Love Outside Marriage

Another term for adultery.

- Dr Prempal Singh 'Valyan'

 

Adultery is the last adventure open to sedentary, prosperous, respectable, mature, western happily-married folk,” says John Updike.

Is there anything so wonderfully exciting, yet so essentially terrifying as adultery? In a world where marital love is deemed all exclusive, the idea of affairs is both deeply disturbing and at the same time deliciously arousing. We love and hate affairs, deny them, judge them, condemn them – and seek them out time and time again. Over and above a good percentage of us who actually indulge in affairs, millions more are there who stay fascinated with novels and films of triangular loves. And news stories of adulterous affairs of celebrities never fail to evoke popular interest.

In real life an affair is a threat on a number of levels. Firstly it goes against the myth of monogamous marital love. Equally it challenges the myth of the happy ending in love. In day-to-day terms too, an adulterous affair is apt to destroy relationships. So we barricade ourselves against it through sanction of laws, religious restraints, moral strictures and a host of other penalties.

And yet, it still happens. People still have affairs, still get drawn into them, again and again. And you can’t say only “bad people” ever suffered from affairs. If marriages are made in heaven, extramarital affairs are all man-made—literally manmade as most such affairs are initiated by males.