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    Re: The Cuckolded Husband

    Posted Monday, March 10, 2008 6:02 PM | By Meghan O'Rourke
    Dahlia, it's interesting that you used the word bride instead of wife in your post: It's much less likely, I think, that you would have slipped groom in there for husband had the genders been reverse. That itself points to just how differently we view female and male extramarital affairs. The woman in the marriage is supposed to remind bridal and quasi-virginal, a paragon of good faith. While a man who cheats is a familiar type, the guy who can't keep it in his pants, etc, etc. We don't like him, but we find him familiar—enough so that the supporting role of stand-by wife with pasted-on smile is by now a type itself. I, too, can't think of any counterexamples of a cuckolded husband clasping his wife's hand. Instead, I conjure up all the news items about Paula Zahn's "betrayed" husband and her "lurid" and "shocking" affair.
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