Marriage and Being Faithful

Marriage and being faithful

My aim in this paper is to promote the liberalisation of personal relationships, this to be achieved partly by analysing the discourse by which men and women rationalise their relations with one another. The place to start, ideally, would be with facts and figures about people’s attitudes to the more problematic aspects of marriage, and in particular to questions of freedom and faithfulness. Not having access to the results of surveys about applied marital values, I shall simply assume that spouses are expected to have sex only with each other, as also to exclude other people in many other ways. Although the emphasis is always on sexual restriction, it seems to me that emotional involvement with others is also placed under curfew. Thus, it often happens that heterosexual couples will police each other’s personal relations with members of the opposite sex, even when they are not regarded as potential sexual rivals, or will try to curtail each other’s access to other people in general, as when the complaint is made that one is spending too much time with one’s friends.

My concern, then, is with jealousy and possessiveness in this wider sense, and what I suggest is that conventional marriage may usefully be understood as a form of relationship capitalism, that analogy being developed when a contrast is made with psycho-sexual socialism based more on the needs of others and less on one’s own interests and inclinations. We speak, after all, of not selling ourselves too cheaply, as if sex were a commodity, and of rejecting the advances of those who are of lower status than we think that we are or would like to be. It could be argued, as I’m sure it has been, that sexual selectiveness is a basic biological mechanism of species survival, but I would maintain that western society no longer functions at that level, if only for the reason that methods of contraception are nowadays freely available. Even if such biological imperatives still make themselves felt, they are shaped and guided by society, and in western countries it is the case, and has been for centuries, that some couples reach out to others from within their relationship, and that communities or communes exist in which the members attend to one another’s psycho-sexual needs, so that no-one, at least in principle, need find herself alone by the camp fire while couples cling to each other in their separate tents.

But what, you may ask, is wrong with mainstream relationships in which partners or spouses focus on their own and each other’s needs and interests and those of their children and other family members? Well, one answer is that something must be very wrong, for we need only look around us at all the unhappy marriages, or consult the official figures for divorce rates in this and other western countries. Clearly, the institution of marriage is in need of repair, and although the reasons for its clunkiness are no doubt very complicated, a central defect, surely, is that too many married couples suffer from romantic delusions about the nature of true love, these being exposed when put to the test. What I suggest, then, is that we critically examine the reasons usually given for restriction of freedom within marriage and long-term partnerships.

To begin with, it is possible to maintain that if two people truly love each other, then they cannot find other people sexually attractive. Now, it might be thought that no-one actually believes this, given its absurdity, but this would be to underestimate the extent to which romanticism distorts common sense. I have actually heard people say, at least when their spouse is present, that they are completely fulfilled within their marriage and do not fancy other men or women. But also, if they say the opposite, that they do find other people attractive, then their spouse may be shocked and upset.

Secondly, there is an argument to the effect that if you truly love someone, you cannot at the same time love anyone else. The merits of the argument are seriously debated, whereas it is obvious to me that you can share your affections and love more than one person. The question is taken seriously partly because true love is implicitly defined in such a way as to exclude the possibility of its having more than one object, except that the stipulative definition is never made explicit, so that it is the confused nature of the discussion that sustains it. This, as elsewhere, is where a grounding in philosophy would be of use.

Thirdly, it is argued that even if it is possible to love one’s spouse and still find other people attractive, one cannot act on those feelings, for instance by embarking on an affair, without it reflecting badly on the state of one’s marriage, for if one is happily married one does not need to look elsewhere. A difficulty here is that such a belief may become self-fulfilling, for if the affair is discovered and the injured party is hurt and upset, then permanent damage may be done to the relationship, trust being replaced by suspicion, with the effect of seeming to confirm that the affair exposed pre-existing marital problems. The reality, however, is that finding other people attractive need say nothing in itself about the state of one’s relationship, the same being true of taking it to the next level and becoming sexually involved with another person, even to the extent of loving them and caring about them.

Note, too, as I have argued all along, that one is expected to be faithful not only sexually but also emotionally. What this means in practice is that one’s need to engage with other people may be stifled by marriage, with limited scope for being generous, for helping other people, and for sharing and being involved in their lives, not just at the social level but at the deeper level of physical intimacy and closeness, the impulse to which must be kept within bounds if one’s affections are to be the exclusive preserve of one’s partner. This is a plea, then, not only for more personal freedom in marriage but also for more involvement with other people in the sense of being allowed to do more for others and to give more of oneself, and especially to combine personal inclination with care for others by having the opportunity to enter into psycho-sexual relations with them, both because one wants to and because we all need so much love and attention.

Last Week's Puzzle

Cheryl's birthday party

This is a well-known puzzle which tests the ability, the same as with the hat problem, to reason from the perspective of another person; in this case the perspective of Albert and Bernard, each working with the information that they know that the other has.

Albert and Bernard have just become friends with Cheryl, and they want to know when her birthday is. Cheryl gives them a list of 10 possible dates:

May		15	16			19
June				17	18
July	14		16
August	14	15		17

Cheryl then tells Albert and Bernard separately the month and the day of her birthday respectively.

Albert: I don't know when Cheryl's birthday is, but I know that Bernard doesn't know, either

Bernard: At first I did not know when Cheryl's birthday was, but I know now.

Albert: Then I also know when Cheryl's birthday is.

So when is Cheryl's birthday?

Note: I've copied the above text and table from an online site; but the first line does not make it clear that Albert knows that Bernard knows the day, and Bernard knows that Albert knows the month.If they did not know this about each other, there would be no answer and in that sense no puzzle. N.B. Each hears the answers given by the other.

Solution

Albert knows the month and he knows that Bernard cannot know the birthday. How can Albert know this? Suppose that the month is May; then Bernard has been told one of the three dates for May. But he could, for all Albert knows, have been told the 19th, in which case he would know the birthday, because the only 19th is in May. But then, Albert could not say that he knows that Bernard does not know the birthday. So the month cannot be May. Can it be June? No, because the 18th is given only for June. Could it be July? Yes, because the 14th and the 16th are both given for other months. So if it was July, Bernard would not know the birthday. Could it be August? Yes, and for the same sort of reason. So it's July or August, and Bernard knows this after hearing what Albert said. But also, Bernard now knows the birthday, he says. How does he know? Look at the dates for July and August. If the date Cheryl has given Bernard is the 14th, then Bernard cannot know the birthday, because the 14th is given for both July and August. That leaves the 15th, 16th and 17th. For each of these dates, Bernard will know the birthday; and this is the point at which the ingenuity of this puzzle reveals itself. Because we, too, are supposed to be able to work out which date is Cheryl's birthday. We can see that Bernard now knows, but how can we know? The answer, of course, is that we cannot know. But wait − if we cannot know, then how can Albert now say that he knows after hearing that Bernard knows? Because Albert knows the month. Suppose that the month is August; then the birthday is the 15th or 17th. Bernard knows which it is, because Cheryl has told him the date; but Albert does not know, so he does not know the birthday. But he does know the birthday; so the month has to be July, and Cheryl's birthday is the 16th July.

This week's puzzle

Albert, Bernard and Cheryl became friends with Denise, and they wanted to know when her birthday is. Denise gave them a list of 20 possible dates.

17 Feb 2001, 16 Mar 2002, 13 Jan 2003, 19 Jan 2004

13 Mar 2001, 15 Apr 2002, 16 Feb 2003, 18 Feb 2004

13 Apr 2001, 14 May 2002, 14 Mar 2003, 19 May 2004

15 May 2001, 12 Jun 2002, 11 Apr 2003, 14 Jul 2004

17 Jun 2001, 16 Aug 2002, 16 Jul 2003, 18 Aug 2004

Denise then told Albert, Bernard and Cheryl separately the month, the day and the year of her birthday respectively.

The following conversation ensues:

• Albert: I don’t know when Denise’s birthday is, but I know that Bernard does not know.
• Bernard: I still don’t know when Denise’s birthday is, but I know that Cheryl still does not know.
• Cheryl: I still don’t know when Denise’s birthday is, but I know that Albert still does not know.
• Albert: Now I know when Denise’s birthday is.
• Bernard: Now I know too.
• Cheryl: Me too.

So, when is Denise’s birthday?

To clarify: neither Albert, Bernard or Cheryl know anything else at the start apart from the fact that Albert has been told the month, Bernard the day (meaning the number of the day), and Cheryl the year.