CHAPTER 2: MARRIAGE, SEX, AND ADULTERY AS PRACTICES OF SELF-GOVERNANCE

KEY TERMS, CONCEPTS, AND THEMES• Self-governance and self-control• Putting your marriage on project status• Transformative power of intimacy• Consummating marriage• Annulment• Adultery—who and what? • Confession and redemption• Prevention, disease, and treatment• Marriage as private and public

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TRADITIONAL MARRIAGEGood Marriage

• Life long commitment

• Heterosexual intercourse and consummation

• Legitimate offspring

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TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE CONTINUEDBad Marriage

• Annulment and inability to consummate

• Adultery and Adulterers

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NEW MARRIAGEGood Marriage• Making marriage a project, self-governance, and self-control • Marriage as a transformation in intimacy—not just sex• Creating boundaries as a healthy relationship, prevention and

inoculation• Function of law and covenant marriage

Good Sexual Citizen• Makes the right choice and committed to the marriage project• Takes preventative measures to protect marriage• Works, works, works!!!!

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NEW MARRIAGE CONTINUEDBad Marriage• No boundaries or lacks self-control and self-governance• Lack of intimacy• Adultery and new infidelities• Diseased

Unbecoming Citizen• Uncontrolled• New infidels• Infected• Hope of redemption and the role of confession

Failed Citizen• Untruthful and lacking confession• Not recommitted to marriage project

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STATUS OF THE NEW MARRIAGE• Work, work, work!!

• Do not expect happiness (or at least all the time)

• Obsessions with adultery is telling of the dissatisfaction within marriage

• Be prepared to hate each other

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FINAL THOUGHTS• Barriers and healthy marriage

• Intimacy

• Work and marriage?

• The role of law in the new marriage

• Private and public marriage

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QUESTIONS• Does Cossman offer a realistic description of the

contemporary marriage?

• What is the future of marriage? Are people willing to work this hard?

• Can we agree on the new conception of adultery? What does this mean for legal definitions for adultery?

• Is it true that we get pleasure through others’ confessions of infidelity? And if so, is this telling of our own dissatisfaction in marriage?

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