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.
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