The Infidelity Ghost

Earlier today, a co-worker of mine gave me a purposefully ridiculous hypothetical: “If you were on an island isolated from society, would you rather have access to the hottest porn you could want for the rest of your time, or spend the rest of your life with a fairly attractive girl. We’re not talking smokin’, but definitely above average.”  Chauvinistic qualities of the whole scenario aside, I answered the latter.  Then a funny thing happened.

Another co-worker questioned, “Well what if you get bored?” I replied that, in essence, the situation was no different than marriage, spending the rest of your life with one person and finding mutual emotional and intimate stimulation.  I asked if he intended to never get married, to which he mused, “I don’t know, maybe. Maybe I’d just end up getting a divorce every ten years but that would be against the personal promise I made myself in our wedding vows. What’s the point of a vow that you feel no compunction about breaking?” We continued the conversation for a fair amount of time, bringing to the forefront some thoughts I have pondered before.

Divorce rates are at an all-time high. I don’t attribute this to the economy or any sort of underlying immorality of society. But I wonder, with the average newly-married couples being around twenty-six years old, and the age rising successively every generation, if people settle out of the fear of fleeting youth and time. I feel the vast majority of modern marriages are out of convenience, the lack of other prospects,  impending mortality, or a combination of these things. How does one settle on who to spend the rest of their lives with?

Of course love should be the deciding factor, but love means different things to different people. For some it is the ability to reasonably coincide and cohabitate with another for the rest of one’s life. For others it is someone who you can never run out of great conversations with. For still others it is the ability to be 100% unguarded, the ability to be consistently sexually satisfied, or the prospect of financial security for the rest of your days. There is no universal benchmark for which to compare what we feel for someone at a given moment to check and see if it is indeed “love.”  That being said, I think some people convince themselves they feel this emotion to legitimize a marriage for other, perhaps subconscious, motives.

All of that aside, humans are creatures of change, especially in a day and age where instant-gratification is the norm. I don’t think someone should be ashamed for getting “bored” of their decided life partner. Marriage is a societal construct, and nothing physical binds you to another. The biological reason we seek out someone as a mate is solely procreation. In nature, many animals do not create “families,” and will move on to undertake their ritual again the next year. The idea of love and monogamy is something we as humans have created, due in no small fact, I suspect, to religion. We created a concept to help reinforce being morally “pure.”

Despite the stigma that religion has placed on it, I don’t view the idea of divorce as being immoral. In fact, I view someone with more respect who can admit to themselves they are no longer emotionally satisfied with a person and end their relationship civilly than attempt to stay in a fruitless marriage, cheat due to their boredom, and perpetuate a downward spiral for both parties involved. Of course when children are involved, that is another consideration entirely, but let’s keep this to one variable for the sake of the point. Just because you get older doesn’t mean your relationships become any different than they were in high school and college. It was socially acceptable to break up with someone then, why should it be unacceptable to do so in your later years?

Ideally you spend enough time with the person you decide to marry that you have come to terms with all doubts in your mind, and that a mental state of dissatisfaction should never be the case. But let’s be realistic. The concept is a notion of romanticism, and for a majority of people, this probably isn’t the case. I think there is a lot of  people settling for reasons I spoke of earlier.  Maybe the person you’re dating is the best you’ve been with relative to everyone before them, and you’ve convinced yourself this is “it” for fear of starting the courting cycle anew, with years ticking off the clock. It’s not like we have the ability to assess every possible candidate that exists in our prospective scope. We picked the best out of what is available to us in limited circumstances.

My point is that wedding vows are a relic of tradition, and even if you meant everyone word of them at the time, they were made in context. The idea of the promise is only as valuable as your personal code of honor makes it. But humans are an inherently selfish beast, and it would be silly to ignore one’s urges in order to simply maintain one’s integrity if the underlying feelings were no longer there. You make your own code and morals and decide what gives you legitimacy and meaning. However, people and circumstances are fluid, and if that means becoming “bored” with a person, so be it. There is nothing wrong with seeking fulfillment with another even if you made a societal pact that you were going to with someone else.

All of that being said, don’t find me too bitter or caustic — I’m still as hopelessly romantic as the rest of the you looking for that ideal person, and maybe in the back of my mind, I expect to find it. However, there will always be a part of me that has a foot firmly planted in logic and reason and will continue to question.

~ by Dux on February 1, 2010.