US psychologist Eli Finkel believes that far from breaking a marriage, adultery can keep a couple together.
Dr Finkel says in his paper The Suffocation of Marriage that we now expect far more from our partners than previous generations and sometimes it’s too much to be the perfect friend, confidant and lover as well as someone who can run up an Ikea bookcase in the afternoon, cook one of Jamie’s recipes in the evening and be a super-stud in bed. Something, Dr Finkel says, has got to give – and that thing is sex.
According to www.dailyrecord.co.uk, as he puts it: “Your spouse may be a terrific source of social support and intellectual stimulation but, hey, you look around and you haven’t had sex more than twice a year for the last five years and neither of you think it’s adequate.” Dr Finkel says that is when the couple should consider “outsourcing” the sex. Infidelity, he believes, can not only relieve the monotony of a monogamy but could even rekindle the desire the pair of you once shared.
But he insists that he is absolutely not recommending cheating but rather a consensual agreement. So you both cheat – sorry, escape the marital monotony – by each having bits on the side. Dr Finkel says that because the couple are being totally honest with each other, there will be none of the usual lying that happens with nonconsensual affairs. In short, they have that which is usually known as an open marriage. I can just about see that such an arrangement has its superficial attractions. There IS more to a marriage than sex – although as a former agony aunt, I’d also say that if the sex doesn’t work, nor ultimately will the marriage. But divorce and separation are seldom easy and few escape from such a painful event unscathed – especially if they have kids.
They, as is widely recognised, are the ones who suffer most when their parents split up. Children, on the whole, want their parents to stay together. End of. It’s equally true divorce can bring severe financial hardship, particularly for women. So perhaps it is possible to get those “needs” fulfilled without necessarily wrecking the marriage. It’s fairly common in France where blind eyes are allegedly turned and a man without a mistress and a woman without a lover are the odd ones out. Allegedly. Whether President Hollande’s ex, Valerie Trierweiler, would agree now with such a laissez faire attitude is debatable. But one of the fatal flaws in the professor’s theory is that he omits totally the people who will be colluding in this cosy arrangement – the other women or men who will be providing the “outsourcing”.
Will their involvement be equally “consensual” and will they be told that they – or rather their bodies – are being used solely as a prop to an otherwise good but “monotonous” marriage? Doubt it. I seldom came across anyone having an affair who did not want to believe that it was leading somewhere. That somewhere was the time, this year, next year, when the kids had grown up, when the mortgage was paid off, when their lover would finally dump their legal lawful for them. Of course, it was usually a fantasy. When push comes to shove, it’s generally the mistress who gets shoved while he scuttles back to the wife. Something many of them inevitably find out. To their married lovers, they’re as expendable as a paper tissue. But for the professor’s theory to work, there will also have to be legions of women and indeed men out there who accept their sole function is to provide sexual services without any emotional involvement or commitment from their partners. There’s a word for that – prostitution.
Meanwhile, I can accept some husbands would happily accept Dr Finkel’s arguments but possibly fewer wives. Obviously marriages can and do survive infidelity. Indeed, it is not the reason most cited in divorce actions. So affairs happen. Affairs end. The marriage goes on. Sometimes it even becomes better. But that is a long, long way from adding official, upfront permission to cheat into the wedding vows.
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