Introduction
Despite different religions, cultural historical and economic background, most of the people treat adultery negatively. There are few exceptions, conditioned by historical and cultural background but we will not study these cases. In my work I will proceed from the assumption that adultery or infidelity is dangerous and destroying for marriage and relationship and thus for the society. I will try to study the way our society treats adultery, historical preconditions of such attitude and the way media and religion influences social opinion and individuals when concerning this issue.
Adultery in the modern society
Adultery is usually defined as sexual intercourse of one of married person with anybody but his or her legal spouse.
Infidelity and unfaithfulness, are another names for adultery. In everyday speech people use term infidelity or just cheating to describe this phenomenon. In modern society adultery generally assumes sexual intercourse, which can be the only prove of infidelity. There were periods in the history when the limits of adultery were not so narrow and even innocent flirting could be regarded as infidelity and cause server consequences. In Hawaii, for example, there existed more than 20 kinds of adultery and each of them had different measure of guilt. In the courts the person who’s committed adultery is usually referred as respondent and his companion is called co-respondent. The spouse of the respondent is called cuckold. In the beginning this term was used to refer to men, whose wives have been unfaithful but the tendency of the last years show that women are oftener and oftener are also referred to as cuckold.
In the history of mankind adultery was severely sentenced and punished. In some counties the price for adultery was not less than human life. Unfortunately, during the human history the attitude to male adultery was much more loyal that to female one. In many societies unfaithful women were severely sentenced, deprived of their rights while men didn’t get even social reproach for the same actions. During the ruling of Napoleon husband could ask for the divorce from his wife if she had committed adultery. At the same time adultery of the husband unless it was committed in family home wasn’t enough reason for the wife to ask for divorce.
There always were and still are countries where adultery isn’t a reason for divorce. Adultery isn’t still illegal in Austria, Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan. In the United States laws concerning adultery and legal punishment for it differ in different states. There are states where adultery is severely punished, up to imprisonment, like in Pennsylvania, for example, and there are one where there is no legal punishment for adultery. The changes in the definition of marriage cause the changes in the definition of adultery. Till recent times marriage was defined as a union between two people of the opposite sex. Legalization of homosexual relationship in some countries lead to the changes in the definition of marriage and now adultery can’t also be regarded as sexual intercourse with the person of the opposite sex outside the marriage.
Despite all the legal punishment and social disapproval, the problem of adultery and fidelity exists in the modern society and even vice verse, it becomes the object of concern of many specialists and ordinary citizens. The results of survey show that eight of ten people condemn adultery. But at the same time the Janus Report show that “More than one-third of men and one-quarter of women admit having had at least one extramarital sexual experience.”(Janus, 65). Another survey, performed by the National Opinion Research Center, which works of the basis of Chicago University had shown almost the same results. The results of the survey showed that about 25 percent of men and about 17 percent of women commit adultery (Schrof, 118). This results show that adultery is a serious problem for the modern society and it takes frightening scope. One forth of all married men had sexual intercourse outside their marriage at least one time in his life. Though lower than with men, result with women are also disturbing. If to take into account that adultery is called among the main reasons of the divorce, the problem of adultery can’t be left without attention. Another interesting conclusion can be made if to compare the results of the surveys. The results show that a considerable part of the people who treat adultery negatively still have extramarital relationship. This means that people turn to infidelity even knowing that it’s bad and can have bad consequences. Infidelity becomes common issue and condemnation of the society doesn’t stop people. The cases when legal punishment was used as a punishment against adultery are very rare in the modern society. Unfortunately, despite all the measures taken by the society to prevent adultery, percentage of extramarital relationship grows and attitude of the member of the society to it becomes more and more loyal. Adultery becomes a common phenomenon in the modern society and people who suffer from it have to go through humiliating court procedure in order to prove the quilt of their partner. In addition, this can be possible only in the case of divorce. Most of the world religions denounce infidelity but statistics show that religious people also have extramarital affairs. High moral standards set up by the Church are often neglected by its believers. Survey taken by Newsweek prove that about 30 percent of protestant ministers had an affair outside the marriage. This percentage is even higher than among non-religious respondents. The Journal of Pastoral Care gives even higher percentage of adultery. These sad results prove that even religious authorities can not influence the problem of adultery. The levers of social influence can not help to solve the problem even if enforced by the opinion of religious authorities.
But nowadays it means that the problem has no solution and it’s not worth trying to resolve it. Adultery is destroying and dangerous for marriage as the marriage is one of the main social components. There are several reasons, which create wrong perception of the adultery and may cause its growth. Very often adultery of famous people becomes the object of speculation of the mass media. Ordinary people follow bright and diverse life of celebrities with palpitating heart. Very often their private life full or adultery and dishonesty becomes the main themes of magazine articles, TV and radio interviews. Celebrities, who very often become ideal for ordinary people don’t perform the pattern of thorough moral behavior. Loudly advertised by mass media, their private life and easy behavior is adopted as a behavioral pattern by the vast majority of people. It would be unfair to blame only mass media in the switch of moral norms of the society. I think that mass media only reflects the level of the society and its perspective for further development. If this is the case, we get a very sad picture as artists and other public figures replace the spiritual leaders and become the founders of moral norms and behavioral patterns. It’s important to pay attention to the switch of public attention from figures with high moral standards to famous people who get their fame by not always decent ways. In this case mass media serves a bad service popularizing this new tendency. In addition some psychiatrists and physicians widespread myths about the possible use of adultery for saving the marriage. The idea about male polygamy is often used to explain male adultery. Some specialists, who state that a man can not be satisfied with sexual relationship with one woman only create a very good pretext for extramarital relationship and even more, they create a very dangerous stereotype when men who have sexual relationship only with their wives feel infringed and even damaged. Another dangerous stereotype created by not very professional psychiatrists state that people can not confront their sexual attraction to the opposite sex. Free will and freedom of choice, together with the ability to control our instincts distinguishes us from animals and recognizing people who turn to adultery to be the slaves of these instincts we break this limit between animals and humans.
Another dangerous mistake states that adultery can be very useful for the marriage as it brings new and fresh emotion to both partners. Such statements in popular magazines don’t reflect true state of events as statistics show just vice versa. Latest researches have proven that “infidelity become the reason of 65 percent of divorces.” (Pittman, 59).
Another not so extreme but still dangerous opinion states that adultery is not harmful for marriage and can be easily overcome and forgotten. It’s needless to mention that all people have different moral norms and treat problem differently and statistics show that adultery can be harmful for marriages and it is harmful in the most cases.
Conclusion
There are many myths, which justify adultery and such an attitude creates serious problems, destroys social, moral and ethical norms and brings big danger for further generations. We have to admit that there are fewer opportunities to influence the private life of an individual than it used to be in the past. Social censure and religious threats are not so effective as they used to be in the past. People obtain more and more rights and freedoms. It’s a natural and very positive process. But there is one condition. More freedoms require more responsibilities and people should think about reevaluation of moral and ethical norms of the modern society, including the attitude to marriage and adultery if they want to live an harmonious society and provide stable and happy future for our children.

References

1. Janus Samuel and JanusCynthia, The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1993), 169.
2. Schrof Joannie, “Adultery in America,” U.S. News and World Report, 31 Aug. 1998, 31.
3. Pittman Frank, Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy (New York: Norton, 1989), 117.
4. Kenneth Woodward, “Sex, Morality and the Protestant Minister,” Newsweek (28 July 1997), 62.
5. “How Common Is Pastoral Indiscretion?” Leadership (Winter 1988), 12.
6. “Attitudes on Adultery,” USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, 1997.
7. Bonnie Eaker Weil, Adultery: The Forgivable Sin (Norwalk, Conn.: Hastings House, 1994), 9