Last night I saw a really well-done movie with all the characteristics of Oscar-nomination-quality work—great performers doing excellent acting, a realistic setting, and perfectly appropriate music. All of it was believable and engrossing. I loved the people; thoughtful, loving, beautiful, awkward, flawed people who looked and acted just like the people in my life. That makes a movie interesting to watch.
But once more, the plot turn, the cause of the horrible tragedy, and enough angst to break up the entire family, was that one of the spouses was caught “cheating.” Cheating, or even just the threat of it, has been the source of crowd-pleasing tragedy in centuries of dramas. Just ask Othello.
Now there's no doubt that betrayal wreaks havoc in all sorts of ways. Relationships are based on trust, and breaking that trust breaks the relationship. The question is: How did having sex with a person outside one's dyad become such a basic betrayal of trust?
Every relationship is based on agreements. Some of these agreements are explicit, openly discussed and agreed upon. When couples start thinking about marriage, they are encouraged to talk about questions such as: How will we handle the finances? Will we have children, and if so, how many? How will we raise them, and in what religion? How will we celebrate holidays so that all three families (his, hers, and ours) are included?
There are also implicit agreements, agreements that are not discussed openly. Usually they are not talked about because assumptions are made about how everybody is. Or at least about how everybody should be.
The biggest assumption of this type for a marriage in our culture is monogamy.
It's just plainly assumed that a person is monogamous. Monogamy is even more generally assumed than heterosexuality these days, though it still has a firm grip on our basic expectations. (For example, did you notice the assumption of heterosexuality three paragraphs ago?) And it's not just for marriage; it's for any relationship that involves sex.
Religions are, in large part, responsible for these assumptions. As discussed in this column previously, monotheism and monogamy have tended to travel together through time and geography. Once a thing becomes associated with religion, it's difficult to even hold a rational discussion about it because religions are not required to be rational. And they're not.
The fact that I'm even asking such a question will be unthinkable to some people. And not necessarily unthinkable as in outrageous, but unthinkable as in “I've never thought about that.” It's that basic an assumption. It's the water we “fish” swim in. It's like calling north “up” and south “down” because that's the way maps and globes are lettered. Much of the world is so used to seeing the directions assigned this way that when they see a map using a different orientation, it's such a paradigm shift that it starts an internal re-evaluation of all sorts of assumptions.
The sex-with-another-equals-betrayal concept is so intrinsic to our society that when Bill Clinton was revealed as “having sex”—or whatever they eventually decided to call it—with Monica, the next question wasn't “Will Hillary be upset?” It was, “Will Hillary divorce him for cheating on her?” There were three assumptions in this logic jump. The first was that, of course, Hillary was going to be upset, so that question needn't be asked. The second assumption was that the reason she would be upset is because he “had sex with that woman.” And the third was that his actions were a huge betrayal. The question of divorce was the obvious conclusion of this string of unspoken (and mostly unconscious) assumptions.
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