Fidelity and Falling in Love
Jan. 4th, 2011 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI was recently musing on different perspectives on marriage, and one in particular struck me. Romance is often cast as a game of meeting The One. Which I don't think is literally true, but probably has a lot of truth in, in the sense that a certain small fraction of people will make an excellent partnership with you, and most people will eventually meet one of them.
But then, if The Ones appear in a classic poisson distribution, what happens if you meet another The One? Most people agree fidelity involves not sleeping with them, but what are you supposed to feel? I didn't expect this to be a practical problem, but I felt I wasn't confident what was the socially acceptable answer.
Are you supposed to just assume it doesn't happen? That seems most traditional, but not in line with the facts.
Are you supposed to just promise to stay together even if you meet someone "better"? That's also traditional (and makes sense if you make life decisions based on staying together), but is contradictory to the idea of being with someone you love.
Are you supposed to say you'll love each other more than anyone else, and rely on "what's normal" to determine what you're actually agreeing to? I agree this works for most people, but I always want to actually understand something, not just accept that it's normal.
But what occurred to me is that a traditional interpretation is basically assuming that you can only fall in love with one person at once, so if you're in a long term committed relationship, and find yourself falling in love with someone else, it's basically all over (unless you lock those feelings down deep and deny they exist).
But if you accept you might be able to love two people, even if you don't have space in your life to make a relationship with both, it actually seems less troubling. It's possible to make a commitment not "I will never find myself falling in love with someone else" but "if I could live with either of these people, but I have to choose, I choose the relationship we've already put the time and effort into building up, and will not pursue the other one as anything other friendship".
Obviously that doesn't prevent insanely painful personal problems, but it felt like a helpful was of thinking of what it meant to make a commitment to each other.
But then, if The Ones appear in a classic poisson distribution, what happens if you meet another The One? Most people agree fidelity involves not sleeping with them, but what are you supposed to feel? I didn't expect this to be a practical problem, but I felt I wasn't confident what was the socially acceptable answer.
Are you supposed to just assume it doesn't happen? That seems most traditional, but not in line with the facts.
Are you supposed to just promise to stay together even if you meet someone "better"? That's also traditional (and makes sense if you make life decisions based on staying together), but is contradictory to the idea of being with someone you love.
Are you supposed to say you'll love each other more than anyone else, and rely on "what's normal" to determine what you're actually agreeing to? I agree this works for most people, but I always want to actually understand something, not just accept that it's normal.
But what occurred to me is that a traditional interpretation is basically assuming that you can only fall in love with one person at once, so if you're in a long term committed relationship, and find yourself falling in love with someone else, it's basically all over (unless you lock those feelings down deep and deny they exist).
But if you accept you might be able to love two people, even if you don't have space in your life to make a relationship with both, it actually seems less troubling. It's possible to make a commitment not "I will never find myself falling in love with someone else" but "if I could live with either of these people, but I have to choose, I choose the relationship we've already put the time and effort into building up, and will not pursue the other one as anything other friendship".
Obviously that doesn't prevent insanely painful personal problems, but it felt like a helpful was of thinking of what it meant to make a commitment to each other.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 10:27 pm (UTC)I'm not sure that is contradictory, unless you're also applying here the "you can only love one person at a time" thing (in which case when person 2 shows up you are assumed to automatically stop loving person 1, at which point splitting up and going off with person 2 becomes logical)
I think there's also an extra level of messiness involved. Suppose you are with person A in a fairly serious way, and person B comes along and you think they're a better match for you.
You can't compare like with like, because you know a lot more about person A (as you're seriously dating them / living with them / whatever, and you're presumably not doing this with person B - if you are, you appear to be having them both, so you don't have this dilemma (until one or the other finds out ...)). So - as well as the "there is extra value in my relationship with A because we have put time and effort into it" - how could you really know whether person B would BE better, or would just SEEM better from the outside but be equal/worse once in a relationship?
Surely the logical thing is not to move unless you are pretty sure that a relationship with B would be significantly better. And since you have less information about B than A, that is a very difficult thing to be sure of. (Unless your information is "my relationship with A is really negative and not worth trying to make good, so with B would HAVE to be better, in which case you should be dealing with that anyway irrespective of B)
As a 3rd complication: one also needs to take into account the extent to which you can choose to feel things for people. I guess this depends on your model of falling in love. I think most people would agree that you have some control - you might not be able to stop yourself feeling something, but you don't have to talk to B late at night on MSN about your deepest hopes and fears, or go out to lunch with B and nobody else because you happened to be free, or start learning ballroom dancing with B. Not that any of those things would be objectively definitively wrong, but they might not be the best choices if you might want to stay with A ...
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 11:22 pm (UTC)I guess I interpret a modern romantic view of relationships as having the freedom to be with whoever is the best match, which does mean that if you meet someone "better" it's very sad if you thought you were already in a lifelong commitment, but it's not really your fault[1].
But the reason I say "contradictory" is that that idea is being with the best match, not a second-best who is good enough (although this is somewhat clarified by your second point).
[1] Somewhere I have a post pending about the views of considering infidelity as a crime of the person reneging on a relationship, and as a crime of the person interloping.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 11:39 pm (UTC)That's a very good point, and I think something I was groping towards. Indeed, you can probably tell "good prospect" from "not good prospect" but not typically be able to tell "we get on very well and like each other a lot" from "life partner" except statistically. Which is why a much bigger factor in the decision is whether you're predisposed to hope a new relationship is better, or the old relationship is better[1].
Although I don't think you can say you can NEVER tell.
[1] Another quirk that didn't quite make it into the post was the thought that making a commitment is not necessarily saying that no-one better will EVER come along, even though that's hard to say, but that you don't hope one will :)
if you are, you appear to be having them both, so you don't have this dilemma (until one or the other finds out ...)
It's true most people would never be able to develop the relationship to that point. Not even in secret, I think: most people put sufficient of their time into a relationship they physically CAN'T have two relationships and still have anything else. (Although if one's relationship is less involved I suppose you can.)
OTOH, if you have an (open acknowledged, or secret) second relationship, that starts taking up more and more of your time and attention, then you may hit the point where you're sure you'd like it to be something more, but that would conflict with your existing first relationship.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 11:46 pm (UTC)Indeed. I tried not to tackle the question head-on (or I'd never be able to talk about anything else) but it's still relevant.
I liked the description from someone on the LJ post that you couldn't choose to have or not have feelings, but you could choose to develop them into big feelings or not.
It's complicated because both R and I have many close friends of both sexes, and so many of the soul-bonding things that might be a red-flag to some people are just normal to us, and yet I'm sure there's something different between a "potential relationship" and "someone I'm close friends with and sleep with occasionally" even though it's hard to describe what. I think we assume we'll know it when we see it.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 11:08 pm (UTC)I guess with that in mind, having grown up when a million was a big number, I don't believe in the one. More like a one, but still feeling damned lucky to find one of them. If I were so fortunate as to find another one, I'd really start to wonder what kind of catastrophe was about to befall me.