When friends announce their impending nuptials the correct response is “congratulations” followed by well wishes for a long and happy life together. I knew this, but the information caught me off guard.

Garth had been trying to get me on the phone for days and I had been trying to call him back. The vagaries of our schedules and the different time-zones between Dublin and Perth meant we kept missing each other. He eventually got hold of me on the bus – not the ideal place for a heart to heart conversation – but we had been chatting away happily for about fifteen minutes, filling each other in on what had been happening in our lives, when out of the blue he announced he was getting married. In a month! To which I promptly responded, “What! Why?”
Luckily, being Australian and all-together laidback Garth didn’t take offence. What’s more, he seemed to be grappling with the idea himself. “Er, I don’t really know,” he said. There was a mention of his age, the fact that he had been with his girlfriend for a while, and that she, unlike his last one, wasn’t crazy.
Admittedly sanity is a good quality to look for in a long-term partner – although I like a little bit of weirdness myself – but given that Garth’s last girlfriend had been both paranoid and aggressive, I could understand his desire for a quiet life. However, I wasn’t convinced that sanity, age and convenience were good reasons to get married. Thing is, I don’t like it when my friends get married. Nor do I like marriage in general. This is not because I am a cynic, far from it; it is because, at heart, I am a romantic and an idealist.
I’ll get straight to the point: marriage is, among other things, a contractual obligation to monogamy, and I believe that contractually obliging your partner to sexual fidelity is both pointless and unethical.
Let’s deal with the pointlessness first, before we come to the trickier issue of ethics. Marriage, civil partnerships and religion all try to restrict sexual expression to a committed relationship between two people, blessed by the State or God – or both. Magazine articles and books will tell you how to spot a cheat or how to keep your man or woman from straying, and there is a whole industry of private detectives, honey-trappers and surveillance equipment designed to help you snoop on your partner.
In the end, none of this makes a blind bit of difference because people will do what they want to do, whether or not you like it, whether or not you keep tabs on them and whether or not you have married them.
Now let’s look at the ethics, and I’ll ask you to keep an open mind here, because I’m going to flip received wisdom on its head. Most people think cheating is wrong; I think demanding sexual fidelity is wrong.
Most relationships open you up to the possibility of further relationships. If I meet you and we become friends, at some point you’ll introduce me to your friends and family and vice versa. Our relationship opens up the possibility of other connections – sexual or platonic – with everyone else we know.
Sexual relationships work differently – they are about closing down future connections or limiting the scope of relationships that already exist. Many sexual relationships are not about love – they are about control. Not all the time, thankfully, but frequently.
All too often, as soon as someone claims another as ‘theirs’ – a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife – they feel it gives them the right to police their partner’s life: who he or she can talk to or befriend; how they behave; spend their money; dress; manage their career; or invite into their lives.
The French philosopher Luce Irigaray called this a ‘consuming’ love – not an all-consuming passion, note, but the kind of love that seeks to subsume the other person, erasing their differences and independence.
Marriage is the worst offender here. It wasn’t all that long ago that the marriage vow for women included ‘obey’ after ‘love and honour’. As far as I can see, a residual desire for obedience still remains but it tends to cut both ways: this being the modern age, women are just as likely to demand submission as men.
All relationships require some compromise and adjustment – but they shouldn’t come with a list of demands, and love is not love if it is conditional. See, I warned you I was an idealist.
An ex once told me that, hypothetically speaking, if we were to get married he would divorce me if I ever cheated.
“What if we were married for ten years and had two children?” I asked.
“I’d divorce you,” he replied.
“Twenty-five years, three children, two grandchildren and it was a once-off mistake after I had been diagnosed with breast cancer?”
“Even then. It’s non-negotiable. It’s a deal-breaker.”
I realised that, hypothetically speaking, he didn’t want to marry a person – he wanted exclusive ownership of a vagina; and that was a deal-breaker for me.
I’m not sure that extra-marital sex qualifies as immoral – but I am absolutely convinced that demanding obedience or anything else from another human is completely unethical.
That’s why I hate all the moralising that goes hand-in-hand with discussions about extra-marital sex. Those who get caught may be shamed and professionally disgraced, particularly if they are famous, or frozen out by friends, family and colleagues if they are not. All that outrage is simply a form of coercion demanding that everyone live their lives according to the same code whatever their circumstances.
Don’t get me wrong. I have had partners ‘cheat’ on me too, twice that I know of, but presumably more times than that. I wish I could claim that it didn’t matter to me, but, as I’m not immune to jealousy, it did. Having said that, I still think it is unethical to try and control anybody else’s behaviour and that includes their sexual behaviour.
It’s not that I underestimate the value of monogamy: for most people it is genuinely important. But I think it needs to be freely given not coerced. Let’s put it this way – if I needed a hundred quid, you might decide to give it to me or I could bribe, blackmail or force you into handing it over. Either way the monetary value remains the same, but a gift freely given has an intangible extra significance, and that makes it worth far more.
After a long rant, similar to the one above, poor Garth must have being dying to get me to shut up.
“Well, if it doesn’t work out, I could always get divorced,” he offered dejectedly and I realised I had been stomping all over his future with my large objections and tiny size-four feet.
“Don’t mind me,” I said and belatedly remembered my manners. “Congratulations.”
Damn! I have had more than one friend ‘disappear’ once they got married. Frankly I don’t want to lose any more, but hell, it seemed I didn’t need marriage to alienate my friends – I am well able to do that all by myself.
The next day, luck and the time difference were on my side, and I caught him on Skype to apologise.
“Nah, mate, I wasn’t offended,” he said. “So, how do you like my ‘tache? I’m growing a Ron Jeremy for Movember.”
Thank God for that laidback Aussie attitude. Still, I better send him a good present – just to be sure.