Libido versus Jealousy?
Who wins? In the cold light of day and social anthropology, jealousy – I’d say.
“Mummy, where do babies come from?” Well ickle, mini – me, when a mummy and a daddy love each other…
Love there are so many different types of love that the Geeks had at least four words for our one and since poets and artists, and angry rap singers alike have been trying to define love for eons I’m going with the Greeks, ‘love’ is far too vague and universal a word for the specifics and is said so often that it almost loses all meaning.
“Oh, I love chicken teriyaki…I love when I wake up before the alarm and realise I can sleep for longer…I love my job, my car…I love my sister…I love my dog…I love my partner.” But how? How do you love them?
Those three words, ‘I love you’ have become a terrifying supernova spiralling out of control due to societies associations. You can’t tell someone you love them now without alarm bells clanging in your cranium. I love my friends but I’m not American and the ‘I love you guys’ comes more difficultly because we give love a bad name.
It seems impossible to me that you can date and get to know a person for months and never say that you love them because if you do it means you’re IN love with them, and like frightened bunnies in the highlights our neural synapse jump to commitment, marriage, mortgage, kids and yet the love is no more less true or honest ten minutes before it’s verbalised.
Mankind are amazing and capable of such love and not just romantic love but unconditional love for the family member you wouldn’t even be friends with except for blood, compassionate love for the sick or lonely, heroic love for the complete stranger on the battle field.
But ‘love’ has become an embarrassment. Such an amazing emotion and nothing in this world has more complexities or limitations and restraints pressed upon it.
We love so naturally why would loving two people be so wrong? And it’s not. Socially, anthropologically in family units it’s dangerous and counter-productive perhaps but I don’t see how anyone could ever blame someone else for falling in love. It’s not something we have control over. But I suppose it’s not the ‘love’ that destroys monogamous relationships but acting on that love.
We make a choice and stand by it through foul or fair weather in a marriage but it is illogical, when we have spent years looking for the ‘one’ and been in love maybe countless times, that we will never be in love with someone else again. So what? We draw boundaries in order to never get to know anyone well enough for that ugly threat of love to become a problem?
How much are we missing out on? Biological there is the need to procreate and to possess and protect, to build a safe, home for those we love but how many couples could ask their partner to love only one person? To choose between family or friends and their betrothed? If we easily admit that our love ones need their space, their mates, their ‘girl’s nights out’ and communion with other beings in order to keep sane and to bring stimulus to parts of their personality that can’t be fulfilled in marriage then how stupid is it to veto a huge part of a persons physically and desires? To allow that no one person can’t complete another person in every conceivable way including sexually?
And more importantly why must infidelity comment on love? There are so many different types of love why would we assume that one must diminish in order for another to thrive?
So many futuristic novels, movies etc show a more relaxed view on monogamy but humanity is complex. In a quote from an episode of ‘House’ paraphrasing here: Your husband may be 90% of everything you need but why settle for never having that full and complete life. If we suddenly had paralysis in a limb we would do everything possible to cure that problem so why in a truly loving and devoted relationship wouldn’t our partners wish us to cure than 10% of us that isn’t fulfilled. Why does sex have to be such a stigma especially when the act itself is more beautiful, intimate and honest than most of our actions that our conscience battles with.
We are such social creatures is it reasonable to believe that one person will satisfy us for the rest of our lives and I’m not talking just sexually. If you think about how much we change and adapt and our intrinsic need to learn and develop, how likely is it that two people will go through their entire lives wanting and needing exactly the same thing?
Marriages seem to consist of the blissful honeymoon period, the getting to know every part of a person and loving the discovery to a beautiful and cherished companionship but no matter how good the book is, do we really want to read it a thousand times? No we’ll never want to throw it away but doesn’t mean we’re not ready to move on to another phase of learning.
Love doesn’t have to diminish but it can change and does and to deny that fact folly. By the way I’m not talking about careless one night stands or the ‘eternal bachelor’ I’m talking about love and how there’s too much of it in our hearts to put it under curfew.
Why can’t two people love one another and want to grow old together but be honest enough to admit that even the best relationships can become stale, precious and priceless but stale. We wouldn’t want to have the same meal for dinner every night of our lives, or do exactly the same thing without variance or challenge in our work places and the home and love is so much more important than these.
But having said all that, two people’s agendas and insecurities are hard enough but adding a third into the mix or a fourth? Surely happiness is even harder on the percentages then? Degrees and quantities of love matter because we want to matter and can love for two people ever be equal? Can our insecurities and jealousies ever go away? Can pain and hurt ever be avoided? And so jealousy wins out but how terrifying would it be for most people to admit that as the crux of monogamy?
And while we struggle and bend and mould ourselves into these social constructions, emotions, physical and uncontrollable attractions and needs are winning out more and more:
Infidelity statistics
it’s tough to get a handle on how many of us are having affairs, given the inherent secrecy.
22 percent of married men have strayed at least once during their married lives.
14 percent of married women have had affairs at least once during their married lives.
Younger people are more likely candidates; in fact, younger women are as likely as younger men to be unfaithful.
70 percent of married women and 54 percent of married men did not know of their spouses' extramarital activity.
50 percent of Americans say President Clinton's adultery makes his moral standard "about the same as the average married man,'' according to a Time-CNN poll.
61 percent of Americans thought adultery should not be a crime in the
-One in 10 respondents said they are addicted to sex and the Internet, according to an online survey of 38,000 Internet users.
MSNBC.com and Dr. Alvin Cooper
-Results show that internet users devote three hours each week to online sexual exploits. Twenty-five percent have felt that they lost control of their Internet sexual exploits at least once or that the activity caused problems in their lives.
MSNBC.com and Dr. Alvin Cooper
-Up to 37% of men and 22% of women admit to having affairs. Researchers think the vast majority of the millions of people who visit chat rooms, have multiple "special friends".
Dr. Bob Lanier, askbob.com
-Only 46% of men believe that online affairs are adultery.
DivorceMag
- About 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in some marriage
"Monogamy Myth", Therapist Peggy Vaugn
BUT
As a Northern Irish resident I have grown up in a very sexually repressed community. So mush of the REAL but embarrassing or socially unacceptable problems in EVERY person’s life are rarely discussed which leads to feelings of immorally, shame and loneliness. It emphasises our differences instead of our similarities and leaves society disassociated and disconnected.
Adultery is morally wrong but is morally judged by the masses or religion? If a global shift in opinion were to occur would we be more healthy psychologically, admitting naturally, if morally reprehensible, feelings. Would the bright light of honesty assuage the guilt? How many lies do we tell others and ourselves about our true natures? (Not just in sexual desires!)
I for one, am a hypocrite, understanding the psychology and physically but needing the reassurance and stability of that fairy tale, white knight horse love that I learned in my formative, childhood years. But I often wonder if a beautiful lie harms more than an unfortunate truth.
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