How An Affair Saved My Marriage
http://www.tangomag.com/2007232/an-affair-to-remember.html
I have mixed feelings about this article. It's all about how a woman married a man right out of college, who then got so busy with his career as a doctor that she felt abandoned, and started an affair with another man who lavished attention on her. I think everyone who knows me, now knows how I feel about cheating and lying in relationships - it's wrong under all circumstances. But the fact of the matter is that people do cheat (myself included) and this often brings people to discover polyamory when they realize they love both their spouse and their lover and don't want to give either up. So, although it's wrong, some very important life lessons can be learned from a cheating experience. Such as this one:
"I was also determined, however tentatively, to touch a toe into the waters of what it was to be alone. To be lonely. And as I did, I began to learn that I was … just fine."
When the author told her husband she wanted to separate and that she had been having an affair, she distanced herself from her husband but did not then speed up her relationship with her lover (speeding up one when another ends is always a mistake, IMO, especially when the person doing the transition is afraid of being alone). She took some time to just be alone. She had met her husband when she was lost on campus and he offered to help her find her way. And she continued to use him to "help find her way" ever since. She was terrified of being alone and it was the feeling that she was alone even while married that drove her to start an affair with someone else. And she learned that the world did not stop spinning, that she did not stop breathing. Being alone can be scary, but you will survive - and do more than just survive.
Now, because I am not afraid of being "alone", because I know the world will not end and I will get over my heartache, I am often accused of not developing deep, emotional attachments to people, of withholding, of using my independence as a shield, a defense mechanism. I don't think that's true. I know I will survive and even love again after a heartbreak, but that doesn't mean I don't love, I don't have heartbreaks, and that they don't really fucking hurt. I don't think that love is mutually exclusive of "independence", but I do want, and have, love. Which brings me to another line from this article:
"It had taken this time apart to realize that my husband was a man I could indeed live without. But I sure as hell didn’t want to."
I think this goes back to my Why I'm A Bottom, Not A Sub post, where I quote from a book in an attempt to explain that being independent does not mean being alone.
The rest of the article goes on to explain how she got back together with her husband, even though she had come to love her lover too. Many monogamous people think that polyamory is significantly different from their own lives, that we feel differently and think differently. I don't think that's true. I think I may be more aware of and more honest of my own feelings than many monogamous people, but I don't think I'm inherently different in how I feel. Monogamous people love multiple people and monogamous people can feel sexually attracted to more than one person at a time. What is different is the social strictures that guide us. In my life, I am allowed to have these feelings and to act on them. In monogamy, whether one is allowed to have the feelings varies from relationship to relationship, but they cannot generally act on them.
In the process of falling in love with her lover, this author also learned that she continued to love her husband. Here's where my mixed feelings come in. She ended her affair to go back to being monogamous with her husband, and I don't see why that had to be the answer. She got very different things from her relationships - of course, they were very different people. Even similar people will still provide completely unique relationships. And if two relationships are unique and individual, one can never replace the other because it could never *be* the other. It will always be different. This is what enables me to feel secure in my polyamorous life - my metamours are not my rivals because it is not a competition. We CANNOT compete with each other because we do not have the same relationship.
The author continued to develop a very deep, emotional friendship with her lover after they ended their affair. And that illustrates my point. These were two unique relationships and one does not have to directly compete with the other. Here is an example of how a "monogamous" woman has the same feelings as a poly person - we just exhibit them differently. There is a place in her life for both men, as they enhance her life in unique ways:
"I took what I had learned from Alex [her lover] and his view of the world into my interactions with James [her husband]. ... I used to think that if I could combine Alex and James, I would have the perfect man. I wasn’t wrong. They do indeed fill in each other’s blanks, serving my different needs. Many people in my life can’t fathom how I have fulfilling relationships with them both."
Of course, the problem I have here is the idea of combining two people to make the perfect person, but what I think she's trying to say is that neither man can fulfill all the roles of people she needs in her life and neither should they be expected to, and how her relationship with each man has enhanced, not just her life, but her relationship with the other. The outside point of view that we get by relating to different people brings a richer, more complex texture to our own lives and thoughts and personalities and this is true whether the "other people" are lovers or not. This will affect all our other relationships, not just our romantic ones, and that affect can be good.
I've also heard people claim that it's not possible to have fulfilling relationships with more than one person, and I'm just totally baffled by that statement. Especially when those people have both spouses and "best friends", and siblings, children, parents, other relatives, etc. I mean, are none of those relationships "fulfilling" simply because that person has so many of them? Oh, wait, but that person isn't having sex with more than one person, right. Sorry, but I just don't buy that the act of sex is the one defining behaviour that makes one relationship more fullfilling than any other (I know certain individuals who do not develop intimate bonds with people they are not having sex with, but this is not a universal trait, nor even all that common, from what I've observed). Each relationship fulfilles a different niche and comparing how fulfilling a romantic relationship is to how fulfilling your best friend relationship or your relationship with a family member is comparing apples to oranges, even though many of those relationships share common activities. They are all fulfilling, but in different ways even when some behaviours overlap, and sexual relationships are no different. If you go to the same restaurants, talk about the same topics, even have sex in the same positions, two relationships will never be indentical and, the fact of the matter is, no two relationships include going to only and exactly the same restaurants/talk about the same topics/have sex in the same positions.
The other point I find fault with is that the author continues to keep her now-platonic friendship with her lover a secret from her husband. She claims it's not out of guilt or shame but to avoid reminding her husband of the time she chose another.
I think this is a huge mistake. First of all, her relationship with her ex-lover is described as "extremely close, unconditionally devoted companions." This is a SIGNIFICANT part of her life and of who she is that she is forced to keep strictly separated from the man she professes to love. These kinds of secrets block paths to intimacy and are corrosive to the delicate nature of intimate relationships. How can she possibly not be doing damage to her marriage when she has to lie about who she is spending time with, how she spent her day, important conversations she had, all those things that contribute to making her who she is? Her relationship with her ex-lover affects who she is right now and will continue to contribute to shaping who she is in the future. And her husband is prohibited from any exposure to that part of her and her life.
Second, if she's not doing anything wrong now, she should have no reason to hide. If her husband cannot bear her having this man in her life, they have a serious problem. Either she is not willing to sacrifice for his sake (give up her ex-lover, which, for the record, I don't think she should have to) or he is not dealing with his insecurity over her past infidelity. If he can bear it, she's treating him like a child who can't make his own decisions for what his life looks like. This is not fair to her husband. She is not allowing him to develop the tools necessary to heal from her past betrayal or to become secure enough in their relationship to allow her to fully be the person she is. She is taking his decision-making ability away from him. She is also continuing her betrayal, whether she continues to have sex or not. He is not being allowed to choose, for himself, a life with this woman with or without her ex-lover-turned-best-friend. Any secret so big that one feels would damage the relationship if told is probably a secret that most needs to be told.
And third, I think he *should* be reminded of the time she chose another. Always. The reason she "chose another" is because she felt that he was not giving her as much of his time and attention as she wanted. She should have communicated her needs more clearly, rather than cheating, but the fact is that he was willing to make an effort to change some behaviour to accomodate her needs and desires - namely to give her more attention. If he ever forgets that, he risks losing her again. He should always be conscious of the fact that his actions have consequences and neglecting your partner can cause your partner to leave.
Now, please do not misunderstand me and think I am advocating that the author use her past infidelity as a weapon to keep her husband in line. "You better pay attention to me or I'll cheat again!" This is not what I'm saying. But the world is goverened by actions and consequences. This is about their choices. He has to choose his own path. Sometimes, however, some things are not compatible. He has to find the balance in his life between the time and attention he focuses on his career and the time and attention he focuses on his wife. It is true that making money and following a demanding dream career requires a sacrifice on how much time can be given to other people. It's not zero-sum, but there are still some things that just cannot co-exist at the same time and time is a finite resource. One has to decide just how little time one can spend with another before it ceases to be a relationship.
I was dating someone last year. He was busy with school, I was still living in Tampa and commuting to Orlando and busy with work. I don't require a lot of time (in terms of counting hours) from my partners. Both of us expected the other to respect our dedication to our respective goals. This seemed like we were compatible. However, when we had been dating a year and had only actually seen each other maybe 5 times and talked on the phone not much more than that, I had to question whether we were actually in a relationship or not. When I went 3 months in a row not having heard from him at all, I had to admit that we weren't actually dating anymore.
It's not just the physical time spent together - anyone who has made long-distance relationships work understands that. It's about how significant a person is to you. We were not in each other's thoughts very often, we did not make much effort to keep in touch with alternate methods, and we were both low on the priority scale for each other.
So when two people are married and share a home and a life together, *some* amount of effort needs to be put forth to maintain the relationship or it isn't a relationship anymore, merely housemates. And I think that a person who has a tendency to get caught up in one's career to the detriment of the relationships one has, that person needs to be reminded that there is a choice to be made. Sometimes I *have* chosen my career over my relationships. I'm not suggesting it's an incorrect choice. But it *is* a choice. So I think it would benefit this husband to always remember that he is involved in a balancing act and that if he wishes to maintain a relationship with his wife, he has to put forth some effort. The author is doing her husband and herself a disservice by hiding her continued friendship with her ex-lover.
So, overall, I think this article has some very good points to make about loving more than one person, being independent, and honesty and communication with one's partners. Unfortunately, there are those couple of points that I think she gets wrong, and they are so very, very wrong.