If 'infidelity' is so bad...

... here's a question that I'm surprised nobody else asked during the lecture, because it was certainly at the front of my mind:

What's so great about the concept of 'fidelity' anyways?

Because folks: from where I'm sitting, it looks hypocritical, sado-masochistic, and profoundly unhealthy in any psychological context you care to name.


Caveat: I have never done the whole 'committed relationship' thing. I have never wanted to, nor really understood why anyone else would want to (I mean, I can postulate various dysfunctions that might explain it, but try as I might, I still find it impossible to empathise). I have no doubt whatsoever that human beings are not naturally 'monogamous.'

Establishing an exclusivity/ownership dynamic in a sexual relationship--a dynamic usually endorsed by screwed-up societal preconceptions, no less--is pretty much the polar opposite of what I know as 'love', I'm afraid. It's effectively declaring (with whatever superficial intention, and however mutually) that your partner's happiness and emotional welfare are constrained by the same factors and arbitrary standards as your own, and that they therefore have no right to be happy in themselves and/or with anyone else, or to try anything new while they're 'committed'¹ to you.

You wouldn't do that kind of crap to a friend; what the hell makes it okay--expected, in fact--to do it to a lover??

Frankly, the whole thing stinks of codependent selfishness and ravening personal insecurity. The term 'cheating' itself suggests depriving someone of something to which they are entitled--as if attraction or love are finite resources, which need to be rigidly graded and rationed out² on a priority basis. Folks: emotions don't work that way. If you love someone, you don't somehow love them any less if you also happen to love someone else. You're don't somehow find them any less sexually appealing if you also happen to be fucking someone else. Attraction may well wear out in many cases, but it can't be appropriated, or diluted through proliferation.

Then there's the whole marriage thing, with the civil/religious aspect... but that's secondary, and just sordid. Religion, like the monster that it is, will eagerly nurture any perverse social construct that makes people easier to control (and/or more miserable). Again: this is not a natural or rewarding state of affairs. Your affection is not some kind of unstable toxic waste that needs to be safely contained by some sterile, impermeable patriarchal bullshit, lest it seep out and impurify everyone else's precious bodily fluids. Or whatever.

Approaching sexual and emotional fulfilment through such a tortuous labyrinth of hangups and disturbing complexes is neither healthy nor sensible. If people can't maintain responsible relationships via open and honest communication, they don't deserve to have any.

Discuss.

¹ I would love to make a bad psychotherapy pun at this point... but I have a girlfriend who works as a consultant psychologist, and people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

² Presumably for the good of the war effort...