Ribbing your spouse about having sex with someone else

[holliday1960]

Beautifully put, JR.

I can only say as an addendum, I love my husband and he loves me. For the first 12 years of our marriage, we were never apart, not for one day, not for one hour, not even for more than 5 minutes. We worked together, we played together, and we chose to be together every single second of the day, every day. It was annoying to a lot of people who didn't and couldn't comprehend our relationship.

People are always going to be uncomfortable with what they don't understand. It's fine if others don't 'get' our relationship. It works for us. We're happy and we have 21 years of being happy together. I have empathy for other couples who don't share the same level of love, honesty, trust and passion with their SOs. Humor is by and large a contributing factor to the success of our marriage.

Isn't it odd how the happiest hetero couples, married for decades, are completely sexist in their attitudes? I'm not sure why others find this bothers them so much. Or why it has to be analyzed. If anything, in the final analysis, it might be said that sexist ideals make successful, honest relationships. I'm not trying to be flippant or antagonistic in saying that, but if we want to analyze relationships, shouldn't we examine all sides and not just one?

To 8letters: I have to ask the question in regard to 'normalizing' sex outside of marriage, of the multitudes of people who have lived and walked this earth since the beginning of time, how many of those individuals would you say never had sex outside their marriage, or relationship with a SO ? I mean if we could look into records and document every single incident of infidelity even where it has been carefully concealed, lied about, denied, dismissed, excused or ignored...What would the statistics show? How many people would come out completely innocent and lily-white?

I think we could agree the numbers of so-called 'cheaters' throughout time would be staggering. So, wouldn't that indicate that monogamy on the whole is NOT the norm in human behavior? It puts monogamist partners in the minority by a huge margin.

So, how can 'normalizing' an affair outside of marriage be anything short of being honest? It IS the norm. People have to make a conscious effort to be monogamous in a relationship. It's not easy to say no to temptation. It's what sets mankind apart from the concept of perfection and perfect deities.

That alone proves monogamy is not a natural human behavior. It's a learned and practiced behavior. That is why we value it. It's rare. No matter what ideals we want to believe and strive to live by, sex with other partners is 'the norm'. To say that we normalize behavior through sexist humor is like a dog chasing its tail. We're just going to keep running around in circles with this one.

I hope you find a way to resolve your conflict regarding sexual humor in relationships. But, in the end, if you don't, that's okay too. Just be happy with who you are and don't try to define it. It'll drive you nutz!

 

[OliviaM]

I've been thinking some more on why this bothers me. I've never seen any articles on this subject, but I've read a few articles on sexist jokes such as this one.

Translating the research from sexist jokes to this, when the character Alyssa ribs her husband Levi about having sex with a co-worker she:
* Normalizes someone married having sex with a co-worker. Everybody does it
* Implies that she condones Levi having sex with the co-worker. It would be bad to do, but these things happen
* Implies that the idea of Levi having sex with a co-worker bothers her very little. The thought of it threatens her so little that she's able to make light of it

In LitE stories when someone ribs their spouse about fucking someone else, that person is doing all of the above things. The spouse always winds up fucking the person he/she was ribbed about.

Now you could say that by ribbing your spouse about him/her fucking someone he/she knows, you are sending the message that you trust your spouse so much that the idea of them cheating on you is laughable. But given how disastrous it would be if he/she took your joke the wrong way, I'd think any married person would stay far, far away from these type of jokes.

If I could make a guess, I think what might be bothering you is the internal logic of the stories themselves. I doubt you judge any real life couples who choose to communicate this way and are comfortable with it. But within the fictional examples, you have one person writing both characters and putting words into the mouth of the other party. One represents themselves and the other is their perfect fantasy partner, who is totally okay with cheating, or they deserve to be cheated on, or they secretly want a threesome or whatever. It doesn't feel true to you because that's not usually how things go and people are more complex than that.

 

[OliviaM]

People have to make a conscious effort to be monogamous in a relationship. It's not easy to say no to temptation.

This can't be a universal truth. I don't relate to this at all, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I think there are as many relationship styles as there are adults on this planet.

 

[8letters]

If I could make a guess, I think what might be bothering you is the internal logic of the stories themselves. I doubt you judge any real life couples who choose to communicate this way and are comfortable with it. But within the fictional examples, you have one person writing both characters and putting words into the mouth of the other party. One represents themselves and the other is their perfect fantasy partner, who is totally okay with cheating, or they deserve to be cheated on, or they secretly want a threesome or whatever. It doesn't feel true to you because that's not usually how things go and people are more complex than that.

That's pretty close. The author requested feedback for his story in the Story Feedback forum. In the story, Mike is trying to convince his wife Michelle to start swinging. They go to a guest night at a swinging club and meet Alyssa and Levi, who are also visiting the club. Michelle is very dubious about swapping partners. Alyssa tries to reassure her by saying what I quoted in the OP:

Alyssa says "Would you like to hear the story of how our first time went? Maybe it might put your mind at ease hearing our first time and how we felt during and afterwards."
:
"Ok, it happened after a work party. One of Levi's co-workers was a woman who Levi always had the hots for. I'd always rib him on how much he wanted to have sex with her but it was always more in jest.

When I read that, I did not find it reassuring to Michelle. Quite the opposite. But I couldn't put my finger on why so I didn't mention it when I gave feedback. I read another story about the same time where the couple was suppose to be extremely happy and she jokes with him about him fucking his new co-worker. Again, it bothered me and I couldn't name why. So I tossed up this thread to see if I was alone in being bothered by a supposedly happy wife ribbing her husband about having sex with someone else.

Having thought through this, I realize now is that when I read the wife joke with her husband about him fucking someone else, I thought the marriage was in trouble. And the reason I thought the marriage was in trouble was because I heard the attitude of "at this point, it wouldn't bother me if you started fucking someone else." So putting the wife joking with the husband about him fucking someone else for me produced the opposite effect of what the author was striving for.

For real life, whatever makes your marriage work. I'm not giving advice. I'm not going to judge anyone. If you've hit 21 years doing what you are doing and you're still happy, more power to you.

 

[holliday1960]

This can't be a universal truth. I don't relate to this at all, and I don't think I'm alone in that. I think there are as many relationship styles as there are adults on this planet.

Nothing is a universal truth, Olivia. I agree. I was talking statistics/percentages. Of the men I have known, and who were honest in their responses, 98% have sought some form of sex outside of a relationship.

Of the women, the percentages are slightly less. However, several of those women were not honest in their answers either. One even claimed giving oral sex to a stranger didn't count as infidelity. I know his wife didn't see it that way. He became single shortly after the incident occurred.

Nor would I want to push that issue with my husband. I think most people would take the same stand. But, as you point out, that was her concept of a relationship style and it seemed declaring she was monogamous with her SO was her honest opinion.

For some people, anything other than vaginal penetration sex isn't considered sex. Others take a more conventional view. I see a LOT of young people (still in school) who consider even talking to another person in private or on a chat-line to be cheating. Kissing someone else is definitely grounds for a break-up among youths.

I find it interesting that you don't think maintaining a monogamous relationship to be part of the 'work' that goes into a marriage.

 

[jezzaz]

I've been thinking some more on why this bothers me. I've never seen any articles on this subject, but I've read a few articles on sexist jokes such as this one.

Translating the research from sexist jokes to this, when the character Alyssa ribs her husband Levi about having sex with a co-worker she:
* Normalizes someone married having sex with a co-worker. Everybody does it
* Implies that she condones Levi having sex with the co-worker. It would be bad to do, but these things happen
* Implies that the idea of Levi having sex with a co-worker bothers her very little. The thought of it threatens her so little that she's able to make light of it

In LitE stories when someone ribs their spouse about fucking someone else, that person is doing all of the above things. The spouse always winds up fucking the person he/she was ribbed about.

Now you could say that by ribbing your spouse about him/her fucking someone he/she knows, you are sending the message that you trust your spouse so much that the idea of them cheating on you is laughable. But given how disastrous it would be if he/she took your joke the wrong way, I'd think any married person would stay far, far away from these type of jokes.

Wait, what?

Yeah, that's sounds a little PC to me. I make jokes about it because I trust that she won't, and she trusts I won't. I don't feel I need to moderate my jokes with my wife - where I am pretty damn sure (as sure as you are ever gonna be) that she's not going to take the joke and suddenly think "Oh, he's joking about it, therefore it's going to be ok for me to do it". I think that anyone who has a decent set of communication lines with their spouse isn't going to worry about that.

That's akin to saying "Well, meteorites hit the ground and kill people. Sure, it's unlikely, but I can't know it's not going to happen, so I'll solve that by never going outside"

I think if you are seriously imagining that because you've made a joke about your spouse having sex with someone else, that they are going to rush off and do it - or even think that's within the realm of possibility, then you've got a lot more issues in your relationship than making jokes.

If you _can't_ make a joke like that, then what state is the relationship in in the first place?

 

[OliviaM]

I find it interesting that you don't think maintaining a monogamous relationship to be part of the 'work' that goes into a marriage.

Because it's not "work" for me? It just doesn't occur to me to be tempted. (I'm not going to bother defending my husband to strangers here, just speaking for myself.) Put a chocolate cake down in front of 10 different people and warn them not to eat it, you're going to get different responses. Some won't be able to help themselves. Some won't care. Some will have no problem saying no because it's not what they want.

Monogamy is a kink for me. I guess I'm weird that way.

 

[Bramblethorn]

But within the fictional examples, you have one person writing both characters and putting words into the mouth of the other party. One represents themselves and the other is their perfect fantasy partner, who is totally okay with cheating, or they deserve to be cheated on, or they secretly want a threesome or whatever. It doesn't feel true to you because that's not usually how things go and people are more complex than that.

If your partner knows about it and is totally okay with it, I'm not sure "cheating" is the word.

So I tossed up this thread to see if I was alone in being bothered by a supposedly happy wife ribbing her husband about having sex with someone else.

Having thought through this, I realize now is that when I read the wife joke with her husband about him fucking someone else, I thought the marriage was in trouble. And the reason I thought the marriage was in trouble was because I heard the attitude of "at this point, it wouldn't bother me if you started fucking someone else." So putting the wife joking with the husband about him fucking someone else for me produced the opposite effect of what the author was striving for.

Some people do try nonmonogamy either as a quick-fix for a dissatisfying relationship ("relationship broken, add more people" - not generally recommended), or because they've given up on the relationship. But it would be unusual to joke about that to one's pre-existing partner.

When my partner teases me about somebody I'm attracted to, it's her way of saying "I know and I'm okay with it".

(That said, anything involving co-workers would need careful discussion first; that's a situation that can go bad very easily.)

 

[8letters]

Monogamy is a kink for me. I guess I'm weird that way.

From Esquire's 2010 survey of nearly 10K US women (average age 27.6):
29. If you knew you wouldn't be caught, would you cheat?
Yes 16%
No 84%

 

[49greg]

My wife has instituted a 'free five' of men she will sleep with if the opportunity presents itself. Since that won't happen we laugh about it. She insists I have my 'free five', but mine don't count as they're all old time movie stars who are now dead or very much past it.

But as for the OP, well it happened to a cousin. Her hubby was a dick. I wasn't the only one who told her that. One time he has on a business trip, I think it was a trade show. He called and told her about a woman he 'hooked up with'. He bragged about it.

She started divorce proceedings. It wasn't the first time he had told her about being with others, although the others turned out to be on-line romances. My though is that he was with a pro. He just doesn't have the social skills to attract a non pro.

Their marriage was shaky anyway, and that was the last straw.

 

[jezzaz]

My wife has instituted a 'free five' of men she will sleep with if the opportunity presents itself. Since that won't happen we laugh about it.

We have the same. We often laugh about it too.

The only reason I brought it up was that one of her five is Mark Ruffalo, and he was at a party we were at in Hollywood.

She didn't have the courage to go up and actually talk to him, so she spent the whole night talking to me, but maneuvering herself so her butt was in his line of sight. Se kept asking me if he'd looked yet - and I was looking over her shoulder to see if he had. Every time he'd move orientation, talking to someone else, we'd shuffle around till her ass was back in his eyeline.

Eventually he did look. And did a double take. Yeah, her ass is that good.

I wasn't threatened for a second. I know who she is leaving with. I just thought it was uproariously funny. I kept threatening to get get him and explain the whole thing to him.

 

[rjordan]

45 years married...there have been a time or two when she would poke me in the ribs about a hot looking slut across the room or I would whisper in her ear about the hunk at the bar. But that was way back when we were young and only as asides to each other, never to third parties.

Same here. My wife would point out hot women I might have missed, but we never teased about fucking anyone else.

About 3 years into our marriage, we somehow got on the subject of three ways. I don't know if I was joking or prodding, but I suggested one with her girlfriend. She was silent for awhile then said, "There's not much in that for me, though. We could do one with another guy."

I never brought up threesomes again.

rj