The Modern Model
Both fields also experienced a revolution in the last century or two, with old ideas being replaced by new conceptions of how things work. For marriage, what was once a mostly economic and societal arrangement is now a romantic one, and is subject (at least in the West) to the “Modern Model of Marriage”.
The modern model goes something like this: a couple meets, feels strong chemistry, discovers shared interests, and starts having sex. The next step is emotional intimacy, as the partners are expected to become each other’s best friends and confidants. Next comes economic partnership: living together, making and spending money together, getting ready for parenthood. A spiritual dimension is added as each partner finds meaning and transcendence in their shared love. Finally, the wedding vows lock in the final requirement: that all of the above will now be provided exclusively within the couple, forever.This exclusivity is meant to provide security, which has to take precedence in the trade-off against the other benefits of marriage. A union that scores a B grade on chemistry, engagement, sex, meaning, intimacy, and economics with an A+ on security is considered a great marriage, about as good as one can hope for. We accept that couples may face financial troubles, a drifting apart of interests and hobbies, decreased intimacy, and lackluster sex. But it’s an oxymoron to say: “my marriage is great, there’s just a bit of infidelity”.
And yet, as Esther Perel quips:
Infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy.(...) The State of Affairs is a close inspection of the reality of marriage and adultery. For the most part it relies not on p<0.05 studies but on Perel’s three-decade career as a therapist in a dozen countries. The diversity of perspectives in the book is its great strength; it does not offer a single Theory of Relationships and is skeptical of all such attempts. Instead, Perel explores how affairs happen, what it means for all three people involved, and what we can learn from them about the foundation of human desire, fear, sexuality, and love.
The book is subtitled “Rethinking Infidelity”, but I read it as a primer for rethinking relationships more broadly. The multitude of affairs recounted in the book happen in good marriages and bad, new marriages and old, gay and straight, Morrocan and Swiss. Combined, the point to myriad structural weaknesses of the modern model, to the point where launching into a relationship guided by it seems as reckless as sailing into the ocean on a leaky ship. (...)
Perel explains that infidelity today is not a threat to our economic or physical security, but to our emotional security. It’s a threat to our very identity.
At so many weddings, starry-eyed dreamers recite a list of vows, swearing to be everything to each other, from soul mate to lover to teacher to therapist.It is a grand ambition, and infidelity tells the betrayed partner that they failed at it. A prerequisite for romantic marriage is succumbing to the illusion that one can make their partner happy like no one else can, that the union is unique and special. The marriage ceremony fuses this illusion into one’s identity, reinforced by the social proof of friends and family offering their tearful congratulations. Infidelity shatters this illusion in a moment.
Affairs can also unmoor the betrayed partner from their own past. Realizing that they lived a lie forces them to reassess their entire personal history for the length of the relationship. The loss of personal history is also experienced as a loss of identity.
The trauma caused by affairs is real, as both the cheater and the betrayed know. Infidelity certainly deserves moral condemnation. And yet, Perel suggests that a focus on moralizing isn’t the most productive reaction to the discovery of an affair.
First, she considers cheating in the context of all other marital misdemeanors. The book recounts the stories of people who cheated on spouses who for years ignored them, bullied and belittled them, emotionally abused them, sacrificed their relationships for work or gambling or crystal meth. It is strange that in all those cases we support the right of the abused partner to find love and comfort with someone else, but only on the condition that they first go through the drawn-out and potentially ruinous process of official divorce. If someone seeks an escape from loneliness and misery before the final papers are signed we turn them from victim to villain.
More importantly, the more moral opprobrium a society has for cheating, the harder life becomes for the betrayed partner.
