing much more attention to these sort of cases; “Look”, they say “here are signs of our moral decadence.  These things never happened in the 18^th century.”  I bet they happened then alright, but people had the taste and decency to shut up and mind their own business about other people’s affairs.