It's close to Valentine's Day, when thoughts turn to romance even for those of us married for more than 30 years.

Although it may be a time of life when I'll threaten my Valentine with mayhem if he brings me a huge box of candy, I know he'll remember. He's good about birthdays and anniversaries and special occasions. I probably love him more now than I did on Aug. 27, 1967, but he needs to know that he is appreciated more right now for just one of his good qualities: he's faithful.

One of the funniest jokes I ever heard, told to me about 35 years ago, was about a guy who was fooling around with someone else's wife. It isn't funny anymore, except in the true-to-life irony that portrays the subject of the story the guy trying to hide from the unexpected arrival of the husband as completely stupid.

At that, it could be a "laugh to keep from crying" kind of funny. The high incidence of just-plain-old-fashioned adultery, particularly "in the news," has me alternately raging and depressed. I can't buy the "I'm a man, so I have to act this way" or "I'm a famous man, so I can probably get away with it" attitudes. I know hundreds of men, some of them somewhat famous, who have managed their hormones and their machismo through many years of mental, physical and spiritual faithfulness to the women they married. It can't be that difficult.

Okay, okay, it takes two to tango, and women are not blameless here. But while we still pay good money to see movies starring much-divorced and living-together men and women (sometimes in the theaters of Magic Johnson, who got caught the worst way), ask yourself a question:

What happened to the female military officer who had an affair with another soldier and then lied about it to investigators? The answer is, she was drummed out and now we can't even remember her name.

News reports on famous women caught in love nests, or photographed while stuffing money into dancers' costumes, or cruising the streets looking for good-looking male undercover cops, are rather scarce. The only names likely to recur, and then usually in the tabloids, might be Roseanne and Madonna. I'm hearing a male echo out here that reinforces what I'm trying to say: "Nobody thinks Madeleine Albright or Elizabeth Dole is cute anyway."

Because they are so visible, and so "misunderstood," I guess it has to be the famous guys I'm mad at. Or maybe it's difficult to accept that this nonsense goes on in one's own extended family.

People keep telling me that the incidence of adultery is no higher now than during the years when we had no nightly news, no Internet. We just have more ways of finding out about our "human nature" now? We're not as easy on our bad boys as the news media was on Eisenhower and Kennedy? We're all getting vicarious thrills through each prurient detail of somebody's latest escapades? Who are we, anyhow?

Regardless of what your religious affiliations might be, or where your values come from, it has to help your life and dozens of other lives if you just simply make a promise and keep it. Tell your children to keep their promises. Tell your grandchildren. And be an example. Bob Pedrotti is.

Happy Valentine's Day, honey.

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