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Today, it’s rather unusual for us to make a choice “for life” – no matter what it comes down to. Perhaps partnership and short ties are no longer so incompatible?
Is it possible to spend your whole life with one person? Should the sexual impulse be considered a “crime against fidelity”? Is it possible to harmoniously develop as a person within the framework of one permanent couple, and is it not worth agreeing that a loved one needs feelings, experiences, passions … with others in order to stay alive?
Such new questions are posed before us by our egocentric time. And for many it is not easy to resolve the (imaginary) contradiction between love for oneself and for another. Our “I” becomes more and more dear to us: for some it may be a synonym for egoism, but for others it is personal freedom. One thing is certain: today more than ever before, each of us is free to manage his intimate life. Wanting to get “everything at once”, many want to love without obligation and do not consider fidelity an indispensable component of love.
Other model
We are becoming more and more individualistic, which means that the old model of society, which the sociologist Alain Ehrenberg called the “predestination society” ceases to operate: one partner, one job, one home for life.
The world is changing rapidly, and life expectancy is growing – this explains why our contemporary can go through a whole series of marriages during his life. On the other hand, more and more often there are people living in two or even three unions at once. This covert polygamy is born out of the need to combine the stability of a marriage with the thrill of extramarital life.
Characteristically, the attitude towards infidelity has changed more among women: for many, infidelity is no longer a taboo – according to sociologists, every fifth woman actually cheats in marriage.
“The attitude of men and women to adultery is now becoming about the same,” says sexologist Gerard Lele. “For centuries, women have been under strong moral pressure, especially condemning female adultery, and this has prevented them from satisfying their sexual curiosity and seeking pleasure on the side.”
We very often mistakenly hope that the other person will give us everything that we lack in life.
Today, every tenth woman has a positive attitude towards extramarital affairs, and every third considers them unacceptable. The majority (57%) tend to think that anything can happen in life, but they do not approve of infidelity as such.
In another study, 62% of respondents of both sexes expressed their attitude towards an unfaithful wife in this way: “There are different situations, and each specific case must be judged separately.” This means that today we choose (in)fidelity based on personal criteria rather than cultural roles.
Service providers
The consumer society inspires us: we need to satisfy all our desires, any self-restraint is the enemy of our happiness.
“People are increasingly acting on the basis of the pleasure principle,” says Inna Khamitova, a family psychotherapist. – To drown out existential anxiety, disappointment, they begin to consume. And the other also becomes a commodity.”
Dissatisfaction can arise in a couple for various reasons: due to a weakening of desire, due to difficulties in relationships, lack of sexual understanding. However, infidelity is often born not just out of discontent, but out of a feeling of inner emptiness that our permanent partner is not able to fill.
“We very often mistakenly hope that another person will give us everything that we lack in life,” continues Inna Khamitova. – When a partner fails to meet our needs, we start looking for another “service provider”.
To come back
“No one can guarantee that they will not succumb to temptation,” says psychoanalyst Daniel Siboney. “Because to promise such is, in a certain sense, to promise to stop being alive. Temptation is one of the forces at work in our lives. At the risk of leading us astray, temptation shows us that we have our own path. In some ways, it even helps us find our way, reminding us that there is what we have chosen, and there is something else – and this circumstance should not be underestimated. The contrast between connections “on the side” and relationships with a permanent partner allows us to redefine what is unique and unique in our life with the person to whom we return, whom we choose again and again – with our life partner, with our beloved.
License to change
“What connects me with my husband? – says 40-year-old Lina. – Since our meeting, we have been rollerblading or skiing together in the park – every weekend! We are united by a son. Sunset in the field – we look at it from the windows of the house that we built together. A deep friendship that I don’t have with anyone else. If I destroyed it, I would destroy myself.
But still, we take risks and allow ourselves sexual freedom. Why? Because for me to seduce is an acute pleasure, it is energy, drive. I’m a musician, and I get similar feelings from a good concert. But my husband and I expect maximum delicacy from each other: jealousy is a difficult feeling, and it’s better not to wake her up again.
“Supporters of“ love without fidelity ”want to enjoy a new experience without sacrificing the existing relationship,” says Inna Khamitova. – There is an impression that they are paying for the choice of a life partner once made with frustration that they are not able to endure. A license to cheat alleviates the stress of spending your whole life with one person.”
New frontiers
But even those couples in which partners allow each other to have sex on the side want to keep their “sanctuary”, where outsiders do not have access. Often under the ban is the appearance of the house of lovers and mistresses.
Art historian Catherine Millet talks with shocking frankness about sex with multiple partners in her book (The Sexual Life of Catherine M., Limbus Press, 2004), but for her there is a strict taboo: “A shared bedroom, a marital bed are under an absolute ban. The idea that I dry myself with a towel that some woman who has been secretly in my house has passed between her legs, or that Jacques used the same towel as a guest whose visit he does not know, leads I am terrified, as if we have an epidemic of leprosy here.
The burden of freedom
“I can’t bear the thought that I hurt my partner” – this phrase, which can be heard from unfaithful spouses, shows how difficult it is to be unfaithful. Their fears are not in vain: according to the Institute of Psychology at the University of Göttingen (Germany), the news of a partner’s infidelity causes not only mental trauma, but also physical suffering: insomnia, difficulty concentrating, and fears.
“Living with guilt and trying to save another from suffering is a double challenge for which one who does not exclude infidelity must be ready,” Inna Khamitova believes. To cope with this feeling, you need to be clear about the state of the relationship in a couple and understand what we are looking for outside of marriage. But, going “to the side” for what we lack, do we deprive our own couple of attention and care that could strengthen it?
“They always leave me…”
Some get cheated on, thrown over and over again. But maybe they unconsciously … desire it? This is how psychoanalysis explains these recurring histories.
“It’s horrible. This is the third time I’ve been dumped – it’s always the same thing!” We have all heard this phrase at least once. More often it is said by women who find it easier than men to admit their misfortunes in their personal lives – and we all know what conclusions they draw from this experience. What happened becomes either a confirmation of a congenital flaw (“I’m a fool, everyone deceives me”), or a manifestation of fate that cannot be avoided (“And so it always is!”).
Such confidence is so deeply ingrained that it is pointless to prove to these women (and men) that they are not really what they think, or to promise that everything will work out tomorrow. The only thing a psychoanalyst can do is to share what he knows from his experience. If a person is thrown over and over again, neither fate nor a birth defect has nothing to do with it. This is a manifestation of the unconscious, a consequence of the repetition of the situation.
Oddly enough, every time we ourselves force ourselves to quit, because we involuntarily and unconsciously strive to be abandoned. Why? Because in this way a person recreates the most important relationships of his personal history. These relations once led to the fact that between the “other” and “leaves”, “the other” and “disappears” an equal sign arose.
Sometimes this is a very old story: “my mother threw me on my grandmother’s shoulders…”, “when my sister was born, my father stopped being interested in me”, “I adored my grandfather; I was four when he died, and I immediately felt abandoned”, “until the age of five I had a nanny, but my parents suddenly took and fired her” – and so on and so forth. The model in which “the other stops loving me” is always hidden in the depths of our childhood. It often happens that, only by groping again for the scar from this first betrayal and re-experiencing the old pain, we can finally escape from that world where the other always justifies the worst expectations.
The logic of the unconscious
The desire to increase one’s self-esteem by looking at oneself through the eyes of a new partner, to experience stronger sensations, or to pay tribute to one’s epicureanism – such motives are called by those for whom infidelity is compatible with love.
“But the unconscious has its own reasons, about which the mind has no idea,” emphasizes psychoanalyst Lola Komarova. – Perhaps, in fact, a woman is looking for an ideal partner, an imaginary father figure, unattainable and inaccessible. And the unfaithful husband is trying to resolve the conflict between the figures of “mother” and “whore”. Here, infidelity has only one task: to separate love and eroticism.
However, sometimes being unfaithful to another may turn out to be the only possible path to being true to yourself — a unique personality with varied and sometimes conflicting desires. Loyalty to oneself, reconciling needs and ideals: doesn’t this look like a new form of freedom that is open to everyone today?
Freedom together
The motto is “Take everything from life!” good for those who are still looking for a partner, says family psychotherapist Inna Khamitova. The couple’s life is developing according to different rules.
“At first glance, a free marriage, when a man and a woman agree on the right to have sexual relations on the side, looks attractive: even having created a family, partners can afford anything, try, taste, feel … But why don’t they want the same or can not find in marriage?
If the partner is looking for more and more adventures on the side, the couple loses (or does not have time to appear) the special intimacy necessary for a marriage to be satisfying. Close, trusting relationships in a couple are impossible without deep contact between the two.
Is it possible to create such an intimate connection with several people at once? I doubt. It makes sense to search and experiment before marriage. A vow of fidelity (however we understand it) means that the partners want to build relationships together as a couple, invest themselves in them entirely. Of course, marriage for life is a risk, a bet with an unknown outcome. But the reward for those who take risks seriously can be real happiness: freedom together.”