*As I foresaw in the introduction immediately following, this post has become long, far too long for one post. I have therefore broken it up and post this first part now with the body to follow.
(March 16, 9:35 a.m.) I have an amateur's theory about this. As this post is liable to be
long I will state my thesis in an abstract and then fill it in.
-Abstract-
Cuckoldry
is an act of power. In its original meaning cuckoldry is an act
performed secretly in a marriage by the wife on an unknowing husband.
The husband is the target of cuckoldry; the wife wants to make him "wear
the horns", unknowingly. The object of the wife's game, for it is that,
a game, is not exclusively or primarily the wife's sexual pleasure with
the lover. The object is joint but primarily the psychological pleasure
of the wife in duping the husband which enhances sexual pleasure with
the lover. The wife's sexual pleasure in cuckolding is essential, for
without it the practice becomes something else, e.g. hate sex or revenge
sex, or to leave the husband to get another. But my thesis is that the
cuckolding wife probably would not even date the lover were she
unmarried. My thesis is that the cuckolding wife does not wish another
husband; she is content with the one she has--as long as he is in the
state of being a cuckold.
-Sources-
My sources are
an amateur's and the accidental, including the anecdotal and the
experiential. I consulted no scholarly writing and did not search pop
cultural references, I just happened on them in reading and watching. In
literature: The Pioneers, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, The
Tale of the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales, The Garden of Eden,
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Fear of Flying;
things that I could watch on my computer without having to pay for: the
movie Eyes Wide Shut, Breaking Bad, episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and
Louis CK; and paintings. That is an eclectic menu of food for thought
whose connections appear obscure, I acknowledge. But there are
connections.
-Terminology-
It is important that I specify what I mean when I use certain terms, that I use them precisely, and that I distinguish them from others closely related.
Adultress: a woman who gets caught committing adultery. It is crucial to the cuckolding wife's psychological power game that she not get caught.
Cuckoldry: As I use the term, and in its uniform historical meaning, it is the wife's act of having sex with a man not her husband, unbeknownst to the husband.
Cuckold:
A term of insult for a man, the "victim" of cuckoldry. The term comes from the cuckoo bird
and that bird's practice of laying its eggs in another's nest. The male
bird raises the hatchling unknowing that it is not his. The term dates to 1250 and the poem The Owl and the Nightingale. Iconography was used in the English Civil War (1642-1651) against the Earl of Essex for his marital problems.
"Wearing the horns": The sign for a man who has been cuckolded. And the sign for a woman who has cuckolded him.
The derivation here is not a bird but a stag, for its practice of defeating another stag in combat for mating rights. I accept the sign as common usage while rejecting the meaning of cuckoldry as a male thing, much less one that is the result of combat.
There is far too much stag imagery in paintings for it not to be symbolic. Two nude women, each wearing crowns, one riding a stag:
There are some seldom-used terms.
-Cockoldress: Per Wikipedia, "a woman who cuckolds her husband."
-Cuckquean: Per same, "the wife of an adulterous husband." But see,
-quean: "a disreputable woman".
Have you ever heard of "cuckquean"? Me neither. Never heard the wife of an adulterous husband called a cuckquean. I don't use or recognize the term.
-Wittol: Obscure, very rarely used, but to me, an important term: a knowing cuckold. Interestingly, it is taken from the bird of the same name, as cuckold derived from a bird.
-Candaulism: An obscure term but a common practice in the age of the camera and the iPhone. Historically, the practice of a husband showing his wife naked to another man without his wife's knowledge or consent.
And then there is the modern meaning and fetish of cuckoldry which mashes all of these different concepts together. Cuckolding today includes wife-sharing, voyeurism, exhibitionism, "swinging", any extramarital sexual behavior with or without the husband's knowledge. I reject all of those as cuckoldry, which I define as the first term above.
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