Seem to forget? Study American history. American presidents who had affairs are all over the place. If your goal is to find such a candidate, especially in the political class, you might as well abstain from politics.
BTW, I support a candidate who has a loving marriage of more than five decades and who has never been accused of having an affair: Ron Paul.
“Well....obviously that isn’t always the case”
No, but, like I said, I assume it is the case until told otherwise because that is the conventional meaning of marriage. Just as, for instance, if someone told me he lost a leg in ‘Nam, I don’t immediately assume he named a dog “Leg” and it ran away while he was on a business trip overseas. Because that’s not what that phrase usually means, and people who don’t make their alternative meaning clear are trying to hide something.
“There are plenty of wives who know the score but stick with their husbands, and vice versa. It has always been thus. A pledge is pretty meaningless if the other party consents.
Seem to forget? Study American history. American presidents who had affairs are all over the place.”
None of this really addresses my post. I’m not sure you got the jist of it.
Anyway, the people with open marriages populating our history who didn’t tell anyone kept it secret, certainly, not because it was up in the air to the general public as to whether their marriages were open or not. It wasn’t because they didn’t feel a need to talk about personal matters. No, it was in the interest of hiding from public admonishment for corrupting the usual meaning. Which leaves people with open open marriages, a portion small enough, I assume, to leave completely unaffected the larger issue.