Infidelity has been considered to be one of the main causes for the break up of American marriages. Many a times an erring American spouse feels the need to come clean to his/her spouse and thats demolishes the marriage.

Jardine Libaire has done an exhaustive and entertaining article on why Americans feel guilty when they stray from their marriages. The reasons ranged from blaming it on the desire to have happily ever after marriages, to the strict Christian values of being true to the spouse, to being dangerously nuclear and to just being social green horns.

The French, Russians and a Muslim guy are given as examples in the article for whom affairs are like little outings or like little fuck parties, screwed and forgotten with no bearing what so ever on the person they are married to nor a reflection on their marriages.

Or more like the way Tony Soprano fucked around with the call girls. He fucked them but went back to the little wife. How nice. But at least Carmella got money in exchange for Tony's roving eye. Even the author of the article was told by Tariq that he could have affairs since the women in his culture did not enjoy too many rights. (Yeah- say divorce three times and the babe is out of the door, thats Islam for you apart from stoning an adulterous, needing a witness to the rape and what not)

Which brings me to the point that when a spouse goes and sleeps with another or has an emotional attachment to another its that much investment that has gone out of the marriage. Of Course in an open marriage its an accepted ball game- 'You screw someone new and I screw someone else and then come home and screw each other, the screwing is done with each others permission and the marriage goes on.'

But in a monogamous relationship the partner that strays basically breaks the rule of being exclusive and its called Betrayal. Why it happens, the reasons, the excuses, the bridge building is not the issue here. The issue is why does the adulterer feel guilt and the need to come clean?

Maybe its because its in bred in the American culture to be honest in their dealings with people? To be brutally frank? To honor even a handshake as a binding contract? And why shouldn't it then eat their hearts when they are honest in society but deceitful in their personal lives?

Serial adulterers compartmentalize their lives and tend to shrug the blame element off. 'What my spouse doesn't know would not hurt him/her' is forwarded with a wink and a nudge. If that isn't a sign of dishonesty and duplicity what is?

Marriage is a institution based on mutual agreements and at least in my books there are no martyrs. If a frequently betrayed spouse stays in a soured relationship its generally due to financial trade offs.

Being married for a long time obviously brings temptations on the way and some slip and some don't but to give affairs legitimacy as if they are some honest activities is a little hard for me to stomach. Go ask a French Man or Russian they'd probably tell you - accepted? , natural? Sure! honest? Well, that would take the zing out of the secret rendezvous.