All Comments on 'Loving Wives in Popular Culture'

Human behavior never changes - the emphasis in life for most is sex that drives both genders.

Very entertaining list.

I have the feeling that cheating

isn't a popular theme in today's movies.

Can't remember a single one.

Divorced characters popular though.

Maybe nobody likes cheaters anymore ;).

Thanks writer for a fun read.

Top ratings from me.

Fascinating, Bob. I had heard of several movies, and seen a few, and have strong memories of only one (Walk on the Moon, which I thought was powerful).

The Anonymous comment "human behaviour never changes" may have some truth in that there are some basic drives there, but the social circumstances and expectations of the time may repress the expression of those drives or create circumstances where they are more likely to be released.

Your grouping of the wartime stories demonstrates circumstances that may lead to people succumbing to temptation because the temptation was greater than normal. The times when various social sets engaged in extra-permissive behaviour (eg; "blithely" chronicled by Oscar Wilde as you say) show an entirely different motive.

Al in all, congratulations, Bob, on an interesting treatise. Unfortunately, much of the Loving Wives commentariat will miss it because they don't look beyond the LW category. Their comments could have been interesting.

Lue

A "loving husbands" movie that I saw recently, Match Point.

Basically, the husband is an ex-tennis pro, turned business man. He joined the accounting firm of his father-in-law and gets into a boring routine. His brother was engaged to Scarlett Johansson, but he broke that off. The ex-tennis player finds her and begins an affair. Seemed like a VERY LW type story to me.

Anyhow thanks for this interesting run-down. Since I started reading (and writing) on Lit, I do say that I have paid a lot closer attention to the subplots of movies where cheating is involved. It seems a bit more common than I had previously appreciated.

Thanks for this!

RNebular

The guy knocks her up and eventually kills her to prevent losing out on his cushy lifestyle. Very deplorable characters, but could still be from a Lit LW story lol.

To everyone who has commented so far.

"Match Point" is a very good movie and the kind my own wife likes, especially. I believe it was actually directed by Woody Allen. And Woody has his own fairly long list of "loving" wives and girlfriend movies - starting with "Annie Hall", of course. Woody has almost made a career of the funny - if not accepting - cuckold character. Maybe "Match Point" was his subconscious "getting even with all those bitches" response. :-)

"Crazy, Stupid Love" is one recent mainstream movie whose main plot IS a wife who has an affair/fling with a co-worker and then punishes herself with a divorce. "Must Love Dogs" has it's own romantic triangles including the main woman protagonist making a very bad decision between two potential lovers at one point. Going for glitter shallowness over real gold, but quickly realizes her mistake and the movie ends with another Hollywood RAAC ending.

Nicholas Sparks as well has some very popular "romantic" movies with loving wives sub-plots as in "The Last Song" where it turns out the wife and Mom of the Mylie Cyrus girl (in the movie) had actually cheated on her concert pianist husband (and then ex) which caused their divorce. It was alluded too in the movie but spelled out in the book.

Also "Pearl Harbor" has the WW2 plot like "Gaby" - where the fiance pilot is shot down, lost for months, and presumed dead - and his fiancee nurse girlfriend then sleeps with his best friend. This ultimately works out with the death of the "best friend" in combat and the cuckold fiance marrying his sweetheart and raising the other man's child as his own. One fist fight and the comrades in arms works their own relationship out in another Hollywood ending.

"Casablanca" - judged by many now to be "the best picture of all time."

The central plot IS of a cheating wife, Ilsa, though she thinks she might be a widow when she first hooks up with American "Rick" (H. Bogart).

Darn good movie but anonys here would absolutely hate it and want both her and Rick burned down in support of the noble and heroic husband Laslo, in his fight against the NAZI's. (Nice trivia - the guy playing the worst NAZI was actually the highest paid actor for this movie. ;-)

Kate and I always have a laugh when we try to watch a French movie with a sexy plot because the end is usually a downer. The French are supposedly so casual about sex, but don't seem to enjoy it like the Spanish and the Italians.

A great Tinto Brass movie with a Loving Wife theme (many of his movies are) is "All Ladies Do It" wherein the husband thinks his wife's stories of misadventure are just fantasies, but finds out differently. The lead, Claudia Koll, plays her part with such joy that even the BTB crowd might give her a pass (well - not all the BTB crowd).

Thanks to justbobkc for putting the list above together, I've had "A Walk on the Moon on my Netflix queue for quite some time, but it's not been available.

And yes, "Casablanca" is the greatest movie ever made.

Private Bell's wife sends him the Dear John letter and asks him "her friend" to let her go to her new love. Bell lets her go by purposely getting death by Japanese soldiers. She was the biggest villain in the movie.

I mentally categorize loving/cheating wives in a war zone into a separate category than the standard, bored housewife scenario. The stress level of life and death situations and the uncertainty of knowing whether you spouse is even alive makes everything less black and white. In Casablanca, for example; Ilsa believed Lazlo had died in an escape attempt from his concentration camp when she met and fell in love with Rick. Her failure to rendezvous with Rick at the train station came after she found out her husband was still alive.

Summer of '42 (1971) was a decent coming of age story where a young teenager (15, so this story wouldn't have made Literotica) befriends a young woman whose husband was overseas during the war. They have their moment together after she receives the telegram with the news of her husband's death. It was not technically a loving wives scenario since she was now a widow, but it was one of those things you recognized was wrong, while still feeling empathy for those involved.

Me, Myself and Irene (2000) views like a completely inappropriate, slapstick parody of a Loving Wives cuckold story. Jim Carrey's character's wife runs off with the black dwarf limo driver who fathered the family's 3 black sons and he is stunned, despite numerous people telling him he was being cucked. The whole thing gets pretty stupid as he descends into metal illness with his multiple personality disorder played for cheap laughs. Like many of his movies, there are some hilarious bits and a lot more where you feel yourself cringing.

Hollywood in many "Romantic Comedy" movies treats adultery on both sides as not all that serious. "The Money Pit" is a Tom Hanks/Shelley Long comedy where Shelley spends the night with her classical orchestral bandmate after getting drunk - so drunk she isn't sure what happened but certainly did not pass the "husband test".

Hanks as the husband was out of town on business that night and Shelley definitely woke up in bed with her horndog seducer.

One serious book/movie which is an interesting classical case is Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina". One key in the book (and some movie scripts) to Anna's self-destruction is that her lover introduces her to "opium cigarettes" before becoming her lover. Tolstoy treated this as no big deal - but I think we are all a bit wiser nowadays on just how such drugs can be insidious in affecting emotions and moral behavior - lowering inhibitions and then addiction. Anna ends up extremely depressed and suicides in the end.

The English Patient

The 'Painted Veil' book has an entirely different plot in the latter part of the tale compared with the film. The wife at best regrets hurting her husband but has no real remorse or even regret. She only reconciles with her father, not her living/dead husband.

The book is excellent albeit somewhat depressing.

Wealthy wife has an affair with the Horseman hired to rehabilitate daughter's traumatized horse. Since the horse guy is Robert Redford, it's obviously okay, but the only thing wrong her dutiful husband did is not being Robert Redford.

The couple stay together with healthy horse and happy daughter at the end.

In the book, he gets her pregnant then is killed by a horse, her loving husband accepts her and her bastard child.

A huge romance novel best seller.

Proving, once again, that women are full of $%#@.

If the situation were reversed, the feminists would be crying for the guy's head. But a wife having another man's baby is okay.

Especially if the other man is Robert Redford.

I realize you were looking at movies, but the Alfred Hitchcock TV series had quite a few cheating wives in it, along with a couple of cheating husbands. I was surprised to see so many cheating spouses in TV during the late 50's and early 60's.