A recent article in the NY Times' magazine calls for society to renounce the 'dishonesty' of monogamy and encourages men to yield to their natural inclinations of infidelity.
By SHMULEY BOTEACHcouple in love_58(photo credit: Courtesy)
This past Sunday, The New York Times ran a cover story for its magazine that focused on the ideas of gay writer Dan Savage, whom the article referred to as America’s foremost sex-advice columnist. Savage avers that it’s high time people acknowledge how tough monogamy is, and further posits that infidelity just might be the thing to save it. He argues that couples should be far more understanding of infidelities and that if such a thing is deemed appropriate in any particular relationship, couples should be open to discussing the matter beforehand in order to receive their partner’s informed consent. Couples should trade in the straightjacket of strict monogamy, which Savage claims doesn’t work, and seek instead to be "monogomish."RELATED:Putting the bed-hopping days behind usIn other words, remaining faithful to loved ones while at the same time allowing for outside liaisons could prevent the dissolution of primary relationships.Yawn. What a bore. This is what passes as newsworthy in the world’s leading publication? The New York Times is apparently not opposed to devoting an ocean of ink to an idea that can never hold up in reality. The argument for open relationships goes back to the beginning of time, but perhaps its most famous advocate in modern times is the celebrated British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who wrote long letters to his wife about his consensual infidelities.Ultimately, however Russell's open-mindedness could not surmount his jealousy when his own wife starting taking lovers. When Dora had a child by another man, he left her, later commenting, “My capacity for forgiveness, and what might be called Christian love, was not equal to the demands I was making on it . . . I was blinded by theory.” Their daughter Kathleen Tait pithily remarked about her parents’ strange marriage, “Calling jealousy deplorable had not freed them from it . . . both found it hard to admit that the ideal had been destroyed by the old-fashioned evils of jealousy and infidelity.”The great British writer Iris Murdoch has a similar story. Her husband John Bayley wrote a memoir of their 40-year marriage called Elegy for Iris. He explains that his wife would not allow her marriage to curtail her freedom or her need for adventure. Despite her insistence in keeping lovers on the side, Murdoch also insisted on marriage for the comfort, companionship, and sense of safety that it offered. Her poor husband tried in vain to camouflage the pain of the arrangement, saying, “I always thought it would be vulgar – as well as not my place – to give any indications of jealousy.”But in an attempt to be ground-breaking, Dan Savage adds another dimension to this discourse. “The mistake that straight people made was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitarian and fairsey.” According to The New York Times, Savage believes that “the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women ‘the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,’ we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”Aha.It makes me wonder: Has Savage discussed his theory with women? Does the average wife believe that her husband ought to have ‘a release valve’ (don’t you just love these plumbing metaphors) that is someone else but her?Let’s be clear. Yes, monogamy is challenging and yes, it does not come naturally. But neither does studying for an SAT, waking up at the crack of dawn to go to a job, or taking care of basic hygiene. The average caveman was no doubt far more successful in doing what came naturally. Bopping a woman over the head with a club and taking her by force is more natural than wining and dining her.Thankfully, men have become civilized. Today the expectation on a man is for him to try and live honorably by their commitments. And the first commitment a man makes in marriage is to treat his wife with the respect and honour she deserves. So that no matter what Dan Savage thinks, when a husband has sex with a woman he is not married to, he is causing his wife to feel discarded and secondary. Indeed, spurious arguments like those made by Savage - now given so much credence by reputable publications such as The New York Times - is what has turned so many women off of men. Three quarters of all divorces today are initiated by women, while one third of all women of marriageable age are still single. Why? Because they’re tired of men who want to act like boys. Who have wandering eyes. Who watch TV at night rather than make love to them.Dan Savage might argue that this is inevitable, that men are hard-wired to require lots of different women. I’ve heard these arguments ad nauseam from hard-core evolutionists who tell us that men are genetically wired to inseminate everything with a pulse.What a pile of nonsense. I am a man. Not a brute. And my actions are in my control. And if I screw up I cannot blame my nature. I can only blame my bad choices. Period.Savage’s theory is also false on another count.Men, like women, are intimacy seekers. Men cheat out of a sense of brokenness. The most common refrain heard among married men to their mistresses is, “My wife doesn’t understand me.” Men seek someone that will make them feel good about themselves and allow them to open up emotionally.Yes, there are marriages that crumble because of boredom, just as there are businesses that lose their customers as the result of stagnation.In the final analysis, the reason why the Savages of this world are so misguided is that monogamy actually accords with our deepest nature. What we all seek in marriage is the synthesis of novelty and intimacy. We want a lover who is also our best friend. We want an erotic bond that is both fiery but also friendly.This is no more challenging than the expectation for people to excel in the professional arena as well as the personal. Human beings are entirely capable of this and by attempting to minimize expectations, people like Savage are simply selling us short.Dan Savage and his fellow “advice” columnists have an embarrassingly shallow understanding of what eroticism really is. By calling for men to devolve back to the primitive behavior that has long-characterized the male species, they are doing a massive injustice to civilized society.The writer is the international best-selling author of 25 books, most recently Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life. (Basic Books) and the winner of the National Fatherhood Award. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
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