Adultery, A Sign of Love

Imagine your spouse/ partner coming up to you and saying, “ Darling, because I love you, I sleep with someone else”! Putting it mildly, this is surely a very new perception of love, I must say.
I read about this new concept of love recently, professed by Eric Anderson, professor of sociology, in his latest book, The Monogamy Gap. The professor claims that marriage and adultery are in fact compatible and not mutually exclusive, as we generally tend to think.
 
He claims that men actually love their wives and hence they sleep with another woman. Men according to him cheat, not because they have fallen-out-of-love, but because they are sexually unfulfilled. The sleeping with another woman is purely for recreational purposes, and has nothing to do with love. All they want is some spice, some zing in their dreary lives. The professor opines, that most men who do indulge in sex-outside-the-committed relationship, do not want to break away from the committed relationship.
 
If only wives/partners allowed guilt-free-recreational sex outside the relationship, all would be fine, and men would not need to cheat at all! On the basis of this hypothesis, one can safely say that sleeping with the partner’s best friend would tantamount to total adoration then!
 
I wonder if the same rules apply to women too? I mean if indeed sex and love were mutually exclusive, then it should be perfectly acceptable for a man to say that my wife/partner had an affair because she loves me so very much. And nope, the argument that men are by nature not monogamous, while women mostly are, is a cliché. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander too, right?
 
The basic question, which comes to my mind post reading the professor’s hypothesis is, that sex and love are mutually exclusive. But, while it may be true, especially when one goes in for paid sex, does this thought hold true, when someone has an affair? An affair involves feelings, I would believe; even for a man who is say looking for recreational sex.
 
There is no doubt change is the order of things, and the concept of monogamy may become defunct in future. But, for most others, do you think happy companionship among partners in a committed relationship is possible, if they are aware that their companion is indulging in recreational sex outside the relationship?
 
Can adultery be a gesture of love, as professed by the sociology professor Anderson? I think not. What about you? Share your take readers.
 
 
Image Courtesy : www.chicagonow.com