By
Norman Elliott Anderson
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See scarlet letter.
abode effect:
The impact of residential architecture on domestic relationships; the influence of a dwelling or dwellings in general on family life.
Comment: I coined the phrase in June of 2006, after finding no term for the sense and discovering that "domicile effect" was already taken by the credit rating industry.
See also feng shui love, household architectonics, household architecture, household proxemics, interpersonal enhancement architecture, relationship ecology, residence-shaped household.
Related terms beyond the scope of this glossary: anthropology of architecture, architectural psychology, environmental psychology.
abomination:
1.
A detestable, abhorent, loathesome, or revolting object, behavior, or
person.
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absolute code:
The principle of not exposing another person's sexuality, for instance, his or her homosexuality, to anyone capable of hurting that person because of it, such as a family member or employer.
See also ask-and-tell eroticism; break-up rules; closeted; code; code of silence; don't ask, don't tell; kiss and tell; moral code; rules of adultery; sexual etiquette; tell all; use sex as a weapon.
absolutism:
See moral absolutism.
abstinence:
Refraining from an activity, the reference often being to sexual activity with others. The point is usually:
- to prevent unwanted pregnancy, contraception being an alternative;
- to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, safer sex practices, such as condom use and sexual exclusivity, being alternatives; and/or,
- to preserve sexual purity for holy matrimony.
Not to be confused with celibacy (q.v.) or chastity (q.v.; note especially the quotation under "chastity," which illustrates one of the ways that abstinence and chastity are sometimes distinguished). Contrast incontinence (q.v.). See also abstinence pledge, agenobiosis, ATM, born-again virginity, consequences of sex outside of marriage, continence, demi-vierge, diasteunia, family values, mariage blanc, master of (one's) domain, nonogamy, no sex outside of marriage, safe sex, secondary virginity, sexual purity, traditional morality, white marriage.
abstinence pledge:
A commitment to abstain from sexual contact until marriage, or the words to that effect.
See also abstinence, condom commitment, family values, purity ball, traditional morality, true love pledge, virginity pledge.
Abstinence Pledge Card (Scott & White)
Starting today, I
____________________
pledge to abstain from sexual activity until marriage, as this is the only proven way to protect myself from out-of-wedlock pregnancy and STDs.
I am Worth the Wait®.
(sign here) ____________________
(date) ____________________
Abstinence Pledge Card ([Temple, Tex.]: Worth the Wait®, Scott & White Sex Education Program, [between 1996 and 2005]):
Love is Patient: Abstinence Pledge Card
Why I am waiting for marriage
So I can be free to:
- Develop healthy friendships
- Plan for the future
- Think clearly
- Give my purity to my future spouse
- Respect myself and others
So I can be free from:
- Guilt
- Rejection
- Sexually transmitted diseases
- Pregnancy
- An abortion decision
- A bad reputation
- Being used
Love is patient
Signed ____________________
Date ____________________
Love waits
Found at the Frontlines.org site. "This product was added to our catalog on Friday 22 October, 2004."
abundant love principle:
The idea that some people can truly and fully love more than one person at a time in a romantic way without depriving any of an essential connection, much as one can love more than one child or more than one friend.
Comments: Among the closely associated ideas is that any sense of deprivation on the part of a person loved would be due simply to the non-satisfaction of inculcated expectations or a limitation of resources, such as time, and that strategies are available for addressing such situations.
The abundant love principle is commonly accepted in polyamorous circles but tends to be alien to monogamy-only circles.
Contrast starvation economy (q.v.) and zero-sum view of love (q.v.). See also heart-swapping, hot and cool sex, in love, love, monogamism, monogamy-only position, non-monogamy position, polyamory, resource dilution hypothesis, utopian swinging.
abuse, as in "an abuse":
1. Subjection of a person to violence, psychological cruelty, or damaging physical neglect, especially when such subjection is persistent.
2. Subjection of a person who is under one's power or protective care to an exploitative or detrimental sexual involvement, as when the involvement does not or cannot, either intrinsically or by inexorable social definition, transcend a structural inequity (the inequities sometimes built into the institution of marriage aside). The usual term for this is "sexual abuse."
See also cruelty, domestic violence, dysfunctional relationship, love-trouble, marital rape, mariticide, maritodespotism, martyred spouse, punishment through marriage, sexual immorality, spousal homicide, toxic relationship, uxoricide, uxorodespotism, viricide, wife abuse.
abuse, as in "to abuse":
1. To subject a person to violence, psychological cruelty, or damaging physical neglect, especially to do so persistently.
2. In the phrase, "to abuse sexually," to subject a person who is under one's power or protective care to an exploitative or detrimental sexual involvement, as when the involvement does not or cannot, either intrinsically or by inexorable social definition, transcend a structural inequity other than a possible marital one.
3. To wrong a person by infidelity.
4. To cuckold (q.v.) or cuckquean a person.
5. In the phrase, "to abuse his (or her) bed," to seduce that person's spouse.
See also batter, cuckold, cuckquean, infidelity, play with fire, seduce, unfaithfulness, use sex as a weapon.
acceptive phase:
The second of three stages of an erotosexual relationship, the stage of mutual acceptance for mating.
See also adectia, budding relationship, chemistry of love, conceptive phase, courtship, erotosexual, in love, mature love, new relationship energy, proceptive phase, romantic love, wooing.
accept (someone's) hand:
To give an affirmative answer in response to a marriage proposal put to oneself; to willingly become engaged to a person.
See also affiance, ask for (someone's) hand in marriage, become engaged.
accouplement:
1. A pairing.
2. A marital union of two people.
See also couple, marriage.
ace:
A person who lacks interest in sexual interaction and prefers sexual solitude; an asexual person.
See amoeba, asexual, autosexual.
ace of spades:
A widow (q.v.).
Source: Lexicon Balatronicum: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence, compiled originally by Captain [Francis] Grose, and now considerably altered and enlarged, with the modern changes and improvements, by a member of the Whip Club [Hewson Clarke], assisted by Hell-Fire Dick, and James Gordon ...; and William Soames ... (London: Printed for C. Chappel, 1811).
aching heart:
See heartache.
Acidalian knot:
See girdle of Venus.
Acoli terms:
See headdress keeper (wer pa lawino).
action on the side:
1. Sexual activity with one or more persons other than one's regular sex partner.
2. The person or persons, other than one's regular sex partner, with whom one engages in sexual activity.
See also adultery, alternative dating, backstreet mistress, cheat, dalliance, extramarital sex, extramural sexual affair, extra-pair copulation, infidelity, intrigue, liaison, multilateral sexuality, unfaithfulness; cicisbeo, lover, mistress, side girl.
active-passive split:
A difference in attitudes, especially culturally engendered attitudes, towards the penetrating (that is, active) and penetrated (that is, passive) partners in sex acts, ordinarily in reference to males with each other, whereby a passive male is thought to be perverted, since acting like a female, and an active male is understood to retain his manhood, since he is performing as if with a female.
See also arsenokoitês, "as with womankind," catamite, cinaedus, double standard, gay male, gugusse, gunsel, homosexuality, man-boy love, pathic, pederasty, perversion, sexism, sexual chauvinism, sexual mores, sodomite.
Adam's rib:
1. According to the second creation account in the biblical book of Genesis, the material from which the first woman was made. Some take this account literally, some take it figuratively or as myth.
2. Women generally.
3. A man's wife.
Comment: The term has sometimes been used to imply that a wife is to be subordinate to her husband or that women generally ought to be subordinate to men generally, although there is much more to be said theologically both about the relation of a husband and wife and about the relation of women generally to men generally.
See also androgyn archetype, "head of the wife," helpmeet, "one flesh."
Genesis 2:21-22, the Source behind the Term, "Adam's Rib" (as translated in the New Jerusalem Bible, 1985) |
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Then, Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And, while he was asleep, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh up again forthwith. Yahweh God fashioned the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. |
addict:
See romance junky, sex addict.
addiction to sex:
See sexual addiction.
adectia:
The unwillingness or inability of a woman to accept a man for sexual intercourse.
See also acceptive phase, involuntary celibacy, uxorovalent.
Related term beyond the scope of this glossary: inhibited sexual desire (ISD).
adelphic polyandry:
The practice on the part of a woman of having more than one male mate at a time, when her mates are brothers of one another, particularly when this is consonant with custom.
See also adelphogamy, fraternal polyandry, polyandry, sororal polygyny.
adelphogamist:
1. A participant in adelphogamy.
2. An advocate or supporter of adelphogamy.
Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "adelphogamy," so here included.
See also adelphogamy.
adelphogamous:
Pertaining to adelphogamy.
Comment: Absent in the dictionaries I've checked, but a natural permutation of the word "adelphogamy," so here included.
See also adelphogamy.
adelphogamy:
1. A marriage in which brothers share one or more wives in common.
2. A brother-sister mating.
See also adelphic polyandry, adelphogamist, adelphogamous, brother-sister marriage, fraternal polyandry, -gamy, incest.
ad hoc union:
An impromptu rather than a traditional joining together in a marital or marital-like relationship due to an unusual situation, such as being stranded together.
See also cohabitation, common law marriage, living together, marriage, paperless marriage, union.
admiration:
1. High regard; great respect.
2. A wondering, with pleasure, at excellence.
3. An object of wonder and high regard, as in, "she was the admiration of all."
4. The noticing of someone as a potentially acceptable mate; a response to a person that can potentially lead to or be an early stage of falling in love.
See also admire, crystallization, enchantment, esteem, in love, love, proceptive phase, respect, zsa zsa zsu.
Quotations from Jane Austen Illustrating "Admiration"
[Mr Darcy]: A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
From the novel: Pride and Prejudice, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2003): chapter 6, p. 42; cf. chapter 24, p. 176. Originally published: Pride and Prejudice: A Novel ..., by the author of "Sense and Sensibility" (London: T. Egerton, 1813).
... Captain Wentworth was not in love with either [Louisa or Henrietta Musgrove]. They were more in love with him; yet there it was not love. It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some.
From the novel: Persuasion, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2004): chapter 10, p. 100. Originally published posthumously in: Northanger Abbey; and Persuasion, by the author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield-Park," &c.; with a biographical notice of the author [by her brother, Henry Austen] (London: John Murray, 1818).
admire:
1. To regard highly.
2. To wonder at and be pleased with the excellence of something or someone.
3. To notice as a desirable mate, whether consciously or not.
See also admiration, adore, esteem, like, love, place on a pedestal, respect, take a shine to, worship one's spouse.
Quotation from Jane Austen Illustrating "Admire"
[Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet]: 'In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.'
From the novel: Pride and Prejudice, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2003): chapter 34, p. 243. Originally published: Pride and Prejudice: A Novel ..., by the author of "Sense and Sensibility" (London: T. Egerton, 1813).
admixture with sexuality:
See unwelcome admixture with sexuality.
'adon (Hebrew):
See lord.
adoption:
Bringing into full-fledged family membership; giving family status to someone.
Comment: Most often the term is used for accepting the full responsibility, typically with another adult, for parenting a child who is not one's own biological offspring; but it can be more broadly applied to encompass, for instance, bringing an unrelated adult into a family.
See also affinity, blood brother, family, family of choice, forbidden degrees, god parent, incest, kinship, natural affinity, new family, snowflake baby, water sibling.
adoration-lust:
Overwhelming desire to treat a lover, would-be lover, or mate as a deity deserving of one's worship.
See also adore, dulia, gyniolatry, husband worship, lust, pedestalism, place on a pedestal.
Quotation from D. H. Lawrence Illustrating "Adoration-Lust"
[Page 52, the character Basil Apsley, to his wife, Daphne]: "... you perfect child! But that is the beauty of a woman like you: you are so superb and beyond worship, and then such an exquisite naïve child. Who could help worshipping you and loving you: immortal and mortal together. What, you want the thimble? Here! Wonderful, wonderful white fingers. Ah, darling, you are more goddess than child, you long, limber Isis with sacred hands. White, white, and immortal! Don't tell me your hands could die, darling: your wonderful Proserpine fingers. They are immortal as February and snowdrops. If you lift your hands the spring comes. I can't help kneeling before you, darling. I am no more than a sacrifice to you, an offering. I wish I could die in giving myself to you, give you all my blood on your altar, for ever."
... He took her hand and rose to his feet in that curious priestly ecstasy which made him more than a man or a soldier, far, far more than a lover to her.
Nevertheless his home-coming made her begin to be ill again. Afterwards, after his love, she had to bear herself in torment. To her shame and her heaviness, she knew she was not strong enough, or pure enough, to bear this awful [53] outpouring adoration-lust. It was not her fault she felt weak and fretful afterwards, as if she wanted to cry and be fretful and petulent, wanted someone to save her. She could not turn to Basil, her husband. After his ecstasy of adoration-lust for her, she recoiled from him. Alas, she was not the goddess, the superb person he named her. She was flawed with the fatal humility of her age. She could not harden her heart and burn her soul pure of this humility, this misgiving. She could not finally believe in her own woman-godhead -- only in her own female mortality.
From: The Ladybird, by D. H. Lawrence (London: Martin Secker, 1923): pp. 52-53.
adore:
1. To love with every fiber of one's being, especially in such a way that the one being loved is placed above all else.
2. To admire the qualities of and to love another.
3. To like a lot.
4. To worship as or as though a divine being.
See also admire, adoration-lust, cherish, dote, dulia, gyniolatry, husband worship, like, love, pedestalism, place on a pedestal, worship one's spouse.
adorer:
Someone who adores another.
See also adore, lover.
Quotation from Shakespeare Illustrating "Adorer"
POSTHUMUS LEONATUS [of his wife, Imogen].
... I profess myself her adorer, not her friend.
From: William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (circa 1609-1610): Act 1, Scene 4, line 74.
adult buffet:
Group sex; having a variety of grown people with whom to engage in sexual activity and the ability to pick and choose among them.
See also group sex.
adulter:
To commit adultery, by thought or deed.
Comment: Poetical.
See also adultery.
adulterer:
1. A person who commits adultery.
2. When distinguished from an adulteress, a man who commits adultery.
See also adulteress, adultery, bedswerver, bull, cheat, half-worker, homewrecker, hothusband, illicit lover, pornos, scarlet letter, sex cheat, spousebreach, spousebreaker, two-timer.
adulteress:
A woman who commits adultery.
See also adulterer, adultery, bedswerver, cheat, half-worker, homewrecker, hotwife, Pericope de Adultera, pornos, scarlet letter, sex cheat, slut wife, sotah, spousebreach, spousebreaker, tail-femme, two-timer, water of jealousy, whore.
adulterine:
1. Pertaining to or characterized by adultery.
2. Pertaining to or characterized by an undesirable mixing.
3. Born of adultery.
4. As a substantive, a child born of an adulteress (canon law).
Source for the fourth sense: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language, edited by Jack Lynch (Delray Beach, Fla.: Levenger Press, c2002).
See also adulterous, adultery, out of wedlock (which see for synonyms of the fourth sense).
adulterous:
Pertaining to or characterized by adultery (q.v.).
See also adulterine.
adultery:
1. In the Bible:
- At least with regard to Israelites: for a man, nefarious copulation with his fellow's wife; for a wife, nefarious copulation with a man other than her husband. See Leviticus 18:20; 20:10.
- Lusting after another's wife or, by way of a common misinterpretation, after a woman; said of a man. See Matthew 5:28. By extension (that is, going beyond the Bible), sexual lust on the part of anybody for anybody.
- Figuratively, faithlessness to God by means of idolatry. See, for example, Jeremiah 3:6-10 and Ezekiel 23:37.
2. In a culture or marital arrangement where sexual monogamy is presumptive:
- Voluntary copulation on the part of a person who is someone's spouse with someone other than his or her spouse.
- Concommitently, voluntary copulation with a person married to someone else. (In the view of many, this is not adultery if on the part of an unmarried person or, at least, an unmarried woman.)
3. Unfaithfulness to a marital commitment to restrict one's sex partners to one's spouse or spouses.
4. Violation of a culturally or maritally imposed boundary regarding either sexual contact outside of one's marriage or male-female contact outside of one's marriage.
5. A marriage fitting a type disapproved by one religionist or another, or the type itself, for example, perhaps interfaith marriage. This is called interpretative adultery, insofar as the disapproval is only inferred from and not explicitly stated in the scriptures of a religion of the book.
6. Any violation of sexual morals, especially if it is conceived of as placing sexual gratification ahead of obedience to God. (Note definition 1 above, the figurative sense: idolatry as adultery.)
7. Passionate love of one's own wife. For this, see Xystus the Pythagorian, as quoted below.
8. A bishop's dismissal of his diocese, "without unavoidable need or out of some apostolic or canonical reason for translation."1 This is a form of spiritual adultery.
9. A church's acceptance of a bishop as its own while its rightful bishop is still alive.2 This is a form of spiritual adultery.
10. A nun's breaking of her vows by engaging in sexual intercourse or entering into a human marriage, since she is spiritually married to Christ.3
11. Cynical definitions of adultery abound. To give an example: A married person's segregation of sex and property rights.
Comments: The core idea of adultery is the mixing of the approved and the unapproved -- for instance, approved semen and unapproved semen, a cultically pure sexual connection and a cultically impure one, or an appropriate loyalty or bond and an inappropriate one.
Since the commission of adultery is dependent upon the existence of a marital state, its precise definition depends in part upon a precise definition of marriage; and the definition of marriage is notoriously difficult. Even where prescriptive definitions of marriage abound, as they do in the United States, the marital status of many relationships is open to question; and, in any case, sociologists and ethicists, among others, may disregard those definitions and throw the net wider to include, for instance, prescriptively excluded polygamous marriages. Thus it might be said that a woman in a polygynous marriage who copulates with a man other than her husband is committing adultery in a moral sense (at least if she does so without her husband's okay), even if the marriage is prohibited under civil law.
The full scope of a definition of adultery in the fourth sense is also dependent upon cultural norms and intramarital understandings. To give some examples of how the scope of adultery is defined differently by different people:
- Sex hospitality in which a man shares his wife with a visitor is not regarded by all cultures or within every marriage as entailing adultery.
- Co-marital sex is not regarded within every marriage as adultery, although it may be condemned as such by some religious bodies.
- Non-procreative sexual activity and sexual activity other than penis-in-vagina intercourse (intravaginal coition) are not uniformly regarded in American culture as adultery (although see the Fisher quotation below).
- For some, adultery is the crossing of a particular line; an act either is or is not adultery. For others, there are gradients of adultery. (For an example of the latter idea, see the James Joyce quotation below.)
- Cybersex with a person other than one's marital partner is viewed by some as a new form of adultery and by others as beyond the application of traditional norms, in fact, in some cases, even as a traditional-morality-free solution to some problems common in traditional relationships, such as sexual incompatibility and sexual boredom.
- Given the shift of emphasis that has been occurring over recent centuries from inheritance rights and "legitimate" offspring to emotional bonds, the "adulteration" of those bonds has become an increasing issue for some; although, for such adulteration, the term that is usually used is "emotional infidelity."
In cultures that are morally pluralistic with regard to love and sexuality in the private sphere of life, as many cultures around the world now are, including North American culture, the precise scope of adultery (again, in the fourth sense) has become more and more a matter of subcultural and intramarital definition.
Adultery has been one of the biggest traditional issues of sexual morality, and these days ethicists have much on their plate to address about it.
References
1 The Collection in Seventy-Four Titles: A Canon Law Manual of the Gregorian Reform, translated and annotated by John Gilcrist (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1980; in series: Mediaeval Sources in Translation; 22): titulus 25, capitula 186 = pp. 171-172. The collection dates from the latter part of the 11th century C.E. and is abbreviated 74T.
2 74T, tit. 25, cap. 186.
3 74T, tit. 56, cap. 252; cf. 254.
See also abuse, action on the side, adulter, adulterer, adulteress, adulterine, adulterous, affair, apistia, arsenokoitês, bestiality, betrayal, clandestine polygamy, comarital, commit adultery, consensual adultery, courtly love, criminal conversation, cuckold, cuckoldry, cuckquean, cyberadultery, cybersex partner, deceased wife's sister question, de facto polygamy, demi-vierge, double adultery, emotional infidelity, extramarital affair, extramarital love affair, extramarital sex, extra-pair copulation, father's wife, first-cousin marriage, fornication, fortunate fall, Holiness Code, illicit love, incest, indiscretion, infidelity, interpretative adultery, intrigue, klepsigamy, lairwite, Lasterkatalog, living in open and notorious adultery, lust, marriage, menstruant as forbidden, non-consensual adultery, out-of-marriage love affair, overlapping, Pericope de Adultera, porneia, rules of adultery, scarlet letter, Seventh Commandment, sex hospitality, sex scandal, sexual immorality, sexual morality, single adultery, sotah, spousebreach, spousebreak, traditional morality, unfaithfulness, venereal transgression, virtual adultery, water of jealousy, worship one's spouse.
Quotation from Xystus (or Sextus) the Pythagorian on Adultery |
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Omnis ardentior amator propriae uxoris adulter est. "Any man who is too ardent a lover of his own wife is an adulterer"; or, as C. S. Lewis paraphrased it: "Passionate love of a man's own wife is adultery." |
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This aphorism by Xystus is quoted in a number of places prior to the invention of movable type, for instance, in Peter Lombard (circa 1100-1160), Sententiarum, Book 4, Distinction 31, Chapter 5, "De excusatione coitus." Thanks to Br. Alexis Bugnolo of the Franciscan Archive for the translation (email to me dated July 2, 2002). I changed his more literal "Every one" to "Any man." |
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The paraphrase is from: The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, by C. S. Lewis (London: Oxford University Press, 1936): p. 15. |
Quotation from James Joyce Illustrating a Gradient Idea of Adultery |
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A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel, Mary [Rochfort], first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris, with her husband's brother? She would half confess if she had not all sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband's brother. |
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From: Ulysses, [by] James Joyce (Revised ed. London: Bodley Head, 1969): p. 286. Ulysses was originally published in Paris by Shakespeare and Company in 1922. |
Quotation from John Updike Illustrating "Adultery" |
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The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop. |
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From the novel: Couples, [by] John Updike (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968; "A Borzoi Book"): p. 456 |
Quotation from Helen E. Fisher on Adultery |
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What constitutes adultery? Definitions vary. The Lozi of Africa do not associate adultery with intercourse. The Lozi say that if a man accompanies a married woman he is not related to as she walks along a path, or if he gives her a beer or some snuff, he has committed adultery. This sounds farfetched. But Americans do not always associate adultery with intercourse either. If an American businessman finds himself in a foreign city buying dinner for an attractive colleague and then performing every sexual act with her except copulation, he might think that he has been adulterous -- despite the lack of coitus. In fact, in a poll taken by People magazine in 1986, some 74 percent of the 750 respondents believed that one does not actually need to engage in intercourse to be unfaithful. Among the Kofyar of Nigeria, people define adultery quite differently. A woman who is dissatisfied with her husband but does not wish to divorce can take a legitimate extra lover who lives openly with her in her husband's homestead. Kofyar men are permitted the same privilege. And no one regards these extramarital relationships as adultery. |
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From: Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce, [by] Helen E. Fisher (New York: W. W. Norton, c1992): pp. 78-79. |
adultery-toleration pact:
An agreement between marital partners to allow sexual freedom beyond the confines of the marriage, albeit perhaps with some restrictions. Such pacts are sometimes modified to adjust for emotional and psychological tolerances.
Comment: Attributed to Robert and Frances Binkley, 1929.
See also arrangement, boundary, comarital, condone, consensual adultery, household rules, hundred-mile rule, new adultery, open couple, open marriage, reconstituted marriage, rules of adultery, sexual nonexclusivity, sexual permissiveness, swing, swingers' moral code, veto rule.
adventitia dos (Latin):
In Roman law, a dowry brought by the bride that is derived from a source or sources other than the property of her father or paternal grandfather.
Contrast profectitia dos (q.v.). See also dos, dowry.
aeipathy:
1. Enduring passion.
2. A pining away.
See also cri de coeur, ghosts of relationships past, grief, heartache, let go, love, lovelorn, miss, pine away, withdrawal anguish.
affair:
1. A sexual relationship between two people who are neither married to one another nor in a committed love relationship together.
2. Any sexual relationship considered illicit.
3. A love relationship between two people who are neither married to one another nor in a committed love relationship together; an emotional involvement with someone who is or could become a sex partner.
4. A sexual relationship that is less than the central love relationship of one's life.
5. A euphemism for genitals, whether male or female; sometimes expressed as "affairs," as in William Shakespeare's Sonnets, 151.
6. In the phrase, "matrimonial affairs," matters pertaining to marriage, as in Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1813): chapter 27.
See also adultery, affaire de coeur, affairette, affair of the heart, amour, amourette, carry on, cyber-affair, direct-affront myth of affairs, escapade romantique, extramarital affair, extramarital love affair, extramural sexual affair, extra-partner sex, extra-relationship sex, fling, fool around, illicit love, inappropriate relationship, indiscretion, Internet affair, intrigue, irregular connection, liaison, married at Finglesham Church, myth of affairs as symptomatic, online affair, out-of-marriage love affair, play around, rebound affair, see-saw affair, sex scandal, thing, transitional affair, virtual affair; Lady Jane.
Quotation from Ruth Dickson Illustrating "Affair"
... the affair (and by this I mean an emotional involvment on your part, not a physical affair over which you maintain control) ...
From: Married Men Make the Best Lovers, by Ruth Dickson (Los Angeles, Calif: Sherbourne Press, c1967): p. 121.
Quotation from Cassandra King Illustrating "Affair" |
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I felt as though my breath had been knocked out of me. "You had an affair with John Marcus Vickery?" Augusta stared at me. "An affair? An affair is cheap and tawdry. What we have is not anything like that." |
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From the novel: The Sunday Wife, [by] Cassandra King (New York: Hyperion, c2002): p. 227. The italics are hers. |
Quotation from the TV Series "Grey's Anatomy" Illustrating "Affair"
[Derek Shepherd, who is married to Addison, speaking to Richard Webber regarding Meredith Grey, whom Derek loves] Meredith, she's not an affair.
From: The American TV drama series, "Grey's Anatomy," Season 3, Episode 38, "I Am a Tree," written by Krista Vernoff, directed by Jeff Melman (first aired on the American Broadcasting Network, September 28, 2006).
affaire de coeur (French):
"Affair of the heart"; love affair.
See also affair, affair of the heart, heart, love affair, romantic love.
affairette:
A short affair (q.v.).
See also escapade romantique, expiration dating, fling, liaison.
Quotation from Armistead Maupin Illustrating "Affairette"
[Michael Toliver, a.k.a. "Mouse"] "[snip] Everybody wants a lover, right?"
[Mona Ramsey] "Wrong."
"O.K.... So almost everybody. Anyway, I thought I'd be snapped up in six months. At the very most!"
"You were. Hundreds of times."
"Not funny."
"What about Robert?"
"Affairettes don't count."
From the novel: Tales of the City, [by] Armistead Maupin (New York: Harper & Row, 1978; "Perennial Library"; in: Tales of the City Series; v. 1): p. 110; cf. 200. The snip is mine, the elision Maupin's.
affair of the heart:
1. A love relationship.
2. A matter of romantic emotions directed towards someone.
See also affair, affaire de coeur, heart, love affair, love relationship, romantic love.
affection:
Fondness; warm, tender feelings for someone, such as one's child, parent, friend, co-worker, lover, or partner; an enduring, usually quiet sort of love, especially as distinguished from sexually passionate types or aspects of love.
Comment: Like "feelings," often cast in the plural: "affections."
Affection is often associated with bonding and loyalty.
See also alienation of affections, amore, bond, companionate love, conjugal love, devotion, express love, fallacy of a cherished affection, fondness, friendship, gentle heart, give one's heart away, keep safe what [one is] to [somebody], like, long-term love, love, love remembered, marital love, public display of affection, regard, sentiment, storgic love, tenderness, thing, tie that binds, token of affection, unconditional love.
Quotation from Susan Ferrier Illustrating "Affections"
His character was as little calculated as his appearance to engage the affections of a young woman of delicacy and good sense.
From the novel: Marriage, [by] Susan Ferrier; with a new introduction by Rosemary Ashton (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books; [London]: Virago Press, 1986): chapter 14, p. 83. Originally published anonymously: Edinburgh: Wm. Blackwood, 1818.
affectionate term:
See term of endearment.
affiance:
1. To engage to marry.
2. To betroth.
3. To arrange that a marriage between two particular people takes place.
See also accept (someone's) hand, affy, become engaged, betroth, fiancé, fiancée; go-between, marriage broker, match-maker, proxenete, shadkahn.
affinal:
Pertaining to or characterized by affinity (q.v., especially in the first sense).
affine, as in "an affine":
A person closely related by marriage.
See also affine, affinity.
affine, as in "the two are affine":
Closely related (not necessarily by marriage).
See also affine, affinity.
affinity:
1. A kinship relation created by marriage, sexual union, or adoption and that is recognized by a family, culture, or religion. Any kinship obligation or marital impediment may or may not be continued past death or divorce, depending upon religious, cultural, or family mores; and those mores may vary according to the specific relation (see, for example, under deceased wife's sister question).
2. A spiritual connection or a sense thereof; a profound compatibility of souls.
Contrast the first sense with consanguinity (q.v.). See also adoption, affinal, affine (noun and verb), alliance, connaturality, diagramming kinship ties, digeneia, easy, father's wife, forbidden degrees, incest, in-law, -in-law, kinship, lover-in-law, marriage, natural affinity, qatangun, step-, trigeneia; compatibility, communion, connection, elective affinity, Hauerwas's Law, made for each other, marriage of true minds, match made in heaven, Miss Right, Mister Right, Ms. Right, mystic betrothal, mystic marriage, propinquity, quality relationship, rival, sseeble, sexual connection, sexual correspondence, soul mate, spiritual bride, spiritual connection, spiritual husband, spiritual intimacy, spiritual marriage, spiritual wife, true marriage of minds and bodies.
A Roman Catholic Definition of "Affinity" Quoted
(Note that monogamy is assumed as the standard)
According to Canon 97 [Canon 109 in the 1983 edition] of the Code of Canon Law, affinity is, just as in modern civil codes, a personal bond arising from marriage whether consummated or not. This is a distinct departure from the old discipline according to which the relationship of affinity arose from carnal intercourse, whether licit or illicit. Affinity is contracted only between the husband and blood relatives of the wife, and between the wife and blood relatives of the husband. Therefore, no relationship of affinity exists between blood relatives of the husband and blood relatives of the wife, since affinity does not beget affinity (affinitas non parit affinitatem). This explains why no dispensation is required for a marriage of two sisters of one family to two brothers of another family....
As long as both marriage partners are alive, affinity remains a sort of quasi-relationship; upon the death of one of them, it becomes an impediment, which bars marriage between the widowed party and the blood relatives of the deceased spouse.
From: Dictionary of Moral Theology, compiled under the direction of Francesco Cardinal Roberti; edited under the direction of Monsignor Pietro Palazzini; translated from the second Italian edition under the direction of Henry J. Yannone (London: Burns & Oates, c1962): see under "Affinity," [signed] Bar. [Vittorio Bartoccetti], p. 49.
affy:
1. To become betrothed.
2. To become engaged.
3. To arrange that a marriage between two particular people takes place.
See also affiance, become engaged, betroth, fiancé, fiancée; go-between, marriage broker, match-maker, proxenete, shadkahn.
against nature:
See unnatural.
agamist:
1. A person who rejects marriage for him or herself or who belongs to a group that rejects marriage.
2. A person who opposes the institution or institutionalization of marriage.
3. A participant in a social group in which there is no rule about marriage.
4. An unmarried person.
See also agamy, misogamist.
Quotation from E. Cobham Brewer Illustrating "Agamists"
Shakers. Certain agamists founded in North America by Ann Lee ...
From: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Giving the Derivation, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions, and Words That Have a Tale to Tell, by E. Cobham Brewer (New edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged; to which is added a concise bibliography of English literature. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, c1898): p. 1127.
agamous:
1. Pertaining to or characterized by agamy.
2. Unmarried.
See also agamy, unmarried.
agamy:
1. Rejection of the institution of marriage, as by a religious sect.
2. Absence of a state of marriage.
3. The non-institutionalization and non-recognition of marriage in a given society.
4. Social indifference to both endogamy and exogamy; absence of any rule about marriage on the part of a social group about whom its members may or may not marry.
Comment: The last sense is attributed, by George A. Theodorson and Achilles G. Theodorson in A Modern Dictionary of Sociology (1970, c1969), to Robert H. Lowie. They cite his Social Organization (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950).
See also agamist, agamy, -gamy, marriagefree.
agapê or agape (Greek):
Agapic love (q.v.); charitable love.
See agapic love, erôs.
Quotation from Charles Williams (1886-1945) Illustrating "Agape"
By virtue of the Incarnation Eros and Agape are no longer divided, though they may be again the next moment.
From: "One Way of Love," in: The Image of the City and Other Essays, [by] Charles Williams; selected by Anne Ridler, with a critical introduction (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1958): pp. [159]-161, specifically p. 161. Originally published as a Time and Tide review of Passion and Society, by Denis de Rougemont (1940).
agapemone:
A free-love or mate-swapping group, community, or institution.
Comment: A commune of that name and reputation was founded at Spaxton, England circa 1849.
See also free love, mate swapping, partner sharing.
agapet:
A womanizer; a man who pursues women for sexual pleasure.
See also bedhopper, Casanova, crumpet man, Don Juan, gallant, gay deceiver, gay spark, God's gift to women, jock, ladies' man, lady-killer, Lothario, loverboy, lovertine, macadam, macadamo, make-out artist, masher, multimitus, philanderer, pick up artist, playboy, promiscuity, rake, roué, satyr, seducer, serial philandering, sex maniac, sexual varietism, skate, skirt-chaser, smellsmock, stud, vert galant, wolf, womanizer.
agapêtê; plural, agapêtai (Greek) or agapetae (Latinized):
"Beloved"; a woman of the early church who lived with a celibate man (or men), without being formally married to him (or to any of them).
Comment: One of the earliest descriptions, if not the earliest description of agapêtai (albeit in the context of a parable and without use of the term) is found in the Shepherd of Hermas (2nd century), Similitude 9:10-11.
Another Greek term with the same meaning is syneisaktos. The Latin equivalent is subintroducta, which see for more information.
See also agapêtos, agenobiosis, celibate, celibate marriage, diasteunia, double monastery, intramarital chastity, mariage blanc, mystic betrothal, sexless love, spiritual bride, spiritual marriage, spiritual wife, subintroducta, syneisaktism, syneisaktos, white marriage.
agapêtos; plural, agapêtoi (Greek) or agapeti (Latinized):
"Beloved"; a man of the early church who was pledged to celibacy and who lived with one or more women.
See also agapêtê, agenobiosis, celibate, celibate marriage, diasteunia, double monastery, intramarital chastity, sexless love, mariage blanc, mystic betrothal, sexless love, spiritual husband, spiritual marriage, subintroducta, syneisaktism, syneisaktos, white marriage.
agapic love or agapê (Greek):
1. An attitude and social bond whereby one refrains from treating another as one would not wish to be treated if he or she and treats another as one would wish to be treated if he or she, in fact, treating another as though one with that person, for instance, as a person would treat a well-bonded spouse.
2. The benevolent spirit and practice of charity; lovingkindness; good will.
3. A nurturing and cherishing love in which self-giving benefits the one or ones being loved and improves the whole of which one is a part, such as a marriage (see, for example, Ephesians 5:25-33).
4. A spiritual bond between two or more persons, especially one where sexual desire is absent, denied, or distinguished from it.
5. Devotion to God (note the verb, agapaô, in the Septuagint's version of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Joshua 22:5; cf. Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27).
6. In some Christian theology, the pure abiding spiritual quality that underlies the existence and coherence of the cosmos, that is identified as being of the essence of God (see, for example, 1 John 4:8, 16), and in which human beings are invited to participate as moral agents.
7. Altruism; selflessness in service of another.
Comment: Also called brotherly love and Christian love, although restricted neither to brothers, males, nor Christians.
Carefully contrast the first five senses with altruism (q.v.). See also agapê, amorization, being love, belief in love, believe in love, caritas, conjugal love, forgiveness, give up on love, heart, law of love, love, love commandments, love quotient, love practitioner, marital love, new morality, "one flesh," personalism, practice love, practice of love, relationalism, sacrificial love, sexless love, situation ethics, substituted love, tie that binds, unconditional love.
age-gap relationship:
A romantic involvement in which the difference between the partners' ages varies widely from the norm.
See also alphamegamia, anilojuvenogamy, anisonogamia, cougar relationship, dysonogamia, gerontophilia, intergenerational relationship, May-December romance, pussy-struck, rob the cradle, spring-autumn romance, sugar daddy, unnatural.
agenobiosis:
Spouses living together without engaging in sexual intercourse together, this by mutual consent.
See also abstinence, agapêtê, agapêtos, celibate marriage, demi-vierge, diasteunia, drone, intramarital chastity, involuntary celibacy, mariage blanc, sexless love, subintroducta, syneisaktism, syneisaktos, white marriage.
age of consent:
The time in life, generally as measured in years, when one's decision whether or not to undertake certain activities with another, such as sexual intercourse or marriage, is recognized, in law, then and thereafter as principally one's own responsibility.
See also child marriage, precocity of marriage.
agnate:
1. Related by male descent.
2. Related on the father's side.
Contrast enate (q.v.). See also cognate, kinship.
hagneia (Greek word):
See purity.
agunah (Hebrew):
A woman whose husband has deserted her or has disappeared and who is restrained from remarrying until she shows a bill of divorce or proof of his death.
See also desertion, divorce, get, kiddushim, remarriage.
AI:
1. Artificial insemination (q.v.).
2. Approach invitation (q.v.).
aiparik (Eskimo, Inuit):
"The second"; a partner in a spouse exchange.
Source: The Eskimo of North Alaska, by Norman A. Chance (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, c1966; in series: Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology): pp. 49, 103. Evidently Chance was speaking of the male participants as the partners in the exchange.
See also angutawkun, aypareek, aytpareik (the same word?), doused lights, nangsaegaek, nuliaqatigiit, partner, wife exchange.
x Eskimo terms.
ajois relationship (Kuikuro-Kalapalo):
An extramarital affair in a cultural context characterized by extramarital sexual freedom.
Comment: "Ajois" is a term from the Kuikuru of Brazil.
See also courtly love, extramarital affair, extramarital love affair, mbuya relationship, out-of-marriage love affair, sacanagem.
Akkadian terms:
See erëbu marriage, kuzbu, sex-joy (rishatum).
à la façon du pays (French):
"According to the custom of the country," often in reference to marriage.
Comment: Typically the term is used when a person from France (or a country that borrows from the French language, like England) enters into a marriage that is subject only to the customs of another people and not of his or her home country.
See also country marriage, country wife.
x French terms.
alcoholic jealousy:
Persistent suspicion that one's partner is being unfaithful and/or hostility towards a perceived rival, either or both due to chronic alcohol abuse.
See also alcoholic marriage, jealousy.
alcoholic marriage:
A marriage (q.v.) in which one or each of the partners is given to alcohol abuse.
Source:
The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage (New York: Al-Anon
Family Group Headquarters, 1992).
See also alcoholic jealousy, alcoholic paranoia.
alcoholic paranoia:
Irrational conviction that one's partner has been unfaithful despite all evidence to the contrary, this due to chronic alcohol abuse.
See also alcoholic marriage, jealousy.
aleupaaktuat (Eskimo, Inuit):
Leaving one's wife in the care of a male ally while away for an extended period, and allowing him sexual rights to her during that period.
Source: "Spouse-Exchange among the North Alaskan Eskimo," [by] Robert F. Spencer, in: Marriage, Family, and Residence, edited by Paul Bohannan and John Middleton (1968): pp. [131]-144, specifically p. 140.
See also allupaareik, nangsaegaek, simmixsuat, wife lending.
Algonquian terms:
See sannup, squaw.
alienation of affections (legal term):
Deliberate and malicious interference with a marriage by a third party, interference that causes the sort of harm to a marital relationship for which a person is liable before the law, given a jurisdiction where the offense is actionable.
See also affection, conjugal rights, consortium, emotional infidelity, fall out of love, feel betrayed, heart balm statute, home wrecker, jock block, steal, thief of love.
alimony:
One or more court-ordered support payments to one's ex-spouse or to a spouse from whom one is separated.
See also alimony in gross, alimony pendente lite, alimony trust, allegation of faculties, break-up rules, child support, displaced homemaker, estovers, palimony, periodic alimony, permanent alimony.
alimony in gross:
Alimony (q.v.) paid in one lump sum, rather than in installments.
See also lump-sum alimony.
alimony pendente lite:
An allowance for one's spouse pending divorce or legal separation.
See also alimony.
alimony trust:
Part of a person's property that is held by a third party from which alimony (q.v.) is paid.
allegation:
Information filled in on a marriage license that one asserts to be true.
allegation of faculties:
A statement given, for the purpose of obtaining alimony (q.v.), regarding the extent of one's spouse's or ex-spouse's income, earning ability, and tangible property.
alliance:
1. A bond between two families created by way of the marriage of a member of each to each other.
2. A bond between family members because they are loyal members of the same family.
3. A special bond between certain members of a family.
4. A mutual allegiance, as between lovers or spouses.
5. An intangible linkage between unrelated individuals, even if only momentary.
6. A conjoining of efforts, by way of a pact, for the achievement of a common objective, such as defending against or defeating an opponent.
See also affinity, ally (noun and verb), bond, friendship, kinship, political marriage.
Quotation from Jane Austen Illustrating "Alliance"
All equality of alliance must rest with Elizabeth, for Mary had merely connected herself with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore given all the honour and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or other, marry suitably.
From the novel: Persuasion, [by] Jane Austen (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, c2004): chapter 1, p. 12. Originally published posthumously in: Northanger Abbey; and Persuasion, by the author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield-Park," &c.; with a biographical notice of the author [by her brother, Henry Austen] (London: John Murray, 1818).