Again, I’m sitting here getting ready to go to bed and pondering life. I know, it’s a bad habit and one I can’t seem to stop. No wonder I can never sleep.

Reading the two books I referenced earlier put me on the path of fidelity (marital or otherwise). Bear with me, for this is a long thought.

Starting with relationships; how many relationships do you know where one or the other partner is (at some point) unfaithful, be it a one time affair or a long standing situation? I’m sure we all know someone who has fallen into this category, as either party. Consider the modern long term relationship – usually the couple move in together, share expenses, make joint purchases, eat together, sleep together, go on vacation together. Yet this relationship lacks social permanency – i.e. a marriage or a domestic partnership. While the parties are both involved in leading a joint life, there can be that lingering sense of impermanence. After all, you aren’t married/partnered so you really can leave when you want, or make whatever decisions you want, or sleep with whom you want. Right?

It changes, of course, as you get older and really discover the meaning of the words trust and partnership. You have to trust your partner to be true to his or her word, and to help row the relationship boat (ah, such an overused metaphor) in the same mutually agreed upon direction. Your partner also has to reciprocate that trust. You have a partnership together – your relationship – that you have to invest in if you want it to mature successfully.

Now moving onto marriage, as you knew we would.

The modern spectacle of marriage occurs, in part (IMO), because the very organization that used to confer official marital status and social blessing (the Church) has now given way in many countries to the state. Largely, you have to go to some pedestrian civil office somewhere and pay a fee or get a blood test or attend some counseling and walk away with a marriage license. In Georgia (at least), the possession of the marriage license means you are already legally married. So a church ceremony for most denominations is no longer necessary. Also, church weddings have to adhere to certain guidelines set by their own governing authorities regarding what is or is not acceptable during a ceremony. As people lack the flexibility to express themselves, they turn to other venues and other types of officiants when expressing their marital vows.

Secondarily, church weddings are/were primarily a family affair. Think of the weddings you went to as a child – you went to a wedding of someone in your family who went to the same church. Your mother or your aunt or your older sister helped with the flowers, helped the bride, and other ladies from the congregation helped with the music, the food, and the guestbook. It involved everyone in the family in some capacity, and a number of members of the local community. The wedding has been, in modern times, all about the women of the family. Personally, I know of a few couples who have chosen the church based solely on the beauty of the sanctuary. Their families live in different cities, and they don’t know their neighbors. Americans in particular have a subconscious cultural message that praises individuals who leave the nest in order to pursue success. Why else would people move away from home in droves? I think with the loss of community and the loss of the closeness of the family, a wedding becomes less of a religious and spiritual joining in the presence of your loved ones and more of a Broadway musical. After all, you want to impress everyone you haven’t seen since you were thirteen with your beauty, your success, your wealth and your partner. It’s just a marital form of keeping up with the Joneses.

How am I getting to fidelity?

Don’t you think that because we no longer have the glue of family and community in an immediate geographic area, it becomes easier and easier for a relationship to go awry. There are, after all, no checks to the balances. If a partner is cheating, and your friends know, do you think the censure of your friends will carry as much weight as the censure of your father or the partner’s mother? I mean, we don’t have the stocks anymore, and no one is forced to wear a Scarlet Letter (more’s the pity, it would make identification SOOOO much easier). It’s this simple - there is no social pressure for couples to stay together.

Man, I just got some bad news about some friends who have decided (in a really brutal way) to end their decade long marriage. Ouch. I’m so sorry. What a terrible way to have your hopes dashed.

Back to the main idea: since there are no social repercussions to infidelity (really, one can always move or take a new job in this day and age), what makes people stay faithful? Is it trust and common interests? Or is it truly understanding what your actions (bad or good) do to your partner? Maybe good old fashioned love and respect? Your religious upbringing? The fear that your father in law will kick your ass if you screw it up? Your children?

For those who can’t seem to be faithful…at some point you thought your partner hung the moon. What changed? When did you start to put your happiness over your partners? Happiness is perhaps the wrong term. When did you start to value yourself over your partner? Are you looking for something you feel is missing? What makes you look rather than reinvest yourself in your relationship? And are you being really brutally honest with yourself? Are you being unfaithful and blaming your partner (the whole he/she drove me to it argument) for something you have failed to address within your own psyche?

Thoughts?