17 May 2013 02:24:06
Kate Figes is a family mediator and prolific author on "the big questions around love and commitment", who now asks if long-lasting monogamy is possible in an age when we all live longer, and when many of us have so much money and personal freedom, and are bombarded with images and assertions about other people's sex lives all the time. Expectations about what we should get out of life generally, and sex in particular, have risen, she says, to the point where extramarital affairs don't simply look like an answer to the disappointment, boredom and unhappiness that are "the norm in many marriages", but something akin to a reasonable self-maintenance choice, made as easy to arrange by the internet as any other shopping.
Figes isn't cynical about this, unlike some of her interviewees who make a living out of adultery, such as the wonderfully named Verity, an "infidelity detective", or David, of lovinglinks.com, a "discreet liaison" facilitator. He has a fine moral sense, as one might guess: "I help [my clients] validate what they are doing, and give philosophical reasons and reassurance that they are not alone in needing sex outside their marriage. I live in this strange world where most of the people I meet in my daily life help to reinforce that what I do for a living is normal and healthy."
Figes has persuaded scores of people to share their stories of cheating, betrayal and marital pain, and they bear plentiful witness to the insanity lust can provoke: the bunny-boiling rages, the histrionic phone calls, the unscheduled appearances at the office. She also follows some finer threads in the tangled web – for instance, the fact that a betrayed spouse can get leverage over the cheating partner, however brief, through sheer force of guilt; and the observation that lovers sometimes indulge in complacent competitiveness with the vanquished spouse, lavishing superior attention, affection and seductive techniques on the lucky cheater, perhaps to reassure themselves, as Figes says astutely, that they are "not being used just for sex".
Her contributors often sound quite nostalgic about the turmoil they have lived through, and can be refreshingly honest. One angry father recalls his cold-blooded strategising at the time of his divorce: "I wanted to make sure the blame rested on her shoulders so that when history judges the break-up of this family people will see it was all down to her and not me." Others can't believe how long they allowed themselves to be deluded. Cheating partners can feel guilt, of course, but on the evidence here, it doesn't seem to stop anyone. And, in more bad news for the betrayed partner, however black and white the case might seem, relationship professionals work on the assumption that the fault for infidelity is usually 50-50, due to the "complicated unconscious dance in couples which involves a lot of provocation and goading".
Figes's most surprising assertion is that monogamy is valued as never before, and that fidelity has "assumed more meaning as a marker of their commitment" in the current generation. She is unaccountably dogmatic about it ("Modern society has become so disapproving of all sexual infidelity that we find it hard to feel tolerance when a person strays," she says at one point; "absolute monogamy is king"), but doesn't seem to remember that she was equally dogmatic earlier in the book about a current "epidemic of infidelity", quoting some evidently meaningless data from "a range of surveys" a decade old that suggest 25-75% of women, and 40-80% of men "have engaged in at least one extramarital sexual activity"; in other words, almost everyone, or no one, has done something, or nothing, disloyal to their partner.
A book like this demands closure, of one sort or another, and in her last two chapters, Figes strains every fibre to provide it. She goes from caring and sharing to deploring all in a trice, and in a grim-faced chapter on the effects of divorce on children, blames unfaithful couples for just about every evil in society, their betrayal of trust a ticking time-bomb.
After this stern talking-to, Figes's conclusions seem culpably lame. We should all "find new ways to make relationships stronger from the inside", she tells us; "this means genuine honesty about our darker feelings such as jealousy and insecurity, as well as the loving ones". This will hardly help or comfort anyone who has suffered from another's infidelity, who is genuinely puzzled about the dynamics of betrayal, or who needs assurance about how to survive it. Nor does it make for a very entertaining read.
