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In the April 2010 issue, David Eddie, Globe and Mail advice columnist and author of Damage Control: How to Tiptoe Away from the Smoking Wreckage of your Latest Screw-Up with a Minimum of Harm to Your Reputation (McClelland & Stewart), writes for CF about the emergence of the new, seemingly more accepted face of infidelity and how it affects everyone from celebrities to the common man.

Is it just my imagination, or has infidelity—blushing and giggling, coyly covering its privates, but not nearly as embarrassed or ashamed of itself as it used to be—come out of the closet lately?

My wife, Pam, has informed me that if I am ever foolish enough to cheat on her, there will be very little point in attempting to perform any sort of damage control on the situation. I will be served my bachelor papers on the spot, and find myself in one of those hotels with a neon sign with a letter missing—HOT-zzt!-L, HOT-zzt!-L, sipping cheap bourbon and staring at a picture of our children with hot tears streaming down my cheeks, before I can say “Pam, I am so, so…”

And I’m lucky, in the sense that I don’t spend one minute of time or one kilojoule of energy imagining I might get away with it, that I might be able to slip an adulterous affair past her uncanny witch radar. Pam’s like Sherlock Holmes’s smarter sister. If I’ve been home and she’s been out, she can come home, take a look around and tell me what I’ve been up to all day: “Hmm, you made yourself a tuna melt for lunch; then you took the dog for a walk, but you forgot to bring a plastic bag, so you had to double back,” etc., etc.

It’s freaky! There’s no way I’d try to slip something as deceitful, duplicitous, and, above all, detail-oriented as adultery past Pam.

There is one interesting codicil in her policy, though: as long as certain conditions were met, she says she would be able to get over it if I had a one-night stand. “What?” one of my (married, male) friends, awash in incredulity and, I think, envy, said when I dropped this little information-grenade on him, once. “You have a pass for a one-night stand?”

Click here to read Eddie’s complete article, where he discusses celebrity sexcapades, whether monogamy really is the best policy and the one woman who he probably couldn’t say “no” to (Hint: It’s not his wife).

For more information on David Eddie, his column and his latest book, visit his website.