Leslie very kindly sends me a link to this Carolyn Hax column that ran in the Minnesota paper. Carolyn responds to a young man who has broken off a relationship with his girlfriend over her refusal to give up her (platonic) friends of the opposite sex. After some general remarks about the importance of honesty, Hax opines:
…you were hiding, too, behind that ridiculous opposite-sex boycott. You were hiding from the very real risk every couple faces, that one of you will fall for someone else. People who love and respect each other do so not in a vacuum, but in a world populated by others — some of whom, inevitably, will prove tempting.
If your relationship can’t survive that, it can’t survive, period, no matter how thoroughly you scrub each other’s calendars of every conceivable risk.
Emphasis in the original.
“No matter how thoroughly you scrub each other’s calendars of every conceivable risk” is a terrific line, and I am going to borrow it regularly. Hax is on to something very important: despite our best and worst efforts, we can never — thankfully — control what an adult romantic partner will do. Part of being in a real relationship, a real marriage, is honoring the omnipresent possibility that your partner could make a different choice. For some, that reality is too terrifying to contemplate, so they stay in denial; for others, that reality is so terrifying that it turns them into over-controlling snoops. And for others, that reality is part of the risk of what it means to love someone. We cannot be vulnerable to the possibility of joy without being concomitantly vulnerable to betrayal; it is axiomatic that intimacy and risk are nearly perfectly correlated. To the extent that you are unwilling to take on the latter, you assure yourself of not having the former.
My wife is somewhere in central Africa at the moment. A classic ESTP and a successful businesswoman, she travels a great deal (sometimes without me). She’s beautiful and gregarious, and every day she meets and works closely with handsome men and gorgeous women in what is our town’s most famous industry. She has excellent boundaries, or so I believe; the ring she wears is an outer symbol of a profound inner commitment, one that I am confident radiates forth from her. Mutual friends have said to me that they have seen my wife in social situations (such as “girlfriend weekends” in Las Vegas) where I wasn’t present, and that she was exuberant, extroverted, and — in her words and actions and aura — evidently married. I like hearing things like that.
My wife could be meeting all sorts of men on her trip: hot young European businessmen in the British Airways T1 lounge, dynamic Ugandan tour guides, impassioned volunteers with NGOs in Kigali or Kampala. Some of these men will be cuter than I am, younger than I am, better muscled than I am, wittier than I am, and so forth. But they won’t be the unique package of Hugo-ness to which my beloved has pledged her fidelity and her love, and I trust in that love and in her good judgment.
I meet all sorts of attractive people in my world as well. I’d like to think I exude a certain level of married-ness (uxoriousness?). I was a pretty damn good flirt in my younger years, and I consciously avoid being flirtatious with women (or men) these days. Though I always wear a wedding ring in public unless I’m working out, I am fairly certain I project a clear “taken” energy even when that David Yurman band is not on my left ring finger.
Better than most, I know marriages can end. A promise given on a wedding day is not, in and of itself, surety of everlasting faithfulness. For me, fidelity is a choice. It was a choice I made when I first decided to stop seeing other people and be “exclusive” with she who is now my wife. It was a choice I made again when I asked her to marry me, a choice I made when we were married, and a choice I make day after day after day.
The other day, I was in a coffee shop I don’t normally go to, playing with my iPhone, which I still don’t understand. An attractive woman near my age also had her iPhone out, and we started talking about our mutual frustration that the “new” model was coming so soon after we had purchased the soon-to-be-outdated ones. I was getting ready to go to Pilates, so I was in workout clothes with no ring on my finger. At one point, I caught “that vibe” from the woman in Seattle’s Best Coffee, the vibe that suggests at least some initial interest. And I made the decision that comes blessedly easily to me these days: I dropped a reference to my wife into my next sentence (remarking about my beloved’s far greater technological facility.) The tall brunette deftly picked up on it, and in that unspoken and yet obvious way, withdrew “the vibe” without the slightest hint of incivility. We chatted for a few minutes more, and off I went.
Bottom line: I make choices every damn day to honor my marriage. I have other options, my wife (younger and lovelier than I) has far more. My happiness and security are not predicated on controlling who it is that she talks to. My goal is to take all of my sexual energy and direct it towards her, and no one else: that means fidelity in fantasy as well as in body. She has told me she does the same, and I believe her. It would devastate me if I found out it were otherwise, but I am smart enough to know that joy and growth are contingent upon two things: my own trustworthiness on one hand, and my radical willingness to be open to devastation and betrayal on the other.
Carolyn Hax nailed this one; brava, sister woman.
It’s great to hear such healthy sentiments from both Carolyn Hax and yourself, Hugo. Thanks for this post.
Excellent post. Here’s my take on choice: the fact that we have it makes it so much more meaningful than if our calendars (or our temples) were “scrubbed.” This was something I meditated on during a Lenten retreat this year: we have free will do feel/act as we wish towards God. That makes it more meaningful when we choose Him–I mean, isn’t the idea that if He wanted, He really COULD keep us on a short enough leash to FORCE us to love/worship? Shouldn’t the same apply to relationships? My own relationship is primarily long distance; my boyfriend is a charming and handsome man who, I’m sure, could find any number of dates on a Friday night. The fact that he chooses me, and I don’t make him? So much better than if I had his feelings and actions at my command.
Great post, Hugo. I would just add that I think that it is particularly important for men to be prepared for the level of interest they will encounter when they travel to certain countries. Many men aren’t used to being objects of interest and this leaves some of them vulnerable to infidelity or promiscuity. (Most American men, unless they are movie stars or pro athletes, aren’t used to saying “no” to very attractive women several times a day.) Much of Asia and Russia stand out as places that require a bit of mental preparation in order for American men to “stay classy.”
“…[A]s a group, men with sex on their brains settled for a less lucrative bargain, suggesting they were more impulsive and valued immediate gratification more than the controls.”
We are fallible, and must make moral decisions that take our fallibility into account — the 7th of Kohlberg’s 6 stages of moral reasoning.
Or, in a more Biblical reference frame, we are free, but using that freedom isn’t always wise.
Where does this propensity for mistakes come into the moral calculus? If a person has a bad track record, does the partner have the right to ask for more restrained behavior, or is that something that can only be offered, not asked for?
I have some difficulty imagining it being totally non-negotiable. What do you think?
Rob - yes, we should make decisions that take OUR OWN fallibility into account. And we should seek out partners who are wise enough to do so for themselves. But we can’t use our judgments of our partners weaknesses to justify trying to control what they are exposed to.
If your partner has a “bad track record” then you should either 1) trust that they have learned and grown from their experiences, making them more aware of their own fallibility and more inclined to act accordingly or 2) determine whether this fallibility is something you’re willing to live with and love them for who they are.
You can’t replace insight and wisdom with rules imposed by a romantic partner.
I didn’t say imposed. I said negotiated. I don’t think that discussion and negotiation should be impermissible, and I can’t believe that’s what you’re saying.
If you can’t talk and reach some sort of agreement, a relationship would devolve into a silent morass with each side attempting to be “mind-readers.” That rarely works.
I believe there is an intermediate range between “trust blindly” (which, in with HIV and HPV (we’re both HPV negative) could be lethal) and “leave.”
Strangely, in my own relationship, we trust each other implicitly on this topic because we are willing to negotiate. Were Nancy to ask me to stop being friends with someone, I would do so willingly if it were still necessary after a frank discussion with Nancy. She would do the same for me. And so we don’t need to.
I am friends with most of my ex-girlfriends — close enough that we will, on occasion, still say “I love you” to each other. (And sometimes, their husbands and I will say “I love you” to each other, too, though usually when I’m getting sent off to the 9/11 morgue or they just had someone die or something).
If Nancy became concerned about my relationship with one of these friends — or even a male or lesbian friend, we would talk about it. If her questions could not be answered to her satisfaction, we would find limits that would make her comfortable. My relationship with my wife is the most important human relationship I have, and thus would take precedence. She would do the same for me.
In practice, the only limitation in friendships (one we arrived at while dating) is that in any relationship other than a professional one (she worked on a secret nuclear project and then switched to being a therapist and I was a paramedic and peer counselor), anything I discuss with any friend must be something I can and do discuss with her. This has its uses: there are times when it’s difficult to discuss something with Nancy butt I can discuss it with a friend — which forces me to discuss it with Nancy.
The only time we’ve ever needed to negotiate a relationship was my relationship with a church. She felt the relationship was hurting me (something I could not admit to myself) and asked me to pull back somewhat. I didn’t want to, but I did. And you see, that’s the advantage — she saw something I didn’t and was able to help me.
Like I said, we are fallible. One may see something the other doesn’t. We;ve got each other’s six. And we’re Stargate SG-1 fans…
We find that trying to guess what each other would have us do is where we get into trouble in our relationship. So anything is open for discussion and negotiation — excepting our commitment to each other.
Rob, I think you’re wandering off on this. We’re not talking about a situation where the girlfriend had a bad track record, or the boyfriend suggested that there was something setting off his radar (such as one of the male friends being inappropriate and the girlfriend pooh-poohing her boyfriend’s concerns). “I want you to stop hanging with those guys because Frank keeps grabbing your ass and you don’t seem to think it’s any big deal” is way different than “I know you would never cheat on me but I don’t like you being with other men when I’m not around.”
In a relationship, I don’t think you (generic-you, not you, Rob) have the right to ask your partner to limit themselves purely to feed your need for control. Which is what insecurity really is.
Rob,
You’re also changing the subject from dating relationships to the relationship you have with your wife. You say, “My relationship with my wife is the most important human relationship I have.” Well, that makes your description of how you would approach these issues make sense. However, all of the discussion up to this point has been about DATING relationships, and pretty early-on dating relationships at that.
I read Carolyn Hax frequently, and I know she would agree that if you’re in a relationship where your partner has no problem with most of your friends of the opposite sex but raises a problem with THIS ONE FRIEND, then you should listen. But a partner who has a problem with all friendships with members of the opposite sex (or a whole category like “co-workers”) is insecure and controlling and trouble.
The people who are raising these questions are trying to DECIDE whether the person they’re dating should become the most important relationship they have or not. And before you really know a person, it’s really dangerous to make them the most important relationship you have, to the extent that you will cut off other (non-sexual) relationships to please them.