In The Daily's advice column, a reader writes in with a conundrum: his girlfriend is away overseas for three months, and she has confided that she is yearning for sex. Strikingly, the columnist does not give the expected advice column answer. Instead, the columnist picks up on the building resentment within the relationship, and prescribes a serious conversation about monogamy and fidelity.
This isn't about you being right or her being wrong, and this certainly isn't about doing the normal thing. This is about coming to terms with your petty jealousy, addressing her potential lack of integrity and recognizing that you're in a self-made prison of unexamined monogamy.
. . . So many people are in a constant struggle — to cheat or not to cheat — and it never occurs to them that in order to cheat, they have to accept a set of rules before they can break them.
Why accept the rules? Why not make your own? . . . Being true and faithful in a relationship has no inherent connection to how many sexual partners you have. The connection is self-imposed.
