Acting in Fidelity

What does this mean, "Acting in Fidelity"? (Especially when applied to one's self?)

Hugo writes about being faithful as "something we do for ourselves, not for our partners," and I agree in a sort of general way, but with some caveats targeting some of the ways we usually talk about "people who cheat" (on relationships-- you could spend maybe a whole course on analyzing people cheating on all sorts of things from taxes to embezzlement to gambling, I suppose.)

I think it may be hard-- especially as a young person but really anyone-- grappling with cheating, as a question, potential, or fact, to hear that basically, their partner really isn't faithful to Them. That it's not our treasuring of them and their worth that makes us give up others (if in fact we do) because the flip-side is that obviously, if we do cheat on them the pain of "what we did to them" is very real. A partner that feels betrayed by infidelity generally does not (at least, in the beginning) look at us and say, "I am disappointed in you, how could you do this to yourself?" Invariably their first question is, "how could you do this to me?"

Other people have written elsewhere (pepomint of http://freaksexual.wordpress.com/, for example on"Jealousy, Monogamy, and Power" is a very worthwhile read) and more in-depthly about the gendered expectation trends of jealousy, but I can generalize to say that women have more of a tendency to blame themselves when their partners cheat. We often say things to our partners like, "Oh honey, why would I ever need to look at other women when I have everything I need right here?"1

But, one of the things I've learned is that just "trying desperately to avoid cheating" is a really, well it's a really crappy perspective and motivation for maintaining a healthy relationship. If we feel a constant urge to pursue intimate relations with people other than our partners, and merely stifle the urge for their sake, something else would appear to be amiss (and it's also firstly, a rather miserable existence and secondly, something of a ticking time bomb.) Trying to house all your motivation for self-restraint/self-denial, in someone else's desires and emotions, has the very real potential to morph into resentment.

One of the classic rationales for justifying cheating, or any other dishonest behavior, is usually based on the assumption that we can keep it a secret, and that doing so will prevent all the bad things from happening... That if the people you care about don't know they can't be hurt by it. But of course this is a fallacy on a number of levels, one that you can't be hurt by things you don't know about, but also the assumption that the worst outcome of cheating is merely going to be your partner's hurt feelings.

What a lot of people fail to fully realize is the damage to one's own self worth, to one's own being, that infidelity produces. Kant said that lying is blatantly unethical, because it breaks our duty to ourselves, our own humanity, when we lie. Although I tend to disagree with the premise of deontological ethics that assumes that circumstances never matter, it is certainly true that in many cases lying begets lying, and yet more lying, until we are caught in a web of our own making and risk losing sight of ourselves-- in which case, it little matters that our partners don't know the cause, if we hurt when they hurt, and vice versa. And when infidelity does a basic harm to ourselves regardless of being caught or not.

I also really dislike this idea that people can rely on their own self-labeled identities, or the ascribed labels they put on other people, like "I'm an honest person, I would never do something like that" to protect them from unethical behaviors, like "cheating." Humans tend to write stories about how they want to conceptualize who they are and where they came from, and if you watch these stories long enough over time, you can begin to see how they change, which is not to say that we're all dirty rotten liars, but merely that our conceptualizations of ourselves wax and wane as we move through life. And the "truth," is that none of our stories are really 100% accurate in both spirit and letter, though some might be "closer" to the truth than others.

Of course, the very obvious problem in laying the responsibility for your actions in someone else's definitions of fidelity is that people define cheating differently. But that's almost irrelevant (though not entirely, and the whole spectrum of articles and magazines devoted to the cause of "5 Signs He Might Be Cheating" and "Is it okay if your man opens the door for another woman?" crap drives me up the wall.)

But, another reason for not relying on someone else's feelings/approval to determine the ethics of your behavior is because when your basis for "not cheating" rests in someone else, your whole intention from which you base your actions is flawed. A second point that Kant makes is in the idea that supposedly righteous behavior merely for the sake of avoiding negative consequences, is not truly ethical behavior.

Which brings me back (finally) to the topic of addressing what "acting in fidelity" means. For me, I can say, that although it has taken much trial and error to figure it out, it serves me best when I act based upon the core of my being, rather than trying to be what I'm not, or hide what I am. And that's probably the founding principle of my ethical behaviors. (Which, as it happens, is impossible to do if you don't know what that is, if you're too distracted by your own ego, or self-righteousness of a painful past. And it's pretty much impossible to do if you're running away from yourself trying to self-soothe with excessive alcohol, drugs, sex, work, serial monogamy, etc.)

...One of the hardest things for me to say was, okay, I'm going to commit to speaking from my beingness... and then realizing I still wasn't out to my dad as a bisexual.

I had several nightmares over a period of months, and my own sense of encoraching dread only magnified when my brother himself came out and ended up moving in with his boyfriend... until I finally couldn't take it anymore and forced myself to blurt it out, rather against the advice of my mother and friends, actually. (Not that it will work out this way for everyone, but it was kind of anti-climactic with my dad.)

In some of the earliest conversations with R, my most recent paramour, one of the things that he was so struck by was my devotion to this honesty in communication principle, which sounds so mundane but feels revolutionary (sometimes scary) when you do it, which is not to say that I always achieve that ideal, sometimes I fall short but it's always what I'm pushing towards. (Actually, he still comments on this. It's adorable.)

I tried to explain, initially, my rationale for my own ethics because a part of it IS motivated by the fact that I've walked some really dark paths of both, trying to force myself into shapes that aren't me, and also that I know what the dark demon of guilt and self-hate looks like, and I'm committed to never being that again. So I have to find a radically different method of handling things, even if it makes me feel uncomfortable at times.

I refuse to allow fear, fear of uncomfortableness, of awkwardness, stand in the way of speaking my truth. It may be awkward, it make be disappointing or scary, but that is way better than being bottled up, of feeling trapped, in a prison you made for yourself without even consulting with your partner to see if they didn't feel the same, because you were afraid of speaking up. And that sinking feeling in my gut I see as a warning sign, that I absolutely have to get something out. It's important, whatever it is, and it's going to start trying to eat me whole if I don't address it. Out of that eventually evolved my own litmus test, which is basically: if it pops into my head, and keeps threatening to jump out of my mouth for more than a week, I'd better spit it out.

So maybe it's hard to see how this ethic of radical fidelity to self, equates to protection from cheating, but really if you're devoted to acting from your truth, rather than an impulse of the moment, then you're prompted to always be considering, "is this really what I want to be doing? Is this really going to be a positive experience/influence in my life?" And it becomes hard to imagine a scenario where something so inherently deception-based like sexual infidelity is even going to fit that model. (Regardless of whether you're monogamous or otherwise.) And yeah, this requires a lot of vigilance and perhaps a lot more regular thought and consideration that perscriptive-blanket-ethics "don't cheat cause it's wrong"... but it's a lot more flexible and ultimately self-affirming too. Because you can still manage to hurt yourself even while following blanket moral codes.



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