I'm thinking back to last week, when we were watching Love Actually during the girls' reunion. In one scene, Emma Thompson recognizes that her husband, Alan Rickman, is the object of his secretary's advances and not far from succumbing to them. She says something to him like "That (whatever her name is) is very pretty. Be careful about that." Jess turned to the rest of us and said, "Can you imagine having to say that to your husband?" I realized then that, able to imagine it or not, I actually expect to say something like that to my husband at some point. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, I instead expect to confront the issue of the difficulty of monogamy for a man head-on, and possibly give him Lady Chatterly's husband-esque permission to find satisfaction elsewhere, given guidelines I'm almost comfortable with. Is this really weird? Yes! I think it is! But am I in any way wrong? Am I pessimistic or just being bizarrely realistic?
I quote a Dan Savage column from October 19, 2004, "You know what? Sooner or later everyone gets cheated on. Some researchers put the odds of one or both partners in a long-term relationship cheating at 80 percent. Toss in the likelihood of being cheated on in a short-term relationship, IDEAS, and the odds that you will be cheated on sooner or later climb to 100 percent. It sucks, sister, but there's not a lot you can do about it. " Considering I plan on having relatively few long-term partners (if the past is any indication of the future), I think that if someone will cheat on me, it will probably be my husband. Savage goes on to advise people to "be in denial about the likelihood, if not the certainty, that some guy, someday, is going to cheat on you." I'm not much one for denial, although I'm happy to practice it when something bugs me on a really deep level, but right now this is still hypothetical and not at all personal.
I know I'll feel differently about the inevitability of adultery when I'm actually in a long-term relationship. After dating Mike, I know I have more of a jealous streak than I'd like to admit. No, Mike didn't cheat on me, he was a very good boyfriend, but when he'd even mention that another girl was cool, I would start to just barely fume. And like the girly-girl that I am, the emotional connection is much more important to me than the sexual one. If I were to arrange for my (future, hypothetical) husband's adultery, it would certainly be something anonymous, with prostitutes or one night stands or something. And lots of protection.
It's a somewhat grim outlook for the future. Possibly all the grimmer because I could never, ever see myself having the desire to cheat on someone I was in a decent relationship with. I don't know, kids, comment on this one if you have anything to say. I'm hungry for lunch.
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To respond to Matt's comment (yay for people commenting):
I certainly didn't mean to insult consensual non-monogamy. It sounds like a wonderful option for people who want it. But I would guess that one of the things that makes your poly relationships work so well is that both partners have some interest in hooking up with other people. I really, really don't. Sure, I acknowledge that this could change over time if I became more comfortable with sex, etc, but I'm operating under the assumption that I will never want to have sex outside of my relationship. I'm just not interested in hooking up with people...I can't remember a time when there were more than two people in the world I'd be willing to hook up with...and usually at least one of those two was gay. Never was there a case where I didn't know the person very well.
I don't plan on sexual fidelity being the solitary "glue" of any future relationships. It's just something I want out of a partner, and we're living in a time when it's not considered unreasonable to want it.
The post then deals with the question of whether it is unreasonable to want it, and since such a high percentage of people cheat on their partners, the answer seems to be "yes." The question then is what concessions I'm willing to make, and the grudging answer is "some." I'm somewhat saddened by it. That's my instinct...I think of a husband who sleeps with other women and I feel sad. Perhaps that's caused by unhealthy social factors, but it's still the case. I suppose ideally I would acknowledge future non-monogamy of a partner and not feel sad. But I can't. So I don't.
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