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You can freely ignore the dipshit who thinks "almost nobody was permitted to divorce" means "people went to jail for back-alley divorces."

When was divorce illegal?

Edit: Divorce has never been illegal since the founding of the USA. It was uncommon, but it was granted by courts which means it was legal just uncommon.

Why are you making this very specifically racial? Most of the Fox News staff are not of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. You can just say white women.

Yeah, fictional romance is more interesting when it's forbidden in some way. Otherwise, who wants to read a romance novel about a nice couple who meets at the library when they're both single, and proceeds to have a wholesome relationship? Great for real life, but boring to read about or watch a movie about.

Many of the traditional reasons for forbidding a romance are gone in the contemporary world. Different race, different social class, same gender, rival families? Not convincing.

So you're left with stuff that's plausible but icky, like being in a relationship already, or being teacher/student or boss/employee. Or pornographic stuff like step-family. Those are problematic and people will criticize them.

You could set your story in a historical setting in which the countess and the gardener are truly forbidden from passion, or a fantasy world where the ogopogos and sasquatches are sexy rivals.

Or just have a lukewarm type of forbidden-ness, like "his family's greeting-card store is in competition with my family's greeting-card store" or "we're coworkers."

It also doesn't help that it has some heritage from courtly romance, if youve ever wondered why Guinevere and Lancelot have a thing going on in Arthurian mythology that's why. The French were enamored with courtly romance and guess who helped forge modern romance.

Piña colada is a "you both awful and deserve each other"

I don't view "we've gotten bad at sex" as evil, though it can be a symptom of "falling out of love." It just depends on the media in question and the story. Plus I can enjoy something even if I don't agree with the protagonist's actions.

Edit: When I say "we've gotten bad at sex" not being evil I mean on part of the person being cheated on not the cheater. Being bad at sex doesn't make you evil and "deserve" to be cheated on.

I don't specifically remember the infidelity in that series, but I do remember the characters. It's very much a "love to hate them" type show like Always Sunny is. Sure, they have genuine moments occasionally but mostly you're just enjoying watching them suffer and get into antics.

I'm not familiar enough with the plot of any Bond media to tell you if it falls in the category I'm okay with. Like if Bond's love interest is also married to the villain and has sex with Bond I would consider that okay. Because the villain is probably abusive.

On the other hand that is also one of those things that annoys me about romance culture, the whole notion of your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband being "stolen" by someone else as if your partner was just a passive object instead of being the actual person in the cheating who made promises to you (which might or might not include sexual exclusivity depending on mutually agreed upon preferences between everyone in the relationship) and should keep those promises or break up with you no matter what any third person tempts them with.

There is a scene with implied sex, when Ilsa goes back to try and convince Rick to give her the letters of transit.

I guess there were no way for her to know her husband was alive or not, a real Schrödinger's spouse situation.
And just to hammer it home that infidelity is wrong, I'm surprised the studio didn't go with an ending where Bogart got hit by that German and covered up that he was bleeding with that big trench coat, only to collapse after the plane had taken off. But I guess since it was a war movie it was bad for morale to have the "good guy" die.

But because the writers needed to give you someone to root for

Moreover, because it went from adapting a British sitcom to making an American sitcom. The famous tweet goes something like: "A waiter spills soup on a businessman before a meeting with his boss. In the UK the show's about the waiter. In the US the show's about the businessman."

Same reason Steve Carell went from playing David Brent to playing Brick Tamland. We don't find a powerful sleazebag as funny as a powerful moron.

Not that there's much difference these days.

Completely unrelated to the discussion, wanted to thank you for the pic. Literally choking down laughter hard so as not to wake the neighbors.

Yes. Because everyone has thought about that one hot guy that they want to fuck (most won’t act on it).

Same thing in porn for men is cheating porn.

It is a turn on for a lot of people. Very few act on it.