I’ve got to go pry my kids off of the couch now. But I’ll come back tomorrow to see how much opprobrium you’ve earned.

I think IR couples are likely to have a bimodal distribution of success, with a much larger set in the more-successful category. There are race-fetish couplings that are likely to fail, because they’re together for shallow reasons or the person expects the person to fit into a racial caricature– the submissive Asian housewife, for example.

On the other hand, most IR couples I know are people who take love and relationships very seriously and aren’t going to let something minor be an obstacle. So I’d imagine that they’re going to have a very low divorce rate.

It’s more difficult with relatives as “blood is thicker than water” and all that. Even if you cut-off contact with them you’ll still end up sitting next to them at the next wedding/funeral/reunion.

Old family friends are also often difficult as they tend to be people your parents/siblings invite over to parties. My mom’s best friend dumped her husband for a much younger man because he was “getting so boring”. I try to avoid her (as her casual treatment of her man of 10 years disgusts me) but we have the occasional run-in. But, really, these people are everywhere.

We were at a family barbecue recently and on the way home we were talking and realized that, although all of the couples were married, more than half were on their 2nd marriages.

Interestingly, all of the interracial couples were on their 1st marriages. It’s just anecdotal, I suppose, but I don’t actually know a single IR couple that is divorced. I suppose they’re out there, though, and I’m sure someone is going to post that they know of one.

Everyone is on the market as, these days, even married persons are part of the market. That is my point.

This is very true, and something that younger people who are entering into marriages now or thinking about doing so need to realize. The market doesn’t stop because you are married. There are no more moral boundaries around marriage that are respected, because infidelity for men and women alike is so plentiful today. The culture pays lip service to marital monogamy when in practice the % of people who are actually loyal in marriages is dwindling. It’s because of that reality that the market doesn’t end when people marry.

I actually think that married people who are looking for “strange” are more inclined to hook up with other married people because this is “safer” in the sense that both can be counted on to be discreet, and it’s less likely that one will turn into a Glenn Close type of character. In other words, it’s more likely that the pair can have a discreet, “safe” affair which is less likely to threaten the marriage of either. At least that’s the thought going in — problems arise due to the reality that people (especially women) tend to emotionally bond via sex — but that sometimes only becomes apparent once the affair has commenced, and it also doesn’t apply to all women (or men).

It’s for the same reason that affair relationships tend to proceed in a very accelerated way, often practically starting in the bedroom: the pair are not looking for the white picket fence and all of that, because that is what the spouse is for. Instead they are looking for passion and sex. Hence the preference for a married affair partner, because he/she is less likely to see you as a spouse replacement, and more likely to keep the relationship as one of passionate lovers.

There is no way around this today, really. We live in a culture that makes men and women alike feel entitled to constant fulfillment, especially in terms of sex. In that environment, infidelity is going to be fairly common, unfortunately. Some people are beginning to suggest that open marriages should become the norm, but I seriously doubt that this will ever be the case — human sexual jealousy is too visceral in men and women alike for that to be a solution for all but a relative handful of couples.

And I’d agree with that. If a woman mistreats her husband, talks badly about him, or leaves him for another man, and the guy wasn’t an altogether bad person, you need to push her out of your social circle (and possibly invite the aggrieved husband in and give him support). Otherwise, your husband will get nervous when he sees you taking the side of a misbehaving woman.