Relationship Commitment versus Permission

When a friendship turns into a sexual relationship, people who are married or in an exclusive relationship have already ignored their original commitment and given themselves permission to go ahead. For some people, commitment comes with a mindfulness of the need for exclusivity, about which they have no second thoughts.

For others, commitment is conditional and seems to come with a warning light that can be heeded or ignored. They split hairs and decide that their commitment permits them to do this but does not allow them to do that. Their conditional commitment may also be dependent on the state of their marriage. Still others have turned a forbidden transgression into a reasonable option and have given themselves permission to go full speed ahead.

For many people commitment means:

“I commit myself to an exclusive physical and emotional relationship with you until one of us dies. No matter what attractive alternative comes into my life, I will not be deterred from my goal of keeping you as my one and only life partner.”

This is the ideal. It is the default position and assumption in our culture. This is what most people assume they are getting and giving when they marry, although very few couples actually discuss it explicitly before they formalize their attachment.

But even if they do talk about it and really mean it with all their hearts in the beginning, when the romantic stage of a relationship passes, one or the other may not feel like it anymore. The novelty wears off, the years go by, youth and beauty fade, and quirks that were once endearing become annoying. At this point, a lot of people slip into a more conditional commitment.

“‘Til death do us part” becomes a commitment to stay, but not necessarily a commitment not to stray. As we have seen, the definition of what constitutes an affair tends to change according to who is doing the defining. I have heard both husbands and wives insist to their spouse that they have honored their commitment either because they never really loved the affair partner or they never actually had extramarital sexual intercourse.
[box] A distraught wife said to her husband, “How could you do this to me? You always looked down on those men who had affairs and broke up their family.” The husband displayed his alternative interpretation of commitment by replying, “I was always committed to you. I never once intended to leave you.” She was enraged. “What do you mean, you were committed? How could you be committed when you had sex with another woman?” He answered, “It never meant anything. Why are you making such a big deal out of it?” [/box]

 

An example of how couples justify infidelity

Ralph was convinced his relationship with Lara was unique, that he wasn’t like those other men who have affairs just to prove something. He told himself that their communion with each other provided the perfect setting for profound self-discovery and human insight. He believed he would learn more about himself and about life by pursuing this opportunity to its fullest. He thought about all those admonitions from popular philosophers to take risks, follow your bliss, and live fully in the moment. He made mental lists of people he knew who had died of boredom in stultifying jobs and marriages. Although he was not sure whether or not he loved Lara, he was curious about what sex with her would feel like. He missed sexual excitement as part of his married life. He was confident that he could control the risk to his marriage by engineering his relationship with Lara so that no one would ever know.

[box] In my clinical sample, two-thirds of the husbands and wives who had extramarital intercourse regarded falling in love as a justification for having an extramarital relationship. [/box]

For Lara, the reasons to go ahead were simpler. She was unhappy with her husband and happy with Ralph. She told herself that her marriage had been a mistake and that she was in love with Ralph. He was her soul mate. She wanted to feel alive the way one does at the beginning of a great love affair. When she thought back over her life, she thought she had played it too safe. She was haunted by the sense that if she had been braver, she would have gone after what she wanted and been happier. She didn’t want to make that mistake again. Lara knew that there might be obstacles to overcome, but she had no doubt it was worth it. She was able to rationalize her relationship with Ralph because she was in love with him. Like many other unfaithful individuals, she believed that falling in love was the only acceptable justification for having an affair.

Although Ralph and Lara used different personal rationalizations, they were both influenced by how many married people they knew who had had affairs. There is no doubt that we are all affected by what we see others doing. They knew of at least one other work affair in their department, and both of them had friends who were involved, without any apparent penalty. When Ralph and Lara finally did give themselves permission to be physically intimate, the opportunity and the timing were right for them, and their attitudes and experiences had prepared them to justify their decision.

Personal Rationalizations make Affair Recovery Difficult!