The USSR engaged in a deliberate campaign to undermine traditional family mores (and many other traditional practices and mores).
While the upper class in the British empire adhered somewhat to a “Victorian sensibility”, I don’t believe the same was true of the middle or lower classes.
Edo Japan was absolutely libertine in many ways. Post Edo, their society was still on its way up and arrested by a successful bombing campaign and occupation.
I’m not so sure which period you’re highlighting as the decline of French society. Ditto for the Balkans.
My analysis isn’t based just on Greece and Rome, either.
Also, as I already pointed out, a few instances in which no libertine period happened doesn’t undermine the notion that the relationship is causal if there can be many other factors at work, which I asserted there probably are.
PS could you stop using “casual” to indicate “acausal” or “non-causal”? It’s horribly confusing.
Edit: Should also be clear that “decline” often precedes “the end” by several hundred years, as in the case of Greece or Rome. I think we’re also both being unclear about what constitutes a “society” – is 19th century France really a different society than GB or Germany of the same period? Are we a different society from France or UK now?
I remember watching about two seconds of a UK reality show, Footballers Wives or some-such nonsense, and two “wives” were talking about how horrible and disgusting oral sex was, and that they’d never do it to their husbands, nor “let” the men do it to them. Very young, modern, women to boot. I was agog. So this is, apparently, a thing?
@caryroys - nice, I was just going by Gizmodos numbers. Still, my point stands. If this 1/31,334,429 men was shtupping 60/5,055,687 women, he seems to have been getting more than his fair share? (and I still don’t believe it)
As someone once n a shit marriage with a guy who had accounts with places similar to AM, and now in a marriage with the love of my life, I’ll say - BS on Dan Savage. If your marriage sucks, get a divorce. If you depend on your spouse financially but not emotionally, that’s why they invented child support, alimony, and visitation agreements.
Frankly, there’s one thing you can’t have bad in a marriage, and that’s sex.
If your spouse doesn’t share the same interests, you can join a bookclub or online forum for people who like fantasy football.
If you have terrible finances, you can separate them and still survive as a couple.
But if you can’t rock it together, you need to get a divorce.
In generally, people romanticize the past and think we were much more moral and conservative than today. While that is the case to a degree in certain cultures, overall we are as bad if not worse in the past than we are today.
Examples would be the wonderfully lewd stuff dug out of Pompeii, Puritans had premarital sex (your marriage would be announced when she started to show), polygamy, people or wealth and status often had arranged marriages or strategic marriages, and both sides had actual lovers on the side, etc etc. All that while being absolutely fifthly by today’s standards.
I actually have a theory on that that hasn’t played out yet.
There is a “Guaranteed Affair” fee of ~$250, which is conveniently in the ballpark of the cost of a prostitute.
I read that commonly, they attach enough strings to that money back guarantee that few people ever qualify for getting that money back. But I am wondering if that detail will shake out of the 12gb of the CEO’s emails.
(I may take a crack at the emails myself, once I get some time off work to set up cygwin on my windows box–most windows tools are not up to the job of parsing many-gigabyte text files)
And how many of those female seed/honeypot accounts were run by AM employees and contractors? I’d be willing to believe even fewer were real honest persons.
Completely legit question. One I intend to answer once I get more time.
The ex-employee is on record for creating thousands of fake accounts. Which, honestly, in the scheme of things, is a drop in the bucket.
I suspect that the ~14% number is actually pretty accurate. I signed up for an account for the lulz last week to see what the story is, and their dealings are so scammy that it belies the idea that the majority of female accounts are fake.
Ok, I just read this guys full story. He says he joined because “We were going through a period where I was horrible in bed and she had little motivation to engage in sex. I was sexually frustrated and had no confidence.” But instead of seeing a professional to work through it, he joins AM.
Then he says he “was spending my nights chatting with several women”, spending money for the service, as well as, travel and hotels. This is now effecting their time together and their finances. It is not just sex.
When he got caught by his wife he says “I came clean about Ashley Madison. My response was that it was an online affair, not a physical affair.” He didn’t come clean, he lied!
He stopped for a bit but went back to cheating. And then does what he feels is better for his wife. “…I decided I didn’t want to risk hurting my wife again so I committed myself to doing it right. I got a burner phone prepaid with cash. I did everything on my phone.” He is delusional and his family deserves better.
What?! You’re telling me reality TV isn’t real?
But yeah, I knew that, I was just more amazed with what these ladies were saying… not something I’d heard before, like, ever. (Maybe once from my Mother…)
Isn’t this just the victors writing history? We’ve got evidence going back thousands of years of people complaining that the kids these days are ruining the institution of marriage and that society is coming apart at the seems. The societal commentary clock is stopped at “libertine period” as far as I can tell.
This seems totally crazy to me. If I had to choose between marrying someone who was a financial disaster but who I had a great sex life with or someone who had similar financial mores to mine but with whom I had no sexual compatibility, I’d pick compatible finances every time.
Financial disagreements end marriages all the time. Some fraction of those ‘infidelity’ marriage endings are infidelity that came after financial stress seriously damaged the relationship. I know I already said this, but I know someone whose spouse bought a horse farm without consulting them. I’d be downright relieved to find out my partner was leaving me for someone they’d been having sex with on the side for years if the alternative was spontaneous horse farm.
This reminds me of a story I heard on NPR a while back, of a female scientist who fell in love with a drifter with an Irish brogue and a soulful singing voice.
(Apparently they lived happily ever after, after a second try)
