Melissa Matthes on marriage, fidelity, and desire
A few weeks ago the New York Times Magazine published a piece by Mark Oppenheimer about marriage and fidelity. Oppenheimer explored the argument of sex columnist Dan Savage that the real purpose of marriage should be stability rather than fidelity, fidelity being an unnaturally difficult and libido-killing virtue with no necessary connection to making, and keeping, a family. Thwarting one’s own sexual impulses in the name of some fruitless ideal is, Savage argues, a recipe for unhappiness. In a post over at Verdicts, Melissa Matthes questions Savage’s assumption that our sexual desires are either more authentic or more important than virtues such as fidelity that require some kind of self-restraint. She argues that our sexual desires are at least as much like consumer desires as they are like other physical appetites. They are in some way natural, but they are also social. They shape us, but they too are shaped by the world in which they develop. Whatever their power, their authority is no greater or more obvious — and no less open to criticism and discipline — than our desires for other things:
Desire is not made in isolation. And we know (at least since Augustine) that humans need a community of virtue in order to desire rightly. Yet, Savage makes it seem as if any sexual desire one has (unless it involves feces, children, pets, incest and the dead) is legitimate. And, while I appreciate these caveats, they are insufficient. Not because I think we should be policing sexual desire in some draconian, puritan way, but because it is still worthwhile for each of us to explore in more detail how desires are cultivated, why we want what we want, and, perhaps, what is the difference between “real” and “artificial” wants. Or perhaps more accurately, it is still worthwhile to consider which wants, desires, urges are themselves symptomatic of other more foundational desires — perhaps for power, intimacy, or recognition. Again, it’s unclear why sexual desire is privileged.[...]
So, why is monogamy saddled with “the drawbacks of boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted”? Why is the repetitiveness of monogamy not a source of solace, expertise, stability, and recognition? And who or what is to account for the one experience rather than the other? Yes, being married to the same person for a decade has elements of boredom, as does being a professor for a decade, or playing tennis regularly. But with that boredom comes expertise — I’m a better professor and tennis player after a decade of practice. Why doesn’t monogamy work the same way? In fact, many times it actually does. But the national sexual rhetoric — tied closely, I think, to consumer desire — imagines that “new and improved” is actually one word, rather than a phrase making an argument.
Read the whole post here.
I think Savage was wrong in his belief that our behavior is determined by evolution. I had a post about his interview at my own blog – Biology isn’t destiny. A lot of how we feel may be a result of our genes, but we act against those subliminal suggestions every day. What especially bothered me about Savage’s interview was his belief that because we may have evolutionary inclinations, that we *should* act on them, that naturalistic fallacy of “is = ought”.
Bravo to Crystal/
But with divorce rate at 50%, the hook up froups at colege, broader ten sex, etc.,Savage fits in with the appeal of desire so often prevalent.
I still think we have not done a good job promoting the relational side of marriage.
In Catholicism, we’re still pushing procreation/NFP/ Theology of the Body.
Maybe we can learn from the gay comunity that say it wants gay marriage as a lifelong commitment to one partner.
My sense is that sexual desire has become something like physical hunger or thirst – a need that it’s absurd to question. If I’m hungry, I have, in modern political parlance, a “right” to food. If I’m horny, I have a right to sex.
I wonder why he makes those exceptions. Probably out of simple political necessity – acting on them would get you into trouble with the law. Maybe a hundred years ago he would have included anal intercourse for the same reason. I can imagine that in a hundred years, we’ll have creatures created in laboratories for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure to humans. Shudder.
All this requires deeper thought than I can devote to it right now, but I would really be much more interested in what Melissa Matthes and other defenders of traditional thinking on sexuality think that Dan Savage gets right than what he gets wrong. I think that Dan Savage and others who approach sexuality on a level where you can actually understand what they are saying are too easily brushed aside. I often feel in reading discussions like this that some people feel you must have a PhD in moral theology to know what you are doing when you have sex. For more than 99% of history, more than 99% of human beings have not had deep intellectual theories of desire.
Folks are dumb,
Where I come from,
They ain’t had any learnin’
Still, they’re happy as can be,
Doin’ what comes naturally.
I really doubt that people have to wade through 700 boring pages of Theology of the Body to have a sensible approach to sex. I’d be more interested in wisdom than deep theories.
It is very easy to scoff at someone who is relatively plain spoken like Dan Savage, and of course I am sure there is a lot I would disagree with. But, as Nixon might have said, that is the easy thing to do.
In an article about Savage I read recently he was extremely emphatic about the stability of marriage being an extremely important value, especially when there are children involved. He seemed to think that children as well as spouses have rights within the institution that are too often over-looked when parents are considering divorce. (Sorry, I couldn’t find the article.)
I think he has a point. One of my lawyer friends once tried to start a practice specializing in children’s rights. It didn’t fly — apparaently children don’t have all that many rights in this culture.
If I recall correctly, Savage himself is married and is a parent. I think there’s a lot of good stuff to say about him, like his “it gets better” project. The only ting I didn’t like about that particular interview was, I guess, the idea that a way of being is validated by being natural. That’s the whole Theology of the Body argument in a nutshell, which I find odious …. I don’t the ‘argument from nature’ works to justify either complementarianism (theology of the body), nor Infidelity (Savage).
Crystal –
Good point about *neither* view being self-justifying. To say it’s good because “natural” seems to overlook the fact of original sin.
Natural law theory needs re-thinking from top to bottom, I think. The basic insights are right, but the specifications leave much to be desired.
“Yet, Savage makes it seem as if any sexual desire one has (unless it involves feces, children, pets, incest and the dead) is legitimate.”
The 500 pound gorilla in the room that liberal Catholics on this site avoid (as David said, by injecting a good deal of abstract moral theology into the conversation) is the clear connection between Savage’s warped views of fidelity and his homosexuality – i.e. they are a natural fit.
His views are not an aberration in the homosexual community because desire is completely disconnected from procreative and moral norms of human nature. Homosexuals can advocate open marriage – esp. gay men – simply because they do not have to consider the fact that sex and children are connected.
Savage is the top mainstream homosexual activist out there and his views are a clear indication that, no matter how sympathizers want to dress up gay marriage simply as a traditional arrangement extended to a minority group, that is not the case. If anything Savage’s ideology is advocating a further descent into hedonism, a further breakdown of social norms and stable families.
Saying that heterosexual and homosexual relations are the same form or are equal in function does not make them so. Ignoring the reality of these differences will have serious societal implications.
The article on Savage in the NYTs is a first glimpse at the fault lines that many progressive Catholics wish to ignore for ideological or political reasons.
A slight but I hope worthy distraction: The author of the Savage article under discussion here is Mark Oppenheimer who writes on religion for the NYT. Earlier in the year he had an article about a conservative figure, the late Elizabeth Anscombe, long recognized by many as a profound Catholic philosopher and increasingly influential among younger scholars. He’s apparently writing a book about her and asks for contributions from those who knew her or about her. Some at this site may be able to respond to his request:
“I have for some time been gathering interviews and other materials for a book on “Miss Anscombe,” as she called herself. If anyone has any leads for me — especially, but not only, people who knew her — I would love to hear from you.”
http://markoppenheimer.com/front-page/aristotle-wittgenstein-and-hating-birth-control-the-anscombe.html
In response to what Brett said, though not as a direct answer, first we have to stop talking about gay men as the exemplar of homosexuality while forgetting there are lesbians. Most of the time people talk about homosexuality, they are talking about gay men and ignoring lesbians.
There is nothing really “unnatural” or atypical about male same-sex relationships once you accept the simple fact that they are between two males. Speaking in very general terms, men and women differ sexually. It’s not odd or sinister at all that two gay males have a certain kind of relationship, two gay females have a different kind, and a male and a female have yet again a different kind. Nor, it seems to me, is there any reason to fear that if same-sex marriage becomes widely accepted, gay male same-sex marriages will set the standard for monogamy or non-monogamy. Gay men getting married are a lot more likely to imitate, at least partially, opposite-sex married couples than opposite-sex married couples are likely to imitate gay males.
Men, heterosexual and homosexual, are inclined to be less monogamous than women. Why in the world should it surprise anyone that gay men, when having relationships with each other, are less monogamous than straight men are with women? Does it surprise anyone that lesbians, who are also homosexuals, don’t act exactly like gay men? If there were something inherent in “homosexuality,” one would expect gay men and lesbians to act like each other.
I found this interesting:
I think he’s not entirely wrong there. Even today, a lot of women put up with philandering husbands, especially (I think) the wives of rich and/or powerful men. I have been reading about Old Testament times and noted with interest that prostitution was not condemned, polygamy was practiced, men had concubines, and adultery was a man (married or not) having sex with a married woman, whereas a married man having sex with an unmarried woman or a prostitute was not committing adultery. These are the people from whom we got the Ten Commandments! :P
The argument that men, being by nature not monogamous, should not be expected to be monogamous in a homosexual relationship presents a very important problem concerning male homosexual marriage.
If a male gay couple marries and has a child, male or female, and the gay parents are not faithful to each other and think nothing of it, what does this teach their child? That promiscuity is OK.
I do not think this is good for children generally, male or female. Say the gay male couple’s straight female child grows older thinking it’s ok for men to be unfaithful, then she will not expect what most women need in a husband — fidelity to ensure that their children will be well taken care of. (Second families or children not their own take away means/wealth from a wife’s own kids.) If the gay couple’s child is itself male but straight, then their promiscuity will teach the straight boy that infidelity is ok, which is not a good idea, to put it extremely mildly.
I respect Savage for his concern for children in marriage. But I don’t think he is entirely right about gay men and marriage-with-a-child. He doesn’t seem to understand women/mothers.
I ask Savage this, based on the quote of David Nickol: What is there to forgive if cheating is okay? If cheating is natural, why do we forgive it?
I think we’re all making assumptions. First, it’s taken for granted that men are much more likely to be unfaithful in marriage, And it’s taken for granted that the reason this is so is because of our genes … that in early human societies, the most powerful men ruled and kept harems, the women only caring about raising their children with a strong man to protect them. But, the first assumption, that men cheat more than women, is debatable — women seem to be cheaters too (Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity). The second assumption is also debatable — research seems to show there was no hierarchy in early human groups but instead a more egalitarian community where sex and children were shared among the group (What you think about evolution and human nature may be wrong.
Ann writes:
Interesting phrasing, Ann – “has a child”. How does a single-sex couple “have a child”?
Crystal, the Psychology Today article that you quote is very debatable in all of its claims, but especially on the notion of an egalitarian hunter-gathering.
This is similar to the notion that religion/hierarchy was only produced as a result of changes in climate and technology which allowed for large farming communities. This thesis allows para-scientists to explain away religion as a product of connivence and control over the population once they began to expand.
The truth of the matter is that both hierarchy and religious ritual / tradition existed before! the major agricultural societies and actually allowed small bands to develop into larger communities by subduing the cyclical nature of violence (usually a result of sexual competition / family vendettas etc)
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text
@David Smith (7/29, 12:44 pm) FWIW, I suspect that most same-sex couples have children the same way our (straight, married) neighbors have their children—via adoption. Either that or the children are from one partner’s previous marriage/relationship—again, like many families headed by opposite-sex couples.
Yes, Luke (7/29 6:50 am), I know. But I’m puzzled by Ann’s use of the phrase “have a child”. Traditionally, “have a child” has meant “procreate”. Are we now using it to mean “acquire a child”?
Language changes constantly, of course, and this sounds to my ear like a new usage. If so, is it happening naturally or is it being intentionally and more or less formally encouraged?
If a male gay couple marries and has a child, male or female, and the gay parents are not faithful to each other and think nothing of it, what does this teach their child? That promiscuity is OK.
Ann,
Please note the passage I quoted from the New York Times article that begins, “Savage’s position on monogamy is frequently caricatured. He does not believe in promiscuity . . . .”
Also, please keep in mind that people who are shocked by what Dan Savage has to say about not necessarily expecting perfect monogamy are not shocked by a 50% divorce rate. When 50% of marriages end in divorce, and 40% of children are born out of wedlock (28 percent among whites, 72 percent among blacks, and 51 percent among hispanics), worrying about Dan Savage or even same-sex marriage is fiddling while Rome burns.
I ask Savage this, based on the quote of David Nickol: What is there to forgive if cheating is okay? If cheating is natural, why do we forgive it?
JC,
“Cheating,” by definition, is never acceptable, and Dan Savage does not say it is.
David Smith:
Suppose a husband and wife are infertile and adopt four children. Suppose someone asks you if they have children. I the answer NO? You are quibbling over the meaning of the verb to have.
Regarding “cheating” in marriage, let’s accept this for the sake of argument, since truly definitive statistics are impossible to get:
Given human weakness, perhaps a 15% to 18% rate of infidelity is not so bad. But remember that getting divorced and remarried is not counted in those figures. Interestingly, Merriam-Webster gives one definition of monogamy as “the practice of marrying only once during a lifetime, but that usage is labeled archaic.
I think it’s very important what David Nickol points out above. As one of those gay men seeking to bring down everything good, decent, and holy I actually have friends who are in relationships of the kind that Savage is discussing, in that they are not “open” (each having sex with whomever they want whenever we want) nor “monogamous” in the sense that they only have sex with one another. They will–occasionally, not as the norm–have sex with other people together. They are both there, they are both involved. This is not cheating, in fact it is fidelity as they have mutually decided it should be. And before Brett gets going, it should be noted that in his book “Skipping Towards Gomorrah”, Savage discusses just this arrangement among a straight, married, fecund, and conservative Jewish couple.
Now, I’m not personally sure what I think about this, more because of the status of the “other” person in these encounters than any of the concerns thus discussed. Still, it does foster several important things in my discussions with these men. The first is honesty. They are very open about what they want, don’t want, need, don’t need. And though we’re talking sex in this context, since sex is often one of the more difficult things for couples to honestly discuss, it also makes it easier for them to be honest in the other areas of their relationships. Second, they have been together in a genuinely loving, giving, generous relationship for well over a decade. I know many couples (straight and gay) who never made it nearly this long. I haven’t the slightest idea if there’s a causal relationship here, but it doesn’t seem valid to dismiss it out of hand.
Though, to second another point, I agree completely that Savage’s reliance upon some constant, naturalistic “drive” that is not socially informed is fallacious.
Haha, I just noticed that I used “we” in the first parenthetical. I do want to point out that, as interesting a slip as that is (I’ll know doubt brood over its significance much of the day), I have no “inside knowledge” of this kind of relationship and am not masking my own as “a friend’s.” Been single for quite a while actually. I think I fell into the habit of defending “homosexuals” as a group, but who knows.
Blah, “know” should be “no”. Proofread Andy!
According to Wikipedia, from which (as comedian Anna Russel says of the Encyclopaedia Britannica) I get all my material:
Somebody else can attempt the math, but I am rather confident that based on reasonable estimates of how many heterosexual marriages there are, how many gay people there are, and how many gay people are likely to enter into same-sex marriages, if Wikipedia’s estimate of the number of heterosexual open marriages is correct, no matter how widely accepted gay marriage becomes, there are always going to be more heterosexual open marriages than homosexual open marriages. Even if all homosexual marriages in the future are open marriages, there will still be more heterosexual open marriages than homosexual open marriages.
David N.–
In the article I read Savage says that each person and couple is different. What is acceptable to one would not be acceptable to others. But he does allow for what most of us would call “promiscuity”, that is faithlessness without a bad conscience. In “open marriages” being unfaithful, especially with some regularity, is not a fault. To most people it is. In other words, how do you define “promiscuous”? I suspect you’ll find a lot of difference between men and women on that one.
True, he insists that marriage should be stable at least for the sake of any chldren involved, and that’s quite healthy. But to say “See how bad opposite-sex marriages are doing” is irrelevent to the question: should adultery be frowned on/be acceptable? Or: is adultery OK for some ? (He says it should all be a matter of individual preferences/needs/whatever. (I wish I could find the original article. As I remember it was in a West Coast paper.)
As I see it, it might be unfortunate, but raising children is a matter of teaching them what will probably make them happy/just/otherwise good, and this includes giving good example. Yes, I think the bishops are right that it is for the common good that kids be given standards of sexual morality. It’s not just a matter of personal preference. We might think at the age of 16 that “this is bigger than both of us” as the phrase used to go, but when you’re older you realize that, as Crystal has pointed out, doing what is “natural” does not always lead to a good life. We all need norms, and the best way to get them is to look at the long-term experience of others.
But to say “See how bad opposite-sex marriages are doing” is irrelevent to the question: should adultery be frowned on/be acceptable?
Ann,
The facet of all this that interests me is the belief in the “homosexual threat.” You may be correct that the state of opposite-sex marriage is irrelevant to the question of adultery, but the state of opposite-sex marriage is very relevant to the question of whether Dan Savage and the movement in favor of same-sex marriage is going to ruin everything.
David –
I have no objection to same=sex marriage unless it affects the children, and, as I’ve said before, I think we just don’t know about that yet.
As to this discussion, I do *not* assume with Savage that gay men are necessarily more promiscuous than other men by inclination. There are many, many long-lasting faithful gay unions, and children in such a marriage would be given the good example they need, so Savage might be dealing with a straw man, viz., men who find it much more difficult to remain faithful than other rmen do.
In all of this little has been said about what women think and feel. The radical feminists generally seem to think that women are just as inclined to wander as men. But I’ll believe that afer a couple of hundred years has shown that it is true. A recent study has shown that American women are more unhappy than they were pre-lib. Do the new opportunities for sexual “liberation” have something to do with that? I strongly suspect so — and the results have been quite negative for women. Yes, the old sexual mores needed some revising, but not that much. Women do not need hooking-up. Sheesh.
By the way on another blog a man whose opinion I generally respected a lot didn’t seem to think that hooking up was too bad for women. If wise men like him think that way then we need a lot, lot, lot more communication between the sexes before we start claiming to know just how much the old mores need revision.
Noone talks abouit history here.
In my youth there were arranged mattiages, strong prohibition pf divorce and punishment of bigamy, shot gun marriages, marriages held together for “the good of the family” depsite alcohol/abuse etc.
As women became more liberated post war and the very tight old understandings of marriage came to be questioned, a lot of rules and regs apptoaches began to collapse.
In different ways, today is not much better but in some ways it is and as our understandings grow, change wil be more inevitable.
Making love paramount 9with the stability implied there) is the message that is needed and not just generally, but to the complex economic society that has evolved.
And the message should be delivered without any perception of sexism on the part of the messenger!
David Nickol (7/29 7:31 am):
You’re conflating two entirely different uses of the verb “have”, David. One meaning is “procreate” and the other is “possess”. If I say that John and Mary are having a child, I’m saying that he fertilized her egg and she’s about to give birth. If they’re infertile and are acquiring the child from an adoption agency, I say that they’re adopting a child. If I’m describing all three as a family – mother, father, child – from the point of view of the adults, I say that John and Mary “have” a child, just as, as you point out, I’d say that John and John, having adopted a child, also “have” a child.
That sounds a bit pedantic, I suppose, but it’s quite important. Language forms thought.
The distinction between “stability” and “fidelity” is a little like Kung’s one between “indefectibility” and “infallibility”. I think that there is merit in it. We should advise people to handle infidelity in a mature way, not treating it as the automatic end of their marriage. And of course there are many stable marriages in which one or both partners have been unfaithful. Male gay partnerships probably are more porous in this respect than heterosexual ones, for many reasons — male psychology, the different conditioning by which gay culture and heterosexual marriage traditions have been shaped, the absence of kids from the equation. Possibly same-sex marriage will evolve to parity with heterosexual marriage on this front.
Note that heterosexual men have been chafing against the strictures of monogamy for centuries. They vibrate to utterances like “Ere one to one was cursedly confined” (Dryden) or Shelley, “With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe/The longest and the dreariest journey go”. It is unsurprising that gay spokesmen are saying “let’s not obsess about fidelity; let’s focus more on building stability”.
Mmmmmm.
“Obsessing” about fidelity. Oh, boy. If fidelity matters, it’s worth obsessing over. If it doesn’t matter, what kind of marriage is that?
I want to reiterate that Savage’s most important point is that honesty is everything in a relationship. He does not say that if one partner in a relationship wants to stray sexually, and the other does not, that it is OK. On the contrary, he says that these things should be agreed in advance before entering into a contract of marriage. The thing that kills marriage is not open marriages, but dishonesty.
As far as the kids are concerned, I believe they will learn well if they learn honesty in their relationships.
“let’s not obsess about fidelity; let’s focus more on building stability”.
Stability for whom, Fr. O’Leary? Stability for men. As with the interests of children, you show no concern for the interests of women. You are the ultimate chauvinist.
“Now, I’m not personally sure what I think about this, more because of the status of the “other” person in these encounters than any of the concerns thus discussed. ”
Andy, might a recommend that “boring” Theology of the Body, love as gift of self idea of Pope John Paul the Great as a companion on your journey?
Ann Olivier, so only men “stray”? I must have been reading too much Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary lately.
Or I must have been watching too much of the movie with Hugh Grant Sarah Jessica Parker, “Did you hear about the Morgans?” in which both husband and wife admit infidelity, in the name of honesty, and then mutually obsess about it until forgiveness prevails.
Many marriages collapse because of the husband’s kneejerk reaction to the wife’s infidelity; wives are more forgiving in the long run; it is the ancient male obsession with fidelity that oppresses women and makes marriages brittle. So I claim to be the opposite of a male chauvinist.
Perhaps gay couples will teach men to be less brutally possessive.
Just a housekeeping suggestion: Could we keep “Verdicts” conversations to the original post and vice versa?
I understand C’weal wants to get people used to checking out the the “Verdicts” blog, but it seems to me that having the same conversation in two places is counter-productive.
I realize this is not my magazine, my blog, or my Internet.
But that never prevents me from suggesting things … :-)