beatrice_otter | (Reply)

How prevalent and acceptable affairs were varied based on a lot of circumstances like gender and class and which precise time period, and so on. But in most cases, having an affair was far more serious than than it is today. For example, if a woman had an affair and it became publicly known, it could ruin her life permanently.

You have to remember that marriage is about consolidating resources and then passing them on to the next generation. Making ABSOLUTELY sure that everyone knew which parents a child belonged to was really, really important ... and the more sleeping around there is, the less able people are to trace what kid was fathered by what man. This is partly why it was gendered. A man could sleep with a sex worker at any time (if he could afford it) with no scandal, or keep a mistress at any time (if he could afford it) with no scandal. But if a woman slept with a man she wasn't married to, and it became known, in most times and places that would be a huge scandal and she would lose huge amounts of social status and her husband could cast her off and her family probably wouldn't take her back and she'd be penniless and might not have any choices between "starving" and "becoming a sex worker". There were exceptions and the exact details varied along with the degree of censure she faced, but that was the general understanding.

You and I come from a culture in which we are daily surrounded by stories, songs, poems, and art telling us that being "in love" is more important than anything else, that it's the highest goal, that it excuses most bad behavior. But that's a modern phenomena. Prior to the 19th Century, the percentage of art and song and story that talked about love was a lot smaller, and it was treated more like just a thing that happens sometimes (or even as a tragedy) than a good thing or a necessary thing. Believe it or not, they tended to talk more about sexual desire than romantic love. And, again, it wasn't seen as this be-all, end-all. If you happened to be in love with your spouse or someone who was appropriate for you to marry, that's great. If not, oh, well, but that's not really an excuse for bad behavior in and of itself.

There were times and places that had a lot more affairs than others; a good example is 18th Century nobility/most wealthy families. That set did a LOT of partying, and did a LOT of things that the Victorians found Shocking And Horrifying. (They gambled! They swore! They slept around! They did every vice imaginable!) The way it worked was, you got married, had a few kids to be heirs, and then you started going to house parties where everyone bedroom hopped and worked really hard at not noticing if people were in different bedrooms than they ought to have been. As long as there were no children produced, everything was fine. And a husband could, of course, have a mistress whenever he wanted, if he could afford to financially support both a wife and a mistress; women were on a MUCH shorter string. But if you'd asked those partying rich people whether they were doing it because they didn't love their spouse, they wouldn't really understand the question. They were doing it because ... they liked parties and debauchery.

I mean, think about today's super-rich people jetting off to a villa in the Bahamas, or whatnot. They can and do marry for love if they want to. Doesn't stop them from screwing around on one another in the process of partying (and mostly not after doing polyamory negotiations).

Also, it's not like nobody married for love in previous eras. If you fell in love with someone who was appropriate for you to marry (right class, right social set, right amount of money) and they fell in love with you, then sure, you might marry them. It just was a far less important factor than the other ones.

Hope this helps!