American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics

by Dan Savage

  People might have an easier time wrapping their heads around my advice if they knew how common cheating was. Various studies estimate that between 40 to 50 percent of women and 50 to 60 percent of men in long-term relationships have had extramarital affairs.

  Whenever a politician gets caught up in a political sex scandal, someone brings up the French. Why can’t we be more sophisticated about these sorts of things—you know, like the French? Why can’t we turn a blind eye to discreet affairs—you know, like the French? But it’s not just the French. When asked about her late husband’s “discreet dalliances” in a profile in The New York Times, the duchess of Devonshire, one of the famous Mitford sisters, replied, “It was absolutely fixed that we shouldn’t divorce or get rid of each other in any way. It’s completely different to Americans, who all divorce each other the whole time. Such a bore for everyone, having to say who’s going to have the dogs, who’s going to have the photograph books.” Yes, if not the children, then just think of the dogs, think of the photo books.

  I’m not saying that being cheated on by your spouse is not a big deal, or a violation, or a betrayal. It is all of those things. But if more people understood how difficult monogamy is over the long term, and how common cheating is, and if people were encouraged to assess the actual particulars of a particular adulterous incident rather than seeing all cheating as essentially equal (i.e., fucking a complete stranger safely and discreetly, if ill-advisedly, just once when she’d had too much to drink on a business trip really isn’t equal to her fucking your boss repeatedly in your marital bed), maybe more marriages would survive the nearly inevitable infidelity.

  I would argue that as a society we have a responsibility to adjust people’s expectations about marriage. Imagine if a newlywed couple’s married friends or the spiritual leaders of those marriage encounter weekends told the happy couple this: “If you’re with this person for forty or fifty years, and your husband or wife only cheats on you once or twice, you should see your partner as good at being monogamous, not bad at it.” But that’s not what people are told; they’re told the opposite: Any cheating, even just once, negates the marriage and everything else it meant.

  Is it any wonder the divorce rate is so high?

  Because I don’t think that married people should have to live without sex, even if they choose to stay in a sexless marriage. I’m frequently told that I overemphasize the importance of sex. But I think a marriage is about more than sex. I think sex is less important than marriage. I believe that there’s more than one way to demonstrate your loyalty and commitment. And if your marriage is rendered meaningless the moment your spouse gets naked with someone else—even if it was just that one time on that business trip—then your marriage didn’t mean much to begin with.

  Cheating is not a bug, as the programmers say; it’s a feature. We are socially monogamous—we pair bond; we couple up (not all of us: Some of us are happily single, some of us are happily poly)—but we are not sexually monogamous. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, the authors of Sex at Dawn (which examines modern premises of marriage and monogamy by studying evidence collected from the fields of human physiology, primate biology, archaeology, and anthropological studies), note that “adultery has been documented in every human culture studied, including those in which fornicators are routinely stoned to death. In light of all this bloody retribution, it’s hard to see how monogamy comes ‘naturally’ to our species…. Were monogamy an ancient, evolved trait characteristic of our species, as the standard narrative insists, these ubiquitous transgressions would be infrequent and such horrible enforcement unnecessary. No creature needs to be threatened with death to act in accord with its own nature.”

  If monogamy came naturally, it would be easier. If it were easy, we would do it, easily. But it’s not; it’s a struggle. Admitting that it’s a struggle makes a monogamous commitment more meaningful. The fact that your partner is willing to “forsake all others” only means something if your partner doesn’t, on some level, want to forsake all others. And your partner doesn’t.

  Defenders of “traditional marriage,” circa 1750, not 1950, objected to anyone marrying for something so unstable as a feeling, Stephanie Coontz argues in Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, no one married for love. You married for property if you were a man; you were married off as property if you were a woman. Couples married to cement alliances. Princes married to unite kingdoms; peasants married to bring small parcels of land together. But marriage wasn’t something you did back then. Marriage was something that was done to you: Young, marriage-age adults (or preadolescents) didn’t have the power or judgment to craft marriage contracts, negotiate alliances, identify the best acreage in the village. Their families—their fathers or eldest male relatives—did that for them.

  Much as the advice business is geared toward the needs of women—or geared toward telling women what they want to hear, which is not always what women need—traditional marriage arrangements were geared toward the needs of men. Historically monogamy wasn’t imposed on or expected from men. Traditionally men (and “traditionally married” men) had concubines; men had multiple wives; men had mistresses; men had access to sex workers. It was only in the middle of the twentieth century—as marriage was redefined from an inherently sexist and oppressive institution to something more egalitarian (i.e., women could own property; they weren’t property)—that monogamous expectations were imposed on men, with often disastrous results. Men aren’t good at it, as anyone who has read a newspaper over the last ten years can attest (Edwards, John; Sanford, Mark; Vitter, David; Petraeus, David, et al.). But rather than extend the same license to women that men have always enjoyed—you can get some on the side, now and then, if you must, but be discreet—we’ve imposed on men the same limitations that women have always endured. Cheating is always wrong.

  But no matter how many times we say it—cheating is always wrong!—people still cheat. Because cheating is not a bug; it’s a feature. Because we are socially monogamous animals, not sexually monogamous animals. (And not all of us are socially monogamous—see, again, people in open relationships, the openly monogamish, the poly community.) And the pressure to perfectly execute monogamy over the life of a marriage—half a century or more—makes every monogamous relationship “a disaster waiting to happen,” according to Meg Barker, the author of Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships. “We readily accept someone loving more than one child, sibling or friend without their love for one of them diluting the love for others,” Barker notes in a 2012 interview with The Guardian on the subject of monogamy, “but when it comes to romantic or sexual love most people cannot accept it happening more than once at a time.”

  Mixed in with the mail from miserable, sex-deprived readers seeking permission to cheat—which I am, as I’ve said, likelier to grant than any other advice columnist currently working—are outraged letters from people who insist that men and women who cheat on their spouses can’t really be in love. This applies, they argue, even in cases where no one is being “cheated” at all (i.e., honest open relationships of whatever stripe). The marriages of cheaters are frauds, they claim—though rarely does anyone suggest that there’s something fraudulent about a sexless marriage—and if I had any respect for marriage as an institution, I would stop telling people that cheating is ever okay.

  But my belief that, in certain circumstances, cheating is okay isn’t informed by any disrespect for marriage. Quite the opposite: I have too much respect for marriage to regard it as solely defined by sexual exclusivity. That’s setting the bar too low, in my opinion, as marriage is about so much more, as this letter from a reader demonstrates:

  I’m forty-nine and my husband of twenty-one years has agreed that I can have sex with someone else since we don’t have sex anymore. We plan on staying together. We are companions and friends. We have shared history and shared burdens. Ther
e have been bad times that we got through together—including the loss of our shared sex life. But in a weird way it may be a relief to both of us that the tension about our sex life is over. I’m so grateful that he is sensible about not trying to control my sexuality just because he’s no longer sexual due to physical and emotional issues. I have a lover and it makes a huge impact on my life. I’d be a crazzzy woman without it. (I seem to be one of the women for whom menopause has increased my libido.) Sex is considered so important in marriage until one partner can’t be sexual anymore and then the other is expected to just give sex up too. It’s not that easy.

  No, it’s not. Giving up sex—which is what most people would’ve expected this forty-nine-year-old, menopausal-but-still-horny woman to do, and what most advice columnists would’ve told her to do, either directly (“be faithful to your husband”) or indirectly (“see a couples’ counselor, do more around the house, have his hormone levels checked, maybe he’s depressed, blah blah blah, anything but take a lover!”)—is not easy. (Except for asexuals, of course, but can those who never took sex up in the first place really be described as having given sex up?) And when we tell people in sexless marriages that they either have to give up sex or give up their marriage—when we tell them that “cheating” is never okay—we sacrifice perfectly good marriages, marriages like this forty-nine-year-old woman’s, on the altar of a perfectly ridiculous, perfectly reductive notion about what marriage is.

  Still not convinced? Let’s unpack monogamy just a little bit more. At least the lie you’re told about it: If you’re in love with someone, monogamy comes easy. If you’re in love, you won’t want to fuck other people. But doesn’t that sort of obviate the need for a monogamous commitment in the first place? After all, if being in love means you don’t want to fuck anyone else, why are you forced to publicly promise not to fuck anyone else?

  The truth is—and most people intuitively understand this truth—that even if you’re in love with your partner, and even if your partner is in love with you, you will both be attracted to other people. You’ll want to fuck other people. You’ve committed to refraining from fucking other people. But you will still want to fuck other people. And so will your partner. You will feel lust in your heart—and in other organs too—but you will, if you can, keep that commitment, by keeping your heart, and other organs, in check.

  We all know this. And yet most people in committed relationships waste a tremendous amount of time scrutinizing their partners for proof that they want to fuck other people. People are angered when they catch their normally discreet—considerately discreet—partner checking out some other person’s ass; people flip out when they discover that their partner watched some porn (which can satisfy a desire for variety); people get furiously angry when they see their partner enjoying a little attention from an attractive stranger in a bar or a club.

  The ones who really suffer, though, are the fools who believe it. The people who believe that being in love means never having eyes for anyone else. What happens to them when they encounter a stranger in an airport bar or a new coworker who fills them with lust? If they believe that true love means not wanting to fuck anyone else, this desire to fuck someone else—the dude in the airport bar, the new girl at work—must mean they’re not in love with their spouse anymore. Conflating love and lust like this, and stigmatizing lust (which forces “good” people to round lust up to love to avoid thinking ill of themselves), creates chaos in the lives of the fools who buy into these romantic and woefully misguided notions of love. Love for your spouse—enduring, solid, reliable love—can coexist with an all-consuming lust for a new person. Telling people they can’t both love their spouses and want to fuck the shit out of the hot dude they saw at the airport bar—or have strong feelings of attraction to someone who is a regular presence in their lives—undermines marriages in the guise of strengthening them.

  So what’s the solution for sexless marriages that are worth saving? Or for good, solid marriages that have lasted decades and only suffered one or two dalliances? Not wide-open relationships, not polyamory for the monogamously inclined, or even for the monogamishly inclined. Not swingers’ conventions, not fucking in the streets. Perhaps a little license, a little latitude. An understanding that two people can’t be all things to each other sexually all of their adult lives. An understanding that life is long and circumstances change and some things—love, devotion, loyalty—are more important than sex, and that lifelong, perfectly executed sexual exclusivity is not the only measure of love, devotion, and loyalty. And an understanding that making a small accommodation within marriage—or a series of small accommodations—is easier than living in a marriage that has been poisoned by resentment. An understanding that real, imperfect relationships are more important than romantic, idealized, and ultimately impractical notions about lifelong fidelity.

  I might have coined the term monogamish, but I was only naming something that loving couples throughout history have practiced. It’s arguably the more common historical marital arrangement, and not solely to the benefit of those of us with a Y chromosome. The desire to be socially monogamous, if not sexually monogamous, was something that aviation pioneer and feminist icon Amelia Earhart understood way back in the 1930s. In a letter to her then-fiancé, George Putnam, Earhart laid out the terms of their impending marriage: “On our life together I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I think the difficulties which arise may best be avoided should you or I become interested deeply (or in passing) in anyone else. Please let us not interfere with the other’s work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements.”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  1 For the sake of clarity, and because most of the letters I get about cheating—contemplating cheating, seeking my blessing to cheat, complaining about having been cheated on—are from straight people, I’m not addressing husbands cheating on husbands or wives cheating on wives. This chapter is aimed squarely at straight married people. It’s not that married and/or partnered gays and lesbians don’t cheat. We can and we do. But gay male couples are much likelier to have hashed out agreements about when “cheating”—sex outside the relationship—is permissible; those agreements are easier to hash out, in part, because threesomes are easier to negotiate when both partners are equally attracted to a potential third. (And can it even be considered cheating if you’re cheating at one end of a guy while your husband cheats at the other end of the same guy?) Lesbian couples, for their part, are much likelier to be successfully and effortlessly monogamous. (This presents a real problem for those who argue that monogamy is a defining characteristic of marriage. If marriage should be reserved for those who are good at monogamy, only women should be allowed to marry—and they should only be allowed to marry other women.)

  2 It should be noted that kinky men outnumber kinky women by a factor of a hundred, which is why this example is gendered the way it is.

  3 My favorite example of a sexist advice columnist: A few years ago, on a quick visit to Toronto, I picked up a copy of the Toronto Sun. The tabloid, at the time, ran two advice columns: Dear Abby (written by the original Abby’s adult daughter) and Dear Val, by Valerie Gibson, a column I’d never run across before.

  The first letter in Dear Val on the Friday I was visiting the city was from a woman who was thinking about divorcing her husband. Four years earlier the woman’s husband announced that he was “no longer interested in sex,” without giving a reason. “In the last six months I’ve lost a lot of weight and worked hard on getting fit and suddenly he wants to restart our sex life!” The woman resents the fact that her husband “couldn’t love me the way I was before” and has decided, now that their kids are grown, to get a divorce. Val’s response? “You’ve worked at getting fit and are at the weight that feels good and you’re seeing your life more clearly than you have before,” Val wrote. “Co
nsult a divorce lawyer.”

  Legit advice, I guess, and I’ve certainly advised people to consult divorce lawyers. But Val didn’t mention that the wife might bear some small responsibility for the breakdown of her marital sex life. (I happen to believe that routine physical maintenance—which includes roughly maintaining your body weight—is one way we show our partners that we value them.) Yes, her husband didn’t give her a reason for his loss of interest in sex, but what was he supposed to say? “I’d fuck you, honey, but you’ve put on a lot of weight”? Men are constantly told—by their wives, by Oprah, by Dr. Phil, by other advice columnists—that any discussion of weight is off-limits. The exact same people who urge honesty in all things warn men that they’re absolutely, positively not allowed to be honest about that. The same people that urge us to own and honor and share our feelings tell men that they’re absolutely, positively not allowed to feel that.

  The next letter in Val’s column was from a man who believed his wife had cheated on him—multiple times. Now that his kids were grown, he was contemplating divorce. “She has always denied having affairs but I have quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. I want her to be honest with me so our marriage can continue.” Val’s advice? The man shouldn’t divorce his wife—he shouldn’t even confront her with the evidence of her infidelities, as that would put his wife between “a rock and a hard place,” leading her “to deny everything.” No, Val says, he needs to take a long, hard look at the real culprit: himself!