The Other Woman Can't Break Up Your Marriage. It's Impossible.

If you have the misfortune to be heterosexual, as many of us do, you have enough on your plate just trying to bridge the divide on how differently men and women go about all things sexual. Women don't need the extra headache of watching their backs with their own gender. But when it comes to affairs, the focus often shifts from The Marriage to The Other Woman.

This morning I turned on the Early Show just in time to hear the breaking news that there was a "Battle Over Brad" (!) and that in Vogue "Jennifer Aniston breaks her silence and blasts Angelina Jolie for breaking up her marriage."

The segment went on to pull up quotes from the article in which Aniston didn't appear to use that language at all. She seemed to express more of a distaste for the way Jolie handled it rather than accusing her of husband stealing.

So this is the problem I have with CBS: it took the sexist route. You never hear people say The Other Man stole someone's wife, and men are never referred to as home wreckers. But because the appeal of a catfight is apparently news worthy, CBS pit woman against woman and obfuscated the realities of affairs which are these:

No woman can steal another woman's man, and no woman has the power to break up a marriage. It's always a decision the husband makes, a choice to step deeper into his marriage, or to step further outside it. Women aren't omnipotent sirens who lure poor helpless men, and this is true even of women who might have predatory leanings.

None of us has control over anybody -- which is usually a big fat drag, as anyone who's ever tried to change someone knows, but in this case it's a tremendous relief because it means we only have to worry about our couple -- those outside it don't need our attention because ultimately, they aren't the threat.

Obviously whoever participates in an affair is accountable for their actions, but that's not the same thing as being accountable for the end of a marriage.

If a husband is having an affair, it's the husband who threatens the break up the marriage. If a wife is having an affair, it's the wife.

Comments

[BernardSG]

This article is totally misguided and misguiding. Mrs. McFadden is, I think, too prompt to spot some sexism in anything.

My point is that there are people out there, men and women, who deliberately go for stealing someone else"s spouse or long-term partner, I tell ya, I know it first-hand because I"m one of them. I "stole" my wife from her ex-husband. Obviously from a third party"s standpoint, one can speculate on the hypothesis that if it hadn"t been me, someone else would have come or the divorce would have happened anyway, but that"s something nobody could know.

Spouse-stealing can be viewed, with good reason, as evil by other people but actually there is a very rational argument in favor of that behavior: someone who"s already married or in a relationship is more likely to, well, know how to make a relationship work. Someone who"s never been committed at a certain age is quite probably someone who"s got issues as far as relationships are concerned.

I"m pretty confident that if I was not happily married, therefore looking for someone, I would succeed again into "stealing" some married woman who appears to be in a happy marriage, it"s something that"s ridiculously easy to do. And if it works that way, there"s no reason that it wouldn"t work the other way.

[querencia]

In my experience.. BOTH partners in a marriage contribute to an affair happening..and also in my experience... no one can be "stolen". If it is over, it is over. If there is something still there- an affair only helps clarify that and the situation gets resolved. Great post...

[tidi]

Alienation of Affection and North Carolina Law


Alienation of Affection is a legal action (a tort) based on willful and malicious interference with marriage relations by a third party. In a divorce matter, Alienation of Affection actions are often brought along with Criminal Conversations actions.

For a plaintiff spouse to recover for Alienation of Affection, the following elements are required:

the parties to the marriage were happily married and genuine love and affection existed between them;

such love and affection was alienated and destroyed; and

the wrongful and malicious acts of the defendant brought about the loss and alienation of such love and affection.

The exclusive right of sexual intercourse is not the right protected in this type of case. The actual affection between spouses is the right protected. In fact, in-laws and religious organizations have been defendants in Alienation of Affection suits.

North Carolina juries have handed out big awards in Alienation of Affection cases. In 2001, a Greensboro jury awarded $2 million to the Plaintiff. Another jury awarded $1.2 million in 1997 in a Forsyth County case. Other awards include $1 million to an Alamance County woman,

tHIS IS LAWS IN OUR COUTRY LOOK IT THERE TRUE STORIES ,AND WHAT ANGIE WANTS ANGIE GETS . I BELIVE JEN AND BRAD WERE HAPPY UNTIL HE MET ANGIE!!!!

[CeeCee]

So they legislate feelings in America? I thought America was the Land of the Free.

[Funnelweb]

It was well-known that Brad and Jen had been having problems as far back as 2003. They would have split up without Angelina, this is FACT.

Also, it seems to me that JEN is the one who alienated Brad from HER affection. She left Brad crying in interviews about a family, told a reporter while she was still married to him that he was not the love of her life. That there, is PROOF alone, that Jen is GUILTY of alienating Brad from affection, therefore Jen should be charged, as Jen is the perpetrator here.

[oey]

I know. You'd think it was 1930.

[alphadominance]

It's because in our culture men are viewed as having to petition women for sex but are uncontrolled dogs who will do anything that moves. That assumption puts the onus of the affair on the woman who "permits" it. If she didn't lure the man away he would have been helpless to seek it out on his own. In fact this is a facile view of it. Ultimately it is the spouse's choices that force their partner's hand, but in most cases the man wouldn't leave unless his wife wished to divorce after the affair was found out. Usually he just wants to scratch an itch that isn't being satisfied in the marriage. The most common complaint among married men is that the sex stops (or nearly so, once a month may as well be nothing) or has become so plain vanilla that he can hardly stay awake. Women need to take accountability for keeping their sex lives fresh and active in marriage rather than taking for granted that marriage is forever regardless. Little is more important to men than sex, and we take it as the defining fact of a relationship. Without it, you are friends but nothing more. If American women would stop using sex as leverage to try to change their men and stop discounting its importance, much of the cheating and divorce we see today would go away.

http://alphadominance.com

[shaunmarie]

"Women" need to take accountabiliy?

Uh.... this is more of the same.

MEN, just as well as women, need to take accountability. While courting, men can be generous, helpful - they woo, they flirt, they make sex interesting. After marriage, they take their wives for granted - no more dates, no more flirting, etc.

Studies have shown that once married, helping with the dishes and laundry tend to get men laid - - the sharing of domestic duties tends to enhance the marital bed.

So, stop putting the onus on women alone. Sex takes two. Well, good sex does, in any case.

[ligaya]

I completely agree with you, Joyce. It's more complicated, of course. But that is the core and the essence.

I don't know what I was thinking. I posted that this article was on HuffPo on popsugar - a Team Aniston-dominated website. I hope their more rabid members don't skew this discussion.

[timbr8ks]

Thorn, with respect, I think you may be missing Joyce's point. What she's saying is that the third person is not responsible for breaking up the marriage--if the marriage ends because of an affair, it's the spouse in the affair that's responsible. A wife may not like the other woman, but she should point the finger at her husband (and, in many cases, herself, too) if she wants to blame someone.

Affairs usually are the result of something missing from the marriage (at least from the perspective of the partner involved in the affair). There are plenty of cases, of course, in which the affair happens because one person wants to do something risky, has sexual addication problems, or simply wants a little more. But typically it is a problem in the marriage that causes the affair, not the arrival of some other woman or other man.

[Maplebird]

It takes at least two to tango, and it is rarely if ever entirely the fault of one person when a marriage breaks up. That being said, we do need to get far, far away from the idea that it's only a woman who can be a "home-wrecker". Men do plenty of damage too: it isn't just us women who do the wrecking.

[Thorn]

Anything can happen in a marriage. What are you, 12?