Thought I'd share with everybody!
Etiquette for affairs?
Dear Miss Manners,
One of my friends is involved in an extramarital affair. I completely disapprove, and have been trying to convince her to stop, or at least to examine what it is about her life, and her marriage, that is making her want to do this. But I know that nothing I say or do is going to make a blessed bit of difference.
The reason I'm writing, however, is that she keeps asking me all sorts of etiquette questions, and moans about how much she wishes there was an etiquette guide to having an affair.
Her questions piqued my curiosity:
1. If you are female, should you buy gifts for your trysting partner?
2. During the actual tryst: do you wear your wedding ring or not?
3. Phone call etiquette: who calls whom? Especially after the first tryst?
4. Do you, or do you not, introduce your trysting partner to your friends?
I'm quite serious. I understand if you think I'm joking, and trash this email, but I beg your indulgence. Thank you for your time.
Gentle Reader,
It’s a good thing you are not joking. Miss Manners is bored senseless with the notion that it is inherently funny to juxtapose etiquette and sex, on the supposedly hilarious theory that people who practice one of them couldn’t really be interested in the other.
As a matter of fact, there is an important etiquette rule in regard to adultery, and your friend has broken it. It is to refrain from recruiting co-conspirators. Lovers always want to flaunt their situation, but adulterers cannot expect the indulgence given to engaged couples, and one would think that discretion would be in their own interest.
Perhaps your friend began by throwing herself on your sympathies, confessing her transgression and asking your advice. For someone troubled to seek help from a close friend is understandable. But once she encountered your disapproval and rejected your advice, she should have backed away.
Instead, she has drawn you back in by asking you for etiquette advice. Miss Manners hates to tell you this, but it is a bogus lure. Etiquette is not so indelicate as to follow people into their bedrooms and start ordering them around. What purports to be sexual etiquette is merely a drawn-out version of the conceit that fails to amuse Miss Manners or, she would think, anyone else past puberty. The only real etiquette question here is number 4, and Miss Manners has already answered it.
