Marriage Quote by Ann Landers

Ann Landers lands a moral hammer with the plainest carpentry possible: no poetry, no loopholes, just a sentence that closes like a trap. The line works because it refuses the most common romance-fantasy alibi in the cheating narrative - that the affair is an exception, a special connection, a glitch in an otherwise decent man. Landers strips away the flattering story and replaces it with a behavioral résumé. He cheated on his wife is not a chapter; it is a credential.

The intent is protective, even maternal, but not soft. As an advice columnist, Landers wrote to an audience that was often asked to accept blame for men’s choices, to compete with an ex-wife as if fidelity were a prize you could earn. This formulation denies the reader the illusion of control. It tells the would-be new spouse: you’re not the plot twist, you’re the next installment.

The subtext is about character as habit. Cheating is framed less as a single sin than as a practiced solution to discomfort: boredom, conflict, ego, entitlement. If it worked once, it’s available again. The quote’s blunt repetition is the point; it mimics the monotony of the pattern itself, a loop people keep mistaking for destiny.

Context matters: Landers’ era sold marriage as stability while quietly normalizing male misbehavior and asking women to tidy up the emotional fallout. Her cynicism is practical. It’s not anti-romance; it’s anti-denial, a reminder that someone’s capacity for betrayal doesn’t dissolve when you become the beneficiary of it.