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Infidelity
June 2
A few years after we overcame our sexual
problems, my husband told me that from the moment we first started
having trouble with each other, he was sure the reason I wasn't
interested in having sex with him was because I was having sex with
someone else.
I almost had to laugh. When, exactly, did he think
I would have had any TIME for a tryst? I was deep into my Superwoman
phase in that era, trying to excuse myself for my lack sexual
enthusiasm by being as perfect as possible in every other respect. I
was working full time (and then some, given various alerts and
readiness exercises) and almost single-handedly taking care of the
household minutiae and my stepkids, making cheerleading clothes for the
girl, scheduling dental appointments, shopping for groceries, etc. etc.
Although
I was aware that my husband had no real notion of how much I was doing
during that period of my life (to him my daily grind was only "a little
cooking and minimal housework," no more burdensome than his three
weekend hours of lawn care or carwashing), I was astonished to hear
that his peculiar illusion that I was leading a life of relative
leisure extended to the idea that I had time and energy to fool around
on him.
But there's no arguing with emotionally mediated
perceptions. To some extent even the most sensible among us will see
what we want or expect to see. Given my sexy singlehood, it was
impossible for him to believe that my libido had died. So obviously I
was getting What Every Normal Woman Always Wants from someone else. I had
to be having an affair. Believing something that defied the laws of the
space-time continuum was evidently easier for him than believing that I
wasn't really interested in sex anymore.
Yeah, well, we're all a little crazy sometimes.
He
never confronted me, of course. He never asked, never even hinted that
this was what he was thinking. It was only after we had become truly
trusting and intimate, much later in our marriage, that he confessed
the dark thoughts he'd had about me decades earlier. As I said, by then
it was kind of funny, and we laughed about it. Gently.
When I
thought about this amazing revelation later, I realized that the way he
had been trying to explain my sudden loss of interest in sex to himself
was not just by seizing on the thing he feared the most, but also the
thing that would most thoroughly take HIM off the marital hook. If our
sexual problems were entirely my fault because I was stepping out on
him, he didn't have to examine his own behaviors, assumptions or
intentions. He wasn't doing anything wrong, he was being the perfect
husband. I, on the other hand, was a betrayer, a bitch, and the ungrateful, selfish Cause Of It All. But somehow he still loved me.
Like I said, people are nuts sometimes.
Anyway.
You might be forgiven for thinking that this amusing story of temporary
insanity has nothing to do with YOUR sexual problems. Because, let's be
frank, it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility that YOUR
wife is indeed having an affair. Some experts believe that the
incidence of female marital infidelity has increased in the last 30
years, and that approximately 25% of married women have extramarital
sex these days (along with about 45% of men). I'll talk a little more
tomorrow about what motivates infidelity and how you can deal with it
if it has actually happened to you. Or even if it is you who has stumbled.
While
it is very often an unrecoverable misstep, especially if it is the
woman who cheats, in a surprising number of cases it can still be
overcome.
But do consider, at least for a moment, that even if you are absolutely positive there's no other reason for your wife's loss of erotic interest in you, you still might be wrong.
COMMENTS ON THIS POST:
Recently, a married friend of mine said she felt as if she were now living "beyond the plot." She said her story had ended with the wedding and now she existed in the gray area after the dramatic arc. I understood. I tell (have just told) a "story" of my courtship with all the fictionalizations that the word implies. The story ends with the wedding; the denouement is summed up with "happily-ever-after." We stop talking before we get to our regrets, the daily mundane details of marriage, the small and larger griefs that pile up and threaten to overshadow everything that came before. I don't tell how, each spring when I visit my parents on Martha's Vineyard, I see other people's weddings, and I feel wistful. I don't say how sometimes I am jealous of couples with matching plates and silver, and photo albums filled with wedding shots. I don't tell how we've lost that blurry Polaroid taken outside the courthouse, how our rings still aren't engraved, how I envy other women's diamonds. I don't go on to say how having children hasn't worked out; how, after one year of marriage we had a miscarriage, and then were told by doctors that, short of a miracle, we would never have a child genetically related to the both of us. How this has tested our young marriage, how we have, so far, survived the grief, but just barely. How sex has become a sad thing, how we suddenly feel old. How we still love each other, despite it.
June 10
Speaking of infidelity, there is a prominent "wronged wife" in the news
who has been kicked around unmercifully on right-wing cable commentary
shows the last couple of days.
The general tenor of the remarks
coming out of the mouths of these political Jerry Springers is, not to
put too fine a point on it, utterly disgusting. These men (they're
mostly men, except for a few opportunistic harpies) are universally
outraged at Hillary Clinton. Why? Because, according to them, she
couldn't possibly have really believed her husband's denials of
his infidelity for that long and -- worse by far -- she eventually
forgave him for it. The Clintons are still married, and for some reason
that makes these vile television types apoplectic with rage.
I'm sorry, but I just don't get
this public orgy of judgment and outrage. I can somewhat understand the
right's generalized hatred of Bill Clinton. I'm sure it's hard to feel
anything but distaste for a man who stands in the way of so many of
your cherished goals, so their enmity toward him has what could be
called a rational component despite its overall out-of-control
character. But the right's paranoid psychosis regarding "Hitlery"
Clinton has always been a mystery to me. This small, smart blonde woman
is, for all intents and purposes, Satan Incarnate to these folks. She
must haunt their dreams.
It's way, wayyyyy weird and I've
given up trying to fathom it. But I'm interested in the current dynamic
because of the subject of this blog.
Why do so many people feel
so strongly that Hillary should never have forgiven Bill for his
infidelity? Why does it MATTER so much that she didn't divorce him?
Certainly for the right wing it's just one more club to beat her with
(and one suspects that if she had divorced him, they'd use that
instead, to accuse her of being a vicious and unforgiving shrew without
any interest in preserving the noble institution of marriage).
We actually have pundits out there claiming that they can read the lady's mind,
that they "know" what she knew and when she knew it, and that she
stayed with Bill only because she's an ambitious bitch who couldn't go
it alone (in spite of having her own independent career now). These
people claim to "know" there's no love between these two human beings,
that the marriage is a sham and its continuation is an affront to all
moral Americans. The whole thing is bizarre.
My take is that
Hillary Clinton's marriage and the compromises she has made to maintain
it are none of my business. Period. If she had based her political
career even partially on some kind of "men should be dumped the instant
they stray" philosophy, it might be relevant or useful to
publicly discuss the fact that she cannot fulfill her pious
exhortations in her own life. But cooking up white-hot outrage over
matters of private negotiation and dishing our barely-controlled glee
at others' marital misfortunes is not political analysis. It's
approximately on a par with Paula Zahn's repeated scheduling during her
jaw-dropping career at FOX of a "psychic" who claimed to be able to
speak to the whereabouts of Chandra Levy.
Clearly, though,
infidelity is an issue which calls forth vehement emotions even when
politics aren't involved. We are all tempted to judge others' handling
of infidelity in their marriages. Perhaps it's because we recognize the
central role of our marriage promises in the ideals that we struggle so
hard to maintain and live up to.
Let's not forget that there is
a valid role for idealism in both communal and individual lives.
Fidelity often seems like an ideal that's impossible to achieve given
the venality of mankind, the pressures of biology and the encouragement
provided by a more forgiving society these days. But of course the
measure of an ideal's value is not in whether it is hard or easy to
achieve but whether its achievement creates a positive or supportive effect on individuals and society.
There
have been many ideals in the past which did not create positive effects
on the people who attempted to conform to them. The Victorian ideal of
sexually "pure" and sweetly passive womanhood, for example, was one
which warped human beings individually and on a vast social
scale. Perhaps the idea that one should confine oneself sexually to a
single partner for life is equally outdated (an arguable concept,
certainly), but there is one part of the fidelity ideal that isn't
outdated, that CAN'T be, if we expect to be fully human and cooperative
as a society: the promise part.
When you have given your word
that you will be sexually faithful, whether you give it privately in
your bedroom in the dark of night or it's announced publicly in a
marriage ceremony, your integrity is at stake. Being the kind
of person that other people can trust on the strength of one's spoken
word of honor is an ideal to which people in every age should aspire.
(There, I said it. I used the word "should." How do I dare? Heh.)
Maybe
the reason people hyperventilate so much about Hillary forgiving Bill
and staying with him is because it looks to some like he wasn't
"punished" in any way for his betrayal of his marriage vows. It's
always scary when our ideals are challenged by the prospect that
nothing much will happen to people who defy them. The spectacle of a
man "getting away with it" causes intense anxiety in some people...and
for others, even a kind of guilty envy. Resentment of "scot-free"
serial adulterers is perfectly natural and even an essentially good
impulse, but it can easily turn pathological.
The more
frightened we are, the angrier we get when we are reminded of our fear.
Whenever you find yourself in a screaming rage about something, you
should look closely at the situation to find a source of fear.
What
people fear about adultery is easy to see. Adultery raises the most
basic and age-old terrors of being human: fear of loneliness and
abandonment, fear that trusting others is a mug's game, fear that love
-- all love, not just our own -- is nothing more than opportunitistic
fakery in the service of biological drives, and fear that we ourselves
are inadequate, unlovable, worthless people. If our nearest and dearest
were to reject us, when they know us so well, we would be the moral
equivalent of dog doo, right? This is SERIOUSLY scary stuff.
When
our friends and neighbors and well-publicized politicians start fooling
around on each other, that seriously scary stuff is pushed into our
faces and consciousness whether we like it or not. So, as scared people
always do, we project our own inarticulate, worried rage onto other
people, preferably people we don't have to deal with on an intimate or
daily basis. And that's how Hillary Clinton's forgiveness of Bill's
philandering becomes a fundamental assault on all that is moral and
just in American life (or, from the other end of the political
spectrum, a spineless collapse in the face of patriarchical power and
immoral excuses).
One might almost be tempted to say that the
people most outraged by Hillary's supposed marital failings are those
who have something to hide -- or to fear -- themselves.
COMMENTS ON THIS POST:
Lusting is more than "thinking about it" - it's greatly desiring it. I think most Christians understand His basic point to be, if you want to do something, and you would do it if not for fear of being caught or other reasons that have nothing to do with you thinking it's wrong, then really you can't claim to be righteous. If you could get away with murder or adultery or whatever you'd do it. You're just not brave enough, not less "sinful" then the person who does it.
Another
Christian guy I talked to a while back in another context also told me
that what Jesus was condemning wasn't just the "idle thought," but the
enjoyment of repeated sustained fantasies, even if they weren't
actually sexual in nature. He gave as an example his own "excessive
interest" in a woman he worked with. They flirted and he became
preoccupied with her, too aware of her presence. They started Looking
at each other with Meaningful Eyes. He would come in early to get a few
minutes alone with her before the rest of the employees arrived. He
wanted to touch her. He knew she Wanted him. He had dreams that made him sweat.
Nothing
ever actually happened, of course, but it was because he suddenly
realized that the thoughts he was having and the relationship he was
encouraging were getting more and more dangerous. When he found himself
starting to compare his harried wife at home (they had several young
children) to his cool, sophisticated co-worker, the penny dropped. He
was being "unfaithful" at least in that sense.
Personally I
think this guy was being a little too hard on himself, but there is no
question that HE felt better about himself and his marriage after he
decided he had to avoid what he called "opportunities of sin," the
obsessing about the incipient relationship and the "special moments" he
was hoping for with the young woman.
I know the whole "sin" thing is very off-putting for some people, so I'm going to leave that stuff right there and let you translate or percolate it or throw it in the circular file as you see fit. But "T" had something else interesting to say. Call it what you want but from the man's point of view we know damn well what our wives would consider a betrayal. Kissing may not be technically adultery, but ask most couples if it's "OK". Or writing sexy notes, or lots of other things that are not really adultery perhaps, but they sure aren't "forsaking all others, cleaving only to her". I seem to recall promising that one day.
I'm not sure I agree that anything you have to hide from your spouse is infidelity, but I'm giving it some thought.
COMMENTS ON THIS POST:
July 17
As
I was reading Fiona's story, one incident really made me sit up and
take notice: the conversation in which Grant blew up at Fiona's idea
that online relationships were no big deal.
One night about 10
years ago I got the inspiration for my Great American Novel (enjoyed by
millions ... of dust bunnies in the lower desk drawer) while thinking
idly about an old lover. He had played a vexed and confusing role in
one of the last chapters of my exciting single life.
As I
worked on the book that resulted (and, perhaps predictably, veered off
into something that didn't even begin to resemble what had really
happened -- starting with the handsome visage of the hero) I decided
I'd like to find out what happened to that unhandsome but interesting
guy. I looked him up via directory assistance, we talked briefly on the
phone, and I sent him a letter to catch him up on the fifteen years
since we'd last met.
A few weeks later, on a trip to a local
resort, my husband and I got to talking about the book and this guy (we
do some of our best talking in the car on trips). Without thinking too
much about it, I said I'd like to see him again sometime and compare
notes about the events that had proved so fertile to my imagination.
I should have known better.
To
begin with, it was a bad time for my husband. He was just starting a
new job after quitting one that had sapped his energy and confidence,
and as a result we were in more than a little economic flux.
Unbeknownst to us both he was also bleeding, gently but constantly,
from an esophageal ulcer, and the encroaching anemia was beginning to
make him feel like an old man, physically and mentally.
So, in
that state of mind, he was sure I was saying I wanted to sleep with my
old boyfriend. "That's not what I'm saying!" I protested. And then I
screwed the pooch: "But seriously," I said, "would it be so horribly
awful if I did?"
Dot. Dot. Dot.
When Fiona said that
Grant's ugly reaction to the idea of internet romance turned her
against him for a time, I could only nod in sympathy, because when my
husband went off on me for that unguarded remark, I felt much the same
way. It made me withdraw from him and (temporarily) regard him as The
Enemy from whom I had to hide my true self. On the other hand, from his
point of view, that daisy-cutter reaction at least ensured that I
understood exactly how unthinkable such an encounter should be if I
wanted to continue my relationship with him. It was pre-emption with a
vengeance.
Our old friend insecurity drives both infidelity
itself and our reactions to it, and some of the other emotions we've
covered also play a role, anger and boredom especially. It's my belief
that although the motivation of "just sex" seems to have taken a larger
role when women are surveyed about their reasons for committing
adultery, for many of us an exciting sexual relationship is a way of
reconfirming ourselves as women, and thus assuaging our anxieties both
about our feminine appeal and that existential angst of "Is This All
There Is?"
I know I promised to come back after Fiona was
finished and make regular posts for a while, but instead I have to take
another lengthy break. I'm working on a formal pitch of this blog to
publishers and my smart, smart agent is forcing me to rethink a lot of
issues of structure and emphasis. Apparently I have to create the
publishing version of a screenplay treatment: a smaller, less detailed
version of the (cough) masterpiece to come.
It's consuming me like phosphor, from the brain down.
So,
in haste, I'll just post an outline of the points I was going to be
making over the next few days, in the hope that I'll be able to get
back to them next week in more detail.
Following infidelity:
1)
Divorce is not inevitable. Some marriages have improved after
infidelity, but only because the crisis forced the partners to start
being radically honest with each other. Needless to say, there are less
painful ways to get at the truth.
2) Don't be hasty. Stay together without making decisions about divorce or separation for at least six months.
3) The affair must end. This cannot be the occasion for a forced re-negotiation of marriage vows.
4)
Guilt and anger can and must be honestly expressed, but you should be
alert for malignant transformations of these expressions into Power
plays. For example, piously playing the MVP (Most Virtuous Person) gig
is a form of control freaking, and it's not the way to regain the
intimacy and trust you need to renew your relationship.
5) The
cheater's partner is not to blame for the other person's infidelity.
The cheater is solely responsible for his or her own behavior. Full
stop. However, looking toward the future, the wronged partner would be
wise to make a realistic examination of the situation prior to the
infidelity and make or suggest changes that will strengthen the
relationship.
See you next week...maybe as late as Wednesday or Thursday. Depends on how far down I have to cut to reach the vein.
COMMENTS ON THIS POST:
August 1
Although I still don't have time to engage in lengthy discussion on
these issues, I did want to share some thoughts I received from "Sally"
on the incident I talked about on July 17. I thought they'd add to the
debate material we already have on offer in the comments section to
that post.
I really will try to get back on Monday all
right-eyed and busy-tailed to actually start blogging again, but I'm
still underwater on a number of fronts, so we'll see.
"Sally" was particularly interested in the Fiona saga because she recently found out that her husband was indulging in cybersex on gay sites. She wrote: Discovering this infidelity was extremely painful for me. In fact, I subconsciously put off discovering and confronting it until I knew that I would have the time and space to deal with it, I believe. There had been clues before the one that I took to him -- a print-out from the gay website that I found in his truck one day when I had to borrow it (a day immediately following a trip he had to make out of town in the same truck).
She makes some good points, I think.
COMMENTS IN RESPONSE TO THIS POST:
In
the comments section to the July 17 post, Roy (our resident
polyamorist) objected to my saying that if the partners still want to
stay together the affair must end. I held that a spouse's discovery of
infidelity cannot be the occasion for a forced re-negotiation of
marriage vows.
Roy wrote: Uh, so renegotiation is always illegitimate if done under stress? If the "cheater" discovers that they are unhappy in a mono relationship, they only have the option of saying "Since we can't renegotiate, I guess I want a divorce."?
This
isn't the Church of Julia Sez. Just because I spout off in a blog
doesn't mean I can prevent you or your spouse from advancing or
agreeing to any given proposal. It's not illegal to (gently or
brutally) coerce a new "contract" out of your spouse.
But in
my view it's always at least morally questionable. If that doesn't
bother you, and if you don't have a problem with the complications
inserted into your relationship when you essentially force your spouse
to accept and even reward your infidelity, go for it. Some people will
put up with any damn thing if they love their partners enough. And who
knows, maybe it will work out.
Maybe you'll get to be King of the World, too.
If you're unhappy in your monogamous relationship, the choices are not just 1) Renegotiate so I can have sex with other people while staying married
Come on. We're all intelligent and logical people, right? Can't we think of a third option (or even a fourth or fifth)?
If
you genuinely believe that you want to stay married but that you HAVE
to be allowed to have sex with other people in order to be happy in
life, you should renegotiate your marriage BEFORE you break your
initial promises. And then you can stop reading this blog because all
your marital problems will be solved and you'll be happy ever after.
Then
again, as long as we're talking Good Deals, I have sixteen acres of
swampland in Florida I've been trying to unload since 1976.
Roy continued: Further, this assumes that the other party to the affair has no vested interest in the outcome. I don't think it's that unusual that the other party has provided some sustaining support for the "cheater", providing a more even keel in the "cheaters" evaluation of themselves. I can't see how sex voids that contribution.
I'm not entirely sure I've
understood this, but Roy seems to be saying that the "vested interests"
of the person with whom the cheater is having an affair need to be
considered. Well, okay, from a strictly human and sympathetic
viewpoint, we do like to think of ourselves as decent people who can
stop short of, say, shooting the "infidels" in their beds. And the
affair partner's interests should to be considered to some extent when
making decisions that involve the affair, if only because that partner
can create an awful lot more trouble for everyone if they are dismissed
too cavalierly.
But by "consideration" I don't mean that they
should have equal weight with those of the married parties. Being the
monogamy partisan that I am, for me the initial relationship should
always come first. If it has irretrievably broken down, the option is
divorce.
If it is still salvageable, I believe the parties
have to concentrate on it and it alone during the dangerous and
complicated period that follows infidelity. You can't dissipate your
energies at a time when you are struggling to cope with volcanic
emotions. You especially have to guard against the temptation to pull
away from the pain of reconstructive surgery and seek out the Other
Person as an endlessly sympathetic escape from your responsibilities.
You
either commit to the marriage or you don't. You CAN renegotiate later,
of course, when you are back on a more even and trusting keel, but
during the crisis of infidelity it is -- in my book -- nothing short of
shitty to say, "But we have to think of my poor lonely lover! What
about his/her needs?"
I don't think I can agree (if I've
understood Roy correctly, anyway) that the Other Relationship might
deserve to be maintained because the Other Person has "contributed" to
the cheater's self-confidence. In fact, re-reading that whole paragraph
led me to suddenly wonder why it's all about the cheater and the
cheater's "self-evaluation."
COMMENTS IN RESPONSE TO THIS POST:
I'm polyamorous. I knew this (but didn't have a name for it) before I
got married. Still, when we hit some bumps in our marriage after about
seven years, we agreed to be monogamous in order to work through our
problems. There were no other significant others at that time, so we
didn't have to consider anyone else's feelings.
We have recently decided that we are once again okay with being open
to the possibility of allowing other loves into our lives, if that
happens to be in the cards for us.
If I'm not mistaken, isn't one of the prereqs for being in the
lifestyle (an example, not poly) is that both agree. Most couples
dabble in it because one is pushing the other and that is demonstrably
destructive when one wants to stop or stay within boundaries. To say,
as Maitresse does, that one should "at least consider not having other
relationships" if that would betray your partner is really a
rationalization of selfishness. It says, "My happiness, mostly my
sexual gratification, is more important than my partner's feelings. And
guess what, he/she will just have to live with it or else." That's not
right. If it's wrong to judge another person's choice of life, it's
also wrong for a person to force their life decisions on someone they
supposedly love.
Bluntly, when I read roy's comment, my first thought was that such a
person, unless he's speaking in the abstract, wants drama, chooses to
inflict pain for an essentially selfissh reason and needs to control
outcomes. Well, I don't know roy and don't know if he's speaking of his
own life, but certainly many people are just like that.
jonathank [apple] 8/4/03; 8:23:23 PM
But by "consideration" I don't mean that they should have equal weight with those of the married parties. Being the monogamy partisan that I am, for me the initial relationship should always come first. If it has irretrievably broken down, the option is divorce.
Lynn [apple] 8/4/03; 8:54:33 PM
Offhand, here's the way I look at it. I'm happily married. Neither my
wife, nor I, have any real interests in people outside our marriage.
However, since we're human beings (and human beings change and
grow), it's possible that will change. Maybe for me, maybe for her.
Morat [apple] 8/5/03; 10:25:05 AM
After all, something was wrong in the marriage for the cheating spouse to be with them in the first place.
I don't necessarily agree with this. There might be something wrong
with the cheater and not with what is on offer to him or her in the
marriage.
I wholly agree with Julia's last remark. No matter what, you are
responsible for what you do. People manufacture reasons why they should
be excused - my wife/husband has been ignoring me/too busy at work/has
been depressed, my wife/husband cheated on me 5 years ago so it's my
turn, my wife/husband made me angry. These are all rationalizations,
what was called a few years ago "denial" because you're denying your
responsibility. The frank truth is that people want to blame their
partner, to find fault that excuses their own actions.
As an aside, this issue is one of the two or three most fundamental
themes of every major religion. Did not Jesus point out that we are
quick to criticize someone else's splinter while we fail to notice the
plank sticking in our own eye? Cain asked "Am I my brother's keeper?"
when it was his hand that struck down Hevel.
jonathank [apple] 8/5/03; 3:32:34 PM
March 1, 2004
Why Your Wife: A sidebar on the Infidelity Topic
Here's an email on a very common question that I got from "Dervish,"
apparently after he had read the Infidelity section of the blog.
I'm trying to find an article about
sexual behavior change after you catch your wife cheating. She never
admits to having sex with him but I'm curious why her sexual behavior
had drastically changed. She went as far as asking for something we had
never done before, and we had sex more then we had in years. Got any
comments?
I answered:
Sometimes a woman's sexual behavior changes just through the magic of imagination. If she's been reading sexy stuff or writing to him -- in reality or in her imagination (in a private diary, for example) -- or if she's just allowed herself to imagine in detail what she'd like to do with a given guy, her interest in sex in general and sexual experimentation is very likely to increase. Remember that women are often turned on way, way more by what goes on inside their heads than what is actually happening on the outside. In that case you are sort of in the same position as a woman whose husband has been drooling about other women and then wanting to have sex to, er, relieve himself. Not a super good feeling, maybe, but let's face it, fantasizing about someone else is an EXTREMELY common situation between couples. It also doesn't necessarily mean anything horrible or significant, because a person who is able to channel their sexual imagination/energy toward their partner and is able to gain ongoing satisfaction from him or her will sometimes end up strengthening the primary relationship, simply because real activity has a larger and more lasting effect on us. Of course, that's only possible if the real partner can accept the phenomenon (which is often temporary and partial anyway) and doesn't turn nasty or suspicious or weird about it all. I'm just offering this as one possible way that your wife's claim not to have physically "done" anything with another guy can actually be true.
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