Extracts from the
Philosophers’ Mail:
"Part of
the problem is how keen we are to say, at once, how deeply awful it is. Society
moves with unhelpful speed from recognition to condemnation. The only ones who
would even think of it are, by definition, only ever very bad people indeed. In
an age that has accepted almost every kind of sexual practice, it remains the
ultimate transgression, violating the greatest of all contemporary myths: that
of the natural lifelong monogamous fusion of love and sex.
Yet no
understanding will come from such a hasty refusal to acknowledge adultery’s
full power over the human imagination. Before we can begin to call it ‘wrong’,
we should concede that it must also, at some level, for a time at least, for
some people (who cannot all be merely monsters) be profoundly enticing. What
might a case for it go like?
For a
start, simply how normal it is to contemplate. It would be deeply unusual to
expect people to grow up in hedonistic liberated circles, experience the sweat
and excitement of nightclubs and summer parks, be bathed in images of desire
and songs of longing and ecstasy, and then one day, at the command of a certificate,
renounce all further sexual discoveries in the name of no particular god and no
higher commandment, just an unexplored supposition that it must all be very
wrong. (…)
The
adulterer is meant to feel ashamed; the betrayed party is encouraged to be furious
– with every right to an apology. And yet, from another perspective, shouldn’t
the latter sometimes be the one to apologise to the former? Adultery may be the
lightning conductor of modern indignation, but are there not other, subtler
ways of betraying a person than by sleeping with someone outside the couple; by
omitting to listen, by forgetting to evolve and enchant, or more generally and
blamelessly, by simply being one’s own limited self? Rather than forcing their
‘betrayers’ to say they were so sorry, the ‘betrayed’ might begin by
apologising themselves, apologise for forcing their partners to lie by setting
the bar of truthfulness so forbiddingly high – out of no higher creed than a
jealous insecurity masquerading as a moral standard.
Anger against
adultery evades a basic, tragic truth: no one can be everything to another
person. It is only a child who can believe this (wrongly) of a parent. Yet
rather than accept the ghastly thought with dignified grace and melancholy,
betrayed spouses are encouraged to accuse their ‘betrayers’ of sin. (…) No
other society besides our own has ever been so hopeful about marriage, nor
ultimately, and as a consequence, quite so regularly disappointed. The
needs for sex, for love and for family have never been so insistently and
hysterically yoked together. This is the distinctive creed of our own
times, an altar over which an unusual amount of pain continues to be daily
expended. We’d be better off undertaking a more disturbing and useful
thought-experiment: daring to humanise and understand the motives of our all
too ubiquitous hate figure: the adulterer.
If
believing in the ideals of marriage is often naive, so too is believing that
adultery can be an effective antidote to its many disappointments.
What is
ultimately ‘wrong’ with adultery is its sheer dangerous optimism. While
it may look at first sight like a cynical activity to engage in, adultery in
fact betrays an absurdly hopeful conviction that one can somehow magically
rearrange the difficulties and shortcomings of marriage through a lie. This is
to misunderstand the facts of life. (…) In short, as the adulterer forgets (to
the huge cost of those they care about and who believe in them), there is no
solution.
There is no
answer to the tensions of marriage, if what one means by an ‘answer’ is a
settlement in which no party suffers a loss, and in which every positive
element can coexist with every other, without either causing or sustaining
grievous damage. The three things people usually want in this sphere – love,
sex and family – each affects and harms the others in devilish ways. Loving
a person may inhibit the ability to have sex with him or her. Yet having a
secret tryst can fatally endanger a relationship with a spouse who is loved but
no longer excites. However, having children can imperil both love and sex, and
yet neglecting the kids in order to focus on marriage or sexual thrills may threaten
the health and mental stability of the next generation. The choice isn’t
between happiness and grief; all that is on offer are different varieties of
suffering.(…)
There is
nothing biologically ‘normal’ or cost-free about sexual renunciation. Fidelity
deserves to be celebrated as a high point of the ethical imagination –
ideally with some medals and the sounding of a public gong – rather than
discounted as an unremarkable norm whose undermining by an affair should
quickly provoke utter rage."
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