Adultery, non-monogamy and polyamory

I know I already said this yesterday, but being sick: totally not fun. Granted I feel a little better; I haven’t taken anything to ease the pain this morning, which is a step because it means that my head is no longer throbbing like mad. It’s also highly inconvenient to be sick at this time of year when one is a student. I have a gazillion things to do in the next three weeks and getting a significant chunk of them done today and yesterday was in the schedule. I also know that either way I go today — if I take more codeine or the like or if I don’t — my brain will be equally messy and it will be rather challenging to get the paper on adultery/monogamy/polyamory written. I have been avoiding housework, so there are dishes piling up, my room is a disaster and I actually need to clean properly which will end up being postponed once again. I am doing my laundry, which is good, but that’s probably the easiest housework-related thing to do in terms of labour-intensity.

I am totally fine with writing, though, so I think that I’ll sit here and brainstorm for my paper and ignore the mess that is the rest of my life and my body. Bleuch. Even my mouth tastes metallicky and gross.

Hmmm… so the paper I have to write is pretty open-ended. I know that I want to write about monogamy/non-monogamy in Western society and the contradiction between the ways in which people speak and the ways they act. Essentially, most people aren’t really monogamous because very few stay in the same relationship for their whole lives. There is more of a tendency toward serial monogamy, which is even a stretch based on the fact that so many people cheat and/or have long drawn out affairs during their relationships. That’s where it makes a lot of sense to be polyamorous. I think that it’s the term that scares so many people. The whole idea of being classified as someone in an open relationship or as a poly person means that whoever is making these decisions is stepping outside of the normal mainstream sexual lifestyle, even if the norm is more destructive in that usually what happens is that people cheat, and either keep it hidden (therefore creating a barrier between partners through lies), or tell the other partner and have to come to terms with what in our society is considered the greatest betrayal. Of course, we also live in a society where jealousy is considered to be the worst of the worst emotions and people seem to think that it’s an emotion that legitimizes all sorts of deplorable behaviour – i.e. destroying other people’s property, physically hurting them, harassing them and all sorts of other absolutely unacceptable things.

Now there are two ways I think we could go with this. We could say (a) people are clearly not naturally monogamous and through an acceptance of non-monogamy and by discussing alternative ways of being with one’s partners, we could come to a solution that enables people to have the sexual relationships they desire while simultaneously keeping the foundations of the primary relationship strong and healthy with full disclosure and honesty. Or (b), which I think is more realistic in a society where most people probably wouldn’t be capable of getting their jealousy under control or sharing their partners, people need to accept that relationships take work, and that while we do live in a consumer culture where everything else comes and goes and is constantly upgraded to the newest model, one’s life partner should be that: a partner for life. If you are willing to make that commitment in the first place, then you should take to heart just how difficult it may be at times… and rewarding at others. That said, obviously any relationship that becomes abusive needs to be dealt with and no person should stay in a physically or emotionally harmful situation without seeking help.

There is a really interesting article written by Bonnie Zare about “Sentimentalized Adultery” in which she describes the way that the film industry sensationalizes cheating and gives it a sort of legitimacy through portraying adulterers in a sympathetic light.

(Little non-sequitur: I was just shocked to notice that at the top of my gmail inbox there’s an ad that says: Date Lonely Married Women – www.LonelyCheatingWives.com – Date Lonely Housewives in Your Area Instantly. How absolutely awful/telling is that?)

Anyhow… where was I? Yes, so Bonnie Zare’s article looks at the reasons why adultery has become more acceptable in recent years. In contrast to what has happening in the mid-twentieth century, when all adulterers in film were portrayed as villains or seductresses, nowadays, there are entire films based on, and tv series that follow adulterous couples who the audience feel sympathy for and are cheering on. She notes that there are a few changes in society that have caused the shift from “adultery as tragedy to adultery as a solution.” These are:

• the liberalization of sexual mores
• the social acceptance of divorce (which goes hand in hand with the relaxation of ideas surrounding adultery)
• the success of feminism, which aided women’s material and psychological independence
• higher expectations of marriage’s emotional rewards
• birth-control, which enables people to try out partners without necessarily having to commit long-term due to children
• the ever-growing isolation in people’s daily lives due to long commutes, easy tv stimulation, dual career commitments and lack of community
• contemporary consumer culture which has overtaken family values and says that “whatever you have is never enough.”

Zare goes on to focus on this final point, which I also think is a most interesting way to view the prevalence and acceptance of adultery and why it happens. In my last relationship we stated early on that if we were to find someone better, then we would talk about it and that would be that. It was as though it was the only legitimate way for us to break up — if there was truly a better option out there, then of course, it was fine for us to switch tracks. I never really thought about it as anything bad (and I still don’t because we never made a long term commitment) but it does absolutely fall into this idea of consumer culture where if there is something better, more exciting, more interesting, more titillating, then out goes the old, in comes the new. I’m not going to say that this is wrong, because there are lots of relationships that do need to end, and perhaps should have ended long before the newer model comes in because the partners are used to one another and don’t want to be alone, or are codependent or whatever other myriad factors exist. But that’s not really the point. It’s just really interesting that people are willing to stick with what they have until they see something more exciting, and then sometimes regardless of the fact that that exciting new playmate might not be an ideal match, will risk everything they have for some momentary action. (Not to draw myself into this too much, but I can happily say that in my recent life-altering episode, I absolutely did find someone who is helping me to find myself and is, at this stage, 100% better for me. YAY!)

Another point that Zare speaks to in discussing The English Patient is the fact that sometimes the adulterous actors aren’t necessarily unhappy in their present relationship. In this film, the female character who has an affair is actually happily married. There doesn’t seem to be anything to do with her relationship that drives her to this transgression, it’s really something that happens in the heat of the moment, when she (Katharine) and Almasy, her lover, happen to get stuck in a sandstorm and discover that they have certain things in common, including a connection and passion that neither seems to be able to deny. This is why, perhaps a little simplistically, it seems sensible to me that polyamory could be a good way to go for many people because it takes an understanding of love as something that isn’t a zero-sum game, that we can love more than one person at once and that desire for another has nothing to do with the person you’re with, but simply shows that you are attracted to or feel a connection with another person. Of course, it’s a whole lot more complicated than this, and I think that if you are in a committed relationship, then talking about options and being honest and open about attractions to other people, regardless of the jealousy it may stir up, is the best way to be. Oftentimes, if we’re honest, then the transgressions don’t happen because weighing up the different factors with a person you love makes everything a little clearer. And relationships aren’t easy — there is a certain amount of work that goes into committing to someone for a lifetime, or just for a period of one’s life, and having open channels of communication is the most important thing.

Ooh…my brain’s starting to feel like it’s going to melt. I’ll have to get back to this later. Nap time.