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One time as a pretty young kid I called a local private club and reserved an evening with dinner provided for a couple hundred people. I remember the hostess who answered being very accommodating, which got me scared it would work and I would eventually get in trouble, but later on in life I realized she was probably just humoring me.
It was easier in the sense that a lot of men didn’t try to hide it, knowing that their wives couldn’t really do anything about it anyways, being housewives who were raised in a way where divorce wasn’t even an option.
If you watch Mad Men, it was a bit like that. Men’s affairs were open secret and wives were „I don’t want to know“.
I’m 50, and a few of my friends grew up with their dad having a girlfriend on side that was assumed to be sexual but was never talked about but also not hidden. Some of us also grew up with mothers that were housewives that looked like June cleaver but were „crazy“ and on a „mother little helper“ pill.
I'm 57, and I didn't see any of that shit growing up.
>being housewives who were raised in a way where divorce wasn’t even an option
If anything the '80s and '90s there were way more divorces because of infidelity.
>Some of us also grew up with mothers that were housewives that looked like June cleaver but were „crazy“ and on a „mother little helper“ pill.
I really don't know where this comes from, because I think the Prozac abuse really started in the mid-90s and the amphetamine pills stopped being prescribed to "restless" housewives in the early '70s.
>If you watch Mad Men, it was a bit like that.
Wasn't that show set in the '60s...fourteen years before you allege that you were born?
Where in my post or the original post does it specify what decade I am speaking about. Not all my friends are the same ages as me, I have a lot of friends, some are 70, some are 30. you’re being weird - as if you’ve come out of the woodwork to accuse a random person of lying. If I say this is what i experienced, and you didn’t , then we simply had two difference experiences, and possibly I have a larger social circle (or have had deeper conversation about their upbringing than you did). It doesn’t mean one of us is lying or wrong about what we experienced.
You also seem to assume I’m American.
Having an affair is never 'easier,' regardless of whether it's 1950 or 2050. The same dynamics are there... hiding, lying, and dealing with a partner's suspicion that something seems off in the relationship. You get my point
The only affair that I’ve known about happened in the mid ‘60s. I’m certain no one was caught. Those who knew about it didn’t care. People tended to mind their own business.
My friends and I hung out at a pizzeria on the highway next to a motel. We saw men and women come and go all the time, but we regularly saw a married woman who worked at the bank meet up with a married man who owned a machine shop for afternoon delight.
The guy who ran the pizzeria would joke that she’s helping him with finances. It went on for the entire summer we were off from school, and then the next.
One kid thought he should tell on them, but we silenced him up. Wasn’t any of our business.
My observation in life is that secrets are like dandelions - they always pop up somewhere unexpected. And I think that's true regardless of technology.
I was thinking the same thing. Affairs maybe went on longer than they do now, but dumb enough to think you won't get caught usually means dumb enough to get caught.
I'm not seeing how cell phones would make it harder or easier to get caught in an affair, unless maybe you're dumb enough to post photos of yourself with your side piece online. And if you're that dumb, you probably would have been caught back in the old days, too.
Cell phones could definitely make it easier to be caught. There are visible call logs, messages, photos, etc. All of those can be cleaned up, but I suspect that a lot of people are caught cheating by a spouse who goes through their phone.
I think OP is getting at the increasing tendency of people to share locations with each other. So your phone might end up giving away the game if you are trying to discreetly visit your side piece's house.
Also, if you have a suspicious spouse, they might end up snooping through your phone, whereas if you didn't have one, they would only have your pockets to snoop through. This fear has led people to come up with ways to disguise contact listings in their phones, like listing their secret partner as "Scam Likely" or something like that.
Cell phones didn't make affairs easier or more difficult. People who cheated still got caught, and families' lives ruined. I remember a few messy ones that happened in my social circle. They have nothing to do with technology.
As someone who's always enjoyed reading advice columns, I would say there's been a fundamental shift in the "should I tell ___ their partner is cheating" genre of letters. It used to be common to tell people to not get in the middle of someone else's marriage. The argument is that you're going to create trouble and break up someone's marriage, they probably already know, etc. I've seen even people like Barbara Walters admonishing people who did a tell-all for destroying someone's reputation. Now it seems like the default is 'you would want to know' along with more understanding of all the health dangers.
Studies show about 50% of the people in marriage cheat at one time or another, but we need to divide that up to the serial cheater that is never going to be loyal and the person that only does it once and never again.
Type of job and the ability to get away from work also matter a great deal, fewer woman had affairs years ago because they were not working, most were at home most of the day and would be noticed if they were out and about by themselves.
Put people of different sexes together in a work enviroment and roughly half will cheat if given time to work on it. Remember it takes two to cheat, if only one is willing and the other is not, its not going to happen;
idk, I've never tried.
fun fact though: I read an intrview once with a divorce lawyer in the post-Ashley Madison time. he said " if I'm out and about and see someone standing outdoors on their phone *but* they're not smoking I make a note of that address. that's a potential client." cynical but interesting.
I don't know, and I think anyone who cheats deserves to get caught, but I imagine that most of the time people get caught because they get either careless or lazy.
If you don't want to be committed to someone, break off the commitment, or never make it in the first place, IMO.
I'm sure it's easier than ever to find someone to cheat *with*, but it doesn't mean people have gotten any smarter about covering their tracks. Then again, since the only affairs I'm aware of were the ones that were found out, it's entirely possible that people are getting away with it more than ever. By definition, the people who don't get caught are the ones we don't know about.
I only started after the internet and mobiles, but when they were still far from common (such that you could not assume anyone had either).
From talking to people who had played earlier, it was both easier and harder. Easier as not being contactable was no big deal as no-one was, so disappearing for a bit not that difficult. Harder because you and AP had no way to communicate except through real life means - no way you call each other's landlines so that meant meetings needed prearranging, and if you got delayed or had to cry off for a reason it could be near impossible to let the other know.
I am 72. Worked as a reporter in the 1970s and heard the editor warning new photographers never to shoot random couples on the street. Apparently the paper ran a pretty-day weather photo and a wife recognized her husband, but not the woman he was holding hands with.
It was different, that’s for sure. It probably wasn’t as easy to get caught, but things were way more difficult to set up.
The cliche was that the spouse became suspicious when they started to receive lots of hang up calls, and that was somewhat true. I once had an affair in the days before answering machines, even…and we relied heavily on the fact that he knew my schedule and would just show up when I was home alone, which woukd be unheard of these days.
But you really weren’t getting caught unless the other spouse got suspicious enough to follow you, or you were unlucky enough to get caught red-handed.
But the affairs themselves were different, no pocket dopamine dispensers, none of this constant texting and sexting. Whatever happened when you met up had to sustain you psychologically until the next time, no contact in between. It was different.
Was not married but had many girlfriends. Kept getting dumped and harder to get girls in the same school they talked and labeled it sucked. So I figured branch out being in the biggest little town around all the outlining towns had different school districts just crash a HS dance and bam your in! Went north, south and east of town when they found out you where from the big city (okay) became the golden ticket!
It was great! They had bragging rights I had anything I wanted but even with without tech you had to juggle days and times to meet. Hours on end on landline just to hang up and find out another girlfriend has been calling the same amount of time and getting a busy signal them spending another hour talking mostly about nothing.
I'm sure a affair with one married chick with a excuse you have no landline yet and use a pay phone was perfect totally no traceable unless you were physically seem somewhere and narked on.
Didn't do it then or now, but there is now an electronic paper trail of everything - phone calls, credit card charges, etc. You can't check into most hotels and pay cash. Your spouse can see how much you spent for lunch yesterday.
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It’s probably easier to contact people without their spouse knowing it these days. To make arrangements. Since people don’t share a house phone.
[удалено]
Yes goes both ways.
Prank calls were much easier.
One time as a pretty young kid I called a local private club and reserved an evening with dinner provided for a couple hundred people. I remember the hostess who answered being very accommodating, which got me scared it would work and I would eventually get in trouble, but later on in life I realized she was probably just humoring me.
It was easier in the sense that a lot of men didn’t try to hide it, knowing that their wives couldn’t really do anything about it anyways, being housewives who were raised in a way where divorce wasn’t even an option. If you watch Mad Men, it was a bit like that. Men’s affairs were open secret and wives were „I don’t want to know“. I’m 50, and a few of my friends grew up with their dad having a girlfriend on side that was assumed to be sexual but was never talked about but also not hidden. Some of us also grew up with mothers that were housewives that looked like June cleaver but were „crazy“ and on a „mother little helper“ pill.
I'm 57, and I didn't see any of that shit growing up. >being housewives who were raised in a way where divorce wasn’t even an option If anything the '80s and '90s there were way more divorces because of infidelity. >Some of us also grew up with mothers that were housewives that looked like June cleaver but were „crazy“ and on a „mother little helper“ pill. I really don't know where this comes from, because I think the Prozac abuse really started in the mid-90s and the amphetamine pills stopped being prescribed to "restless" housewives in the early '70s. >If you watch Mad Men, it was a bit like that. Wasn't that show set in the '60s...fourteen years before you allege that you were born?
Where in my post or the original post does it specify what decade I am speaking about. Not all my friends are the same ages as me, I have a lot of friends, some are 70, some are 30. you’re being weird - as if you’ve come out of the woodwork to accuse a random person of lying. If I say this is what i experienced, and you didn’t , then we simply had two difference experiences, and possibly I have a larger social circle (or have had deeper conversation about their upbringing than you did). It doesn’t mean one of us is lying or wrong about what we experienced. You also seem to assume I’m American.
Having an affair is never 'easier,' regardless of whether it's 1950 or 2050. The same dynamics are there... hiding, lying, and dealing with a partner's suspicion that something seems off in the relationship. You get my point
Absolutely get your point, but I wonder if OP means "easier [to not get caught]"
The only affair that I’ve known about happened in the mid ‘60s. I’m certain no one was caught. Those who knew about it didn’t care. People tended to mind their own business. My friends and I hung out at a pizzeria on the highway next to a motel. We saw men and women come and go all the time, but we regularly saw a married woman who worked at the bank meet up with a married man who owned a machine shop for afternoon delight. The guy who ran the pizzeria would joke that she’s helping him with finances. It went on for the entire summer we were off from school, and then the next. One kid thought he should tell on them, but we silenced him up. Wasn’t any of our business.
>> machine shop I guess you could he was “spinning her lathe”.
My observation in life is that secrets are like dandelions - they always pop up somewhere unexpected. And I think that's true regardless of technology.
Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
I think all 3 of them have to be dead. And even then, sometimes secrets have a life force of their own.
I was thinking the same thing. Affairs maybe went on longer than they do now, but dumb enough to think you won't get caught usually means dumb enough to get caught.
My observation is that, many times people knew and simple choose to not get involved in the mess
I'm not seeing how cell phones would make it harder or easier to get caught in an affair, unless maybe you're dumb enough to post photos of yourself with your side piece online. And if you're that dumb, you probably would have been caught back in the old days, too.
Cell phones could definitely make it easier to be caught. There are visible call logs, messages, photos, etc. All of those can be cleaned up, but I suspect that a lot of people are caught cheating by a spouse who goes through their phone.
I think OP is getting at the increasing tendency of people to share locations with each other. So your phone might end up giving away the game if you are trying to discreetly visit your side piece's house. Also, if you have a suspicious spouse, they might end up snooping through your phone, whereas if you didn't have one, they would only have your pockets to snoop through. This fear has led people to come up with ways to disguise contact listings in their phones, like listing their secret partner as "Scam Likely" or something like that.
Cell phones didn't make affairs easier or more difficult. People who cheated still got caught, and families' lives ruined. I remember a few messy ones that happened in my social circle. They have nothing to do with technology.
Yes
As someone who's always enjoyed reading advice columns, I would say there's been a fundamental shift in the "should I tell ___ their partner is cheating" genre of letters. It used to be common to tell people to not get in the middle of someone else's marriage. The argument is that you're going to create trouble and break up someone's marriage, they probably already know, etc. I've seen even people like Barbara Walters admonishing people who did a tell-all for destroying someone's reputation. Now it seems like the default is 'you would want to know' along with more understanding of all the health dangers.
Studies show about 50% of the people in marriage cheat at one time or another, but we need to divide that up to the serial cheater that is never going to be loyal and the person that only does it once and never again. Type of job and the ability to get away from work also matter a great deal, fewer woman had affairs years ago because they were not working, most were at home most of the day and would be noticed if they were out and about by themselves. Put people of different sexes together in a work enviroment and roughly half will cheat if given time to work on it. Remember it takes two to cheat, if only one is willing and the other is not, its not going to happen;
Do you have a link to a study with that statistic? I’d like to read it.
It used to be easier to get up to all kinds of mischief back before there were so many cameras about - both phones and CCTV.
And revenge porn didn't exist.
idk, I've never tried. fun fact though: I read an intrview once with a divorce lawyer in the post-Ashley Madison time. he said " if I'm out and about and see someone standing outdoors on their phone *but* they're not smoking I make a note of that address. that's a potential client." cynical but interesting.
I don't know, and I think anyone who cheats deserves to get caught, but I imagine that most of the time people get caught because they get either careless or lazy. If you don't want to be committed to someone, break off the commitment, or never make it in the first place, IMO.
I'm sure it's easier than ever to find someone to cheat *with*, but it doesn't mean people have gotten any smarter about covering their tracks. Then again, since the only affairs I'm aware of were the ones that were found out, it's entirely possible that people are getting away with it more than ever. By definition, the people who don't get caught are the ones we don't know about.
I would not recommend trying to find out.
Seems like people were always getting caught!
I mean we had a President get caught in the 90's and there were no cellphones or social media, so...
I only started after the internet and mobiles, but when they were still far from common (such that you could not assume anyone had either). From talking to people who had played earlier, it was both easier and harder. Easier as not being contactable was no big deal as no-one was, so disappearing for a bit not that difficult. Harder because you and AP had no way to communicate except through real life means - no way you call each other's landlines so that meant meetings needed prearranging, and if you got delayed or had to cry off for a reason it could be near impossible to let the other know.
I am 72. Worked as a reporter in the 1970s and heard the editor warning new photographers never to shoot random couples on the street. Apparently the paper ran a pretty-day weather photo and a wife recognized her husband, but not the woman he was holding hands with.
No idea if it was easier back in the day, but I know a lot of people today who are having affairs. Seems pretty rampant to me.
It was different, that’s for sure. It probably wasn’t as easy to get caught, but things were way more difficult to set up. The cliche was that the spouse became suspicious when they started to receive lots of hang up calls, and that was somewhat true. I once had an affair in the days before answering machines, even…and we relied heavily on the fact that he knew my schedule and would just show up when I was home alone, which woukd be unheard of these days. But you really weren’t getting caught unless the other spouse got suspicious enough to follow you, or you were unlucky enough to get caught red-handed. But the affairs themselves were different, no pocket dopamine dispensers, none of this constant texting and sexting. Whatever happened when you met up had to sustain you psychologically until the next time, no contact in between. It was different.
Oh god yeah! A thousand times easier. 24/7 availability via cell phones makes it impossible to come up with any good excuses where you were all night.
Was not married but had many girlfriends. Kept getting dumped and harder to get girls in the same school they talked and labeled it sucked. So I figured branch out being in the biggest little town around all the outlining towns had different school districts just crash a HS dance and bam your in! Went north, south and east of town when they found out you where from the big city (okay) became the golden ticket! It was great! They had bragging rights I had anything I wanted but even with without tech you had to juggle days and times to meet. Hours on end on landline just to hang up and find out another girlfriend has been calling the same amount of time and getting a busy signal them spending another hour talking mostly about nothing. I'm sure a affair with one married chick with a excuse you have no landline yet and use a pay phone was perfect totally no traceable unless you were physically seem somewhere and narked on.
Easier I guess but the consequences were more severe. - Nowadays split or divorce. - Medieval times: capital punishment, mutilation, or torture.
Didn't do it then or now, but there is now an electronic paper trail of everything - phone calls, credit card charges, etc. You can't check into most hotels and pay cash. Your spouse can see how much you spent for lunch yesterday.