This post first appeared in January 2006, and it reflects a more conservative view than I now hold today.
I’ve generally held in recent years that sex outside of the context of "commitment" falls short of both a feminist and a Christian mark. Several of my secular feminist allies (and MRA opponents) take issue with that conclusion, and others expressed some curiosity about what it was I meant by "commitment" — an admittedly pliable term that can be used to describe a very wide variety of arrangements.
I see sexual "commitments" as appearing on a ladder — or a hierarchical continuum — rather in a simple dichotomy. The most basic commitments we make are to certain principles that do not create obligations to one specific person. The obvious example here is the commitment to be honest. Even the most enthusiastic defenders of a relaxed sexual ethic tend to be firm proponents of the honesty principle, and the moral obligation to be clear with one’s partner(s) about one’s intentions and expectations.
But rising up the "commitment" ladder, we encounter other essential virtues. Here, the commitments shift from being general principles that help us deal with the world (like honesty), and become more focused on the person with whom we are sharing physical intimacy. The obvious components of a commitment here are concern for a specific partner’s pleasure, safety, and emotional well-being. Again, most of my friends who believe that non-monogamous sexual relationships can be ethical stress that in their encounters and exchanges, they take responsibility for these things too.
I would never suggest that caring and concern only manifest themselves in enduring monogamous relationships. It is theoretically possible to be kind to and honest with any number of people at the same time; I’ve seen it done, often with aplomb. But despite recognizing the possibility for virtue in the transitory, the fleeting, and even the promiscuous, I’m convinced that all such relationships fail to reach the highest level on the ladder of commitment.
I’ve come to believe that the most important commitment we can make to our partners is the commitment to accompany them through all of the myriad short-term and long-term emotional, physical, and spiritual consequences of our sexual relationship. Though sharing responsibility for contraception is better than ignoring the matter altogether, and caring about another’s pleasure is preferable to using their body selfishly, most modern, secular codes of sexual ethics fail to account for the enduring effects of intense physical intimacy.
I am convinced that whether we acknowledge it or not, our sexual activity transforms us and affects us on the most profound of levels. When we open our bodies to others, we frequently are stunned by our own reactions — or those of our partners. We all know countless stories of people who end up falling in love with the person who was just supposed to be a fling, just as we know many stories of folks who fail to live up to their promises to love and support each other for life. Few of us, no matter how great our self-awareness or vast our experience, can confidently predict how each of our sexual partners will react to our love-making. And let me be very clear: I see both Christianity and feminism as demanding that each of us take responsibility for how our behavior touches the lives of others.
We can’t use verbal honesty as a means of avoiding that responsibility, either. For example, when we say to a prospective partner "no strings attached", but they end up feeling "attached" after we sleep together, we have incurred an obligation. To say "this is just a fling" with one’s tongue while making other promises with one’s body falls short of the mark of commitment. Our mouths are not the only part of our body we use to communicate, after all — we must take responsibility for how our actions are perceived as well as how our words are heard. And few among us can be completely confident in every instance how are actions in the bedroom will affect the hearts and minds of those with whom we choose to share our bodies.
At its best and highest, real commitment is the promise to be there to work through all of the ongoing emotional, spiritual, and physical consequences of sexual intimacy. Children are one obvious consequence, but emotional transformation is surely another. If one wants to get to the highest level of relational ethics it’s not enough, I’m convinced, to be a brief and fleeting agent of change or growth in the life of a sexual partner. We have to be ready and willing to continue to be present in the life of a lover, just as one’s lover is called to continue to be present for us.
Again, I’d rather folks be candid than not; I’d rather folks use contraception than not; I’d rather folks be willing to care for the immediate repercussions of intimacy than abandon each other. Any degree of caring or candor, no matter how small, is an improvement on recklessness, selfishness, and dishonesty. But in the end, I’m convinced that the highest form of commitment, and the one towards which we all ought to aspire on ethical grounds alone, regardless of our religious beliefs, is the commitment to be a loving, reliable, and enduring presence in the lives of those with whom we have chosen to be sexually involved.
Great article - just a quick question. I understand that you take a more liberal view today than you wrote about in this article, having read your ‘Sexual Ethics and Christian Faith’ series. I was wondering if you have changed your views at all (either becoming more liberal or more conservative) from those espoused in the ‘Sexual Ethics and Christian Faith’ posts in the year or so since you posted them, and in what way?
That series is much closer to where I am now. Lots happened to my thinking in the two and a half years in between. But some of what I said about commitment in this post still holds water, I think.
You either have no fault divorce or you don’t. There is no such an inbetween.
You proposition is nothing new. We used to call marriage a “commitment”. Until death do us apart. Now adays it is more like, until “I feel unfulfilled” or because “he does not understand me” or “I’m just not that into you.”
What are some of to make the things that happened to make you change your mind?
I see this as the difference between “should” and “can”. The old article starts off saying “I’ve generally held in recent years that sex outside of the context of ‘commitment’ falls short of both a feminist and a Christian mark”, and that seems to be saying that feminists and Christians think people ought to do better. Undoubtedly both groups would say a permanent, committed relationship is a fine thing if both parties want it and stay true to it, but it’s not necessarily better than any other relationship, or series of relationships. Not everyone wants to settle down with one person “till death do us part”, and not everyone should try. If people are being honest with each other and if their expectations match, who’s to tell them that they’re wrong?
As for “the things that happened to make you change your mind” I wonder if a few years ago, Mr Schwyzer was a newlywed, if that was when he wrote the piece, and thought that everyone should find the same haven from life’s tempests that he had found (cough, cough). Now maybe he’s feeling more liberal, and accepting that there are other paths to happiness, or that trying to force what shouldn’t be, makes things worse. After all, he’s also had relationships that seemed good and turned out not to be. Perhaps he’ll tell.
Who’s “we”? You’re reciting a line from what I believe is a Christian marriage vow. (Don’t mean to shock you, but Christians did not invent marriage, nor have they patented it.) No-fault divorce has to do with the grounds and proof required for the dissolution of a civil marriage and has nothing to do with religion.
mythago
I got married a second time around in a civil ceremony only and if I remember correctly those words were used. They patterned the ceremony on Christian ceremony; they just left out the god part.
You are exactly on the mark about no fault divorce. It is a legal, not a religious term; at least any religions I know of. One party can unilaterally break a marriage contract without any consequences making the commitment part meaningless once the parties decide to divorce. Hugo was dead on when he said that the term commitment was rather vague. Vague is not what you want in a contract, marriage or otherwise.
One party can unilaterally break a marriage contract without any consequences making the commitment part meaningless once the parties decide to divorce.
I wouldn’t call it “meaningless,” even if it’s not the same meaning as the “till death do us part” one that’s promised in Christian rites. The legal meaning of the commitment of marriage is that, in my case, should I choose to divorce Joel, I: A) have to wait six months (mileage varies here, depending on what state you’re in and other factors), and B) have to give him half the property we acquired during our marriage (with certain specific exemptions), even though I earned the bulk of it. Also, C) there’s the possibility that I could be obliged to pay him alimony for a while (I think that’s rare, though others may know better than me here). In legal terms, this seems to me to constitute a commitment that’s different in a meaningful way from what I’d have made if we’d lived together without getting married.
Re: You are exactly on the mark about no fault divorce. It is a legal, not a religious term; at least any religions I know of.
For what it’s worth, Islam permits no-fault divorce, at least for men (some Christians in Egypt apparently convert to Islam ‘for the day’ when they want to get a divorce). Some traditional cultures in Africa and the Pacific Islands, I think, before the advent of Christianity, were quite liberal about divorce.
The idea that marriage is indissoluble is, I think, pretty much unique to Christianity. You can regard that either as a unique strength or an unique weakness.
The legal vagaries and specific procedure of marriage and divorce seem to be very much beside the point here.
Going through my own divorce at the moment, I understand fully what Hugo is saying. No matter how it ends, neither person is going to be the same coming out as they were going in. That period in your lives that you shared becomes a sine qua non for what follows. Even when it ends under the bitterest and most recriminating terms, you can still care and feel some sense of investment in that person and for the dreams and desires that you once shared for each other.
Aside from the grief and loss that comes when a relationship like that ends, one of the most sensitive spots that lingers, maybe never goes away, is the sense of responsibility you can have for that person, whether justified or not, whether they ever want anything to do with you again or not. You still wonder how they’re doing since you parted, and what responsibility you have for where they go after. That connection lasts.