Is it really OK to have affairs in other cultures?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m not sure I need to go into specifics with cites and all that, but I occasionally hear that in other countries it’s considered OK for married people to have lovers on the side. No jealousy, no hurt feelings, no divorces. Since people are people I find it a little hard to believe that it’s all that simple and different than in the US.

I’d be interested in hearing what Dopers know about this. Things you’ve read, things you’ve been told, personal experiences, anything at all.

And of course, I’d be interested in knowing your opinions.

2

From what little I know, it seems that in France, it’s not so much that the household-level situation is much different than in the US – a married person whos has an affair will cause the same sorts of problems, etc. – but that the electorate in France is not as hypocritcal – i.e., they realize that their elected officials are likly to have the same range of behaviors that they themselves have.

3

Here’s my purely anecdotal and unscientific armchair psychology response.

Many people I have known who have spent time in Latin America, as well as my studies of the region have reported that things like extramarital affairs are considered much more commonplace or ‘‘expected’’ in the natural development of family relationships (though of course with the double standard that that rule only applies to men.) I have read a lot of Latin-American literature where the male protagonist carries on affairs with other women without thinking twice about it.

However, there is a difference between a cultural norm and individuals’ feelings about it. I’ve talked to a Mexican immigrant devastated by his father’s extramarital affair, and seeing the way the topic is sensationalized in telenovelas (soap operas) indicates that there is a dramatic pull to the idea of an affair, that it is considered wrong and hurtful to the people it is happening to (though tellingly, the characters are often portrayed sympathetically, the crux of the drama being, will someone find out? )

Thus, some might advance the argument that the wrongness in it is finding out, i.e. men can have affairs but it is the discovery that brings the real scandal (according to my Japanese lit prof, this was also true in Heian Japan, as illustrated in The Tale of Genji when a betrayed lover asked something along the lines of, ‘‘How could you be so indiscreet?’’ rather than, ''How could you do this?)

When I was in Mexico, I also read a self-help book by a prominent Latin American author about healing marriages at the point of divorce (there were REALLY not a lot of reading options, ok? ;)) The ‘‘example’’ protagonist had fooled around with another woman, and was seriously considering intercourse. The author of the book stated in no uncertain terms that while society considered mens’ extramarital affairs acceptable as long as you didn’t love the woman, it was in truth and according the law of God, never okay. So in the very least, in the author’s eyes, there was a conflict.

So while there may be cultural trends, I would hesitate in saying it wouldn’t be noticed, or challenged by individuals within the society. And I would certainly NOT say that it wouldn’t impact the strength or happiness of a family unit.

As I said, this is purely speculation based on random things I’ve read and heard and seen and talked about. I’d be interested in one of our friends in Japan giving the Straight Dope on Japanese society in this regard.

4

Anecdotally, I had a female Japanese friend who was married and whose husband regularly had affairs. She was a little upset, but it was not a huge deal to her. I asked why she didn’t have affairs and the answer was “because he’s a man and I’m a woman.” They did later divorce, but it was for other reasons.

I’m not so sure on Japanese society at large, but IIRC I read somewhere that stories like mine are not at all unusual. I’d love to hear from Sublight or TokyoPlayer about it.

5

Latin America? Certainly, if my experience is any indication.

6

As I’ve reported before, even though it’s been outlawed in Thailand for almost 100 years, it’s still not uncommon today for Thai men to take on extra wives. My father-in-law had a minor wife, as they’re called, and probably a girlfriend or two besides her. Despite a penchant for Thai ladies slicing off a guy’s Old Fella while he sleeps if he’s been running around, it’s pretty well accepted that Thai men will see other ladies.

EDIT: As for jealousy, hard feelings, etc., my mother-in-law was not too happy about the situation, but being Thailand she just had to lump it.

7

I’ve worked in about 20 countries and in my experience, there is an attitude in some places that it is less a big deal than in the US. I find this is often particularly true for the husband, especially in cultures that have a strong ‘macho’ culture.

8

It’s not uncommon here in Japan for men to have affairs. At the turn of the 19th century to the 20th, then lovers more formalized arrangements among the wealthy.

I know scores of men who either had (or are having) affairs, use prostitutes or get very friendly with bar hostesses.

There are a few “rules.” The husband should never flaunt the affair and needs to take a reasonable amount of effort to cover it up. The affair shouldn’t become public knowledge or the wife loses face. As long as it’s not public then many women will tolerate it, but very few, if any are happy about it.

If it does become public, then it can become an ugly matter with extended families becoming involved. I read about a woman who visited her hometown, and slept with her high school boyfriend, who had conveniently failed to inform her that he had recently married. The wife found out, and it took three-way talks between the three extended families to resolve the issue.

Many Japanese couples will often stop having sex after the children are born, and it’s an unspoken understanding that the husband will find his relief elsewhere. There are women who don’t care if their husbands are having affairs, as long as it’s only physical. One of my friends was having an affair, and asked his wife for a divorce. Her suggestion was that they stay married, and that the husband continue to see this other woman, but that he come home at night. As said earlier, I’m sure that she would have much preferred him not to have an affair, but it wasn’t an immediate end to the marriage.

I knew a businessman whose wife didn’t want him coming home until after his teenage children were in bed, so that it didn’t interrupt their studies. It was unspoken that having an affair would be a convenient reason for not coming back.

It’s not always the men who are at fault here. There are women, usually younger, who go after married men, usually successful types. This is a staple of Japanese TV dramas. I’ve talked to many women who are in this circumstance and some are hoping to get married and some are just enjoying the lifestyle.

It can get tricky if the “other” woman decides that she wants to force things along. Going on an overnight trip together and then putting her panties in the guy’s suitcase for his wife to find is known to happen. There have been the occasional murder result, which inevitable become sensationalized in the media.

When I was younger, I went out and/or slept with a number of women who were married and their husbands were having affairs. I was their revenge, I guess, but since I was young, I didn’t particularly care what the reason was that a pretty woman was sleeping with me.

The summary. It happens, perhaps more openly then in the States. Women have been more likely to tolerate it, but this may change as divorce becomes more common.

Like most other cultures, there are double standards and women’s affairs are less likely to be accepted.

9

I’d second Siam Sam’s post about this being common in Thailand. My ex-father-in-law had a Mia Noi (minor wife) and had two kids with her. It makes things very tense when they bump into each other. The mother-in-law was not at ALL relaxed about the matter but wasn’t really shocked either and there was no divorce. I learned some new Thai words from that episode.

A more distant Thai relative (who’s 72! :eek: ) just got busted for having a minor wife. His wife is also pissed about the matter.

And, Siam Sam? If your wife buys a duck, kill it immediately! :stuck_out_tongue:

Regards

Testy

10

It seems more common and accepted to have an affair here in BG. Here’s an anecdote: my Bulgarian class was having lunch in a restaurant, and our teacher recognized a guy from her hometown, which was nearby. She looked surprised and told us that the girl he was with wasn’t his wife OR his girlfriend. We Americans were surprised that she knew that this random guy, who didn’t appear to be her close friend or anything, was having an extramarital affair and asked our teacher a lot about it. She told us that it wasn’t a big deal and that everyone in town knew that the guy had a girlfriend.

I’ve since heard a number of similar anecdotes, stuff that I would have found really shocking in America. And they’re not all about men cheating, either. Another volunteer I know had some kind of technology problem in her apartment (I forget what exactly) so she called her school director, who showed up half an hour later with her husband and her boyfriend, who fixed the problem.

11

Is it possible to explain this so it would make sense to other readers? If not, I’ll understand. (I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll just imagine something like Robot Duck, the Avenging Fowl!)

12

My experience is out of date, since I lived on Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia, from 1986 to 1989. It is possible that things have changed a bit since then.

However, at the time, there was an unspoken rule that “what happens off island, stays off island.” This was very liberating for an island nation where to get anything done you often had to travel from your home island to somewhere else. The morality behind it seemed to be “if you don’t get caught, no one gets hurt.” And given the geography and socialization, no one gets hurt: It is pretty safe to fool around when you are on Guam and your SO is on Mwokil, since there is zero chance they could walk in on you. (Also, the “look the other way” culture ensures that if your friends notice, they won’t tattle on you to your spouse.)

Both my husband and I experienced this attitude. I was on a business trip on Palau and had a Pohnpeian roommate. We were at a conference and I was harmlessly flirting with a guy there from Thailand. He gave me a hug goodnight as I left him to go into my hotel room. My roommate said “oh, Carol, if you’d like to go spend the night with that guy, go right ahead. I won’t tell anybody.”

In my husband’s case, he was on a business trip to Chuuk and during the course of the dinner, one of the women asked if he’d like to have a little fun that night.

One nice thing about all this is that it seemed to be pretty non-prejudicial – the same rules applied to everyone: male, female, Micronesian, foreign.

However, I have a feeling things were more conservative on particular islands. I did not spend any significant time on Yap or Kosrae, but knowing people from those islands, I’d be a bit surprised if they were as, er, open-minded, as Pohnpei and Chuuk.

13

OtakuLoki

It’s a Thai joke, or at least it used to be. The first Thai woman to become famous for slicing-off her husband’s unit supposedly threw it out the window where a duck grabbed it and waddled off into the sunset. At weddings, the Thais used to tell the groom, “If your wife ever buys a duck, kill it immediately!”

My wife used to tell me this when she saw me eying some good-looking honey; “Be careful or we’ll have a duck in the back yard!”

Oh, and rumor has it that the first guy to become famous like this had 11 or 12 minor wives. You gotta give him credit for stamina if nothing else.

Regards

Testy

14

Testy, thanks for explaining. I do appreciate it.

(Poor duck, what an obvious fall guy.)

15

OtakuLoki

Yeah, blame the duck! Since the original penis-chopping incident, over 20 years ago, there have been several copy-cat incidents.
Thailand is a funny place. For a long time, adultery by men was not considered grounds for divorce. Adultery by women was. I don’t know if this has changed or not.
Regards

Testy

16

To add to TokyoPlayer very accurate assessment, the typical (or at least stereotypical) thing for successful Japanese executives wanting something on the side is to patronize a hostess club. A hostess club is a bar staffed by young ladies who sit with the customers and pour drinks, light cigarettes, laugh at jokes, giggle at suggestions, keep conversations flowing and generally make the customer feel like he’s the big cheese*. The customer’s role in turn is to show off how much money he has by spending absolutely insane amounts of it**. These are not brothels or sex clubs: customers who can’t keep it in their pants are shown the door. Most guys who go to hostess clubs are there just for an evening of having a beautiful young woman cuddled up next to him acting like he’s the greatest thing to ever have a Y-chromosome, and then go home drunk, horny and much lighter in the wallet.

However, if a big spender becomes a frequent customer and has a favorite hostess, it’s generally assumed that she will become his mistress while he becomes a patron of sorts and continues spending lavish amounts of money buying her expensive gifts. This is ideal from the “don’t cause a scene” perspective, since the hostess generally doesn’t harbor any illusions about the situation, and because there are no legal ramifications like there would be from hiring a prostitute or hitting on an employee. If the guy having the affair isn’t a celebrity or famous politician, nobody (beyond his wife, perhaps) really cares who he’s checking into a hotel with.

This is pretty much limited to the upper strata. The rest of us just get an internet connection and look at porn.

*There are also host clubs, where the female customers spend through the nose to be waited on hand and foot by handsome young men.

**Even at a low-end club, spending over $1,000 by oneself in an evening is trivially easy. At higher end clubs, an evening’s bill in the tens of thousands may be the norm. Brewster’s Millions would be a very short movie here.

17

Hostess clubs are an interesting experience. Businessmen often go there for entertainment, and I get dragged there on occation.

I’ll have to disagree on the cost. The lower end is much less, and you get get around $70 to $100 per person. Of course, with that you get 20-year-old girls who have to idea how to actually have a conversation, but will sit and drink with you. Personally, before I got married, I always prefered finding my own conversation what I wasn’t paying for.

Going to hostess clubs is the worse possible investment / return ratio for finding a mistress, pretty much limited to people with bottomless expense accounts.

18

I’ve had some contact with the Portuguese fishing community here in San Diego, and got the impression that fishermen who were away from their families for months at a time were not expected to be 100% faithful. The women didn’t approve, but it wasn’t seen as something to dissolve a family over. This may be partly a Catholic thing, though.

19

Unfortunately, it’s no joke. I’ve seen it in the news, a Thai wife slicing off her wayward husband’s Good Fella and feeding it to the ducks in the yard. In another case, the wife tied it to a helium balloon and released it. Another popped it into the blender. The lovely ladies here are becoming more creative because instances of penis-slicing have resulted in Thailand becoming a hub for microsurgery penis reattachment. Really.

I went into this some in the thread about “Sex after Marriage … but Not with Your wife.” In that thread, I included this link here to an *Agence France-Presse * story – this is presented in the Taipei Times, but it ran all over the world – about one of the top penis-reattachment experts in Thailand. I think he says he sees about three to five cases a year but that they go in waves, sort of a fad. Nothing for a while, then Bam! They start coming in. He says his most challenging case was an angry wife who had to be bribed by her husband to reveal to him that she had thrown it down into a septic tank. He had to hire a crew to tear the tank up and get it out. The doctor told the man of the danger of septicemia if it were reattached, but the man said he was willing to die with his penis if it cam to that – a sentiment I can very well understand. Amazingly, the reaattchment took hold, even though it had been separated for 15 hours, and the books said it should not have been successful. I also like his advice at the end for how to prepare for the possibility that your wife might slice off your penis should you insist on being unfaithful.

Ironically, in my case my wife tells me I can fool around if I want to, but I don’t want to! She says she loves me and is lucky to have me, and if I ever feel the need I should just do it, but be discreet and don’t bring any diseases home. But I simply have never felt the need to do that. Funny old world, eh?

20

From time to time, they raise the issue again, but I don’t think that has changed. If it has, it’s only been in the last couple of years. The last time they discussed changing it was about that long ago, but I really didn’t pay much attention.