andrewducker | Meditations on Situations

In the summer of 1996 I chatted to erstwhile flatmate Saint about infidelity. He was engaged in a somewhat complicated love life at the time (the lives of my friends have a tendency towards soap opera at the best of times, their sex lives frequently venture into actual opera and will undoubtedly become space-opera as soon as the opportunity arises). He seemed entirely unconcerned that his girlfriend of the time was indulging in an affair, a position that left me both baffled and uncomfortable. He explained to me that if she wanted to sleep with other people then he'd much rather that she was open about it and that engaging in jealousy seemed, if anything, counterproductive. He was happy to be with her when he could and didn't see the need for pointless fuss. Several years later I find myself simultaneously agreeing with him and thinking that doing so doesn't actually make me feel better.

Recent discussion with an older (and intermittently wiser) head than mine led to their advice that what was needed was a variety of different relationships for different needs. One person for dancing with, one for talking to, one for sex, etc, and so on. This seems very reasonable in many ways, especially considering my views on relationship as contract (I view the idea that someone could somehow be held in a relationship they didn’t want to be in as extremely disturbing, which is the reason why I view marriage with distaste). People should be able to do as they like, coming together with other people for whatever emotional gain they choose. But it’s sadly not quite that simple (not, in fact, even slightly that simple), and the theory falls down on the fact that people develop emotional attachments over sex in a much more extreme way than any other activity. While a film-going friend might feel slightly miffed that you'd gone to the cinema without mentioning your trip to them, the reaction of a sexual partner that you are sleeping with someone else is typically far more intense.

(A quick note here - I've just re-read this and, as usual, I've been influenced by the book I most recently read, in this case a rather wordy guide to taxation, markets and the economy. My apologies to anyone who is thus finding the style even more awkward than usual).

Erin having broken up with me some weeks ago, we are nevertheless still sharing a flat, and in fact, sharing a bed. In some ways this suits me perfectly, as I rather enjoy having her around, and the end of the relationship means that certain stresses and strains have vanished into the ether. By removing any feeling that we _have_ to do anything together, we suddenly found (much to our mutual surprise) that we actually enjoyed doing things together.

The end of our relationship allowed Erin more practical opportunity than me - I tend to find one partner every 4 years or so (Marianne in 1992, Gina in 1997 and Erin in 2001), whereas she seems to have no trouble at all in finding them (in my experience, women have less trouble in finding sexual partners whenever they want them - there being no shortage of sex-starved men, but this actually makes it harder to find one they want to keep).

While I'm happy that she's happy (and ecstatic that she's going out and making friends), there remain vestigial traces of jealousy and discomfort at the thought of her with someone else. On the one hand, protection of mates against impregnation by other males is one of those primal urges that's common to pretty much the whole animal kingdom - on the other, I'm a fairly rational kind of person and I have no wish to disrupt a largely comfortable situation by making completely unreasonable demands.

Of course, by reducing this problem to it’s basics the question I’m left with is quite simple: Do I allow myself to be overwhelmed by my immediate emotions or do I attempt to retrain these emotions to allow me to feel happy in a situation where I wouldn’t ‘naturally’ do so. Put in those terms, it’s a simple question of weighing up the difficulty of retraining myself versus the likely happiness of continuing my time with Erin.

As the nature of the problem is sexual/jealousy based and neither of those things play a large part of my psychological make-up, I’m going to opt for the latter course and see if I can make myself comfortable. If it was something that was going to cause serious difficulty then it’d be a different story (if Erin had taken up tarantula-collecting then I’d have placed all of her belonging in a neat pile outside the door the first time she left the flat). If this had happened 5 years ago then the emotional stress would also have been too high. However whatever process it is that occurs as we get older (and I’ve seen some fascinating programs on that recently) seems to be leaving me in a better and better state to deal with emotional turmoil (although not all kinds of it – merely typing the word tarantula a few minutes ago meant I had to take my feet out from under the desk, as they were itching too much).

The current situation seems stable and is largely enjoyable, I can't see it changing much in the near future. It seems likely that we'll continue sharing a large chunk of our lives until one of us decides to move on in a more determined fashion. It's quite possible that at that point it will seem that, in retrsopect, we should have made a more determined break. Lacking 20/20 foresight, I think that's a question I'll put to one side for the moment.