The Politics of Love: We Are Elizabeth; We Are John

The same dynamic is at play in our national and private yearnings. We want the same illusion of moral constancy in our politicians as we do in our marriages.

But we inevitably find our leaders have feet of clay. And it's common for couples to not even know what's going on in their very own relationships.

I've heard these sexual secrets with regularity in my 20 years of practice as a psychoanalyst; I can reflect on stories of infidelity from my small puritanical home town that have dribbled in over the last 40 years, long after the fact, often after somebody who'd be affected by the secret has died (just like with Deep Throat); I know of their existence in the family in which I was raised; and they've been repeatedly disclosed to me by my friends as they've grappled with it. Naturally, I also see it played out in media coverage whenever a story breaks.

It's omnipresent and we don't want it to be.

We can consider the sexual acts of others so stupid and hubristic we can't even believe they were undertaken, and we think that would certainly never happen to us. Or we try to keep our concerns at bay by joking our partner has no time to have an affair, or we ask them if they've been untrue and they say "No, honey". Sexual love over time can be tricky. I don't know who said it first, God or Bono, but this line comes to mind: "Love is a temple; love the higher law. You ask for me to enter but then you make me crawl."

No matter what we do to try and protect ourselves, this is the problem: rationality plays no role in desire. They operate in separate spheres.

To prove we're all susceptible, here's a list of just some of the jumpstarts to affairs:

Too much narcissism
Not enough narcissism
Stasis
Tragedy
Grief
Wanting to ride the wave of happiness by riding someone's curves
ADD
Illness
Augmenting great sex at home
The absence of great sex at home
Sexual disorders
Sexual ease
Falling in love with someone else
Wanting compartmentalized un-emotional sex with someone else
Too much money and grandiosity
The absence of money and the wish to not feel it
Having children
Not having children
Because you're young and don't know better
Because you're old and know too much
Because your partner's your best friend
Because you can no longer stand your partner
To get back at your partner for betraying you
To get your partner's attention
Because the couple steers into danger consciously
Because the couple drifts into danger unconsciously
Because it's so not what people believe you're capable of that no one would suspect you
Because it's what everyone expects of you
Because the Madonna/Whore split is alive and well
Because you're human.

Our trust doesn't extinguish our partner's sexual desire; and their trust doesn't extinguish ours. In fact, our wish for trustworthiness exists in part because we have such a well-earned fear for the power of desire. The same is true of those we vote into national power. Our hope for true leadership guides us in our search, but it doesn't guarantee finding it.

I believe we'd have a better chance of weathering the foibles of our own humanity if we'd reconceptualize intimacy in a way that plans for the high possibility of infidelity. I suggest this because betrayal is hard enough without the additional shame we heap on it with our clanging response of shock each time we hear of another couple in crisis.

The same could be true for how we see our leaders.

There should be no cause for shock in the case of something that happens with great regularity. What?! A politician lied to cover up hypocrisy? What?! Someone strayed? What?! You ordered the chicken again?

Comments

[mbaty]

Honest communication>monogamy.

[saami]

No one mentioned depression which can lead to no love life, no sex but lots of self loathing. The depressed one pushes their spouse away and doesn't know why. It is really difficult to love a depressed person, even when you are the depressed person. Too bad mental health still has a stigma attached to it.

[nov47]

Would it were different, but you're right, it's not.

[Paul Peete - Huffpost Blogger]

See Paul Peete's Profile

Very good post! Our expectations for marriage are based on custom, infidelity is a sin in the Judeo-Christian world; yet unlike other sins forgiven by confession and or repentance, infidelity has the accompanying sense of betrayal. Either we betray our mate's trust or betray our carnal instincts. The propagation of the species, which lies beneath our social veneer, signals for the act of procreation to supercede our desire for trustworthiness. Add to this the problems of sexual dysfunction, inadequacy, jealousy, envy, Jimmy Carter's lust, and the romanticization of our movie stars and entertainers makes for marital minefields. Gender also has challenges for a unified approach to sensible sexual relationships. Men are dogs, and women cats. Men are from Mars women from Venus. It all points to our different perspectives on infidelity. Part is based on the physiological and psychological differences; the womb, versus the phallus, the nurturer versus the hunter, warrior.

The Edwards' public unmasking of private matters, as we have learned to relish since the Clinton era, was accentuated with Elizabeth's health issue but it is revealing about how we view our political figures. John McCain's infidelity and abandonment of his first wife juxtaposed against the seeming idyllic marriage of the Obamas will dictate many female voters choice, whereas guys will say John was just being true to himself and maybe Barack is just a little too "spousy".

[LRM216]

As much as I would like it not to be, I believe the act of being unfaithful lies within us all, and while some attempt to fight it off successfully, others not so much. It is such a common fatality to so many couplings, yet the shock of hearing about it, yet confounds us. What stange beings we remain.