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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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and the perfectly healthy sexual instincts that once bonded you to your wife, now demand that you should betray her [1]

[1] I’m actually in my twenties AND SINGLE, so I have no personal experience with the temptation described.

I'm in my late 30s and married and have to say that one of the mildly surprising, but quite pleasing aspects of marriage is that this temptation isn't strong at all. While granting that people's sex drive differs, I have most settled on habitual womanizers just being scum, deeply immoral people with little regard for their commitments. To your point, it's actually somewhat interesting why I hold to more or less traditional Christian ethics despite not sharing the religion, but however it came to be, it isn't actually difficult to follow through on keeping complete commitment to my wife. Perhaps societal belief in the Christian God was necessary to so thoroughly inculcate that moral intuition, I don't know.

I'm in my late 30s and married and have to say that one of the mildly surprising, but quite pleasing aspects of marriage is that this temptation isn't strong at all.

I felt the same way in my 30s and when my marriage was going well. It was blissful to not be tempted at all. Fast-forward ten years, with little incompatibilities growing exponentially, and things might look different. Although I have not done so, I have much more empathy now for some men who do cheat (not the compulsive, chronic cheaters, but the ones who feel abandoned in some aspects of marriage). There may come a time when it looks like the least bad of the terrible options.

I think this is why having a wife that's 7 to 10 years younger is generally a good idea