Ramblings on commitment and cheating in romantic relationships
What’s the reason to stay loyal in a society that lacks relational moral coherence?
What is the point of dating? Different people are seeking different outcomes, obviously, but how well do people articulate them? And are those outcomes actually satisfying when they’re achieved?
I’ve been thinking about commitment lately. I believe we can maintain commitments to each other without committing to a duration of the relationship. But also, it seems we lack a cultural consensus for the purpose of committed romantic relationships at all. Once it was marriage, but now what is it? There is no real imperative for commitment, so we are willing to shirk it or delay it.
On the surface this looks like freedom: We don’t need to commit to anything in particular, so we can explore our desires and prioritize other things like careers, or ourselves. We are untethered, unbothered. But are we really happy to just float along, stay in “situationships,” and so on? I don’t think most people are, but it seems they struggle to understand or articulate their loneliness, its source, or its antidote.
What moral basis do we have to stay loyal to each other in a decadent culture of hedonism and self-prioritization? The most powerful force that will stop someone from cheating is their conscience overpowering their most basic urges for libidinal or ego gratification. But what happens when our consciences are formed oriented towards self-love at the expense of love of the other? That is the most popular refrain of contemporary culture, to love yourself. We are encouraged and celebrated to guiltlessly indulge ourselves in many areas of life, and how could that not bleed into our relational commitments? Cheating is easy to justify, or at the very least easy to dismiss as an extreme moral transgression, in such a framework.
There are two obvious routes to stop someone from committing infidelity. One: empathy, knowing it would hurt the other person and feeling terrible. Two: someone whose conscience cannot allow them to break a commitment, who feels a moral imperative to stay true to their word. I think there is another important route to “doing the right thing” that we seriously lack, perhaps due in part to an absence of functional religion.
This route is through commitment to a coherent moral framework and a higher purpose. I think some people need this more than others; some people cannot function well without seeing their actions in a meta framework that serves a higher purpose beyond hedonistic indulgence. (It’s me.) People who fall into moral nihilism are the ones that need moral coherence—perhaps “god”—most of all. If the absence of meaning or purpose is the force that leads them into the deepest despair and thus recklessness, it is the presence of meaning or purpose that will empower them to act in the highest good.
Anyway, it is odd to me how common infidelity seems to be, but also of course it is. I don’t think it’s that we lack a moral foundation that enforces monogamy—you can still cheat in non-monogamy as well. Rather, we lack a moral imperative beyond mere empathy to truly love the other before oneself. To love the other more than yourself means either denying yourself of something dopamine-inducing to stay committed to love, or admitting that you are unable to commit to love the other, and letting them go. But empathy alone is not sufficient for everyone when your foundational belief is that ultimately nothing matters. Then what? I guess for me it has been: Find God.
I have recently discovered multiple people I was flirting with were being disloyal to their partners, or have a pattern of doing so. An acquaintance of mine confided in me that they betrayed their partner recently. I am shocked at how when it rains it pours, but it is also forcing me to reckon with infidelity and its consequences. I am embarrassed to admit that it took me until the last few months to fully appreciate how fundamentally bad infidelity is, and these encounters have confronted me with the depth of its depravity. Being betrayed is one of the most excruciating things to experience, and one of the cruelest behaviors to engage in.
Something perhaps controversial: I now regret having an open relationship. I know my ex consented to it, and I told him everything, but in retrospect I feel like I deeply betrayed him. I have been feeling a great deal of guilt for it. I suppose I’m starting to question the limits of a moral framework of “consent” on its own. That is for another time though. I don’t condemn polyamory broadly, but I do not know if I could in good conscience engage in it again myself.
I look around at popular culture and people’s experiences with dating and I literally cannot imagine navigating contemporary courtship (or lack there of), but I will have to eventually. All I know is that I want to be with a person who has real integrity and conviction, as well as courage to be brutally honest with me and themselves. If someone does not lead with integrity to a coherent and articulated moral framework, but rather mere instinct oriented towards immediate gratification, I am uninterested.
For now, I’m working on becoming that way myself. I seriously abandoned my conscience over the last decade as I bought into the premises of identitarian liberalism. I know this will turn off many people, but the more into Christian theology I get, the more I realize how aligned its teaching are with the innate, strong conscience I had before I fell into the ideology I submitted to in college and online. The more I recognize this, the more grief and, indeed, guilt I’ve been experiencing. I also feel more clarity and strength to become a healthier, happier, more purposeful person.
I trust and obey my disgust more lately. When I recently found out people I was into were being disloyal to their partners, I felt disgusted and my interest effortlessly evaporated. Something kicked in and I could no longer see them in the same light; I could no longer see myself falling in love with them. The romance left. I no longer wanted them, though I don’t think they’re irredeemably bad. In the past I think I would not have that experience. I would have felt either willing to forgive and overlook it and remain interested in them anyway, or I would have even found it a bit, well…alluring.
I’m glad for this change. I think this will help guide me to the right person one day, but who knows. People can still lie and cheat and exploit despite their convictions. We are human after all. But I hope maybe I’ll find someone who is as committed to actual love and truth as I am. I hope we all find our way.
Hi Molly,
I've been reading your work for a while now but wasn't subscribed under my Substack account, so re-subscribing today with this account just so that I can say thank you!
Your essay today reminded me of some of the thoughts Ram Dass had on infidelity. He condemned it simply because, according to him, it does nothing but add paranoia to the world. I haven't been able to shake the beautiful simplicity of this way of framing it ever since I heard it on one of his recorded talks.
I think it speaks to the integrity behind deciding not to cheat as being something that has to come outside of the self, outside of the commitment/guilt/obligation/care for the partnership one might find themselves in, which as you illustrated, often can only take us so far when immediate gratification presents itself like a dangling carrot. I choose not to cheat, not just because I love my partner, not just because I care about what in my community think of me, not just because of the immediate consequences of hurt or shame, not just because I currently have enough will-power, but because I don't want to add paranoia to the fabric of the world, even if it's a mere single thread or stitch - it still leaves a mark.
Definitely questioning the moral limitations of consent practices rn as well. It can be dangerous territory.. not wanting to paternalistically make decisions for someone while also noticing the limitations on their reasoning. It does make an external moral framework appealing- not sure I’m on board with the Christian one personally tho lol