Debbie does Paris, and Moscow, and...

It's worth remembering that monogamy isn't precisely natural, and even as a cultural artifact deviates across the globe. While the predominant narrative says that men are the prisoners of their biology, women are no saints in this one either. This isn't a gendered issue, or even just a human issue--biological imperatives are pretty indifferent when looking at any of God's creatures.

Of course, an easy argument is that marriage then represents our opportunity to rise above our bestial natures, to transcend the atavist. And there is merit to this, to be sure, but in doing so, we should be very clear that frame marriage thusly, we transform marriage and monogamy from a natural occasion to a cultural artifact (this is the thesis of Matt Ridley's fascinating The Red Queen). Culture is subject to change and evolution. It might not be pliable, but it is neither static nor universal.

If the origins of marriage are cultural, then so too are the ends, and into this gap steps Pamela Druckerman's Lust in Translation. How we as Americans frame cheating and infidelity are radically different than the rest of the world. Cheating happens everywhere, but in America, life ends. A cheating spouse demands public implosion, "my world falling down around my ears", before we can move on. We demand full accountability and full subservience--every tryst is documented, and every phone call screened by the aggrieved partner.

A not-small portion of the vitriol direction at Hillary stems from the perception that the only reason she stayed with Bill was because he was a political asset, that it was pure political machination. She disobeyed the culture code that demanded that she prioritize her broken heart before her career, and by inverting that formula, revealed herself to be the heartless beast of caricature.

So maybe, possibly, somehow, all these scandals give us an opportunity to address our narratives of marriage and relationships head on. We're in the midst of redefining both, yet our conversations largely surround norms weathering the storm of rapidly changing moderity, and we don't really articulate either the norm or the assault. Instead, we get progressively more confused and frustrated, as we struggle to define whether a single date is actually a date or if we were just hanging out. We are lost when events like those of the past few occurs begin to wash over the desk, and we try harder and harder to reify ossified standards. And given the spate of friends getting married, this seems like a topic of more than academic interest.