Marital Fidelity

As a guy who pays more attention to language than most people do, I find I often oppose the inflation of adjectives. In Oregon, not too many years ago, there was a campaign against a ballot measure, the tag line of which was "It's Too Extreme!" Too extreme? If it were a little less, would it be "just right" extreme? And then with a little less, it would be "not extreme enough?" Really? And then there's "just a little paranoid." And "experiencing a little trepidation." Not to mention "awesome," meaning even less, now, than "yeah, OK." ********************************************************************************** I admit it was my generation or a generation somewhere before mine that separated the terror from terrific and the fable from fabulous and that turned luxury from one of Dante's deadly sins to a major selling point. I/We did all that. But I learned all those as a child and I learned them as proper uses, so I don't really feel too guilty about them. Today, I'm on the other side of the axis. I'm going to be arguing for a very demanding notion of marital fidelity. The charge I am laying myself open to is that I have set the bar so high that everyone who attempts it will fail. In this case, I don't think that would be so bad. But I also don't think it will happen that way. I am going to define marital fidelity as a single unitary concept, one that has integrity and clear borders--as a concept. In practice, the borders go away for sure and it might be that the integrity goes away as well, because I am arguing that married couples [see footnote 1] who like this notion will define for themselves how they will achieve it; what it will look like; what to do when the "check engine" light comes on. *********************************************************************************** I started thinking about this in the 1970s, when I read Sexual Intimacy, by Andrew Greeley. Here is what he said that first caught my attention. "It is interesting that the almost universally accepted definition of marital fidelity focuses on whether one engages in sexual activity outside of marriage. The faithful person is one who does not have intercourse outside of marriage. In no other context is fidelity defined in such narrow and negative terms. Indeed, normally, the word conveys a highly positive connotation; but in marriage, fidelity merely means that one doesn't do certain things." ************************************************************************************ I knew at once, when I read that, that it was true. "Fidelity" was, in this context, the word you used for the things you didn't do. Pathetic! As I hinted earlier, this is a word I want to put way out on the end of the axis. If we fail in our attempts, which we will, we gain more from seeing the goal clearly than we lose by our failure. This standard means that my own marital fidelity is suspect, as well as that of every other married man and woman I know. It means that "unfaithful in his/her marriage" is a stone that can be thrown at anyone. I hope that will make using it as something to throw considerably less attractive. I hope too that the people in the relationship will continue to find it useful. ********************************************************************************* It seems to me that it raises two and a half really interesting questions. If you think of a marrige, as I do, as a relationship with a blend of collegiality and intimacy, in which, borrowing C. S. Lewis's physical cues, the collegueship is the side by side part of the marriage, where the partners are pursuing the same goal and value each other as contributors to the effort and in which intimacy is the direct, face to face, part of the marriage, then we have the two questions in our sights. If the couple pursues goals, as colleagues do, then fidelity is doing what you can to achieve your common goal and helping your partner do all she can to achieve that goal. [footnote 2] ********************************************************************************** In intimacy, the face to face part of the relationship, fidelity is sharing his "inwardness"--intimus, the superlative of intus. "within," is the source of intimate--and being most fully "who he really is." As I am using the term, fidelity is a goal without any mitigation at all. More is better. But that is not the way I see collegiality and intimacy. For those traits, it is what is best that is best, not necessarily what is most. More fidelity, in other words, is always good, like "more love." But more collegiality is not always good--or maybe it is just harder to measure--and more intimacy is, in the same way, not necessarily good. There is a level of intimacy and a "kind," almost a "flavor" of intimacy, that is just right for a couple. Getting the flavor right is what is good. More intimacy might be good, but it might not. Some flavors are too strong to enjoy and must be endured. ********************************************************************************* And the half question? Sexuality. I see the erotic relationship of a couple as a part of their intimacy. I think every husband has the privilege of making his wife a wonderful lover of him. I think that every wife as the privilege of making her husband a wonderful lover of her. "Wonderful lover" means what they decide it will mean for them, but letting such a powerful part of their life drift aimlessly away because no one cares enough to save it is probably infidelity. Not daring to do, to save that special kind of intimacy, what needs to be done is not being faithful to that part of the relationship. *********************************************************************************** That is, in fact, the part of the relationship Greeley had in mind when he pointed out how absurd it is to give "fidelity" as the name for "the things you don't do" outside the marriage. His point, and mine, is that it is what you actually do inside the marriage that makes your behavior faithful or not--in addition, of course, to what you do not do outside it. It is not taking the time and not taking the risks and not leaning what you need to know that are unfaithful. Those are the failures of fidelity. It the same way, the failure to be fully and optimally collegial is an infidelity. It is not appreciating, not delighting in, what your partner brings to your common effort that is unfaithful. It is refusing to allow your partner help you refine your own skills and to take the risks necessary to help her refine hers that is unfaithful. ************************************************************************************* That is why I think that "marital fidelity" is a term that deserves to be placed where I put it, wa-a-a-y out on the high end of the axis of meaning, where most of us will fail most of the time. With that kind of clarity, it becomes a kind of North Star for the relationship. It isn't that you can get there. It is that knowing where it is means that you know where you are and how to go in the direction you and your partner have decided to go. [footnote 1] There is no reason this notion can not be legitimately extended in a number or directions I will not consider. It could be applied to "committed relationships," for instance, entirely without reference to marriage. For that reason, it could apply to gay/lesbian relationships, straight relationships or (oddly) to some mix of the two. I am focusing my attention of sexual fidelity within a heterosexual marriage because it is the only kind I actually know anything aobut. [footnote 2] To simplify the grammar and to draw most closely on the part of the relationship I know most about, I am going to presume the perspective of the husband. This is a convenience only. I believe that wives have exactly the same duty and privilege of collegiality as husbands, and exactly the same duty and privilege in intimacy as husbands. The particulars will vary, of course, not only with gender, but with the actual persons involved. The symmetry I am describing is only a formal symmetry.