Note: To avoid being provocative or misconstrued, today this might be better entitled:

Against a preponderance of couples

Against Couples

Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1984

ABSTRACT

The essay attacks the convention that a person should at any period in their life have not more than one sexual partner. The issues of the care of children and thedesirability of a shared household are here bracketed out. The main argument proceeds by seeing conflicts between the requirement of exclusivity in sexual life, authenticity, and the principle that sexual communion should be an expression of love. A general social inertia, defined by the possessive introversion of couples, means that individuals will inevitably sometimes have to choose between sexual solitude and cultivating a more or less artificial relationship. The ideal of a single, central relationship is criticised on the grounds that (i) in some respects it is not desirable and (ii) it is in any case unrealistic to suppose that we can choose to create such an ideal relationship at will.

In which contexts is sexual interchange held to be appropriate? What are the reasons given for these restrictions and how good are those reasons? In the West there have been three broadly accepted requirements for the sanctioning of sexual activity. The relationship within which sex takes place has been required to be permanent, exclusive and loving. Of these, the requirement of permanence has now been considerably relaxed, but the other two remain strong. Casual sex is generally rejected, at least in the sense that few if any would see it as a satisfactory approach to the long-term shaping of their sexual lives. In the following I shall challenge the reasons variously given in defence of the principle of exclusivity and examine how this principle fits in with the demand that the sexual relationship be one of love.

More specifically, I shall argue that insistance on the exclusive nature of sexual relationships will tend to militate against full and authentic friendships between persons of different sexes and even result in the one central sexual relationship losing out on the singularly personal love which is supposedly its raison d'être.

I. By the requirement of exclusivity I mean the principle that as long as any given relationship lasts the two partners should not enter into sexual relations with third persons. When asked why they uphold this restriction, most people will either reply that they feel no desire to sleep with people other than their partner, or they will explain that there is a bond of trust between the two of them and that unfaithfulness would hurt the other, possibly endangering their relationship. This of course begs the question of why it should hurt the other. Usually reference is made here to the peculiar nature of sexuality. Now it may be that there is something about sexual experience such that certain restrictions are appropriate, but if it is to justify our conventions that something needs spelling out. After all, in other cultures people uphold sexual mores which are very different from our own.

Many of the reasons given for our traditional norms have to do with the need to provide a common household for the care of the children issuing from the relation-ship. But modern contraceptive methods mean that our sexual life is no longer inextricably bound to the need to plan for children. (Apart from this, it is not self-evident that conventional family structures provide the only satisfactory setting for children to grow up in.)

Once the procreative aspect of sexual life has been bracketed out, there are few arguments, as opposed to appeals to tradition and intuition, in favour of the requirement of exclusivity. The one coherent defence I have been able to isolate rests on the idea that individuals need a central personal relationship so as to give their lives a certain focus. The sexual act is then variously understood as a symbol, a- sacrament, or even simply as a cohesive force for the union within which it takes place. On this view, additional sexual involvement would detract from the unique status of the privileged relationship and so deprive the sexual act of its special meaning. This argument tends to support the principle of permanence as well as that of exclusivity.

The most obvious doubts that can be raised here concern the nature and the desirability of the relationship involved. There is also a general question as to whether the alleged need is universal and what might be meant by maintaining that it is a need. Possibly it is thought that it should be a need, but that would be to beg the question. There would at any rate seem to be people who, whilst feeling no special need for a single, central relationship, nonetheless do experience sexual desires and needs. And even if everyone should come round at some point in their lives to the conventional perspective, this does not necessarily prove that it is right or best.

To what extent is an all-encompassing personal relationship actually desirable? It is not in dispute here that people have (or at least, should have) a need for close friendship and companionship. But if we accept that there are many facets to each personality, then it must seem appropriate that a person should seek out a number of close friends, of both sexes, whose various strengths and sensibilities accord with the diverse aspects of his or her personality. Too great an attachment to a single relationship must normally involve the neglect of some and maybe of many of these facets. In any life there is of course neglect of some, possibilities for the sake of others. But any consequent gain must be weighed against what is lost. (We are forced to measure things that seem incommensurable.) If we accord real respect to the many-sidedness of the human personality, then people would seem to have a need for a number of intimate friendships. Where this need is to a greater or lesser extent ignored, certain resonances will be lacking; the relationship for whose sake others are left untended can for its part turn into a routine. The security offered by constant companionship might be bought at the price of inertia and mediocrity. This does not have to happen, but the danger is not slight.

Nevertheless, it may seem that people have need of a unifying focus in their lives, and even of the feeling that they are for some other this focus. But are we free to choose whether our lives provide us with any such centre of gravity? And granted that we find a person who can be this focus, and whom we therefore claim to need unconditionally, do we not thereby accord to loss or rejection extreme dimensions such that they can hit at our very sense of meaning in life?

Perhaps, however, it is less an all-encompassing relationship that people need than a central friendship to whose continuing growth they make a special commitment. But what is the nature of that commitment? Why should it imply a monopoly over their sexual lives? Are there other areas of their lives over which it claims a monopoly? If the commitment means that the partners live together and share their possessions, then a limited case can be made for their restricting their sexual lives to this relationship, although even here there remains ample room for viewing the matter differently. But how is it when those involved choose a different life-style and live separately, whether alone or in a household together with others, i.e. third persons? The specialness of the central relationship begins to look artificial. The sexual act does not seem (does not tend) to be limited to the privileged union because that friendship is, for those involved, uniquely central at that moment in their lives; but the relationship is unique because it is their one friendship with a sexual dimension. Yet if the sexual act is to be understood as expressive, there must be something (other than itself) for it to be expressive of. Now if it is to be expressive of intimate friendship there is no reason why it should not be extended to other relationships where there is intimate friendship. Or is it to be maintained that further friendships of comparable intimacy are not possible? But how might this be so? Is it a matter of the proportion of time that can then be devoted to any one of the relationships? Or is it that people are psychologically incapable of devoting such affection to more than one of their fellow beings? The received wisdom will probably reply both. But it is surely wrong to suppose that one worthwhile relationship requires so vast a proportion of our time and energy that little is left over for others. And it would be naive to assume that those who cultivate a number of friendships thereby necessarily lose out on quality. Such crude calculations have no place here. After all, parents do not decide against having more than one child on the grounds that this would diminish the share of affection each child would receive.

This said, it does nevertheless occur that people are so in love with each other that there really is no room for a second relationship of comparable intensity and intimacy. This state of extreme passion is, however, virtually always temporary. If the relationship persists there is a change in the quality of the friendship; the jealous intensity which people experience when in love mellows as what was exceptional becomes normality. It is important we distinguish between ordinary affection and intimacy, on the one hand, and, in contrast to this, the extreme fascination by another that occurs when in love. Not everybody experiences love as an all-consuming passion, and, even for those who have experienced love in this way, such erotic passion (as I prefer to call the experience of being in love) generally remains an exception.

II.

I come now to the ways in which the prevailing norms tend to work against the free play of the personality. These norms generate a basic inertia which results in what we might call failures of distribution and redistribution. It is inevitable that many people will often find themselves badly matched or without a partner. The extent of this will reflect the measure in which individuals set real store by the specialness of the person they choose as a companion for their sexual and emotional life. How exactly does this come about?

I assume that it is in general important that a person should enjoy some sexual fulfillment and that there should be a high degree of compatibility and natural sympathy between sexual. partners. Now in a society where people are paired off into exclusive couples, the more people commit themselves in this way, so the more restricted is the choice of those who remain uncommitted. In order to find some sexual fulfillment and emotional security people must settle for the best person they find (and are accepted by) rather than wait. Some are now bound to find themselves in a relationship they are less than happy about, and others will be alone. These imbalances can be partly overcome if people are able to meet others who are unattached fairly easily and naturally; and, of course, they must see that the demands they make of a prospective companion are sufficiently modest. But in fact it is not always easy to meet people one knows to be unattached in settings which allow for real spontaneity; and meeting and getting to know person after person must take up time and much emotional energy.

Still, provided that a person is not too demanding in what he or she seeks in a prospective partner, they can, given perseverence, find someone. But is it good that people should be constrained to reduce their demands in respect of the person with whom they are to have so very special a relationship? Is there not something artificial about cultivating a relationship simply because one needs someone to fulfill a certain role? And we should not close our eyes here to the extent to which this role is at least initially a sexual and a social one. (There is for the satisfaction of purely emotional needs comparatively wide scope within our social structures. But our society also creates, or at least encourages, a need to belong to and possess another exclusively. This is not necessarily a sexual need, although that is the subject of the present essay. It can be primarily a social and psychological need involving the desire to think of oneself and be seen as integrated within what is society's standard unit amongst adults, i.e. to be a member of a couple.)

In a world which was as if prearranged for us, where as in a fairy tale each person eventually found the other (or an other) he or she was ideally suited to, the value conflict outlined above would not arise. In any other world it must arise, although not for everyone. Generally it will be those who are most sensitised towards the central values of our culture who will both be subject to and feel the conflict most acutely. They will be forced either to jettison one value or another, or else to engage in a pretence or self-deceit. For example, in order to maintain a relationship, it may be necessary to pretend to harbour a sentiment of love when in fact what one feels is something much less intense and exceptional than love.

Apart from the compromise it implies for the authentic self, the ethic of exclusivity suffers from the more tangible failing that it must militate against new friendships. One way in which this can happen is that people are understandably reluctant to venture on any new relationship when this immediately puts in danger their current one. This hesitation need not indicate that they are happy about their present companion; it might mean merely that they do not wish to risk the insecurities and uncertainties which a fresh commitment must involve when this also means abandoning all that is good in their old relationship. There may also be moral reasons for their reluctance: the partner they are tempted to leave might suffer real hurt. The obvious solution to the dilemma — the pursuit of a fresh friendship whilst retaining the old — is ruled out precisely because of the prevailing norms. (These norms make themselves manifest in the jealousy which is provoked when someone has two sexual partners. The requirement of exclusivity is, of course, often defended by reference to this danger of jealousy. But is it not nearer the truth to say that the traditional norms encourage and justify jealousy? As has already been indicated, a person has in our culture good reason to fear sexual loneliness. Apart from this, people feel themselves to be morally in the right to feel jealousy: the ethic of exclusivity tells them that they have a right to an exclusive claim on their partner.)

A further cause for the hesitation which typically precedes fresh sexual involvements, and therefore inhibits the development of new friendships, is the fear people understandably have about making a commitment which can only be gone back on with difficulty.

The dominant ethic also militates against new friendships in that a person can hesitate to form a friendship with someone they know to be attached on account of the distress which might ensue if they should develop real affection for the person concerned, in consequence want to give sexual expression to their feelings, and subsequently face rejection and frustration. (Much of the sexual rejection that takes place is not a result of authentic disinclination but a consequence of complex anxieties born of the dominant ethic. There is here also the factor of individuals coming to desire of themselves the fidelity that society expects of them.) It is an indictment of traditional conventions that close friendships between people of opposite sex are comparatively rare.

Do not see these problems as inherent in the human condition. They are a direct consequence of an inflexible approach to a certain kind of friendship. In a society where people formed friendships with a sexual dimension in the same sort of way in which they now form other friendships these problems would not arise. As things stand, however, our sexual lives fail to go hand in hand with our friendships, our love and the alchemy of erotic attraction.

III.

In the preceding, I have placed great emphasis on the value of the individual personality and argued that this is often incompatible with the commitment to a single person which is prescribed by the traditional ethic. Against this, it is sometimes maintained that what counts is not the personality of the chosen person but the decision which is made to cultivate a special relationship with this person. (Note that here again the argument for an exclusive relationship cannot be readily distinguished from the argument for a permanent relationship.)

There is certainly an element of truth in this emphasis on the fact of making a commitment rather than on the object of the commitment. We can perhaps see this point at its clearest if we consider how things stand when someone is urged to choose a profession. It is sometimes incidental which profession they choose; what is important is that a choice is made. SOme of the personal relationships which we cherish most are those which we have not, properly speaking, freely chosen, but which we have found ourselves living and relating in—think here of the ties between brothers and sisters. What can be important in a friendship is that those involved have spent a lot of time together. But obviously this is not always the case; and time and companionship are not the whole story. These things do not lend themselves to calculation, and devotion to a formula is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the meeting of minds and lives which we seek in personal love.

IV.

Our society (our culture) has relaxed the requirement of permanence, but not that of exclusivity. It is indeed by reference to the principle of exclusivity that that of permanence is waived; (divorce is legal; polyandry and polygyny are not). Where other friendships die gently over time and distance, those with a sexual dimension tend to end more or less abruptly: when sexual interchange ceases, so too does the whole relationship. Yet it is not that the emotional ties have vanished overnight. They may, however, be too tightly interwoven with sexual desires for the one or the other partner to bear willingly the encounter where such desires must be suppressed. And one possible reason why they must be suppressed is that a new relationship, with its own exclusive demands, has made its entry. (In other cases, the total collapse of a relationship might simply reflect the fact that for one or both of the partners it was all along only a sexual relationship.)

The logic of the preference our culture gives the principle of exclusivity is that it is better to abandon a person with whom one has built up an intimate relationship than it is to have and express feelings of love and erotic attachment to two persons. Yet in the first case love is withdrawn completely, whereas in the second there is exactly no withholding of love.

V.

We have seen that the justifications available for the principle of exclusivity do not hold good. This is in part because certain biological, material and social factors have changed, and in part because the values implicit in the conventional way of thinking involve contradictions. Some people will inevitably find themselves trapped by this conflict of values, although they may well not see clearly what is happening.

There is a vicious circle of sexual loneliness and possessive claims. Possessiveness and jealously are aroused when one person's (exclusive) claim on another is threatened or thought to be threatened. This kind of response is sometimes seen as a proof of love; it is in fact a sign of fear. In so far as it is allowed to overrule other values (of openness, authenticity, love), the principle of exclusivity aims at containing anxiety: where people are sure that their partner will be 'faithful' they can tolerate a degree of freedom which they might otherwise find unbearable. But this artificial exclusion of certain sexual developments has two negative consequences. Certain friendships with a high promise of emotional attachment must be avoided. And there must for some people be a problem of the availability of sexual partners with whom more than a superficial emotional involvement is possible.

The sum of these two consequences is that the individual is prevented from relating to certain others fully and authentically. An individual rebellion is not possible because it would take the guise of deceit or of disregard for the feelings of one's sexual partners. The conflict can, however, be lessened (albeit by no means resolved) where partners agree not to insist on each other's adhering to the principle of exclusivity.

Such a decision only becomes effective, of course, when it is shared by others. And not all who are persuaded of the logic of the case against exclusivity will be inclined to try to give up the sort of claims they have previously made: patterns of feeling and relating cannot be unlearnt by the work of reason alone. As long as people are happy with their situation they will quite naturally and understandably stay put. It is where individuals are faced in their emotional and sexual relationships with a crisis or a questioning that a clear appreciation of what is happening can help; and, perhaps, liberate.

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