Wives Husbands And Lovers

What is the state of intimate romantic relationships and marriage in urban China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan? Since the 1980's, the character of intimate life in these urban settings has changed dramatically. While many speculate about the 21st century as Asia's century, this book turns to the more intimate territory of sexuality and marriage—and observes the unprecedented changes in the law and popular expectations for romantic bonds and the creation of new families. Wives, Husbands, and Lovers examines how sexual relationships and marriage are perceived and practiced under new developments within each urban location, including the establishment of no fault divorce laws, lower rates of childbearing within marriage, and the increased tolerance for non-marital and non-heterosexual intimate relationships. The authors also chronicle what happens when states remove themselves from direct involvement in some features of marriage but not others. Tracing how the marital "rules of the game" have changed substantially across the region, this book challenges long-standing assumptions that marriage is the universally preferred status for all men and women, that extramarital sexuality is incompatible with marriage, or that marriage necessarily unites a man and a woman. This book illustrates the wide range of potential futures for marriage, sexuality, and family across these societies.

Marital and family therapist Moultrup unravels the meanings and functions of infidelity to reveal the complex roots of extramarital affairs and their ramifications for both the marital relationship and therapy. Beginning with family systems theory, he branches out to encompass individual psychodynamics and behavior therapy in fashioning an integrative, multisystem model of assessment and treatment. No bibliography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In this interdisciplinary exploration of the cultural and social history of early 19th-century France, Patricia Mainardi focuses on what was considered a major social problem of the time - adultery. In a period when expectations about marriage were changing, the problems of husbands, wives and lovers became a major theme in theatre, literature and the visual arts. The author demonstrates that this intense interest was historically grounded in the post-revolutionary collision between the new concept of the individual's right to happiness and the traditional prerogatives of family and state. duty or happiness more important? Are arranged marriages doomed to be empty of love and poisoned by adultery? Should adulterous wives and their lovers be punished while husbands may commit adultery with impunity? Out of such legal, social and cultural debates ultimately emerged modern bourgeois family values, Mainardi argues. And she illuminates how art, in all its varieties, both influences and is influenced by social change.

Do you go out of your way to avoid conflict in your primary relationship? Do you feel that your partner is emotionally closed off from you? Does the fear of abandonment overwhelm you and make you cling to your partner?

A sincere and compassionate novel about the complications of married life, and the love, loathing, pain, loyalty, disappointments and friendship that grow out of a marriage Channel City, California, is a an average coastal town where everyone is doing their best to get by and be respectable, from the sun-grizzled fishermen on the wharf to the perfectly coifed society wives to the over-fed gophers who plague every middle-class garden. But in the hot summer of 1954, one unhappy man's extramarital affair turns the community on its head. Hazel Anderson, a dental assistant, is a contentedly divorced forty-something whose ex-husband, George, runs the town's wharf bar. Hazel worries about George, who is smitten with a much younger woman, Ruby, who won't have anything to do with him, and Hazel thinks Ruby is hiding secrets of her own. The dentist Hazel assists, Gordon Foster, works hard to support his wife and three children in their middle-class lifestyle, but he can never satisfy his wife, Elaine, who has always resented being married to a dentist instead of a "real" doctor. All of these relationships become tangled when henpecked Gordon's romantic indiscretion comes to light. Here, in this sweet, sad, and incisive literary novel, Margaret Millar accomplishes the same feat as she has with her award-winning crime fiction by offering readers a fascinating snapshot of life as it was, not life as we like to remember it having been.

Victoria Stratford's birthday party for her ambitious husband David shows off their beautiful Wimbledon house, their wonderful children, their perfect lives. But while Victoria welcomes her guests, the only person missing is David himself. Victoria's sister Clara and her husband Tom are at the party. Unworldly and idealistic, Tom scorns David's quest for wealth. While Clara is content with her job as a university lecturer, she yearns for a change in her life. In the garden, the youngest sister Annie talks to her husband Hugo. Very happy together, the only blight on their lives is Hugo's mother, whose jealousy and possessiveness have turned into a poisonous hatred of Annie. So begins a train of events that will lead each sister down a different path - towards love, sex, grief, betrayal and happiness.