I always knew I was weak-minded, but this is an insult

When reflecting on the cost in both time and money of maintaining a family, I've wondered how on earth men can maintain mistresses. I just don't see how it's possible unless you're filthy rich, grossly irresponsible, or both. But along comes a psychologist from France (where else?) to illuminate the real obstacle.

My mother passes along this story that I missed in Corriere della Sera, who are apparently translating a story in the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper in Great Britain (where else?). The French author Maryse Vaillant writes that infidelity among men is not a sign of weakness in a relationship, but of strength. It is monogamists, she says, that exhibit weakness. From the Telegraph:

"pathological monogamists" in many cases lack the strength of mind to take a mistress, she claims.

"They are often men whose father was physically or morally absent ... during their childhood. These men have a completely idealised view of their father and the paternal function," she said.

"They lack suppleness and are prisoners to an idealised image of a man of duty."

So the real obstacle to my acquiring a harem isn't time or money; the real obstacle it's mental strength. It would be an understatement to say that this contradicts everything I've ever read on the subject.

Well, everything I read must have been wrong, since the Telegraph calls her "France's most eminent female psychologist". I refuse to insert a gratuitous French joke here, but it kind of writes itself, don't it?