A Valentine Day's special
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A Valentine Day's Special. Laurie Taylor explores changing attitudes to infidelity and considers a cross cultural history of rings. Wendy Doniger, Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, asks why this piece of circular jewellery keeps re-occurring in myths and stories about seduction, love, sex and betrayal. What can it tell us about the shifting nature of power relations between men and women? She's joined by Adam Kuper, Visiting Professor in Anthropology at Boston University. Also, have attitudes hardened towards adultery? The visibility of non-monogamy suggests a challenge to dominant assumptions about the feasibility of lifelong sexual fidelity. However, infidelity remains the lone area of adult sexual practice that is disapproved of under any circumstances. Dr Jenny van Hooff, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, examines claims about the extent to which relationships have been de-traditionalised.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.5 | It's Valentine's Week, so of course I have very important news about your relationships. |
| 0:37.0 | Hello. |
| 0:38.0 | In what would have been the mid-80s, I was at this regional sociological conference on the growth I think it was the growth of neoliberalism |
| 0:45.2 | when I fell into a sort of salooned by a conversation with the delegate who without any noticeable sign of |
| 0:50.3 | shame or embarrassment began to tell me about his multiple affairs and multiple |
| 0:55.8 | was the word because while all the while protesting his enduring love for his wife |
| 1:00.0 | the only real woman in my life he told me with the serious inclination of his head |
| 1:04.1 | he regaled me with stories of his secret doings his disguises his alibis his |
| 1:09.6 | covert liaisons in CD provincial hotels? |
| 1:13.0 | Well at first, I really couldn't help but regard him as a, you know, some sort of |
| 1:17.3 | nudge-nudge sexual braggot, but the more he talked, the more I realize that what he mostly gained |
| 1:22.2 | from his affairs was a sense of adventure. |
| 1:25.8 | In a fine essay, the sociologist George Sybil described the adventurer as someone who was simply |
| 1:30.3 | unable to resist the lure of risk-taking, the thrill of taking chances, the excitement |
| 1:36.4 | of not knowing where the road might lead. Well that was my man to a tee. But when I was |
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