Defilement therefore has meaning: it is a surprising way of trying to improve a relationship. It’s not an act of sabotage or a denial of love. It’s a deeply curious but, in its own way, very logical quest for closeness.
We need to embrace a similarly radical understanding of the many aspects of our sexualities that seem very odd at first. We are such complicated and surprising machines; we need to foster the rehabilitation (by which we mean the wise, sympathetic investigation) of parts of ourselves that are otherwise so easy to disown or panic around. Although our erotic enthusiasms may sometimes sound off-putting, they are almost always motivated by a search for the good: a desire to build a connection marked by understanding, sympathy and kindness.
AFFAIRS
An affair is a love – or sexual – story between two people, one of whom (at least) is ostensibly committed to someone else. Most importantly, in our times, an affair is a disaster, pretty much the greatest betrayal that can befall us, a harbinger of untrammelled suffering, frequently the end of the relationship it has violated and almost always an occasion for fierce moralizing and the division of participants into goodies (who have been betrayed) and monsters (who have betrayed).
However, in trying to understand affairs and make sense of their pains as well as their less frequently confessed attractions, we should grasp that the way we interpret affairs today is very particular to our own times. Judged against the long span of human experience, we are remarkably contorted about the whole business. People have always had affairs, but what an affair means has been subject to huge changes across societies and eras.
When Does an Affair Begin?
Once an affair has been uncovered, we often ask – in the position of the betrayed, pained party – when it began. Pinpointing the precise moment promises to shed light on its motivations and on possible ways to prevent any further such calamities in the future.
There is, understandably, a hunt for the exact time when the two straying individuals met and physical contact began. We think of how two people had a drink after a business dinner or met online or flirted at a party and agreed to meet up a few days later. We concentrate on details: when their knees touched under the table, when one of them lightly put their arm round the other’s waist and when they first lied about where they were going or to whom they were sending a message.
This kind of detective work feels obvious, but it overlooks a complexity: the start of an affair should not be equated with the moment when two straying people meet. Affairs begin long before there is anyone to have an affair with. Their origins lie with certain initially minute fissures that open up within a subtly fracturing couple. The affair pre-dates, possibly by many years, the arrival of any actual lover.
The situation is duplicated in many other areas, the study of history for one. It is common to ask when a cataclysmic event such as, for example, the French Revolution began. A traditional response is to point to the summer of 1789, when some of the deputies at the Estates General took an oath to remain in session until a constitution had been agreed on, or a few days later when a group of Parisians attacked and broke into the Bastille prison. But a more sophisticated and instructive approach locates the beginning significantly earlier: with the bad harvests of the previous ten years, with the loss of royal prestige following military defeats in North America in the 1760s or with the rise of a new philosophy in the middle of the century that stressed the idea of citizens’ rights. At the time, these incidents didn’t seem particularly decisive; they didn’t immediately lead to major social change or reveal their solemn nature. But they slowly and powerfully put the country on course for the upheavals of 1789: they moved the country into a revolution-ready state.
Likewise, affairs begin long before the meeting at the conference or the whispered confidences at the party. It is not key to fixate on the trip to Miami or the login details of the website. The whole notion of who is to blame and for what suddenly starts to look much more complicated and less clear cut. One should be focusing on certain conversations that didn’t go well in the kitchen three summers ago or the sulk in the taxi home five years before. The drama began long before anything dramatic unfolded.
This is how some of the minute but real causes might be laid out by a partner who eventually strayed.
Unending busy-ness
It was a Sunday morning. My partner had been taken up for months with a big project and I’d been very understanding. Now it was over and I was looking forward to some closeness and a trip to a cafe. But suddenly there was something new that he needed to look at on his phone. I glanced over at his face, which was lit up by the glow of the screen, and his eyes looked cold, determined and resolutely elsewhere. Or else my partner hatched a sudden firm plan to reorganize the kitchen cupboards just when at last we might have had a quiet time in the park together. That’s perhaps when the afternoon of passion in Bordeaux really began: with the need to stop everything in order to swap around the crockery and the glasses.
Neglect
I was away on an exhausting trip and in a break between meetings I fought for the chance to call my partner. She picked up, but the television continued on in the background. She had even forgotten that I’d had to give a speech and it felt a little humiliating to have to remind her and to hear her lacklustre ‘great’ in response.
Shaming
We were with some new friends, people we didn’t know too well and wanted to create a good impression on. My partner was looking to amuse them and, having cast around for options, started to tell everyone a story about how I once showed the wrong slides in a presentation at work. He knows how to tell a good story and there was a lot of laughter.
Ownership
Without discussing it, my partner arranged that we’d both go and have lunch with her parents. It wasn’t so much that I minded going, it was the fact that she didn’t feel the need to ask if I minded and if the timing was convenient. On another occasion, without even mentioning it, she bought a new kettle and got rid of the old one. It was as if I had no say at all. Sometimes she’d just tell me what to do – ‘Take the bins out’, ‘Pick up some mineral water at the shop’, ‘Put on different shoes’ – without adding ‘please’ or ‘would you mind’ or ‘it would be lovely if …’ Just a few words would have made all the difference.
Flirting
I was at a party with my partner and I saw him across the room, bending towards this person, saying something. He was laughing, being charming. He put his hand on the back of her chair. Later he said it had been a very boring conversation.
One too many arguments
It wasn’t the basic fact of having disagreements, it was the sheer number of them – and their unending, repetitive nature. One that sticks in the memory was when we were at the seaside and things should have been happy for once. Yet my partner chose again to ramp up the tension about a Thai takeaway that had been ordered. I remember arguing and, at the same time, one part of my mind was disassociating, looking down upon the two of us standing on the pier with cross faces and wondering, ‘Why?’
Lack of tenderness
We were walking along the street together near the antiques market and I reached out to hold my partner’s hand, but he failed to notice. Another time he was doing something at the kitchen table and I put an arm round his shoulder, but he said sharply, ‘Not now.’ In bed I’m always the one to turn towards him and kiss him goodnight. He responds but never, ever initiates. This rankles more than it seems normal or possible to say.
Erotic disengagement
There was a sexual idea I’d been getting interested in but I felt awkward about mentioning it to my partner. I tried to give a few hints, but she didn’t give the impression she was curious. She didn’t encourage me to expand. Instead she gave me the impression that it would be a lot more convenient if I just kept whatever it was that tickled me to myself.
Individually, none of these things may be very dramatic. Some little version of one or other of them may be happeni
ng pretty much every day. And it’s not all one way: both parties are probably doing some of these things quite regularly, without particularly noticing or meaning to.
Yet a careful historian of infidelity might pinpoint any one of them as the moment at which – in a true sense – an affair began. Long before the party or the conference, the feeling was implanted deep in someone’s mind (perhaps beyond the range of their conscious awareness) that there was something important missing in their relationship that another person might, possibly, be able to supply.
It is common, when an affair is discovered, to become an inquisitorial prosecutor: to seize the phone and ask the ‘cheat’ in detail where they have been; to read through their emails; to parse every receipt. But such assiduousness is a little late, a bit misdirected and rather too self-serving. We should look further back than the moment when a lover came on the scene. The revolution didn’t begin with the sexual act or the dirty texts and with the actual storming of our domestic citadel; it began on an innocent sunny afternoon many years before, when there was still a lot of goodwill, when a hand was proffered and when the partner was perhaps fatefully careless about how they received it. That might be a rather more painful account of our relationship and its troubles than either of us is ready to contemplate for now, but it might also be a more accurate and ultimately more useful one.
How to Spot a Couple Who Might be Headed for an Affair
Having arguments does not, in itself, say very much about the likelihood of a relationship disintegrating. What matters is how arguments are interpreted, conducted and resolved. The fragile unions aren’t necessarily the ones in which people shout, insist that this is finally it, call the other a ninny and slam the door; they are the ones in which emotional disconnection and rupture are not correctly identified, examined and repaired.
A number of qualities are required to ensure that a couple know how to argue well. There is, first and foremost, the need for each party to be able to pinpoint sources of discomfort in themselves early and accurately: to know how to recognize what they are unhappy about and what they need in order to flourish in the couple. This is not necessarily as obvious as one might imagine. It can take time and psychological insight to know that it was actually the missing phone call or the request to move the date of the holiday that is really the source of anger.
Then there is the equally vital quality of feeling that one has the right to speak, that one isn’t duty bound to be ‘good’ and not cause trouble, that it is acceptable to say when one is miserable and troubled by something – however small it might appear; that it is better to spoil a few evenings than ruin a marriage.
It can help to have a sanguine assessment of how human relationships tend to go: to accept that a bit of disappointment and some friction belong to the necessary ingredients of good enough love, that it isn’t a disaster to be cross at points and seemingly convinced that this should be the end.
A subsidiary talent is knowing how to speak up. It might not be exactly the moment the problem appears; diplomatic skills matter. One might need to wait until some of the surface tension has dissipated; perhaps the next morning can do just as well. One needs a background confidence not to have to blurt out every objection in a panicked diatribe or shout a wounded feeling across the room when the other is themselves too upset to hear it. One needs to know how to formulate one’s complaints into a convincing, perhaps even humorously framed point that has a chance of winning over its target.
It matters in all this that one both feels attached to the partner and at the same time has an active impression that one could walk away from them were matters ever truly to escalate. Feeling that one has options, does not therefore have to cling and deserves good treatment ensures that one’s voice can be measured and that the status quo will remain manageable.
These factors tend to be absent in those unfortunate couples who not only argue but lack the gift of arguing well. The following range of inner obstacles prevents them from dealing effectively with their emotional disconnection and anger.
Over-optimism about relationships
Fragile couples tend, paradoxically, to be very hopeful about love. They associate happiness with conflict-free unions. They do not expect, once they have found the person they unwisely see as The One, ever to need to squabble, storm out of a room or feel unhappy for the afternoon. When trouble emerges, as it inevitably does, they do not greet it as a sign that love is progressing as it should but as alarming evidence that their relationship may be illegitimate and fundamentally flawed. Their hopes drain them of the energy needed for the patient tasks of diplomatic negotiation and routine maintenance.
Being out of touch with pain
Fragile couples tend not to be good detectives with regard to their own sufferings. They may be both unhappy and yet unsure as to the actual causes of their dissatisfactions. They know something is wrong in their union, but they can’t easily trace the catalyst. They can’t zero in on how it was the lack of trust in them around money that rankles or how it was their behaviour towards a demanding youngest child that is hurting. They lash out in vague or inaccurate directions, their attacks either unfairly general or unconvincingly specific.
Shame
A shamed person has fundamental doubts about their right to exist: somewhere in the past, they have been imbued with the impression that they do not matter very much, that their feelings should be ignored, that their happiness is not a priority, that their words do not count. Once they are part of a couple, shamed people hurt like anyone else, but their capacity to turn their hurt into something another person can understand and be touched by is recklessly weak. Shamed people will sulk rather than speak, hide rather than divulge, feel secretly wretched rather than candidly complain. It is frequently very late, far too late, by the time shamed people finally let their lover know more about the nature of their desperation.
Excessive anxiety
Complaining well requires an impression that not everything depends on the complaint being heard perfectly. Were the lesson to go wrong, were the other to prove intransigent, one could survive and take one’s love elsewhere. Not everything is at stake in an argument. The other hasn’t ruined one’s life. One therefore doesn’t need to scream, hector, insist or nag. One can deliver a complaint with some of the nonchalance of a calm teacher who wants listeners to learn but can bear it if they don’t because the information can always be conveyed tomorrow, or the next day.
Excessive pride
It takes an inner dignity not to mind too much about having to level complaints around things that could sound laughably ‘small’ or that leave one open to being described as petty or needy. With too much pride and fear, it can become unbearable to admit that one has been upset since lunch because someone didn’t take one’s hand on a walk or wishes so much that they would be readier for a hug last thing at night. One has to feel quite grown up inside not to be offended by one’s own more childlike appetites for reassurance and comfort. It is an achievement to know how to be strong about one’s vulnerability. One may have said, rather too many times, from behind a slammed door, in a defensive tone, ‘No, nothing is wrong whatsoever. Go away’, when secretly longing to be comforted and understood like a weepy, upset child.
Hopelessness about dialogue
Fragile couples often come together with few positive childhood memories of conversations working out: early role models may simply have screamed and then despaired of one another. They may never have witnessed disagreements eventually morphing into mutual understanding and sympathy. They would deeply love to be understood, but they can bring precious few resources to the task of making themselves so.
None of these factors means there will automatically be an affair, but they are generators of emotional disconnection that contributes to an all-important affair-ready state. Outwardly, things can seem good. A couple may have an interesting social life, some lovely children, a new apartment. But a more judicious analysis will reveal an unexpected degre
e of risk. An affair won’t in these circumstances – however it may look later – be just an idle self-indulgence or a momentary lack of self-control. It will be the result of identifiable long-term resentments that a couple, otherwise blessed and committed, lacked the inner resources and courage to investigate.
The Role of Sex in Affairs
When an affair is discovered, it is common to describe the person who strayed as despicably sexually profligate. They are lustful, wanton, dog-like. They have ceded control to their animal selves. But we get a more nuanced view of the role of sex in affairs by asking a deliberately obtuse, philosophical-sounding question: why is sex so nice?
One possible answer, which can sound a little odd, is: because we have advanced tendencies to hate ourselves and find ourselves unacceptable. And sex with a new person has an exceptional capacity to reduce feeling like that.
The School of Life Page 15