3. Two or Three Covenants in Place of Marriage

I.
Among or alongside the first & last things of birth, death and transition to adulthood, which are the core subjects of religious ceremony, is the male-female divide. The life of a woman is always different to that of a man. We define ourselves in the light of what we are not. It is hence no accident when this divide figures high in the precepts of religions.

Traditionally, or in most societies, men and women have lived separately, the men keeping to themselves and the women likewise, coming together only at appointed times. As historically we have moved away from this ordering, now with mingling in all walks of life, there is one institution which stands out as a remnant of a bygone era. It is marriage, or rather, the idea of marriage as encapsulated in couples, which are less committed formally whatever the strength of the bond.

In the West and many places elsewhere, one defining feature of marriage is not, as some would have you believe, love, but exclusion. The counterparty is regarded as property. The extent of the putative property rights varies. At a minimum it is the claim to have exclusive access to the sexual organs of the other. But it may extend to access to their intimate thoughts, such that even male-female conversation of any profundity with outsiders is illicit.

There has always been a refusal in the Deep Christian State (as similarly elsewhere) to come clean (be explicit) about the disparate elements which constitute marriage. Much vexation can be attributed to the attempt to keep these elements together.

It would be possible for the state to allow a man and woman to form a legally binding partnership which was solely for the creation and upbringing of children. Such a partnership would end when the children reached adulthood (which may itself be in need of more precise definition).

The partnership need not include long-term co-habitation, altho living together may be practical and most welcome especially when offspring is very young. It would be enough to commit to proximity of dwelling.

There is a need to spell out a role for fatherhood, which is quite different from the maternal role, this latter being dictated, for babies at least, by biology. It is not complicated (tho it may be hard) to be a passably good mother. One knows what one has to attend to. Fatherhood, as a pre-eminent form of masculinity, is less well-defined. I suggest that it is induction of the child or children into the outside world, away from domesticity. As such it would be a growing role, with the maternal role diminishing. We are talking in generalities, so exceptions will apply, not all of them desirable.

(Masculinity is not limited to or defined by fatherhood. The masculine role is to attend to affairs outside the home. Most men neglect this duty, thereby conceding a concentration of power to the hands of only a few and with disastrous consequences. It is irrelevant that a few women choose to take on core masculine tasks. We are talking generalities.)

One reason (or the reason) that people get married is to accommodate their sexual desires. We return to the idea that the (or: a) purpose of the marriage contract is access to (possession of) the sexual organs of the other. This is contingently associated with the idea of fidelity.

But what happens when the access is refused? Refused not because of monthly or health-related restrictions, but for other reasons, which may or may not be known.

Sometimes the motivation for refusal will be the exercise of power, with disputes outside the bedroom spilling over to inside. Power sits uncomfortably with love, which is supposed to be the spirit of the marriage bond. Such exercise of power may find itself countered with violence.

The easy response to sexual withdrawal (an infringement of the marriage covenant) would be to apply the
right of first refusal
This enables an initial infidelity to be rebuked (lawfully, morally) by a second.

By upholding the absolute (inviolate) nature of the marriage vows on fidelity, Puritanism (endemic also among Catholics) leaves no space for a better accommodation of sexual desire with the nuances and realities of interpersonal relations.
II.

Thought can be given to the psychology behind the idea of fidelity. The sexual act involves taking bodily possession of another, or allowing oneself to be taken possession of, temporally. Afterwards the desire is extinguished and the possession relinquished. What drives desire is to take possession, which is only possible for what is not possessed. Desire is dynamic.

Not all people wish to possess another uniquely. For suchlike, jealousy, like fidelity, is not a virtue. There is, tho, a counter-sentiment, which lacks a name. It is resentment at being excluded on principle rather than due to capacity or attraction.

The prominence given to Coupledom has a corrosive effect on friendship between men and women. The corrosion also occurs where there is no possibility or hint of sexual rivalry. This is an affront to those of us who simply prefer the company of a variety of members of the opposite sex.

This is how it comes about, counter-intuitively, that marriage, often touted as the remedy if not panacea, drives loneliness. People hesitate to venture out of their shells, until, that is, their one relationship ends, whether by death or desertion, whereupon they find themselves playing musical chairs. If nearly everyone is uniquely attached, and be they attached ever so badly, there is no space for new friendship across the gender divide.

III.
In truth, they are seldom uniquely attached, but almost haphazardly, ìuniquelyî here meaning ìexclusivelyî.

The rare exceptions receive much attention and idealisation. In the public sphere, we learn of exceptional marriages, where there is a meeting of kindred spirits. We might even be envious. The envy may end when one of the couple dies or loses their mind. Or when the image of harmony turns sour. Sometimes, tho, these marriages of soulmates are indeed blessed, and productive. Other couples have several years of mutually enriching exchange, but eventually they run out of things to say to each other. The challenge here is not to delay the end, and to end amicably, or to separate for a while. But we lack a culture of departing on good terms or, as the rhythm of communication slows, just growing apart naturally.

For most, it is wiser (would be wiser) to have a handful of special relationships. With luck, one or two will survive into old age, with the others replaced by more recent encounters.

All real life being encounter. (An encounter may be brief or long-lasting. Each ends eventually. People cannot merge, except in the creation of new life, which then becomes separate. The sentiment ó or illusion ó of merging is the essence of being in love which, if it ends amicably, is a worthy experience and has its own antecedents.)

"For most, it is wiser to have a handful of special relationships..." But it is here that the Deep Christian State invokes its authoritarian legacy.

Another reason people marry is in order not to be a nobody if their partner dies or is rendered incapacitated. Without a marriage certificate, you mostly have no say in burial, in inheritance, or the direction of palliative care. You may not even receive consolation from acquaintances. It is no bad thing, today where so many lead isolated lives, for there to be a formal, i.e. lawful, record of close, trusted, friends of long standing with certain privileges. But only one? Or only those in the blood line?

Two or Three Covenants in Place of Marriage

Re-weaving the Social Fabric with Godparenthood

I.
Across the western world there has been a torrent of controversy about same-sex marriage and associated rights to adopt children or, in some cases, to permit artificial procreation on behalf of same-sex couples. For all the passion and outrage on either side, little light has been thrown on the essential issue, which is that of the purpose, or rather purposes, of marriage. Once we call to mind some fairly obvious distinctions, things fall in place.

Marriage is a special kind of personal contract, but it is also a social institution. You might marry in near secrecy, but part of the essence of marriage is that the union is recognised publicly. This is the recognition that same-sex couples have craved and that traditionalists have wished to deny them. It is a separate matter to arrangements for procreating or bringing up children.

The heat of the debate has left one issue cold, which is the desirability of universal coupledom, or indeed whether this is seriously even conceivable. This failure is exemplified by the unfortunate slogan propagated in France of mariage pour tous ( = marriage for all) , which may sound more like a menace than a promise. As one kind of exclusion is ended, at least in terms of state recognition, so another kind appears, with all attention being focussed on the institution of coupledom (whether with or without a marriage certificate), as though this must be the universal norm. Those who live differently, whether by conviction or circumstance, are left outside. In point of fact, coupledom often comes at the expense of friendship, which is governed by loyalty rather than an exclusive — i.e. excluding — contract.

II.
One purpose of marriage is to provide a robust institutional setting for bringing up children. It will not be disputed that children thrive better when there is constancy and continuity of attention from more than one adult. Two parents are better than one. It is argued below that two parents are not enough. Nor is it essential that these be biological parents.

A robust institutional setting for bringing up children must mean that those involved have rights and duties with regard to the child. The qualification “institutional” means that their involvement cannot be terminated on a whim. Outsiders — neutral, unknown and maybe anonymous ­ — must give their blessing to any change.

A separate set of purposes essential to marriage is the provision of emotional security and material solidarity between the persons of the couple. In short, a covenant to maintain a joint household.

"Marriage" cruelly conflates these two sets of purposes, and this failure to differentiate leads to no end of conflict, confusion and, of course, misery. It is for this reason that here the proposal is made to speak of covenants. Covenants resemble contracts, but they are less legalistic and, above all, give formal recognition to the role of the emotions and the virtue of loyalty.

One covenant that may be made is to bring up a child jointly. Much of the time, this will involve running a joint household. Normally, when the child has reached adulthood and independence, the covenant will have achieved its purpose and so have come to maturity — or fruition, its commitments having been fulfilled. Although long, it is temporary in nature.

A separate covenant that may be made is to share a household until “Death us do part” . This is not a flat-share or a business partnership. It is best exemplified by the rare but poignant cases where two siblings spend a lifetime together in a single household, presumably without any sexual relationship between them, although this is of no concern to anyone outside.

The household here to be shared in permanence also stands for solidarity, as “in sickness and in health”, or indeed “for richer or poorer,” while legal recognition involves rights & duties in cases where one of the couple is incapacitated.

A problem may arise when one of the couple dies, but only because, in most jurisdictions, of the onerous nature of inheritance tax. (The revenue authorities may de facto confiscate the jointly held home, leaving the remaining person destitute.) That is, the problem would seem to arise solely from a heavy-handed, non-discretionary tax bureaucracy interfering with common-law property rights. (The non-discretionary aspect is associated with the contemporary prioritisation of equality; strict equality being an unobtainable goal and so always at odds with discretion, but that is another subject.)

A household covenant might more usually be equivalent to a marriage as commonly understood when no children can come naturally and no adoptions are planned.

Obviously two people might resolve to enter into both covenants, though this might be rash since one cannot in early adulthood (i.e. when most fertile) know the person one will be, much less so the person the other will become, a score of years later. This would be more like entering a convent than a covenant.

Indeed, in public reflection about the institution of marriage, much light might come from considering in parallel the institution of celibacy such as is exemplified when someone takes a vow of celibacy, which is not only a promise not to marry, but also a vow of chastity. Would it be possible to go to a government office to register this vow? And if, subsequently, one broke it, would there be legal recourse for the breach of vow to be punished? Or would one be able, legally, to register a revocation?

These reflections demonstrate that marriage is first & foremost a religious sacrament. One does not have to be religious to acknowledge this. A marriage — proper — takes place in the eyes of God. So an atheist cannot marry. An atheist may, however, very well enter into a solemn promise — a binding agreement — to care jointly with another adult for a child, or else to share a household until “death they do part”.

Hence it is impossible for the state to conduct marriage ceremonies, between whomsoever. And consequently impossible for the state to regulate marriage. The tasks of the state here are, rather, to register (i.e. acknowledge & anchor) covenants for the upbringing of a child or the maintenance of a life-long household. Much would be gained if the state were to distinguish these two tasks and make proper and separate provision for them.

III.
There is a third — rather obvious — purpose of traditional marriage, and that is to provide the spouses mutually with a permanent sexual partner. The Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant maintained — notoriously — that marriage is a contract for the exclusive use of the sexual organs of the other. A more realistic and liberal version for the contemporary world would be that it involves a promise of availability, or a granting of priority.

In France there was a case recently of a wife being awarded compensation because her husband had failed to fulfil his conjugal duties. Although in the reported case the husband’s neglect seems to have been a matter of his indifference, in other cases the withholding of sex is used as an instrument of power in the dynamics of a couple. On the other hand, progressive opinion has led to legal recognition of the possibility of rape within marriage, a possibility that some traditionalists contest.

It will be obvious that no brief treatment of these conflicting perspectives can begin to do justice to the enormous range of situations that can occur. The question arises, therefore, whether, in this regard, marriage can be given any kind of state recognition. Again, it would seem that marriage is a religious sacrament, or covenant, which the adherents to the faith must define and police on their own, independently of any legal involvement.

There is, however, another institution that has been hitherto religious, or rather Christian, and whose recognition and regulation by the state could be universally beneficial.

Re-weaving the social fabric with Godparenthood

Granted it is better that a child should have more than one adult to bond to, some of the invective against parenthood in a same-sex marriage would seem vindictive. It would amount to depriving some children of a good. But, if we presume, to be conventionally on the safe side, that it is best for a growing child to have adults of both sexes to bond to, there is a simple solution, which may be seen either as a compromise or an ideal. It may also present a safety valve against gross mistreatment.

There is an ancient institution to provide additional assurance that children are cared for, roughly, as they should be, and that is godparenthood. All we need do is give this institution legal recognition, such that parents and especially any single parent be urged to nominate two or three godparents, who would have legally enforceable rights and obligations. That is, a godmother and a godfather (not necessarily in any liaison) would be expected and empowered to visit their godchild regularly, for example once a fortnight, and held partly responsible (with penalties) if the child came to serious harm.

They might be grandparents, or aunts & uncles, but ideally they would, as originally in medieval Christendom, be unrelated persons who lived nearby. This mechanism could work wonders in establishing or reinforcing social cohesion. It would also encourage the institution of long-term friendship, which suffers grievously when everywhere all emotional eggs are invested in the excluding relationship of marriage.

Such a rejuvenated and legally enforceable institution of godparenthood would calm the passions in the contentious debate about gay adoption. If two men, or two women, are bringing up a child jointly, then let them appoint godparents of the opposite sex to provide some gender balance in their child’s growing perception of the human world, it being understood that we understand gender imperfectly, and should err on the side of balance.

Although originally an ecclesiastical institution, there is no need for godparenthood to have religious undertones.

Marriage as a Moral Disorder

Since some marriages undoubtedly succeed, why is it that others fail? Is this just a matter of individual and all-too-human shortcomings? Or is it possible that marriage, when held up as a universal moral order, has failings of its own? Would it actually be possible, if only we were all mature enough, for everyone to be a partner to a happy, exclusive and lifelong relationship of sexual and emotional intimacy? Or could it be that, both within and without marriage, the players who lose out are merely the victims of the rules of the game, that some, at any rate, are really just well-rounded persons who fail to fit into the square hole of marriage?

Changed circumstances
Before examining the concept of marriage as such and the values it assumes, let us look at some assumptions and clear the ground of related issues which are only sometimes relevant.

Our times have seen sweeping changes in the material circumstances governing our sexual and affective lives. These are:

* Control over fertility. Connected with this is the desirability (in the light of high population levels and high per capita consumption of natural resources) of a low birth rate, and the fact that people no longer need provide for their old age by having children themselves.

* Acceptance of the principle and partial realisation of substantial equality between the sexes. Connected with this is the material feasibility of single-person households, with our affluence offering us technical convenience unimagined in previous epochs.

These changes (i.e. the attenuation of certain constraints) mean that age-old structures and assumptions no longer hold. While a traditionalist might see in the system of marriage the wisdom of the ages, we have meantime entered veritably a new era.

By "Marriage" I mean monogamous marriage and marriage-like arrangements, e.g. common-law marriages; i.e. much of the analysis also applies to "relationships". The principal elements involved in marriage — its defining characteristics — are:

* A sexually exclusive relationship — this is the crux of the matter; "open marriages" are outlawed.

* A single focal relationship, overriding other claims of friendship. The marriage partner is the most important person is the life of the other, both day-to-day and long-term.

* Co-habitation. Married people share a household

* The intention of permanence

* Solidarity — notably in times of hardship, sickness and in old age.

The important non-essential element is joint upbringing of children issuing from the marriage. First some comments on this last aspect. Marriage and parenthood

In appropriate material circumstances, there is no compelling reason why the responsibilities of parenthood must be exercised within marriage, i.e. in a joint household and with a continuing, sexually and emotionally intimate relationship between the parents. All that is required, in practical terms, is that the two households be located conveniently close to each other and that the parents should have a friendly working relationship. (The key material circumstances involved here are flexible working hours or else material independence and, crucially, the availability of suitable housing. It is incidentally apparent that, as a society, we have come to place more emphasis on providing a variety of other goods and services, including many that are doubtless trivial, rather than designing our living and working environments to be adaptive to the lives of the affections.)

It is important to stress that other considerations apply when material circumstances fall short of what is required. Children need stable relationships with adults of both sexes, and the primary obligation to provide those relationships rests with the child's mother and father, often overriding their other duties. (This does not mean that the two child-parent relationships are enough; children need a multiplicity of relationships with adults of both sexes, both in order to correct for the idiosyncrasies of their parents and to provide substitutes in the event of tragic separation.)

Even if the above principle is not accepted (i.e. that parenthood can be adequately exercised by parents in separate households), there is the further point that, in an average life span of over seventy years, of which fifty are spent in full adulthood, care for children should not normally be taking up more than, say, twenty years. There is no reason why the life style for the other half of adult life should be dictated by considerations appropriate, if at all, only to this special twenty-year period.

Traditionally the social and economic need for fathers to take their share of responsibility for any children produced by a sexual relationship has justified a rule of sexual fidelity. But note that this justification was even then only watertight as long as the nature of the sexual intimacy was liable to actually produce children. Today we have considerable control of fertility, with the result that this argument, while retaining some force, is much diminished. Personal expectations and demands

There have been major changes in what is expected of a relationship. Since marriage is no longer an economic necessity, the focus has shifted from material considerations to personal qualities. A good husband, a good wife, are no longer defined in terms of the fulfilment of specific roles such as being a reliable provider or an efficient housekeeper. What most of us now expect from a prospective partner is defined largely in terms of emotions and personalities, and is hence highly individualistic. Often it is even in terms of shared leisure interests. Typically, enormously complex demands are now made of a prospective marriage partner. It would be too easy simply to censure people for making these demands. If one takes the notion of marriage as a life-long (and sexually exclusive!) union at all seriously, then it would seem to be rather important to set higher criteria than those for a simple friendship.

If monogamy is claimed as the only justifiable setting for sexual intimacy, there must be a rationale for this. At a general level, it can be agreed that humans and human societies have a continuing need (i.e. independent of considerations related to fertility) to integrate sexual behaviour into the life of the emotions. That is, we try to make sexual intimacy expressive of the mutual emotions felt by those involved. More precisely, we say that those emotions should be ones of affection, fondness, liking or love. So far, so good.

The problem arises because of the exclusive nature of the claims, and most notably the sexual claims, inherent in marriage. Presumably the justification for this exclusivity is that the marriage relationship is (ideally) the central relationship in a person's life, with a much more intense helping of affection and love than is to be found in other (sexually attractive and socially tolerated) relationships. Sexual intimacy is then seen as expressive of the uniqueness of the relationship; extra-marital sexual relationships are ruled as undesirable because they belie or undermine the centrality of the marriage relationship (legitimate sexual intimacy being interpreted as always expressive of central emotions).

One assumption here is that a person needs (and therefore should ideally live within) a single central relationship. But it is difficult to see what an argument for this claim would look like. It might be an empirical claim about what people naturally prefer when they are free to choose, but this is a highly theoretical circumstance. Apart from the commonplace that people never grow up within a vacuum, there is the consideration that individuals do not usually have anything like a practical choice in the matter, any more than they have a choice about whether or not to enter a contract of employment of some kind.

Perhaps the argument for monogamy draws its strength from a claim about what kind of arrangement generates the most potential for happiness, fulfilment and the like. Here it would be easy to provide apparent counter- examples. But the claim is too vast for anecdotal matter to decide the issue. Each of us may form a conviction one way or the other; in the final analysis, it seems more like a matter of faith than one for demonstration.

Assuming that sexual intimacy is, ideally, expressive of love, it needs to be demonstrated that it is only possible to love a single person at any one time. This is counter-intuitive. It might, however, be possible to redefine love in a strong sense such that intense love is always focused on only one person. We might genuinely wonder, for instance, whether it is possible to fall in love, or be in love, with more than one person at a time. But we might equally question whether such a peak of intensity of feeling can be maintained for long, let alone over a lifetime. If it is not maintained, then there is a justification for either later terminating the sexual intimacy involved in the relationship, or else extending sexual intimacy to a new love.

For the present defence of fidelity to hold, the love ideally present or sought in marriage has, we have seen, to be either exclusive by definition or else must be a love of such intensity that it practically rules out comparable depth of feeling towards anyone else. Now there is no reason to suppose that life will necessarily present us with a person whom we feel bound to quite this closely and who also, felicitously, returns the feeling in equal measure. It will happen in some lives, fail to materialise in others, and in yet others there will be an essentially one-way affection, at least of this intensity. The move now open to the defence of fidelity is to claim that the special love involved is something which has to be worked at, that it is not a love which just happens.

Arguably no love just happens; the new affection is tended with hopes and meetings until it is sometimes suddenly — happily or tragically — out of control. Neither can love, as commonly understood, be forced. Yet for their argument to hold, the advocate of fidelity has to redefine love as something that can substantially be controlled, i.e. subjected to the will of the individual. This redefinition is implausible. The common word “love” involves necessarily a strong affective element and hence a certain spontaneity; love is not invested like trust in a business partnership.

The advocate of fidelity must now move the focus to the marriage relationship as such. The relationship, rather than the sense of love, must be nurtured until, with the years, it has become something special or irreplaceable, i.e. until each partner has become the most important person in the life of the other. "For better or worse," I should sceptically add, for familiarity is not the same as love.

This is the nub of the problem. The advocate of fidelity is eventually forced to discard the centrality of love, at least in any ordinary sense, and replace it with some such notion as long-term commitment. But this makes the connection of the relationship specifically with sexual intimacy ever more tenuous and artificial. The truth of the contention becomes clearer and clearer: the relationship becomes special because it has been made the unique arena for sexual intimacy, while the justification for restricting sexual intimacy to this one relationship is that it is special. That is, a wholly vacuous specialness is manufactured. In other words, there is in principle also no moral reason (there may still be prudential ones) for restricting sexual intimacy to a single relationship.

Mismatches: the non-universalisability of the marriage ideal

In the long term, sexual desires can rarely be ignored with impunity. The following argument therefore assumes that the great majority of people need sexual connection of some kind and that it is desirable that they should find some sexual fulfilment. The corollary is that celibacy imposed by force of circumstance is an evil.

Just now the point was made that not everyone is likely to meet the person whom they can relate to and love unreservedly and who also, felicitously, returns the sentiment. It was argued that this fact would force the advocate of fidelity to redefine love so radically as to lead eventually to the collapse of his argument.

Now in forming and developing relationships a great deal always turns on just how much compatibility and closeness is demanded. This said, the advocate of sexual exclusivity needs, for their argument to carry any conviction, rather a high level of compatibility and closeness. However, once expectations and demands begin to rise only a little, people encounter difficulty in finding the suitable partner or else they seem to find themselves with the wrong partner. Where does the fault lie, in the people who ask too much, or in the value system that calls for such a high investment in a single relationship?

If the justification for sexual exclusivity is sought in the specialness of the relationship (or else in the specialness of the other person), then we must ask whether everyone can realistically have such a relationship if they so choose. Is this statistically feasible? It would certainly be conceivable for nearly everyone to be a partner in an exclusive relationship of sorts. And equally conceivable for this relationship to be a sexually intimate one excluding third parties. But such partnerships cannot reasonably be expected also to be ones of a meeting of minds, of wide-ranging compatibility, of depth of companionship. Yet once these features are absent, again, the moral rationale for fidelity collapses.

The point is crucial, and I will restate it — twice. Assuming affections may be coaxed but not manufactured, and since affections are not automatically mutual or automatically associated with sexual attraction, it is statistically probable that many people will be unmatched or ill-matched. If they are ill-matched, a mockery is made of the whole rationale of sexual intimacy being expressive of the special closeness of the marriage partners. There is no longer anything inherently unique or especially valuable about the relationship, only the uniqueness imposed externally by the norm of exclusivity in sexual matters. The justification for keeping the sexual relationship exclusive has to be that the relationship is on other grounds and in other respects unique and special such that sexual intimacy and exclusion can mirror this unique and special character. But now, in practice, the only thing special and unique about many of the relationships is that they involve sexual intimacy.

This problem only arises as long as the rule of sexual fidelity, as a moral (rather than hygienic or progenitory) rule, is propagated as binding on all. The ideal of exclusive love (in an ordinary and substantial sense of the word love) as the only proper setting for sexual intimacy cannot realistically be universalised. This does not mean that it cannot be realised some of the time. (It could theoretically be universal in a world which were governed by divine providence and guardian angels, but it cannot be universal in a world subject to the — creative? — chaos of non-mutual and conflicting attractions.)

Here the second restatement of this crucial point, this time in statistical terms. Imagine a model of people forming couples. Let us suppose that the average woman in the realm is three inches shorter than the average man. Let the tyrant decree that each woman is to marry a man who is three inches taller. We intuitively see that havoc would result, at least in the absence of centralised matching by computer. Our intuitive insight could doubtless be demonstrated by mathematical modelling using probability theory.

Let us now add just one more variable. Suppose the average woman is three years older than the average man and that the tyrant issues a further decree that each woman must marry a man three years her junior. With just two variables, the headache is complete. Yet in the area of personal relationships we are dealing with a veritable multitude of variables.

Let us suppose for a moment that a close, lifetime relationship, which is the ideal of marriage, really is a most desirable destiny for all. (This is a big supposition. The institution of marriage lends legitimacy to the staking of exclusive claims, and hence to possessiveness and jealousy. The latter can scarcely count as virtues.)

Let us suppose furthermore that, notwithstanding the foregoing argument, it could reasonably be achieved by everyone, i.e. that there were no systemic problems about its universalisability. This ethic still runs foul of another difficulty, namely that setting something up as an ideal to be pursued by all is likely to encourage falseness in one shape or another. For example, assuming that sexuality constitutes a powerful drive, if it is only acceptable to exercise that drive in the presence of certain rather high-flown emotions and attitudes, people will consciously or unconsciously fabricate the appropriate feelings. Those feelings, even if they are not wholly counterfeit, will consequently lack staying power.

In other words, once an ideal is firmly in place, people will feel constrained to comply, and be it at the cost of suppressing (either publicly or psychologically) what they really feel and want. In the present case, if it is put about that people (and notably adolescents) can only have sex when what they feel for each other is love (rather than, say, simply affection), then they will either pretend to such feelings or else — and I suspect this is far worse and widespread than straightforward deceit — they will manufacture the said feelings. In consequence, they will likely be misled into confusing sexual desire with love.

Now it might seem that this blending of the two (desire and love) is the ideal state, indeed just what we have been striving for, and in a sense it is. But do we achieve the real thing by suppressing the distinction? Or do we not rather introduce confusion into the hearts of the best, while fostering hypocrisy in the rest? The word love is easily spoken, and it is only a little more difficult to imagine that it has been achieved. Especially if you have the incentive of socially approved sex to reward you.

The general fallacy at work here might be described as the confusion of the ideal with the good.

There is a crucial difference between, on the one hand, a statement that sexual intimacy can be expressive of love (and when it is so expressive this fortuitous event is to be welcomed), and, on the other hand, the setting up of an ideal unity between desire and love, which all should strive for. There is a presumption here even that we have the power to choose to achieve this harmony. This presumption is, I contend, a form of hubris. Or, in a more modern, a Wittgensteinian idiom, it is what happens when thought is idling. Too often, indeed, ideals are but the product of idle minds. What we should instead require, of ourselves and of others, is behaviour that is good enough.

Summary

First the argument from common experience tells us how difficult it is to find and win someone with whom we can forge more than a limited partnership. Should we then lower our sights? But if it does not much matter whom you marry as long as a rough and ready compatibility is ensured, then equally it ceases to matter that you should be faithful. Unless the argument for sexual exclusiveness is to be one of fidelity for its own sake.

The empirical premise of this argument, namely the practical difficulty people face when seeking a suitable partner, was then shown to be a nearly necessary truth. That is, the statistical probability of no or few placement difficulties arising is negligible. Hence, the failure of marriage as a social system is pre-programmed, and does not generally reflect personal failings. (This argument from non-universalisability does not presuppose acceptance of a Kantian standpoint, although a Kantian would have to accept it.)

Finally, a separate argument distinguished between a set of circumstances being good in the sense of felicitous and these circumstances being an appropriate target for acts of will. We should not seek to control and determine everything, because the attempt is likely to fail and, indeed, create more havoc than letting things be. In matters connected with sexuality, it is arguably wholly inappropriate, for spontaneity is of the essence here, the nature of the erotic experience being a letting go, an abandon, and so a relinquishment of control.

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

Against Couples

PAUL GREGORY

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.