Sarah, contemplating divorce, writes to Jennifer and the Spouse Support Group:
Can you, or anyone, tell me why, what the point is to remaining married if the husband or the wife has outside relationships? I don't mean the standard, pat answers like 'love', or 'financial security'. I am not asking this in a judgmental way. I am ho nestly wanting to know. I guess you could say I have begun to question my own values and the beliefs that I have held close to my heart and soul for all these years. What keeps the marriage special, and worth keeping intact when there is no longer anythi ng within it that you couldn't pursue outside of the union?
Jennifer responds:
Sarah,
Your post made me think a lot. I felt very strongly, earlier in my relationship with Sean, that to be his only love was absolutely necessary for our marriage. I mean, I couldn't even consider a life in which he also loved anyone else -- it just seemed to me to destroy the basis for our special relationship. That was even when he was having anonymous sexual encounters with men...which hardly even seemed like relationships, more like "real" pornography.
I have changed on that, but only through the experience of seeing Sean in love with someone else, and seeing that it didn't change his love for me.
I actually think I still believe what you say above - that what keeps marriage special is having something in it that you don't have with anyone else. Like, my daughter has a "special" blanket -- if she had two, then they wouldn't be "special" in the same way.
But what I have had to face is: I have one place in my heart, for the man in my life -- and I put Sean in that place. To put any other man in that place, even for a night, would be to displace Sean, to make him not special to me in the same way.
But Sean has two places in his heart -- one for the woman in his life, and one for the man in his life. It's bizarre, but true. I filled the place for a woman in his life, but then the place for a man was empty, and he suffered. When he found a man to fill that place, he became a fulfilled, much happier person -- the way I felt after finding him. But I don't feel that what is special to our marriage exists in his relationship with Alan - and that is special to their marriage does not exist in Sean' s and my relationship. They are really very different, at the core. And one doesn't detract from the other.
Another way of saying it would be: I have two places in my heart - for my husband and for my children. One person can't fill them both. Sean has two places in his heart -- for his wife and for his husband. One person can't fill them both. To ask him to choose only one would be like asking me to choose between him and my children. Either way, my life would be partly empty.
Now, let me say that I DO NOT feel that Sean could be involved with another woman and still make our relationship as important. That would, for me, violate his commitment to me and his promise to make me the person who fills that place in his heart. (I feel more betrayed by a flirtation he had with a woman at work, than by all his years of sex with men). And if he became involved with another man, that would definitely be a violation and betrayal of his commitment to Alan. And Alan and I will cheer fully break both of his legs together if he tries either one!!
For me, where I went wrong in the beginning was in not understanding that Sean's psychology really was different from mine. I thought his loving a man would be like me loving another man, or a straight man loving another women. It just isn't true. But again, I would never have believed that except by experiencing it. When th e monster I feared arrived, it turned out to be a friendly dog.
Sarah, I don't know if that makes any sense---it's the best I can do to explain how I see it, now.
I am not, at base, a polyamorous person. Nor is Alan. Nor, in a bizarre way, is Sean. When he has a man, he is not interested in any other men. When he has a woman, he is not interested in any other women. When he has a man and a woman, he has his "family" and isn't interested in love or sex with anyone else. Maybe you could call Sean "bi-ogamous" -- dually heterosexually monogamous and homosexually monogamous.
This isn't a general answer --- it is just what is true for us. I guess I'm saying that I think people really have different psychologies. Our conventional understandings of love and commitment and sexuality come from people who are "mono-sexual" - and the same things don't always apply to people who really do have more complex "love maps" (as the sexuality researcher John Money calls them).
Good luck in your struggles to understand. Please let us know your thoughts as they evolve, we're all trying to discover this new territory together!
Jennifer
And Lucy responds:
I wish I could be as truly accepting as you seem to be. I love my husband so deeply that I can't imagine a life without him. And I know that he feels that way about me. But the sense of betrayal never leaves me, and sometimes it becomes unbearable. I've been lied to many times through the years about affairs (or occasions). In despair, because I couldn't bear the lies, and the pain of discovering those lies, I finally said, "All right. Do what you must. If you have to have sex with another man, I won't leave you--but don't ever lie to me again." I do understand his needs. But that doesn't take away the pain.
It seems that for most of you on this page it's all right to have an affair outside of marriage, as long as it's with someone of the opposite sex. I feel like I'm from Mars--or fifty years out of date. Perhaps I am. But I've done all I can to help him, and, indeed, to free him, so that he can do what he must do without feeling guilt.
But what can I do about my pain?