Well, should you?  Odd question but one that we have been discussing this week on our forum.  There is a wide range of opinions and I must admit it made me stop and think.  Is loving your lover the same knd of love you’d have or a partner? Would you want it to be?  Would falling in love with a lover present you with awkward choices?   Can lust turn into love or will it stay as lust?  Have a look at the forum thread and have your say.

When we launched loving links as a solution for boring celibate marriage we were classified by internet newsgroups as ‘alt lifestyle’ along with ‘hippies’, ‘vegans’ and ‘cross dressers’ - I used to post on ‘usenet’ community groups  and get attacked by radical polygamists who thought we were immoral.  These days I supposed we would just get classified into the ‘adult dating’ category as if all the philosophical arguments had been resolved.  Yet, last night I was thinking about ‘alt lives’ rather than ‘alt lifestyles’.  The reason being that a group of us went out on one of our regular Loving links evenings in London and booked a table at a burlesque club.  Amongst the crowd were several firm longterm pairs of lovers.  They looked so natural together, as lovers should, but they were actually living their ‘alternative lives’ rather than the lives that their friends and families normally witness.  Under other circumstances each of these LL individuals would be partnered at a function with someone completely different, the photos of laughing couples taken last night would be replaced other people.    I know this has been the theme of many films over the years where - often when a character dies - a whole secret life is discovered peopled with history and events that were happening in some strange yet parallel universe.   I know this sounds very philosophical for a bank holiday bit of blogging but even I get tired of Ashley Cole and Tiger Woods        For many people the idea of trying out life/intimacy/socialising with different partners simultaenously remains a fantasy and a daydream it is something that our friends here at Loving links do succeed in experiencing.  there is acceptance and reassurance that what is seen as an impossible ‘alt lifestyle’ for most  is in fact a very possible and enjoyable  ‘alt life’ for some of us.

We have been running Loving Links for around 15 years now.  This is a couple of centuries in ‘web life’ and we are the oldest established genuine extramarital site around.  Over the last couple of years I felt we were getting buried under the morass of ’start-up’ sites that claimed to serve our marketplace.  It is really difficult to sift the good sites from the bad and it is easy for any site to buy search engine postion with advertising money.  Of course on the non-paid search engine listing we always feature in the top 2 or 3 in our sector.  We have now received ‘Google news provider’ status from Google which is the highest accolade a site can receive in its own sector.  You can’t buy this, you have to earn it and it is the equivalent of a Michelin star for a restaurant.  Apart from our blog page(s) Google will distribute the news content we have on our site.  This means means that LL  is considered by Google as the ‘authorative reference’ for our sector.

According to Lucy Cavendish writing in ‘Femail’ magazine today it is often counter-productive to dig too deeply into your husband’s activities since it could open a whole Pandora’s box of problems.  Cavendish says that although her husband has 3 mobile phones she would never dream of checking their content.  She cites the cases of friends who have dug too deeply into mobile phone and internet activity and facebook friends.  As she puts it, ‘ Our electronic suspicions are killing our marriages, it is time to leave those mobile phones where they are and learn to trust again’.

Here is a ‘how to do it’ link if you want to know what you should watch out for.

So there we have the day’s headlines - Ronan Keating fessing up to having fun with a backing dancer and scientists creating a new life form.  Well certainly the adulterous celebrity is not one of those      Then we have some reat marital advice from Ms Kidman - never let your bloke out of your sight for more than 3 days!  Especially if he has a history of alchohol and partying.   Add to the mix the stunning revelation in the Mail that miserable husbands get a better time at home than guys who are unexplicably happy and the temptation for me to go off fishing grows ever stronger!

Back in the 1960’s I vividly recall sharing a salt beef sandwich with David Triesman who moved in the same social circle as me.  I remember him as being the first truly bonkers football supporter I’d ever chatted with.  I was a Spurs supporter but Triesman verged on the fanatic.  In those days foreign travel was a big deal event but young Triesman was there following the Spurs team coach as it wended its merry way across europe.  Back in those days of halcyon innocence I don’t suppose he expected to have an illustrious career brought down by an extramarital affair and I didnt expect to be chronicling it.   It does seem rather sad though he vainly believed that his sagging frame and thinning hair would be the only reason a tasty flame-haired babe would consider sharing his bed.  She was looking for her pay-off , her moment of tabloid fame and the useful cheque, poor David Triesman walks away in disgrace and disappointment.  On the bright side though, Spurs are in the champions league next season.

Well things have moved on since 1987 when the film ‘Fatal Attraction’  hit the screens and brought the phrase of ‘bunny boiler’ into our vocabularly.  A generation of adulterers has lived in fear of the recriminations suffered by Michael Douglas at the hands of Glenn Close.  Now the film has been resurrected as a stage play .

Some concessions will be made to modern mores, however. The character of Forrest herself will apparently be softened from crazy-lady-with-a-knife to a “depressed loner”. This may be an attempt to move with the times, but if so, it falls far short of the mark, according to Andrew G Marshall, a marriage therapist and author of How Can I Ever Trust You Again?

The late Sir James Goldsmith, noted for his colourful private life, once cynically – or in his case accurately – observed that “When a man marries his mistress, he creates a job vacancy.” If a mistress is also married, in theory she has as much to lose from the relationship being discovered and therefore has a vested interest in maintaining a dignified silence when a dalliance ends. But even if the family pet remains unscathed, the fallout can be horrendous.

When Loving Links started 15 years ago we talked about ‘extramarital affairs’ which meant semantically exactly what it said - something ‘extra’ to the marriage.  Because we were a forerunner in this niche we always had ‘pole position’ in search engines before SEO (search engine optimisation) became the darkest of dark arts. Now a batch of adult dating sites have created the phrase ‘marital affair’ to grab some search engine real estate.  I have no real problem with this but I am intrigued by the way SEO conspires to change the use of language.  I have never heard someone say in real life - X is having a ‘marital affair’ - have you??  I even checked this in www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary  and if you look up ‘extramarital’ it says relating to, or being sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse : adulterous <an extramarital affair>    There is no listing for ‘marital affair’.  What interests me is whether google usage will in fact add ‘marital affair’ to the dictionary.