We have all heard the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intention. I received an email asking for my thoughts regarding how not to commit adultery. So I offer them. Insofar as I have any advice on not committing adultery, it starts with the simple adage above. First of all, human feelings are dynamic. That is, they can change over time. We can come to like people whom we did not like at all. Likewise, we can come to detest people whom we could not live without. Or, in any case, things cool off because people change. So just how one feels about a person in the present is not necessarily a clue about how one will feel about that person in the future. Lots of romantic ties have started between people who thought that there was not a chance in hell that anything romantic could or would happen between them.
With married couples my view is a very simple one: It should turn out that there are very, very few occasions when I am expressing gratitude and appreciation only to the wife. And if there are lots occasions when I am doing that, then it seems to me that my interaction with her is not as it should be.
Expressions of gratitude and appreciation kindle warm and good feelings. And it seems to me that part of what is involved in respecting a marriage is not kindling those feelings. Momentarily, I shall say more about why I hold this view.
Significantly, it does not matter whether we talking about a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage. If a close male friend of mine marries another man, then it seems to me that some forms of interaction between us are no longer in order. Out of respect for their marriage, there will be gestures of good will that I would cease doing for him alone. If I could include both in the gestures, then I would have no qualms in continuing with those gestures.
I understand all too well that two married people remain separate individuals. I also understand, though, that in marrying one another, they have sworn off ties of romantic endearment with others.
There is, of course, a difference between romantic endearment and friendship. But the two are on a continuum and there are aspects of overlap between them.
With my male heterosexual friends, the continuum involving friendship and romantic love has a very significant built-in-barrier, namely that neither of us has any interest in the other sexually. This, in turn, makes it well-nigh impossible for expressions of gratitude and appreciation to transform into sentiments of romance.
It is one thing to express gratitude and appreciation to someone for saving one’s life. It is quite another for one’s interactions with another to be such that expressions of gratitude and appreciation constantly range over small and personal things. This allows too easily for gratitude and appreciation to transform into romantic sentiments, precisely because things have become intertwined with one’s personal life on a more or less daily basis. There is fluidity in place.
By contrast, saving a person’s life is a very well-define act that does not have a re-occurring aspect to it. So although the gratitude that one has is obviously enormous, it is so well-defined as not to be intertwined with a person’s life on a daily basis. Thus, even if the person who did the saving is someone’s wife, that act and the corresponding gratitude does not cast any concern over the marriage itself. If it did, then there was already something else going on in the first place. But knowing me, I would probably send a letter to both the wife and the husband with the letter of gratitude to the wife included. This move has the symbolic significance of acknowledging the marriage, even as the gratitude for saving my life is rightly expressed only to the wife.
There can be other well-defined acts owing to social conventions. Secretary’s Day is an example of this. Birthdays can be, too, provided that there is an opportunity to celebrate a spouse’s birthday in a public manner. This allows for everything to run its course in a public way. This allows for expressions of personal appreciation and goodwill to take place in a public forum. Barring special circumstances, sending the very same gift to the person’s home changes its import.
What bothers many people about my approach is that it has the air of not trusting oneself. This is not quite right, as I shall explain below.
Intentions are very ephemeral things. Accordingly, having clarity about what we intend strikes me as of the utmost importance, especially as it pertains to romance and friendship. And it seems to me best never to allow the opportunity for any misunderstanding than to do anything that would allow for there to be a single misunderstanding. This, in turn, speaks very nicely to the issue of having trust in oneself. It is easy to miss this if one focuses upon the wrong aspect of things. We can affirm our intentions that nothing is to go wrong, and doing that requires engaging in the right sort of behavior, even symbolic behavior in some instances.
Thus, if I am at a married couple’s home having dinner with the wife and husband, he gets up to go to work, I invariably get up to leave as well. This has enormous symbolic significance. And it really is foolish to pretend that such things do not matter. They matter all the time in all sorts of context.
As I said at the outset: To know something about romance is to grasp the reality that all sorts of feelings can get off the ground in ways that no one ever anticipated in the least. And to know that one is the kind of person who can be counted on to never let any misunderstanding get off the ground is to know something very profound and wonderful about oneself. And for others to have that confidence in one is for them to have a trust in one that is ever so precious.
It is one thing to have trust in ourselves. There is much to be said for that. But the issue of kindling feelings of romance in another person’s spouse is not just about us. Inescapably, the issue here is also about whether another can trust us. And it is striking to me how few ask that question.
When it comes to not undermining the marriage of others, I would say that one can trust oneself precisely when one has in point of fact earned the trust of others. This requires more than never making a wrong move, but affirming in a myriad of ways our intentions that a wrong move is never to be made. If we are not prepared to do that, then we are not us trustworthy as we suppose. Indeed, it is far from clear that we can even trust ourselves.
