POLL: Have you no shame?

Let's face it - normal stuff just aren't always fun to watch on TV. People don't want to see an episode of a show where the wife and husband come home from work tired, make dinner, kiss each other goodnight and go to bed.
And I don't know what program we're talking about here, but studies show that men are turned on by the thought of more partners - so if a show is triggered towards men, there's likely to be more women in it. Or maybe that's just what's fun to watch for all, who knows...

And I can only speak for my own country, but in Denmark, the amount of people being unfaithful is about 50% of males and 50% of women - seems men and women here have the same amount of shame left...

More mistresses on TV? Television is bottled sensationalism. Adultery has always sold well, throughout the Bible, Greek mythology, the accounts of Pilgrim families in the American colonies.... Everywhere.

Wait. What about the guys? I mean, its pretty difficult to be a mistress without a guy too, yes?

Puh-leese! Feminism and it's cries of 'women are not objects' are long gone. Modern young women are quite hip to the fact that they have what it takes to get 'taken care of' in any way they want. Why work, why have your own life? Get a man to take care of you...in more ways than one!
Shame? Don't make me laugh. The ideas of women being self-sufficient, educated, independent, with a great job etc. are long gone kids. Many, many women know that they don't have to face the cruel world anymore. Just play along with a married guy and the cash will flow. Are any of the 'tv' or even real life mistresses in the unemployment lines? I think not. Face it girls, and complain all you want but the easy life is there for the taking. Oh sure you'll be alone on Christmas but the day and night after should make up for it. Get over it boys and girls, the girls are on a roll! Shame - Schmame! LOL

Wow...just wow.

Cynical much, davztruk?

My reply was just going to be

"is this a trick question?"

The first two posters nailed the answer. Don't look to the media as an indicator of what values are or ought to be. TV thrives on stories, which in turn require conflict. There's no story in a happily-wedded couple unless there's also trouble in paradise. This is equally true for comedy as drama. Both are (and must be) skewed.

I expect the career longevity expectancy of a "professional mistress" with no other talents is quite short. Then again, the 1980's cliche was that most mistresses were secretaries (administrative assistants) first and their bosses' flings second, so at least they had their typing speed.

Given the nature of the current population and workforce and TV (both "entertainment" and "news"), the tendancy to be someone's "on the side" is nowhere near as prevalent as the original poster seems to think. 99.9+% of men lack either the time, energy, money, interest, or some combination of the above to support a girl-on-the-side in addition to their official family. 99.9+% of women won't tolerate being a girl-on-the-side if they know about it.

Also, in the end, most people want something stable, at least by the time they turn 25. (While many men apparently crave excitement in their 40's, it's a matter of nostalgia for the long-gone sense of energy and invulnerability they had in their early 20's.)

On-the-side relationships are not stable, with the constant threat of getting caught, of the person with another primary relationship pulling out without warning to refocus their priorities, of the person who is the on-the-side encountering the other's primary partner and/or blackmailing the other with revealing the on-the-side relationship... And if the primary relationship dissolves because of the on-the-side one, the person in both rarely has enough resources after being taken to the cleaners in the divorce settlement to satisfy their original on-the-side partner as a new primary partner, not to mention the built-in distrust that comes from the origin of the relationship.

Bottom Line is, as-seen-on-TV is either a non-standard data set, or outright fiction.