Fidelity: An Issue of the Brain, not the Genitals
Fidelity: An Issue for the Head, not the Genitals
By Loren A. Olson MD (From Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, a Psychiatrist’s Own Story, due out March 10, 2111.
The default setting for marriage is an exclusive sexual and romantic relationship throughout the marriage, but apparently it is difficult for most humans, gay or straight, to maintain. What renders outside sexual relationships damaging is not the sex, but the secrecy, deception and lack of agreement.
Gay men frequently have been targeted as having deficient moral standards about monogamy in comparison to heterosexual couples. Some monogamous gay couples experience a relationship that feels too dyadic, too narrow, with no room for even male platonic friendships. It appears, however, that the difference between gay and straight as it relates to fidelity may not be all that different.
Pamela Druckerman in Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (2007), said that 80% of respondents indicated they thought infidelity was wrong, but most of those who got caught cheating didn’t think of themselves as “the cheating kind.” Only other people who committed infidelity were cheaters.
Lust in Translation
Click here for: Ten Signs that your Parnter is Cheating.
Our culture socializes men to be independent, and some male couples seek to reduce their dependence upon each other by seeking sex outside the relationship. Some couples consider their relationships “open” but run into problems when there is a lack of agreement about how non-exclusiveness will be managed.
A study of gay couples at San Francisco State University reported in the New York Times (2010) found that 50% of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners. As romance and passion diminish, love may live without desire and ardor may abide without love.
Although statistics like this have been used as evidence that only gay men are incapable of long term, committed relationships, a study by AARP “Sex, Romance and Relationship Survey, completed in 1999 concerning changing attitudes about extramarital relationships provides a different perspective.
New attractions cause excitement to build, judgment to fail, and trouble to begin. According to the previously mentioned AARP survey in 1999 about 41% of the survey respondents said non-marital sex was wrong. Now, only 22% give their thumbs down vote to sex outside the marriage
A related finding from the same reports provides additional insights into adult sexuality. Some believe that if a person is involved in a satisfying heterosexual marriage, masturbation is “lusting of the heart,” and just another variation of infidelity.
People who masturbate have more sex and more satisfying sex. In the AARP Survey of Midlife and Older Adults (2009) “Sex, Romance and Relationships,” AARP reported that of all men in their fifties, 42% masturbate to ejaculation at least once a week.
Men masturbate for all sorts of reasons. Many people believe that an affair indicates there is something profoundly wrong in the marriage, but those who have affairs often report good sex with their partner and rewarding family lives. This seems to undermine the idea that men in stable relationships should have no need to masturbate because of an always present and willing sexual partner.
Non-monogamous sex can interfere with sexual desire for the spouse, and if adventures become regular, they can become destructive in the relationship. Couples sometimes will introduce a third person into their sexual relationship to add sexual excitement, but problems result if the primary spousal relationship is already strained, and one of the pair feels left out.
Ted Haggard
While I was still married to my wife, I began seeing my first gay lover while we were both married. We both understood that we were cheating on our wives. We each justified our behavior with our own personal rationalizations, however weak.
It is possible to attach oneself to more than one person emotionally, but loving more than one person is very difficult to do. The question, “Did you have sex with that person?” is what most people insist upon knowing, but betrayal and emotional infidelity are far more damaging to a relationship than sexual infidelity.
Once loyalty shifts and trust is broken, it can be very difficult, though not impossible, to re-establish a solid relationship. In seeking resolution, the individuals in the relationship lock themselves into conflict if they focus only on, “You Son-of-a-bitch! How could you?” rather than “What have I done to contribute to a weakening of our relationship?”
Some people are turning to what they call “responsible non-monogamy” or “polyamory.” Polyamory literally means “many loves.” No statistics are available for how frequently polyamory exists, but it is said to be more common in heterosexuals. Proponents of polyamory believe that humans experience varying degrees of loving others. They see the barrier between friends and lovers as permeable.
Polyamory follows rules of poly-fidelity, or fidelity within a closed system. In polyamory, the primary relationship takes on the characteristics of a spousal relationship with a high degree of commitment; all other relationships are subordinate. Secondary relationships involve both emotional and sexual intimacy and are enduring, but the secondary relationship does not carry the power or authority of the primary relationship.
One man in my research spoke of his twenty-five year relationship with his partner who has become impotent because of surgery for cancer of the prostate. Although he continues to love his partner, he also loves another man with whom he has engaged in a daily, long-term Internet relationship that includes web cam sex as sexually intimate as it can be in two dimensions.
Variations are seemingly endless. Many find it difficult to comprehend that a man can love a woman while preferring to have sex with another man. Many of these men claim to have a good sex life with women, all the while knowing that for them sex with a man is more satisfying. I know of several heterosexually married couples where of the four individuals in the two couples, the two men have developed on-going, long term sexual relationships with each other. They sought these relationships as a way of dealing with their same-sex attractions. The families are friends, travel together and seem content. Others I know have been open with their wives about their male sexual partners; their wives have agreed to share their spouse with a man rather than accept a divorce. Even in those situations where they do divorce, these men may never define themselves as gay.
The most common problems in these relationships are predictable. When someone new is brought into the system, there is an intense sexual focus on the newest member, and triangulation of relationships results in possessiveness and jealousy. Frequency of sexual intimacy between the primary spousal partners may diminish.
Schedules and an over-riding commitment to children complicate these relationships. To be successful, all relationships within the system must be respected. They must be based on honesty and authenticity rather than sex alone. Members must also be assertive to get their own needs met and boundaries and limits must be respected.
Druckerman P (2007). Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. New York: Penguin Press HC, The.