There are three main aspects:

• keeping the promises you make
• avoiding making promises that you don’t think you will be able to keep
• renegotiating your promises rather than breaking them

All three are essential.First of all, if you break a promise you’ll be hurting someone, whether it’s just by inconveniencing them or more seriously by shaking their faith in your trustworthiness. Promises between partners are particularly important because they have chosen to rely on each other more than on other people. If your long-term partner, who you’ve chosen to spend your life with, turns out to be someone you can’t trust to keep their promises, you are going to be pretty upset.

But if anyone says that you should keep every promise, whatever it was and however long ago you made it, they are being very unrealistic. A promise is a prediction of the future. It expresses an intention that you will do something or not do something. None of us can accurately predict the future, though. Circumstances change, and even if you fully intended at the time to do whatever it was, it can become impossible.

Acting honourably involves keeping your promises as far as you can. But when a promise becomes difficult to keep, what can someone do then? They can break the promise and make the excuse that it would have been too difficult to keep it. Or, better, they can renegotiate the promise: say that they are finding it difficult to keep and suggesting an alternative.

But that isn’t all. Someone who promises the world but keeps renegotiating out of their commitments just annoys everyone they deal with, even if they don’t, strictly speaking, break their promises. This situation can be avoided by not makeing promises you don’t think you will be able to keep.

Promising monogamy

This might all seem obvious. But one very common promise is to be monogamous, and we all know how often that is made and broken. It is a promise implied (and sometimes explicitly stated) in the marriage vows, and it is also often implied when two people start to go out with each other and act as a couple.

I have always found it hard to understand how people can promise to love and have sex with only one person for the rest of their lives. Only around half of the people who make this promise go on to break it according to various surveys, so why promise it?

When I was quite young I decided that I was never going to get married, and I think it was because of this issue. Why make a promise I know I probably won’t be able to keep, and thereby risk my own happiness and that of the person I promise monogamy to? I seem to be unusual in this: most people who are lucky enough to find someone they love, who loves them and whom they are legally allowed to marry seem to manage to get married. Why not just swallow my qualms and do the same, Anna?

Well, I for one don’t want to ignore my reservations. I don’t believe I should make a promise I don’t mean to keep, and I don’t think I should try to kid myself that I can definitely be monogamous forever, however wonderful my partner is.

The reason that some people get married or otherwise promise to be monogamous, I suspect, is that it is conventionally required if you want to be with the person you love, get the rights that come with legal marriage and have your relationship sanctioned by society.

But those of us who want to commit to a long-term relationship don’t have to go along with this implied requirement. You can avoid legal marriage, either by not having any kind of ceremony by having a commitment ceremony. Or, if you want to get married and your marriage vows include the word faithfulness, you can make sure it is clear in the ceremony what you mean by this and whether it includes monogamy.

A promise of faithfulness could mean that:

• you will always take your loved ones’ interests into account in your decisions
• you will be honest with them
• you will put them first
• you will tell them whenever you have difficulty keeping any agreements you have with them
• you will renegotiate rather than breaking promises
• you will listen to them, communicate with them, be tolerant and accepting, and to try your best to act lovingly.

All these are things that you can make an effort to do. But promising not to fall in love with someone else, not to be attracted to anyone else, not to fall out of love, never to stop finding your partner sexually attractive – these are things you can’t control, so any such promise

For all those readers who find monogamy difficult: will you join me in refusing to promise it? To do so will be not an admission of weakness but a statement of integrity.

When I was near the end of the long-term relationship with Sylvia, Sally was one of several sexual relationships I was having – some regular, some irregular, some one-offs. Sally became a regular and my mental attachment to her grew. This did not affect my other friendships, whether physical or not. Sally did not mind me having my own life, she loved me ‘as I was’, unconditionally. Sally was married before to someone who was unfaithful but lied about it (and he was also dishonest in other ways).

Sally and I were able to talk about any subject – I felt she was completely non-judgemental and was very accepting about my situation, always positive and helpful and interested. She is very mature, wise, understanding and non-judgemental. As someone who doesn’t suffer from jealousy, she didn’t (doesn’t) get jealous of my friends or non-Sally activities. She does however really enjoy the times we spend together, and we have lots of good times together. She loves my ‘whole person’, which includes that saucy glint in my eye.

At the same time as I was getting to know Sally I was also getting to know Diane. She was, like Sally, more than ten years older than me, and she was a wheelchair user with quite severe physical disabilities. She was delighted with my interest in her and we had a few rather difficult to organise sexual experiences. Sally seemed happy for me to do this with Diane, and knew I was providing her with sexual release and companionship and love, which Sally believes is a human right.

When Sally and I discussed my flings with other women, we agreed some ground rules – I don’t play away at home, and am not to discuss lurid details with her (the less I say about it the better). The best thing to say is (if the time is right) “seeing X makes me realise how much I love you” and varieties of that. But only if that’s what I’m feeling!

Other rules were that I did not have those experiences in our house, that the behaviour didn’t get in the way of my being a good dad, and that I answered any questions she asked honestly. Also she would expect me to use a condom and be as safe as possible, partly to protect her.

Although in theory Sally is free to have other lovers, she tells me that I satisfy all her needs, give her more attention and love than she thought possible, and is very happy thank you very much. I think she thinks it’s fairer to share me out a bit.

I am honest with the women I’d like to ‘get to know better’ and I always wear my wedding ring. I’m sure this puts a lot of women off me, but it reduces the chances of misleading someone. Most women I chat up or pay a compliment to do not understand that I can be happily married but enjoy having sex outside of this AND have the ‘permission’ of my wife to do so. I know therefore how lucky I am to have Sally and how well suited we are for a lifetime together.

She is very satisfied sexually (we make love approximately seven times per week) and can see that I’ve got a very high sex drive/level of energy and stamina so is able to ignore the things which if she concentrated on would make her unhappy. She thanks me every day for making her into a mum.

The most difficult thing for Sally to cope with was that on occasions, Diane and I would have a ‘difference of opinion’ which would leave me feeling unhappy or preoccupied or thoughtful.

When we were considering getting married we discussed my sexual habits and agreed that we couldn’t vow fidelity, so we spent ages working out our own vows. My general recollection of these discussions is that I was amazed that I’d met someone who didn’t mind me doing this ‘naughty’ behaviour – making it not-naughty. This also made it less desirable for me, as my rebellious nature is attracted to those ‘forbidden’ things.

The wedding vows were:

By giving you this ring, I promise to continue the friendship, trust, respect and honesty that we have already established.

I promise to build on the solid foundation of our love, our shared sense of fun, joy in our children and appreciation of all that we have together.

I promise to keep listening to you, communicating my needs and practising tolerance of those inevitable little difficulties.

By giving you this ring, I am honoured to call you my husband/wife.

Building an open relationship

Russell’s description of his relationship with Sally illustrates many of the ways in which couples can make an open relationship work well. When they met, there were both keen to avoid dishonesty. It must also have helped that Sally already knew that Russell had multiple partners. He describes her non-judgemental, accepting, positive and mature, all characteristics that can help strengthen any relationship but that are especially important for an open one. In their wedding vows, there are many words that signal a good relationship, above all communication and listening.

Sally is lucky not to suffer from jealousy, and although there are some ‘things which if she concentrated on would make her unhappy’, the advantages of this relationship clearly outweigh the disadvantages for her. She prefers not to hear all the lurid details of Russell’s other lovers but trusts him to keep his wedding ring on. I have spoken with her briefly and she confirms that she is very happy in her marriage.

Russell and Sally’s story also shows how Open Fidelity can be part of a legal marriage. I find their vows moving to read – how realistic they are, how much more evocative of actual married life than the traditional vows!

Jennie supported Philippa through the sex change but found it hard. She was continuing to spend time with other men and explore the submissive side of herself, and Philippa accepted this now that Jennie had come clean about it. The transition was obviously the right thing for Philippa to be doing, but as she took hormones and underwent surgery, Jennie became reluctant to share a bed with her.

After a trip away visiting a lover, Jennie decided they would have to get a divorce. But deep down she still loved Philippa and knew she was the same person she had married, and shared her life with all this time. Together they applied for the first stages of a divorce, and Philippa moved out to stay on a friend’s sofa. It was ironic, says Philippa:

Our wedding anniversary consisted of putting in the divorce petition, and then she came over and we actually went for a meal together.

After a few months, during which they had met regularly and found they still enjoyed each other’s company, Philippa found herself with nowhere to live. To Jennie the obvious solution seemed to be for Philippa to move back in with her and the teenage children.

I thought, we have so many life values and interests in common, we’d only end up creating two separate homes with very similar sorts of feels, and why would we want to do that, if at the end of the day we could still be best friends, even if we weren’t going to be sexual partners?

At first, Philippa stayed in the spare room. They talked a lot over the weeks and months, and eventually Jennie invited Philippa back into her bed. Through gentle exploration, they found a new joy in sex now that Philippa’s body was how she had always wanted it to be. They decided not to complete the divorce.

Life transitions, marriage and staying together

Many marriages might have been broken by the wish of one spouse to transition to another gender, the gender they feel is their true one. In fact many marriages might have foundered after the discovery of infidelity. This was a difficult time for Jennie and Philippa, and they did nearly divorce. It is a tribute to the strength of their love that they didn’t take the final step of the divorce but had another go at staying together.

What made it possible for them to get through this time? The fact that Jennie was able to get sexual fulfilment elsewhere probably made it easier for her to contemplate living as ‘best friends’ rather than as sexual partners. And for Philippa, who was only just getting used to having a female body, the trust the two of them had built up over the years probably meant she had a safe space once she was ready to start exploring sex as a woman, without having to go out alone and meet someone new who might not understand the process she had been through.

But overall I think it was the love they had built up over their years together, their respect for each other and their willingness to work things through that saved their marriage.

So, for a while they had a good arrangement, living together as a committed couple, but with Jennie seeing other men now and then. But, as you’ll read in the next post, they then took a step further and sought out a third person for a loving three-way relationship.

Jennie and Philip met at university and got married the year they graduated. They were open to each other about their feelings, and quite early on, Philip told Jennie that being a man was something he found difficult. When they made love, he never wanted to be the active partner as he felt expected to be. Neither of the couple were very happy with their sex life, but they were happy to be together. As time went on, they had two children.

Several times in the first ten years of their marriage, Jennie found herself getting infatuated with someone else, and she told Philip about these feelings. Philip was not a jealous person and told Jennie that the marriage could be open if she wanted; Philip didn’t want another lover himself, partly because he was unsure of his own sexual identity. None of Jennie’s early romantic attachments led to any sex, and she was open about all of them. Later, however, she had several affairs that involved sex, and at that point she felt it would be fairest on Philip not to tell him. In one of these Jennie explored a side to her sexuality that she hadn’t explored before – her desire to be submissive to a dominant lover.

Why didn’t she tell Philip earlier, given that he had said he wouldn’t mind?

It’s traditionally seen as a betrayal when you’re sexually active with somebody else and you don’t tell your partner about it, but in a strange sort of a way, I felt very strongly at the time that it was helping me to keep the marriage together. I wouldn’t do it now, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

The affairs had been going on for over 15 years when Jennie finally decided to tell Philip. He seemed, from little teasing comments he made now and again, to have already guessed.

It was almost as if there was a challenge there to say ‘Come clean, I’m ready to hear it now’.

His response was a surprise: he was relieved. Philippa (as she is now called) says

She said she wasn’t seeing me as a man, and that she needed a man, and I said ‘Well in that case, I might as well stop trying to fake it.

Philip explained his wish to live as a woman.

To tell or not to tell?

The fact that Jennie decided not to tell Philippa about her affairs shows that, even with the best of intentions, it isn’t easy to be open to your partner about your interest in someone else. (Note that I will call Philippa by that name from here onwards, to respect her female identity; also, all names have been changed.) Philippa had already told Jennie that the marriage could be open, and yet Jennie felt it wouldn’t be right to tell Philippa about her affairs. When Jennie looks back, she clearly finds it hard to remember how she came to this decision at the time and, as she said, she wouldn’t do the same now.

Jennie’s silence makes some sense to me, though, given that there is strong pressure from society to keep affairs secret, stronger perhaps than the pressure not to have affairs in the first place. However idealistic you might be, the assumptions of the wider society can get into your head and lead you to conform, even when you have good reasons not to.

The complications in Jennie and Philippa’s relationship – Philippa’s difficulties with living as a man and Jennie’s new-found desire for a dominant lover – might have made talking about the affairs harder. Eventually they did talk, though, and talking about one issue seems to have made it easier to talk about other issues. It must have been hard for Jennie to finally admit her affairs, but she doesn’t regret doing it for a moment.

Did Jennie’s affairs help them to stay together? I think they probably did. She wasn’t happy with their sex life, so when someone offered her a kind of sex she preferred, it gave her a way to be sexually fulfilled while staying with the partner she loved. Despite her lack of honesty about her affairs, they don’t seem to have hurt Philippa and they gave Jennie an outlet for her sexual feelings. I wouldn’t recommend keeping an affair a secret, but in this situation, who am I to say it was wrong?

Helen didn’t feel guilty about spending time with Julie – how could such bliss be wrong? She introduced Julie to Georgina, who guessed that this was more than a friendship and said she thought David was beginning to guess that something was going on, not least because Helen was obviously deliriously happy. So with Georgina’s encouragement she chose a moment when she and David were both relaxed at home and told him everything. She also reassured him of her deep and enduring love for him, and that she would never leave him.

To her surprise, his reaction was cautiously positive. David wasn’t surprised but was pleased that Helen had told him. He greed that she could go ahead and continue to see Julie and become more sexually intimate with her. He made no conditions, but Helen promised that she would be completely above board with him and that she wouldn’t tell anyone else without his agreement.

In fact, it was worth it for David. The affair actually improved their life together. Helen’s passion for Julie spilled over into their marriage and rejuvenated it. She was more relaxed, more tolerant of little habits of his that used to irritate her, because of her overwhelming gratitude to David for his understanding of her feelings. Because she couldn’t see Julie very often, David got the benefit of Helen ‘firing on all cylinders’. And Helen came to see that she could love both David and Julie at the same time.

Loving the one didn’t diminish my love for the other. They met different needs and were in separate compartments. The one was a deep and enduring love – the anchor of my existence. The other was a life-giving and all-demanding passion, riding the crest of a wave.

Options for David

What would you have done in David’s situation? Some men might not have been as accepting as he was. Someone in this situation could have been afraid that his wife might leave him, or doubted his wife’s love for him. These are all natural reactions, especially when our culture assumes that they are the only reasonable ones. But David’s experience shows that there are other ways to react, and that they can bring benefits.

In fact, David is someone who doesn’t get jealous easily. Yes, there are people like him! Others might have needed more reassurance that the relationship was strong and that they were loved and valued. Some might not have been able to cope with the situation at all and might have preferred to impose restrictions on their partner or end the marriage. But what a shame to take such drastic action, when accepting the situation might have brought such a rejuvenation to the relationship?

In this blog I aim to give alternatives and show that they can work. Helen and David are far being from the only couple who’ve experienced this rejuvenation after opening up their relationship. You’ll hear about others in future posts, and I’ll also tell you later what happened next for Helen, David, Julie and Miriam.

I can honestly say that I was never tempted to look elsewhere, with or without David’s knowledge.

Then one day Helen was persuaded by friends to take part in a week-long historical pageant, in which a 17th century village would be reconstructed. There she got to know Julie and Miriam, who had been partners for five years. Miriam was in her sixties but Julie was about the same age as Helen’s daughter Georgina. They all hit it off and had some hilarious, and also thoughtful, times.

When the project ended, although she liked them as friends, Helen didn’t expect to see Julie and Miriam very often. But to her surprise, Julie kept on seeking her out, sending her little notes, inviting her on walks, for coffee, all without Miriam or David. Julie was vivacious and bubbly and Helen began to realise that she found her very attractive. Then one morning she awoke after dreaming about Julie in an undeniably sexual way. She realised that she was falling in love with Julie. She says:

My eyes had been opened. From then on I was like a love-struck teenager! I realised I loved Julie, but I could hardly believe it myself and didn’t dare express my feelings even to her, let alone tell David. It seemed impossible that she could love me.

Then one evening, over a meal that Julie had arranged, their feelings for each other spilled out. Julie said “I’ve loved you since that first week”. Then, as Helen puts it:

Everything went off with a bang. For three weeks we were in a crazy and intoxicating world, in a complete spin. We loved being together, it was effortless and we wanted to know everything the other had ever done. We felt we had always known each other.

Options for Helen

Helen had several things to cope with. First, the fact that this was all happening while she was married, when she had intended to be faithful to David all her life. These feelings must have been quite a shock for her.

Then there was the fact that it was a woman that she was falling for, when she had not been interested in women before. She was suddenly faced with her own bisexuality. Many women in their late 60s would find this particularly difficult, as homosexuality is only just becoming widely accepted in the UK, and bisexuality is still not often talked about in heterosexual circles. Helen was lucky, however: her daughter Georgina had previously come out as a lesbian, so Helen had worked through for her difficulties with the idea of women loving women several years earlier. But she had still never applied these ideas to herself.

Then there was the question of what, if anything, to tell her husband David. How to explain this double whammy – that you have fallen in love with someone else, and that it is a much younger woman? And to cap it all, Julie was in a long-term relationship with someone else, Miriam. Miriam was Helen’s age and Helen knew and liked her. She knew Julie was committed to Miriam, just as she was to David. She had no wish to hurt Miriam.

So, what would you do in Helen’s situation?

She could have insisted that they stop seeing each other straight away, to stop the incipient affair in its tracks. For those who believe that monogamy is the only ethical option, there would be no other choice. They would have gone home, concentrated on their marriage/partnership, and tried to forget each other and get on with their lives. Sometimes this can work, eventually, and in some similar situations this could have been the best solution.

Should she tell David? If Helen had put off seeing Julie before it had started, many would argue that she hadn’t been unfaithful and that there was therefore no need to tell her husband. No need according to a strict interpretation of fidelity as monogamy, perhaps, but in Helen’s heart there would still have been an important secret that she was keeping from David. If a relationship is to help each person to grow and be their full self, it is better to share this kind of discovery with each other, even if ‘nothing has happened’. In fact especially then, because it will be easier to confess to feelings for someone else that you haven’t acted on than it will be to confess to breaking a promise of monogamy.

If Helen didn’t break off contact with Julie, what else could she have done? She could have had an affair with Julie and kept it a secret from David and Miriam. I’ve posted already about the problems with this approach. Or she could have left David for Julie. In this case this would have involved a very sudden change of life, giving up her home (or perhaps forcing David to give up his), probably a drastic reduction in income, the disapproval of family and friends, and not least loss of the man she loved and had shared decades of her life with. If their marriage had been unhappy and she had been considering a divorce anyway, that would have been different. But Helen and David were happy together.

Helen’s story illustrates an important fact: people who fall for someone else while in a relationship aren’t always having problems with their relationship. Some people would have you believe that an affair is always a sign of something having gone wrong, perhaps a sign that the ‘faithful’ spouse needs to try harder to keep the ‘straying’ spouse. My research that shows that this just isn’t true: like many others, Helen fell in love with Julie even though her marriage to David was loving and stable.

I’ll tell you what she did in the next post.

She has interviewed over a hundred people who have had no-strings-attached sex while married, without telling their spouses, and concludes that this is becoming more and more common in the UK. She also concludes that many of them don’t feel guilty about it. Women are no longer much less likely to have affairs than men, and age isn’t a barrier either.

Like so many journalists writing on this subject, Levin completely ignores the idea that someone might be honest about having sex with someone else. None of the interviewees seem to have considered for a moment the idea of telling their partners about their need for more sex, or about the fact that they are having sex with someone else. As usual, the choice seems to be between monogamy and cheating. The third article talks about what happens when the other spouse finds out, though this never seems to be through a confession.

Interestingly, there seems to be a consensus among the people interviewed that this extramarital sex keeps them sane and happy and therefore saves their marriage. To some extent I would agree with this: sex with others can enliven a relationship, as I have found myself and heard again and again from the people I’ve interviewed. But Levin does point out that “the partner who chooses to have a fling has to live a life of subterfuge and always be on the alert in case he or she is found out”. Yes, it is a big price to pay. I would go further: I’d say it the deceit that causes most of the problems, rather than the extramarital sex itself. In fact, if there is no deceit, sex with others has a much better chance of enlivening the relationship.

I want to say loud and clear to people in this situation: there is another way. You don’t have to be monogamous and you don’t have to cheat. But it requires talking to your spouse and telling them about your needs.

Here are some thoughts from an Open Fidelity perspective for someone who is married and considering having, or has had, a no-strings-attached affair, and who wants to stay in the marriage.

The ideal time to talk to your spouse about this issue is when you’re starting to feel unhappy and are tempted to cheat but before you have done anything concrete to find another sexual partner. It will be much more difficult to try and find a solution if you have already broken your original promises. But even that can be done. The longer you leave it, the more difficult it will be, either to keep the secret or to come clean. And the secret is almost bound to come out at some point.

Tell your spouse that you are having problems being monogamous. Tell them you have considered looking elsewhere for some sex, or that you have done so if that is the case. Also tell them how much you love them, how committed you feel and that you don’t want to leave them. Say that you would like to work out a way in which both of you can be sexually satisfied while still managing to stay together.

Then wait for the suggestion to sink in, for your spouse’s anger to die down, and for them to consider their options and the alternative options (the two of you splitting up; you having an affair behind their back; and you being unhappily monogamous). If your having sex with someone else with no strings attached will really not affect your love for your spouse or your relationship with them, it might be possible to convince them to accept this too (but make sure you are certain of it first!).

If you have been unhappy, the chances are they have also been unhappy, so they might be glad for the opportunity to talk about their difficulties. Who knows, they might also have been wanting something different in their sex life and have been wishing they could tell you. They might even have already guessed that you’re thinking of an affair. This will be an opportunity for you to work out what you both want and find a way in which your probably differing needs can be made compatible.

Then try, tentatively and gently, to negotiate with each other a solution that involves you getting some sexual fulfilment while staying with your spouse. I can’t say what the solution will be – each relationship is different – but I can, over the course of this blog, give you examples of people who have tried this solution and what they have learnt from the experience. Are there some rules that you can agree that will make it easier to cope with each other’s liaisons? Practising safe sex is an obvious example. Perhaps a period of strict monogamy would be a good idea while you find ways to make non-monogamy possible. Are you prepared for your spouse to have lovers too? If you find this idea difficult, ask yourself why. Look for support from others who have tried honest non-monogamy, perhaps via this blog and the links from it.

This whole blog is about this alternative to monogamy and cheating, called Open Fidelity, so keep reading if you want more tips.

• ignore the feeling and stay monogamous;
• leave their partner in order to get together with a new partner; or
• cheat on their partner with the other person.

I’ve talked a bit about staying monogamous, though I’m sure there will be more on that in future posts. Leaving the original partner is always a possibility, but often the person does not want to leave, for reasons such as:

• they love their partner
• they feel committed
• they don’t want to be seen to break their promises
• breaking up would cause upheaval (emotionally, practically and/or financially, particularly if they are married or have children).

For those who don’t want to leave their partner but are finding it hard to reconcile this with an attraction to someone else, a secret affair is the only other obvious option in our culture.

So given that other options aren’t obviously available to most people (a situation I aim to change), it isn’t really surprising how many people cheat on their partners. It seems to be almost expected by western society today that many people will enter into ‘monogamous’ relationships (such as marriage) and will then, sooner or later, have sex with someone else without telling their partner or spouse.

I am using the word ‘monogamous’ in this blog to mean ‘having sex with only one person over a period of time’. A person who is monogamous is someone who, over the course of, say, a year, has sex with only one person. I will usually mean ‘sexually monogamous’, that is, if someone has a romantic attachment to more than one person but has sex with only one, they are strictly speaking being monogamous. Of course there is plenty to discuss in all this, but this definition is where I am starting from.

Helen Fisher, in Anatomy of Love: a Natural History of Monogamy Adultery and Divorce, defines the term differently, as ‘having only one spouse’ regardless of any short-term sexual relations with other people. This is more of an anthropological definition, used in discussions of forms of marriage in different cultures.

I think the definition I am using is the more widely used one in general western culture, and so will make more sense to people. Besides, we need words that distinguish people who have sex with only one person from those who have sex with more than one person.

Partner

I generally talk about partners in all my writing, rather than about husbands, wives, girlfriends or boyfriends, for two main reasons. Firstly, what I am talking about applies just as much to same-sex relationships as it does to relationships between men and women. And secondly, whether a couple is married or not is not usually relevant to the argument, as nowadays many couples live together (or even separately) without being married but the same issues surrounding monogamy still arise, just as they would if the couple were married. I am aware that ‘partner’ can mean ‘business partner’, but here it won’t mean that.

The problem with the gender-neutral approach is that you can end up with lots of ‘they’s and confusion about who is being referred to. I don’t think it is useful to use ‘he or she’ all the time, and grammatically I don’t have a problem with using ‘they’ in the singular (it is very commonly used). If you talk about a husband and a wife, you can they say ‘he did this, she said that’ and it is clear, but with two partners, ‘they did this and they did the other’ is not. I will try to make it as clear as possible, sometimes by using examples with names when no other method works. Please add a comment if a particular sentence isn’t clear to you, for this or any other reason.

Infidelity

One of the main arguments I will be making is that ‘fidelity’ shouldn’t mean the same as ‘monogamy’. For the purposes of the next few posts, however, while discussing the status quo, I will use ‘infidelity’ to mean ‘having sex with someone who isn’t your partner without your partner’s knowledge or permission’. Someone who does this could be called a ‘cheater’ and their partner has been ‘cheated on’. These terms are not ideal but I choose to use them because they are generally understood.

Many people try their utmost to be monogamous. They try to avoid getting tempted into having sex with anyone other than their spouse (or their partner, in other words the person they have committed to). But more fail than succeed.

Yes, there are couples who stay happily together for decades, with no interest in anyone but each other. They are the lucky ones in today’s society – they find it easy to keep to the conventional rules.

But I suspect that many other couples who do manage long-term monogamy struggle with it. They are tempted and resist the temptation, or they avoid situations where they could be tempted. Perhaps one of the two partners struggles alone with their attractions to other people. This person might be afraid of mentioning to their partner how difficult they are finding the struggle to be monogamous, for fear that their partner could be angry or could leave them.

Alternatively, the two partners might struggle together when one of them is attracted to a third person. One partner is suspicious and the other partner makes promises or denies everything.

Looking at relationships this way, we can see that large portions of the energy in a relationship can be used in keeping to the rule of monogamy.

And of course many others don’t manage it. I will go into the numbers in more detail in a future post but, essentially, studies show that in western societies marital infidelity occurs in 40-70% of all marriages. These infidelities can take many forms, from visits to prostitutes, one-night stands and holiday flings to affairs lasting years.

Many of the married people having affairs have vowed to ‘forsake all others’ when they got married, usually with full sincerity, and even when these exact words are not an explicit part of the marriage ceremony they are implied in it. Can we argue that they have changed into different people, suddenly not caring about the feelings of their spouse? If infidelity was a rare occurrence we could treat it as an aberration; but it is not rare, not at all.