DEAR ABBY: I'm a married man who happens to have a girlfriend. My wife knows her and likes her, and her husband is a fine man for whom I have the greatest respect.
We are not cheating. There are no tears, no recriminations, no lies, no guilt, no screaming, no divorces, no dead bodies on the floor. Everyuone's heart is big enough to accommodate this situation.
Your column is filled with letters from jealous spouses. I wonder if you dare acknowledge a different perspective. Jealousy is not instinctive in humans. It is learned behavior -- a product of cultural conditioning.
Many people have open marriages. Puritanism was one of the most destructive forces in American history. It should have been jettisoned centuries ago.
The next time you see one of those horrible news stories about a man killing his estranged wife, kids and self, consider what the price of that cultural conditioning really is. -- ALIVE AND WELL IN UTOPIA
DEAR ALIVE AND WELL: Cultural conditioning? Estranged husbands who kill their former wives, children and themselves are psychopaths. I'm hardly a Puritan, but in my opinion, people who have open marriages behave as though they have no marriage at all. My sympathy to their spouses.