HARA ESTROFF MARANO
Extramarital affairs express the determined refusal to grow older gracefully.
CATHERINE HAKIM
Later life is a patchwork for profound love—it presents some of the best circumstances for it as well as some of its greatest obstacles. Since time nurtures profundity, the deepest point of connection for romantic partners in healthy relationships is sometimes after they have accumulated decades of experiences that they can build upon together in later life. After the loss of a partner in old age, the severing of this bond can be extremely difficult to deal with. It can be tempting to give up on love completely after the death of one’s lover. But, as love is so vital to flourishing and well-being, it is important to find a suitable new relationship, though the type and timing of such a relationship differs from person to person.
When one partner passes away and the other is left single, often for the first time in nearly a lifetime, there are unique challenges in achieving new love. Not only do widows tend to idealize their deceased partner, but their profound love might very well be everlasting, so dealing with mixed emotions when establishing new love becomes even more complex. Questions of whether to try to forget or to replace the previous partner further complicate the beginning of a new relationship.
Adding to the hurdles for love in old age, dementia presents a unique set of issues and questions, as the disease often unpredictably influences a crucial aspect of the romantic connection—profound meaningful interactions and experiences, including communication, sex, caring, friendship, reciprocity, and love. While individual experiences differ widely, dementia does consistently mark a change in the way that partners relate to each other and interact. This is not a barrier to profound, though limited, love, but it requires significant adjustments to the new type of relationship.
Emotional experiences in later life are likely to be marked by calmness rather than excitement. As both calmness and excitement are important in a romantic relationship, the issue is not one of either/or, but of choice of focus.
Obstacles to love are scattered throughout the life course. Old age can rebalance partners’ ability to engage constructively in the relationship. When dementia figures into the equation, the maintenance of love calls for great sacrifice. Serious consideration must be given to the impact of such sacrifice on the relationship and one’s personal flourishing. This is how we honor the wholeness necessary to sustain profound, romantic relationships.
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Greater Diversity and Flexibility
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
I love my husband and do not intend to leave him for my lover. However, my husband is not easy to live with—he is grumpy and tries to control me. My wonderful time with my lover helps me cope with the situation I have made at home. It gives me back my self-confidence. Without my lover, I would divorce my husband immediately.
A MARRIED WOMAN
Overcoming difficulties on the road to enduring profound love is one aspect of the complex task that lovers face today; another is making romantic norms, and in particular monogamous ones, more flexible. I begin by examining the attitudes of singles, which genuinely express what people want, while not having to take account of the chains of their present situation. Most of them keep the traditional value of an enduring, profound loving relationship, while still yearning for brief and diverse sexual interactions. Then the nature and feasibility of polyamory are discussed, and the issue of whether you can be happy with your partner’s romantic affair is examined.
What Do Singles Really Want?
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Many married people envy singles for their greater romantic freedom in conducting casual relationships. Do singles envy married people for their enduring serious relationships? Match Eighth Annual Study on U.S. Single Population (2018), supervised by Helen Fisher, indicates surprising trends.
Seeking Serious Relationships
I have a rule, and that is to never look at somebody’s face while we’re having sex; because, number one, what if I know the guy?
LAURA KIGHTLINGER
Conducting a serious romantic relationship that includes the intention to stay together for a long time implies giving up much of your romantic freedom for the sake of your significant profound relationship. Strikingly, however, the Match survey indicates that 69 percent of today’s singles are looking for something serious.
According to the survey, American singles use three major paths for fulfilling this wish for seriousness: hanging out, friends with benefits, and an official first date. All three paths require an investment of time and are governed by rules that send messages about their differing degrees of seriousness.
In hanging out, people do not engage in sex and have not gone out on an official first date. Although this type of relationship has the lowest degree of seriousness, it still has some rules of behavior that indicate some level of seriousness. Thus, many singles believe that a wider array of behaviors are appropriate when hanging out than when on an official first date, including asking out on the day of the meeting, splitting the bill, and moving slowly toward physical intimacy.
Friendship with benefits is more serious, and indeed, almost half of the people in such relationships have turned it into a committed relationship. Moreover, most participants in the survey who engaged in this kind of relationship think that the friendship part is more significant than the sexual benefits.
The experience of a formal first date has become increasingly popular (almost half of the singles surveyed had gone on such a date) and significant. The greater significance is expressed in asking someone out two to three days in advance, having the first date at a nice restaurant (rather than in a fast food place), and having a perfect ending, such as a peck on the cheek or kissing.
Seeking Diverse, Brief Sexual Interactions
I thought I was promiscuous, but it turns out I was just thorough.
RUSSELL BRAND
Alongside their search for serious romantic relationships, singles are experiencing diverse, brief types of superficial, sexual relationships. Thus, many singles have dated multiple people simultaneously—more women than men. Moreover, most heterosexual singles would be open to a threesome, and one in four singles would have sex with a robot, yet nearly half of singles would consider it cheating if their partner had sex with a robot.
In a fascinating finding, both single women and men reported having their best sex in their midsixties. This suggests that good sex is not mainly based on superficial novelty, as is often the case at a young age, but requires some profound familiarity. This is not to imply, however, that the best sex in a committed relationship with the same partner is best at an older age. On the contrary, the aforementioned “honeymoon-as-ceiling effect” indicates that marital quality rarely increases beyond its initial point of marriage, or prior to it.1
According to the Match survey, among those involved in a friendship-with-benefits relationship, most singles believe that one must disclose all other current sexual partners. The greater openness about romantic flexibility stems from the greater acceptance in society of such flexibility, as well as from the fact that such flexibility is expressed in many frequent and various types of experiences that can no longer be hidden.
What Do Singles Really Want?
I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The huge number of alluring options in the current romantic environment presents challenges for everyone—but particularly for singles. To an outside observer, this environment is paradise, the wet dream of all lovers: having whatever you want, whenever you want it. A closer look, however, reveals that something is rotten in the state of
romance. Flexibility without constraints and change without stability are the makings of many difficulties.
Singles really want to combine profundity with sexual diversity. They want to have it both ways—a serious, meaningful relationship, as well as diverse sexual encounters. Is this possible? In our current society, it is not easy to achieve. It contradicts the accepted norms that separate profoundness from sexual diversity—most people feel the two are incompatible and should not be sought at the same time. You first have the sexual diversity. You eat as much as you can from the sexual meal, then stop it, and turn to the phase of a serious relationship. This route is rather problematic, as most people want both of these phases to continue. They want to be married, but not dead; they do not want merely to breathe, but to be alive.
Current singles (and others) realize the intricacy of their conflicting desires. On the one hand, most of them retain the old dream of having a serious, profound relationship that will last for a long time. To achieve it, they develop different tactics to get to know others better through various interactions over time. On the other hand, singles also like brief and diverse sexual interactions, such as dating more than one person at a time, having a threesome, and for some even having sex with a robot.
Relaxing Monogamous Values
I see my extramarital affairs as a different nutrition. Just as I need extra minerals because I’m a mature woman, I need the affair because I am still beautiful and horny. Calcium for my bones and chrome and zinc . . . all of these are not provided in my regular diet, and so I need to take some additives with my food. My extramarital affairs are additives for my health, regardless of my activities with my husband.
A MARRIED WOMAN
The Love Bird is 100% faithful to his mate, as long as they are locked together in the same cage.
WILL CUPPY
Monogamy—that is, the practice of being married to one person at a time, and having a sexual relationship only with this person—is often regarded as the best road for enduring romantic love. A central assumption of traditional monogamy is that your partner should fulfill your entire romantic and, in particular, sexual needs. Nonmonogamous relationships can be consensual and nonconsensual. Nonconsensual nonmonogamy involves the prevailing practices of sexual infidelity. Two major types of consensual nonmonogamy are open sexual relationships (where a primary couple pursues outside, mainly sexual, relationships), and polyamory (in which people maintain multiple loving or committed relationships). The first type also includes swinging (in which a couple may have other sexual partners). The differences between these types are not always clear, and in any case, we speak here about a continuum of breaching monogamous values.
The prevalence of flexible sexual practices indicates that the way of coping with the issue of romantic or sexual exclusivity is not to stage an all-or-nothing holy war against them, but to look for ways to make romantic exclusivity more flexible, but still limited. A major feature of such flexibility is abandoning the expectation that marriage will fulfill all your needs.
Couples can relax strict exclusivity by agreeing to various relationship rules that allow a more flexible notion of fidelity, albeit within certain boundaries. Such an agreement can include rules such as the “doesn’t count” rule, which allows for oral sex, one-off sex, out-of-town sex, phone sex, and even mental infidelity. Other similar rules are the “must-confess-all” rule; the “don’t know, don’t care” rule; as well as “anything goes—except love,” “sex and nothing more,” “no couple-like behavior outside the bedroom,” and “anything above the waist isn’t cheating.”2 Within such agreements, “coloring outside the lines” is not always a grave violation of normative behavior.
More and more, society is adapting its norms to cope with the greater diversity and flexibility of actual romantic behavior. Many couples now allow each other greater freedom in their personal romantic relationships with others. Certainly, many societies continue to disapprove of extramarital sex. Yet there is an increasing tendency to mildly criticize, rather than condemn or ostracize, the transgressor for such activity. Indeed, extramarital affairs are often described in terms that are more neutral; instead of highly negative terms such as “adultery” and “betrayal,” some people use the term “parallel relationship.”
A different tack toward more flexible types of romantic exclusivity would be to promote the value of uniqueness over that of exclusivity. Exclusiveness is characterized in negative terms that establish rigid boundaries, whereas uniqueness is characterized in positive terms that celebrate an ideal. The shift in emphasis from exclusivity to uniqueness is often a shift from a superficial “preventing” decree to a profound “promoting” value. It reflects the shift from basing love on the negative requirement of controlling the beloved’s behavior to the positive feature of seeing the unique value of the beloved. It seems that the longevity of a romantic relationship can profit more from the latter attitude. While romantic love involves both features, uniqueness is much more important.3
Until rather recently, the sexual realm was limited (mainly for women) to marriage. Today, sex is considered an acceptable part of casual relationships before and after marriage. The only stronghold that the sexual revolution has failed to destroy is the prohibition against married people having sex with people other than their spouses. Married people seem to be allowed to do almost anything with other people—except engage in sexual activity. Will married people be allowed to join the party sometime in the future, and satisfy their sexual needs outside of their committed framework? Do the boundaries of marriage reflect profound moral or psychological boundaries, or are they rather, as George Bernard Shaw colorfully put it, “the Trade Unionism of the married”? Not unlike other trade unions, that of the married couple attempts to stay in business by erecting rigid boundaries. At the end of the day, do such boundaries make people happy? In Shaw’s ironic formulation, “If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?”4
Taking a perhaps provocative tack, Hakim argues that an enduring marriage and extramarital affairs are the best formula for happiness. Attributing the high divorce rates in England to the “unforgiving, Puritan Anglo-Saxon” attitude to adultery, she advocates the French (and to a lesser extent, the Italian and Japanese) tradition, which considers an extramarital affair as a parallel relationship that, when conducted discreetly, has its own value. Hakim believes that a successful affair can make both parties happier, without hurting anyone. While the Anglo-Saxon tradition leads to serial monogamy and multiple divorces, in the French tradition affairs are simply ignored, and marriages last longer. Hakim praises the French tradition, in which marriage is a more flexible relationship and both spouses find friends and lovers outside marriage. This tradition rejects the common assumption that spouses must fulfill all of each other’s needs, all of the time, exclusively. However, in order to avoid embarrassment, the affairs should be “conducted with great discretion.”5
I do not think that the prohibition of affairs is just an external and socially dependent issue, as it closely relates to the partial and personal nature of emotions. However, the strength of this prohibition is being increasingly diminished in a more flexible social environment.
Loving Two People at the Same Time: Polyamory
One woman is too much for me—and two are far too few.
WOLF BIERMANN
I feel a polyamorous relationship fits the biopsychosocial needs of many! In my situation, my spouse can hardly sexually satisfy me, but my lover satisfies me immensely. If I could have both it would be ideal. I deeply care about my lover as a person, and I love my husband.
A MARRIED WOMAN
Monogamous romantic relationships involve a trade-off between the romantic intensity prompted by variety, on one hand, and the romantic profundity of a connection with one person, on the other. This trade-off rests on the premise that increasing the one inevitably decreases the other. Is this premise correct? Can nonmonogamous relationships offer bot
h romantic intensity and romantic profundity?6
Consensual Nonmonogamy
The chain of wedlock is so heavy that it takes two to carry it—and sometimes three.
HERACLITUS
It takes a loose rein to keep a marriage tight.
JOHN STEVENSON
Consensual nonmonogamy comes in different flavors. Open sexual marriages and polyamory are two major such types, and each has many variations on its main theme. Both relationships, and their various variations, are open, though in different ways. Open sexual relation focuses on sex; polyamory is more comprehensive and involves romantic needs as well. In open sexual marriages, one or both partners seek sexual experiences outside the relationship, while in polyamory one or both partners desire an additional intimate, loving relation, which also includes sexual interactions. Consensual nonmonogamy involves adultery—namely, sex between a married person and someone who is not their husband or wife—but infidelity, which is the action of being unfaithful to a spouse or another sexual partner, is typically not part of it.
In open sexual relationships, it is easy to see that there is a primary and a secondary relation. In polyamory, such a relational hierarchy often exists, though it is less clear. The major concern in open sexual relationships is having sexual relations with those who are not the primary partner; in polyamory, it is bringing within the primary relationship an additional loving relation. The degree of involvement in the life of each partner is different. Thus, a prevailing form of open sexual marriage is swinging, in which the couple has other sexual partners, and their interactions often happen at social events designed for this purpose. In some forms of polyamory, the secondary relationship of each partner is separated, and in other forms, there are shared activities of all those involved.
The Arc of Love Page 28